A varied morning down on the patch. Seawatching from first thing for 2.5 hours was steady but not spectacular, with some quality provided by a distant Great Skua west and 3 Manx Shearwaters east, with 79 Teal west, 12 Eider, 96 Common Scoter, 13 Fulmar (12 w, 1 e) and 66 Gannets also noted. One of the notable events of the day was excellent numbers of terns throughout, first of all on the seawatch in the morning, then on the beach in Thornham harbour at low tide and again in the early evening, when large numbers were wheeling about catching ants with large numbers of gulls over the pines and observatory, resulting in counts (at any one time) of 364 Common Terns, 54 Sandwich Terns, 12 Arctic Terns (4 on the beach at Gore point at high tide, 5 past on the seawatch, 2 in Thornham harbour at low tide and 1 along the broadwater in the evening) and best of all 2 moulting adult Black Terns loafing around in Thornham harbour at low tide amongst the masses of Common Terns, along with a smart adult Little Gull. I rather stupidly didn't bring my camera to Thornham but Ray did and shots of both will be posted on his site soon. Further quality was added by an excellent group of 7 Spoonbills found by Ray, which flew west and then looped round east over the marsh (allowing me to eventually see them), heading towards Thornham at 07:42hrs - a further group of 3 were logged later just after we had left. Seemingly the first grounded migrants of the autumn were seen thanks to the rain overnight, headlined by a Spotted Flycatcher in the Forestry and 3 Garden Warblers, of which one was trapped and ringed.
15 Willow Warblers and 4 Lesser Whitethroats were also amongst a clutch of commoner warblers recorded in the dunes, while a singing Cetti's Warbler was on the NOA reserve. Waders were again a key feature, with a Greenshank, 8+ Green Sandpipers, 14 Golden Plovers, 20 Snipe and 10 Black-tailed Godwits recorded, while a trickle of hirundines flying west along the dunes consisted of 75 Swallows and 10 Sand Martins.
