It was yet another beautifully sunny day, but the temperature quickly picked up throughout the morning and by the mid-afternoon had become almost unbearable without a cooling sea breeze. The freezing temperatures of March and early-April certainly seem a distant memory at the moment!
Elsewhere on the island an unseasonal Lapwing toured the island for most of the day and no less than 23 Swifts passed overhead, whilst five Fulmars, 120 Manx Shearwaters, 19 Gannets, a Sparrowhawk, a Kestrel, two Peregrines, seven Dunlins, two Whimbrels, a Curlew, four Turnstones, 118 Kittiwakes, nine Puffins, a Collared Dove, 12 Swallows, 15 House Martins, a Whinchat, three Stonechats, 23 Wheatears, five Sedge Warblers, two Whitethroats, a Garden Warbler, four Blackcaps, 11 Chiffchaffs, a Willow Warbler, a Goldcrest, 18 Spotted Flycatchers, four Chaffinches, two Goldfinches, nine Linnets and a Lesser Redpoll made up the rest of the counts.
Note the white wedge extending up T5 (the second most outer-tail feather) as well as onto T4 that support the identification of an Eastern race bird (ssp. albistriata).
We spent most of the afternoon counting Herring Gull nests and Guillemots on ledges. Many of the Gull eggs have hatched already and there are quite a few auk eggs about. Over the next few weeks seabird monitoring will dominate our daily tasks and we'll be spending a lot of time around the East Side of the island - the seabird season is definitely in full swing!
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