What started out as a calm morning, ended up being quite exciting! Ringing was fairly good for the first few rounds, with the first lesser whitethroat of the year, and a lot of fat migrant warblers moving through.
However it was a mammal that first stole the show, a single bottlenose dolphin seen all morning moving up and down the coast. Dolphins are extremely rare in the southern north sea, and we presume this individual was lost. Interestingly, before I wrote this, a presumed minke whale was washed up further up the coast at Bawdsey, clearly conditions were right for some cetacean movement.
The momentum was snatched back late morning as a black kite moved south from Minsmere, tracked south by birders for an hour or so, and was seen distantly from the observatory by a few lucky individuals. At least two people DIDN'T see it, and they're not salty about that at all, I don't want my first British black kite to be a speck over Felixstowe docks . . . . .or at least that's what I'll be claiming from now on.
Moth traps produced the first V- pug of the year, though this was a little lost in the cetacean/raptor excitement (frustration for some) of the day.
Birds Ringed: Blackcap 7, Chiffchaff 2, Lesser Whitethroat 1, Linnet 2, Robin 1