Saturday 8 August 2020

The fog from yesterday continued into the morning of today. Last night George and Mark were ringing Storm Petrels at the North End, yet another successful night with 23 new birds and seven retraps, this brings the year total tantalisingly close to the 300 mark, with 298 ringed so far...

The weather early in the morning
The weather early this morning

The visibility 4 hours later


Unfortunately, as mentioned, in the morning the heavy fog and faint drizzle did persist and it was too damp to ring. Although visibility was far from ideal, a walk to nant and down the West Coast did produce decent numbers of Whimbrels and fledgling juvenile Willow Warblers. Three Sandwich Terns and ten Turnstones were in Solfach too, feeding in the gloom.

Meadow Brown

Purple Thorn

Autumn Lady's Tresses

The fog cleared at around 0900 and the sea was once again visible from the Obs. A second attempt at birding on the South End yielded 35 Linnets, 18 Meadow Pipits nine Curlews. Two Ringed Plovers flew across the Narrows, too.

We said goodbye to Daniel Owen today. He's been a good help, particularly when it came to monitoring the number of gulls roosting around the island. He was rewarded with Bardsey's earliest autumn record of Sabine's Gull and a plethora of Yellow-legged Gulls, a species that can easily be overlooked.

As we said goodbye to Daniel, we also welcomed Patrick and Gill, long time guests to the Obs. It will be lovely to have them here for the week, and it was good to have a catch-up over a cup of coffee.

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