Isle of Wight September 25th-27th.

Headed down south for a brief visit to see the birding brother. I got lucky with the weather with temps in the twenties and blue skies, while the birding wasn't too shabby either.
The major highlight came during a visible migration watch at St Catherines Point on 26th when a group of large birds were spotted in the distance approaching from the west. These materialised into a group of five adult Common Crane which then circled the ridge  above St Catherine's Lighthouse, the birds were thermal-ling looking to be getting  ready to depart out to sea. Eventually on some unknown signal it  was time and the birds went out south across the English Channel and I followed them in my scope until they were dots on the horizon, a superb sight.

Another nice thing about this sighting was we completed the British leg of their migration story, these five birds had first been seen over the Yythan Estuary, Aberdeenshire on 21st and had then been tracked moving south over Cleveland, Northamptonshire and Wiltshire. They then stopped  at Lymington Hampshire on the 25th. Here it was confirmed that none of the birds were ringed and so not from the re-intro UK population. They were seen to depart Lymington at 10:40 on 26th and arrived over the island somewhere between Yarmouth and Newtown as viewed from the mainland before we made the final sighting on the Islands south coast.

Other good sightings during the watch included a Cattle Egret flying west and a prominent passage of Jays, frequent small groups totalling 37 flying west including some very high up going over the imposing Gore Cliff. Strangely, this movement doesn't seem to have been picked up at other south coast sites? A Coal Tit landed briefly near our watch point and was  likely to be a continental bird showing a very blue grey mantle.

Cranes just before departing across the English Channel 

A Cattle Egret took us by surprise as it flew over to the west 

An unexpected movement of Jays.

St Catherines Point, a great place for migration and very scenic.

On the 27th we tried another scenic migration site, West High Down/Needles/Headon Warren. Once again the weather was amazing. Migrants were thin on the ground apart from a very prominent arrival of Stonechat, a total of 41 counted around the entire area. Also good value was movement/dispersal of species you don't often think of as migrants, a small group of Blue and Great Tits and 2 or more Great Spotted Woodpecker looked out of place on the treeless Needles Headland.