Migration at Portland Bird Observatory
I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to stay at Portland Bird Observatory for a week during peak spring migration in April. D ue to its proximity to the English Channel, Portland is just about the best place on the South Coast for watching spring migrants arrive in Britain. It was a bird-packed week... On the first morning of my stay, I went into the observatory garden just before 6am to be greeted by huge numbers of passerines flitting about and feeding in the shrubs. Unbeknown to me, there had been a large 'fall' of migrants during the night, resulting in 1000's of birds dropping onto Portland from their migration. There had been heavy cloud and fog during the night and early hours, which meant that any birds who were migrating across the English Channel wouldn't have been able to navigate and so dropped down onto Portland. This male Pied Flycatcher was one of many birds which arrived that day; very conservative estimates included 4,000 Willow Warbler, 1,5...