13th September

A lot of hard work today in an unrelenting blasting westerly eventually came up with a really decent list. The highlight came after dogged persistence tracked down a mystery wader seen briefly a couple of times in flight over the Bill: as half expected it turned out to be a Buff-breasted Sandpiper when it was eventually found settled late in the afternoon in a horse paddock on Bill Hill. After another very stormy night the sea had earlier come up with the best of the other newcomers: singles of Leach's Petrel and Sabine's Gull were the pick of the tally at the Bill that also included 13 Balearic Shearwaters, 12 Sandwich Terns, 7 Manx Shearwaters, 7 Great Skuas, 2 Little Gulls and singles of Storm Petrel, Whimbrel, Common Gull and Arctic Tern. Single Grey Phalaropes dropped in at Chesil Cove and Ferrybridge, with 2 Arctic Terns also fleeting visitors to the latter. On the land both the Obs Quarry Wryneck and the Southwell Hoopoe lingered on but there was little else of note or in quantity either on the ground or overhead.

With a hatful of suitable horse paddocks to scour it took a fair bit of searching before the Buff-breasted Sandpiper was eventually tracked down © Keith Pritchard (upper still), Pete Saunders (lower still) and Martin Cade (video):




A couple of views of the Hoopoe did at last show that it's ringed and so confirm it's last week's Bill bird © Gary White (upper) and Pete Saunders (lower):



These two Arctic Terns pitched in at Ferrybridge right at last light © Martin Cade: