Drift

Some fantastic visible migration today at Beddington in classic drift conditions. I did nearly twelve hours and between us we logged the following migrants: 1 Black Tern, 18+ Common Tern, 1 Turnstone, 1 Sanderling, 6 Common Sandpiper, 1 Grey Plover, 6 Ringed Plover, 2 Little Ringed Plover, 5 Dunlin, 1 Yellow Wagtail, 1 Cuckoo, 40+ Swallow, 150+ Swift, 1 Yellow-legged Gull, 2 Great Black Backed Gull and 35+ Black-headed Gull. Also present were 1 male Shelduck and the 1st sum Iceland Gull.

Interesting to see some of the detail of this regional drift event. As far I could tell- not too much in the way of sea movements except for Dungeness where there were a few Skuas, 2500+ Commic Terns and 81 Black Tern , a huge influx of Black Terns (also some Arctics, Little and Common) was mainly inland and only the east side of the country, good numbers of inland waders (e.g. Sanderling, Dunlin, Turnstone) mirrored the Black Tern influx, there was a major fall of common migrants at Portland but not much at somewhere like Spurn and also a peppering of scarce drift migrants- Red-rumped Swallow, Icterine Warbler, Melodious Warbler, Bluethroat, Short-toed Lark, Golden Oriole, Kentish Plovers etc along the south and east coasts. Black Terns and large flocks of Common heading out of the Thames Estuary were probably birds re-orienting back towards the continent.