It was a grim start to the day, but amazingly it cleared really quickly and produced some decent birding, especially for raptors. Around the Lower Piddle Valley this AM there was an adult White-tailed Eagle, 1st winter Goshawk, 2 Red Kite and 2 Peregrine, with the White-tailed Eagle opting to gently josh with the local Ospreys, before soon getting escorted out of their airspace. The Forster’s Tern was again on the Brownsea Lagoon this morning, and seems to be fast moulting into summer plumage. In Holes Bay NW the Ruff was still feeding, an Osprey flew through Lytchett Bay this morning and the years first Garden Warbler was in scrub there too. A Turtle Dove was reported flying over Middlebere yesterday which is an incredibly good Poole Harbour record these days. Finally, the Red-spotted Bluethroat was still at Swineham showing on and off all day. Over the last couple of days we’ve had a small static sound recorder located down near where the bird has been vocalising in the hope we could sound record it sub-singing. We retrieved the recorder today and have found some lovely examples of the bird performing plastic song, filled with multiple imitations of other species songs and calls. We plan to extract several examples to put on our sightings page for tomorrow, so make sure you visit this page again tomorrow to listen to some incredible mimicry!

Red-spotted Bluethroat – Swineham – Clive Hargrave