In which the Circus finally comes to town and the wind keeps blowing

Number 2 and I headed out to do a little more sea-watching this morning. En route we picked up a migrating male marsh harrier at Troentorp, ending a personal four-month harrier drought that was beginning to get me down. It remains to be seen if I can actually see a hen harrier this spring. Nils Kjellén was already on site and reported 320 common scoter and a reasonable 'passage' of red-throated diver. I packed Number 2 into the car with her toys and she passed drawings and comments out through the window at regular intervals.

The wind was strong but had backed westerly again and the scoters were passing a little further out. Things slowed down a lot for my two hour stint, I logged just 89 common scoter but 31 red-throated divers was a reasonable effort until these too started to pass less frequently. The main difference from yesterday was the absence of gannets and the replacement of great crested grebes (1) with red-necked grebes (9). Two sandwich terns flew past and a small flock of 13 barnacle geese went west. Today's other year-tick was a brace of black-throated divers flying west in glorious plumage. Nils pointed out a migrating osprey that whilst ostensibly flying south did a nice easterly vector past our position, driven by the strong westerly wind. After two hours we had to leave and run some errands and then had time for 15 minutes at Klarningen, where there was nothing new to report.

In the afternoon I was down south so I checked out Farhult, water levels were very high and the only stuff picked up was flying by, the highlight being 7 bar-tailed godwit. Rönnen next were at least there was sone shelter and many more birds around Lilla Viken, including a flock of 50 avocet and seven gadwall. Three Sandwich terns roosted with the gulls and then I staggered back against a wind that was increasingly strong. Sandön was barely worth the effort, not an inch of mud or sand exposed and the spray flying, just two goosander! Meanwhile back in BK a northern fulmar and more gannets had been spotted...