Thursday 5 April 2007

.......now for something completely different

Heysham Obs
Its amazing what a subtle change in the wind direction, even very light winds, can do. A change to a very light westerly soon after dark produced murky misty conditons by morning, stretching several miles inland. This is the first wind direction out of the north/north-east sector for some time.

Grounded/ringing
The change in wind direction presumably led to a rather late exodus of thrush species from Ireland. There were 'lots' of nocturnal east/north-east-bound calls around 0100hrs and the morning saw a small Blackbird landfall and (for spring, especially this late) a substantial fall of c50 Redwing.

The nets were empty other than 2 lightweight Blackbird - there were apparently no new arrivals of Goldcrest or Chiffchaff. The north harbour wall mound contained 33 off-passage Meadow Pipit but no Wheatear.

Vis mig
Practically nothing with just 4 Meadow Pipit NE during the early morning mist but presumably the Meadow Pipits grounded on the mound & perhaps elsewhere moved on when the weather cleared mid-am

No time to check the wooden jetty/outfalls/Red Nab etc

Moths
One or two species have been inexplicably late this year - this morning's Early Thorn was the first of the year

Elsewhere
3 Whooper Swan still on the Lune floodplain at Farleton mid-morning.