With a period of settled weather forecast for the week ahead, the thoughts of warmer weather and more birds arriving over the bank holiday weekend hopefully make for a pleasant few days. It felt good again today, with the Swineham/Lower Piddle Valley area producing the goods with the Bonaparte’s Gull present this morning and the Little Gull and Garganey present all day, plus 1 Spotted Redshank, 4 Greenshank and 1 Cattle Egret also on the floods. The Swineham area also had c30 Swift around this morning and c50 House Martin, c200 Sand Martin and c100 Swallow this afternoon. An Osprey was seen catching a fish in the Wareham Channel around 4pm, and was thought to be male 022 and the White-tailed Eagle pair were seen flying high over Lytchett Bay with another (thought to be a juv) seen flying west over Sandbanks and Brownsea this morning. Hobby were seen over Arne, there was a single Common Sandpiper in Middlebere and at the harbour entrance Whimbrel were seen arriving in through the harbour entrance at dawn with flocks of 18, 9 and 6 recorded, along with the Lesser Whitethroat that’s still singing next to the Shell Bay car park.

Peregrine Falcon – Carey Secret Garden – Alison Copland