7th October

Today's blasting north-westerly took a long time to ease down and again made birding on the land pretty hard work. It took a while before it was realised that there was a surprising amount on the move overhead(with - rather unusually - pulses of passage carrying on well into the afternoon) and even then there was no systematic coverage at the Bill, where odd sample count indicated a Linnet total of way into four figures and alba wagtails and Goldfinches into the high hundreds. Apart from being pretty quiet on the ground, trapping evidence indicated that much of what was about was lingering on from recent days; singles of Kingfisher and Firecrest were new at the Bill, with at least 2 more Firecrests in the Pennsylvania Castle area, but there was little else of interest on the ground. At least 2 Balearic Shearwaters were lingering at times off the Bill.

The strength of the wind knocked moth activity on the head, with singles of Convolvulus Hawk-moth and Bordered Straw the only immigrants of note amongst a poor catch at the Obs.