A cold and windy day, always making the birding tricky. An Osprey (presumed 2-year old male 5R0) was out hunting in the Wareham Channel this morning, a small number of passage waders were dotted around the harbour on the low tide including several small flocks of summer plumaged Dunlin and Ringed Plover, with just singles of Avocet and Sanderling on the Brownsea Lagoon.

We also received a sad but fascinating dose of bird migration mixed with reality with the below Woodcock we ringed in Poole Harbour on Nov 20th 2019 having been hunted ‘for the pot’ on it’s breeding grounds in the remote region of Klimushino, Verkhovazhye, Russia on May 6th 2026! This highlights just how far our winter Woodcock are travelling to over-winter in the UK, some c3000km each autumn. It’s estimated that about 1.2 million Woodcock arrive each Oct/Nov, but as they’re an incredibly hard bird to survey that total could be way higher.

Woodcock, ring number EY18750 the night it was ringed on Nov 20th 2019

The marked location of where it met it’s sad end having been hunted by a Russian hunter.