Compare and contrast

Heysham Obs
Stephen Grimshaw has seen one of our Twite on Iona in the last few days, a new island tick for 'our' birds (one previously on Staffa).  It was ringed at Heysham in either October or November last year.  Thanks Stephen.

Yesterday east coast's Spurn had Swallows moving throuh at a rate of about 370 per hour, recorded 5306 birds of 60 species including Spoonbill, Montagu's Harrier, Red-rumped Swallow etc etc etc (see http://www.trektellen.nl/ for full details).

Today west coast's Heysham had Swallows moving through at a rate of about 30 per hour, recorded 40 birds of 6 species (slightly more than yesterday!!) including such exotics as Gannet and Whimbrel.  Mind you the observers at Spurn were there for over 12 hours whereas both yesterday and today the Heysham counts were only for about a 24th of that time.  So who knows what was missed????? (I think I can guess).

0730-0850 Wind S F5 & early afternoon, wind SSW, no cloud
Red-throated Diver 2 in then on
Whimbrel 4
Swallow 32
Gannet 2 in early, 1 across afternoon
Common Tern - 1 on Heysham 1 outfall
Arctic Tern - 8 on Heysham 2 outfall
Eider 3 on and 1 out
Arctic Skua - dark morph blogging outer bay on incoming tide

Pied Wagtail (female) gathering nest material and taking it to the Centrica area.

Moths
Mother Shipton x 3 sheltered bits of dog track/nature park

Hey ho, that's the way it goes..... Jean.