Unsurprisingly, todays sightings were a tad limited, but when it’s wet and stormy, there’s always the possibility of a sea watch to spice things up, even in June. The species of interest today were Manx Shearwater, and with an obvious strong passage at dawn off the Purbeck coast it would be interesting to see how many ventured into Poole Bay. A couple of sea watches off Branksome yielded small numbers with just 2 and then 7 seen during a couple of short sea watches, but with views of more out beyond Old Harry warranted a closer a look. Before the deluge kicked in a decent count of c350 Manx Shearwater were logged off Old Harry along with 2 Balearic Shearwater, 8 Fulmar, 30+ Gannet, 1 Razorbill, 6 Guillemot and a small number of Common Tern. 

As we reported earlier in the week, the Poole Asda Peregrines started fledging this week, but as seems typical with these urban Peregrines, a few often get into trouble post fledging, and this morning one had to be collected by the Dorset Raptor Group off the ground at dawn and was taken to a wildlife rescue in Ringwood. Thankfully it seems to be ok, and just needs a bit more time in the nest, so will be returned to the nest box in the coming days where it will hopefully recover and fledge ‘properly’ in the coming days.