22nd February

The proverbial day of two halves, with a perfectly OK morning giving way to a shocker of an afternoon once a particularly vicious little weather front had rolled in. The sea came up with most of the action at the Bill, although with movement in both directions it was maybe a case of birds shifting about before the weather arrived rather than there being another pulse of early spring passage; totals through the morning there included 33 Common Scoter, 27 Red-throated Divers, 3 Red-breasted Mergansers, 2 Black-headed Gulls and singles of Black-throated Diver, Manx Shearwater and Great Skua. The only reports from elsewhere were of a Grey Heron over the Grove, the Pale-bellied Brent Goose again at Ferrybridge and the Black Guillemot still in Portland Harbour.