A wind-swept canary - from the canaries??

This morning Peter Hughes (who mans one of the Castlemartin Range entrance gates) telephoned about a small finch that was feeding next to his hut at St Govan's Head. I went over to check and sure enough the bird was still there - a male canary. It looked quite shattered and was avidly feeding on small seeds taking advantage of some shelter afforded by some ruts in the track and around the hut. It appeared out of the blue early this morning during a stormy spell of southerly winds and rain so, although most likely an escape and possibly not a genuine migrant, the question has to be asked - did it get blown up this way from the south somewhere? Are there others around too?

Peter, who is there most days, is in quite a good spot for unusual wind-blown birds - last autumn (during a westerly storm) he recorded a Pectoral Sandpiper in exactly the same spot. He has some nice images of both birds.

Only other relatively note-worthy birds of late have been a good scattering of lesser whitethroats on territory in several places between Skrinkle Haven in the south and Fishguard in the north. One bird at Skrinkle today was carrying food to dense scrub in the bay.