Thursday 18th May 2006
	Essentially it was another very quiet day, highlights being a brace of new Red-rumped Swallows, with single birds over Spurn (E.Yorks) and at Sandwich (Kent). However both birds were only brief stayers and this theme continued with a Great White Egret in Suffolk, Laughing Gull in Co. Down and Bonaparte’s Gull in Glamorgan only favouring the finders or the very fortunate. In Devon the adult Gull-billed Tern remained by the River Caen at Braunton while other remaining rarities included the drake Blue-winged Teal in Cumbria and the trio of Black-winged Stilts in Lancashire. Seawatching in the south-westerly winds produced a Long-tailed Skua past Bowness-on-Solway (Cumbria) and a few Storm Petrels off Glamorgan and Somerset.
-  Richard Moores, RBA