Although superficially it looked good for more Wood Pigeon migration this morning, a big bank of cloud sitting to the south potentially halted any big movements, and as it happened there wasn’t much of a push, although a reasonable 13,870 still went through between sunrise and 9:30am, but it very quickly died off and not much else was moving at all. Also logged from Constitution Hill viewpoint were 43 Redwing, 1 Woodlark, small numbers of common finches, 1 Peregrine, 3 Sparrowhawk and 150 Cormorant lifted from Brownsea. There were 3 Water Pipit at Lytchett Bay, 1 of which was colour-ringed by Stour Ringing Group. It was good to see a photo of the Forster’s Tern appear on Twitter this afternoon, although the photo was from Thursday last week and it hasn’t been seen since. Regardless, this means it will almost certainly be around, and looks as if it could potentially over-winter? Maybe it’s hooked up with it’s North American counterpart, the Spotted Sandpiper somewhere in the harbour, discussing on travel plans back home?! There was a male Hen Harrier in Middlebere where there were 23 Spoonbill and 4 Spotted Redshank and there was a ringtail Hen Harrier at Swineham this morning. At Lytchett Bay, the team there received some great information back of a colour-ringed Curlew that was seen at Lytchett Fields on October 28th, explaining that it had originally been rung as a juvenile in Finland at Säisänperä on 1st July this year. We don’t get many Finnish ringing recoveries, so this is a great recovery.

Colour-ringed Curlew photographed at Lytchett Fields on October 28th – Ian Ballam

Google Map highlighting potential Curlew journey from fledging site to over-wintering site