With a nippy, light NW breeze and the threat of rain, I opted to head up the garden first thing rather than stomp off down to St Lawrence. At 6.30 I picked up the first party of 20
wood pigeons heading west along the coast, at head height (the garden sits a couple of hundred feet above the town, 1000m from the sea, giving excellent views across the town and inland up onto Ventnor Downs). Soon it was clear that an awful lot of wood pigeons were on the move, with parties in the low hundreds passing west every minute or two. By 8am, and after a couple of 1000+ strong flocks, I'd counted an impressive
13,096 woodies!
Otherwise vis mig was a bit of a non-event:
17 redwings, 3 field fairs, 5 song thrushes, and just one
brambling being the garden highlights.
By mid-day the drizzle had eased so I decided to head down Ocean View Rd to check out the small sycamore wood on Old Station Rd, Upper Ventnor. This area is ever popular with tit flocks and looks perfect for rare warblers. I headed up the path that skirts the west edge of the old quarry that at one time contained Ventnor railway station. Having clocked a couple of
chiffs and
goldcrests, I followed the path round to the back of the old Terminus Pub. Here I encountered a party of
14 goldcrests and
8 chiffs. I soon got onto a striped leaf warbler - at bloody last (I've been grilling every crest and tit flock for days now in search of one of these beauties!). It got me going, being very frosty-shouldered with washed out wing bars. Although yellow-browed was most likely, I couldn't exclude Humes. Then it called, twice - yep, a standard
YELLOW-BROWED WARBLER!
By now one really needs to double check as Humes warblers tend to appear later than the peak for yellow-browed - end of October/November. I alerted Andy Butler and other island birders. Andy got to see the bird with long-tailed tits just over on the west path, with a smart
firecrest too. The ybw called again a couple of times.
So aside from wood pigeons, a quiet day for visible migration but finally one of my favourite warblers shows itself.
