There seems to be plenty of birding effort put in this weekend on the Peninsula (see Selsey blog) and I also did a couple of sessions including Church Norton yesterday evening here and I did Pagham Spit this morning here. Despite the effort there doesn't seem to be much down here despite the substantial fall of eastern scarce migrants and a couple of vagrants brought in by this easterly airflow (mainly in the Northern Isles, East Coast down to North Kent). My personal highlights locally have been seeing a few more Brents which are dripping in, a couple of Tree Pipits and a bit of vis-mig (although the hirundine passage of the week has dropped right off with Meadow Pipits being more evident this weekend). Seems like the Peninsula is in some kind of migration shadow as there have been absolutely enormous numbers of hirundines elsewhere this weekend- e.g. 54,000 at one site in Glamorgan yesterday and 200,000 (120K Swallows and 80K House Martins) at Dungeness today (also a Western Bonelli's there).
The weather this morning was south east winds and rain, which even inland at Beddington Farmlands I would associate with a good chance of a scarce migrant- indeed there was a Short-eared Owl there today. Certainly seems like I may need to reprogramme myself for autumn weather watching for the south coast as easterlies seem to be a different box of chocolates down here (it was the dreamed for weather at other birding patches I've had). It could possibly have been just bad luck and other easterly autumn conditions might fair better.
The winds are now shifting to a more southerly to southwesterly direction from tomorrow with stormy conditions predicted for next week so will be interesting to see what unfolds now with a change in wind direction.
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