There were various bouts of excitement today, some concealed with a bit of sadness too with certain events taking place outside of our Poole Harbour recording area, but are still of interest to us. Firstly, the Rutland Water Osprey pair arrived back onto their nest at Manton Bay, incredibly within 30 minutes of one another. Then just 4 minutes later they were already copulating! We hope it’s not too long that here in the harbour we can be expecting regular returning Osprey year in, year out and to successfully breed every year. However, we’ve still got quite a long way to go until that becomes a reality and until then we’re simply keeping our fingers crossed for CJ7’s safe return in a few weeks time and that she manages to ‘woo’ a suitable mate over the coming years. The other really interesting discovery today was that a Pine Marten was delivered to us by local birder Luke Westercott, which was sadly dead having been found on the side of the road on the outskirts of Wareham Forest. These are traditionally animals of Northern Scotland and to a less extent, northern England and Wales. Where this one has come from is anyone’s guess, but sightings in the New Forest have increased over the last few years (possibly due to an unauthorised release) and we could be seeing dispersal from there into new uncharted territory. There was an amazing piece of footage from last summer where a Pine Marten was caught on a CCTV camera at the chain ferry end of the Sandbanks peninsular. Considering they’re not even supposed to be in this area of the country, let alone in urban areas, what one was doing there we really have no idea! The big question is just how many more are there out there????

Bird wise today it was quite quiet with 12 Knot in Lytchett Bay being a surprise as they’re really quite scarce here, also a Great White Egret at Little Sea, Studland and 7 Sand Martin were over Swineham GP. A Barn Owl was observed hunting along the causeway between Wareham and Stoborough at dusk.

Pine Marten – Sandbanks – May 2020 – Brownsea_Boatman (YouTube)

The poor Pine Marten that was discovered on the roadside near Wareham Forest today