Thursday 28 September 2017

The conditions didn't look too promising for today, and birding at times felt rather quiet. However, in spite of this a good selection of species were recorded. Great Spotted Woodpeckers had increased to two, while some increases in chats and thrushes saw 25 Robins, 16 Wheatears, 14 Stonechats and five Song Thrushes. Three Spotted Flycatchers and two Pied Flycatchers were seen, as were another two Blue Tits. This good autumn for Goldcrests continued, 74 were seen today with three Firecrests amongst them. Warblers, however, did rather poorly, with just 11 Chiffchaffs and three Blackcaps to be seen. Another pulse of Wagtail migration saw ten White Wagtails recorded, the same as the number of Pied's. three Grey Wagtails went south overhead, with 47 Rock Pipits around the coastline and 132 Meadow Pipits throughout the island. Finches were in modest numbers, with just 12 Chaffinches, two Lesser Redpolls and singles of Siskin and Reed Bunting.
Ten Skylarks and eight Swallows were the extent of passerine movement overhead, but singles of Buzzard, Kestrel and Osprey (the fifth of an excellent autumn) also passed south.

Whimbrel, Ephraim Perfect; Ephraim's Bird Blog

Out to sea it was an extremely modest day, however. Kittiwakes were down to just 515, with 92 Black-headed Gulls also seen. The only notable sightings were six Common Scoters and two Common Gulls, with no terns or Skuas seen at all today. Waders too were very quiet, 45 Oystercatchers,  41 Curlews and three Whimbrels being the only sightings of any real consequence, a handful of Redshanks and Turnstones were also present. The days two other bird sightings of note were a single Wigeon on Pwll Cain, and a Water Rail again sharming in Cristin Withy.

A bit of migration was noted amongst lepidoptera today, with 10 Red Admirals, 8 Silver Y's and a Hummingbird Hawk-moth recorded. Alongside these came possibly our first record of Palpita vitrealis, a distinctive immigrant Micro Moth seen on the Narrows.

No comments:

Post a Comment