12th September 2013

Weather:- Overnight rain or drizzle, clearing to sunny spells and light north westerly breeze force 2
A quiet day came to life at noon when a small grebe was seen on the sea to the north east of the island.Viewing was distant as it was low tide and it was watched from the obs balcony at the other end of the island, however it was clearly very much smaller than nearby Cormorants and was definitely a Grebe. As the bird stretched its wings there was no sign of a white patch caused by the colour of the secondaries and therefore it is assumed to be a Little Grebe. Little Grebe is a real 'mega' in Hilbre terms and is rarer than both Black-necked and Slavonian Grebe. Interesting that a Little Grebe was seen in flight over the sea from Hoylake last month (JET), almost certainly the same bird. More conventional seabirds included 2 Arctic Skuas doing their thing out towards the wind farms. Earlier excitement was caused by the arrival in off the sea on to the north end of the first Purple Sandpiper of the autumn, it will not necessarily stay to winter and may pass on elsewhere although others will arrive later. Other signs of autumn today were 2 Wigeon flying in from the north west, a Grey Wagtail over the shore and 2 Skylarks calling over the obs building. The remaining migrants this morning were limited to a dozen or so Swallows, a similar number of Meadow Pipits, a small passage of Robins and a Chiffchaff that arrived during the morning. About 25 Bar-tailed Godwits are now feeding to the east of the island and 3 Little Egrets were in the pools between the islands for a while.
Ringed:- 3 Robins, 1 Chiffchaff     [ 558-31 ]
(DB,AEH,CJ,KMc+SD)