24th April

The current spell of easterlies began to lose their shine a little today, with a great deal of the momentum accrued over recent days gradually tapering away under the samey conditions. Overhead migration took the biggest hit, with reduced totals of c500 Swallows, c100 Sand Martins and 13 Yellow Wagtails (coverage was decidedly limited so these totals were very much minima) as well as singles of Kestrel, Merlin and Hobby in-off along the west side. Grounded migrants remained fairly inconspicuous but did include another pulse of 60 Willow Warblers at the Bill plus 2 Whinchats at Reap Lane and a Grasshopper Warbler at the Verne. It was therefore left to the sea to provide the day's chief numbers and variety with an impressive selection from both the Bill and Chesil watchpoints that included 300 Whimbrel, 98 Common Scoter, 38 Grey Plovers, 25 Bar-tailed Godwits, 24 Sanderling, 18 Knot, 10 Little Gulls, 5 Pomarine Skuas, 4 Curlews, 2 Velvet Scoter, 2 Little Ringed Plovers, 2 Arctic Skuas and an Eider. The day's chief oddity came during a lull in a seawatching when a Bonaparte's Gull was noticed behind Chesil on the oysterbeds west of Ferrybridge.

A couple of the more interesting sea sightings included these Velvet Scoters and Little Gulls through off the Bill © Martin Cade:

For us, the most frustrating event of the day was finding this evening's Bonaparte's Gull but not really managing to get any meaningful photographs of it. We weren't tapping into much passing off Chesil during our watch from above Ferrybridge so had a look behind us to scope the sandflats for waders; it was then that we noticed a few terns and small gulls flittering about around the abandoned oysterbeds up past the Little Tern colony and on zooming the magnification right up suddenly noticed the unmistakable underwing pattern of a Bonaparte's Gull among them (we just checked on a map and the distance is about 1100m so the views were very, very long range!). It was obviously necessary to get closer which we eventually did after a really knackering slog over the shingle that was made even longer by having to skirt the tern colony. On eventual arrival at a better viewpoint we were initially blindsided by latching onto a settled first-summer Black-headed Gull and being mystified by the features not looking right for Bonaparte's before the bird took flight to reveal it really was just a perfectly obvious Black-headed Gull - you don't half make some stupid decisions when you're in a bit of a flap. A further scan quickly revealed the equally perfectly obvious Bonaparte's - clearly in first-summer plumage but with what in this quick first glance looked to be a complete black hood - that almost instantly took flight and headed away west off up the Fleet. What with still being quite out of breath and with the camera still slung over our back we weren't at all ready for this and by the time we composed ourselves enough to get the rapidly disappearing bird in the frame the results were shocking - with a bit of imagination you can maybe just about make out a well-defined trailing edge to the upperwing and perhaps get the feel for the very pale overall appearance of the wings in flight but that's about it - really frustrating! © Martin Cade: