Underwhelming migration
Nocturnal migration continues to be practically non-existent after another blank night, with the exception of the resident Tawny Owl. There have been very few reports of Redwings for example from anywhere and it seems that migration is being held up by the prevailing weather conditions, with day after day of weather fronts brought in by Atlantic low pressure systems.
The Met Office chart below shows the weather synopsis over northwest europe at midnight on 2 October. This is fairly typical of the last couple of weeks. Incessant strong westerly, north-westerly and south-westerlies have seemingly blocked any meaningful movement of migrating birds from continental europe. Local diurnal migration during the latter half of September also appears to have been subdued. There’s likely quite a build up of thrushes in Scandinavia right now which we should start to see arrive here in numbers once conditions improve, which hopefully will come in the next few days.
