Recording migration on a small island is often about finding the location that arriving migrants have favoured, weather, habitat type and disturbance all play important roles, but good sites are usually somewhere simply offering shelter, and/or the opportunity to rest and feed.
Having checked most of the likely sites this morning for freshly arrived migrants and seen very little, our fortunes changed as we came across one single field on the west coast where it was all going on, hosting 32 Wheatears, 2 Black Redstarts, 10 Stonechats, and for good measure 2 Sand Martins overhead. One of the Wheatears was wearing a red colour-ring very possibly part of research being undertaken by The Calf Of Man bird observatory.
Photo (JH) one of this morning’s Wheatears.