Westerly overnight with rain showers, only produced a trickle of migrants, 23 birds ringed incl. 10 WW, 6 CC, 2 Blcap and a male Whitethroat,new to many for the year. Wind S from 0900 produced a small Swallow and House Martin passage with a female Swallow caught. Sexed by length of tail feathers.
— Peter J Morgan (@pbo61.bsky.social) April 13, 2026 at 8:40 PM
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13th April
Unless this spring starts bucking its ideas up it's going to go down the pan just like last spring did - or maybe it's just that there just aren't that many migrants left in the world. Today was painful and there was no weather excuse that we were able to fall back on: hours of mist-netting and diligent fieldwork in lovely conditions returned the leanest of rewards, with the year's first Corn Bunting at the Bill the pick of some pretty woeful numbers and variety of grounded migrants for this date; a decent passage of hirundines did develop through the day - an event that the optimistic took as an indication that nocturnal migrants had been on the move but just hadn't dropped in. The sea fared almost as poorly as the land, with 4 Arctic Skuas and a single Red-throated Diver the best on offer off the Bill. A positive from the day was the continuing rise in Little Tern numbers at Ferrybridge, with a minimum of 56 already present - it's another sign of the rapidly changing times that there's many a year in the past when the first Little Tern of the season wouldn't even have been logged by this date.
