Rain in mid-May with a southerly airflow is always likely to ‘down’ a few birds and this afternoon a flock of summer plumaged Sanderling were located on Pilots Point, with a decent mix of Ringed Plover and Dunlin thrown in for good measure. Upon closer inspection this evening by Aidan Brown, the mixed flock of c100 birds was also found to contain a Red-necked Phalarope. A great Poole Harbour record. A sea watch from Branksome Chine produced 1 Arctic Skua, 2 Manx Shearwater, 9 Whimbrel and 3 diver sp, as well as an ‘asio’ owl species that headed from the Isle of Wight towards Studland but wasn’t identified. However, this evening a Short-eared Owl was seen in the dunes at Shell Bay, so was almost certainly this mornings mystery bird. A new Osprey was seen, this time over Morden Bog and was assumed to be a male due to the fact it had an identical underwing pattern to our male 022. He at the time was on the nest cam with CJ7, so we know it wasn’t him. From our Spring Safari Cruise this morning we managed to make the best of it before the rain set in with a decent number of Swift now back at Hamworthy along with c20 over Swineham GP. We also had multiple sightings of the local Marsh Harrier pairs, plenty of Common and Sandwich Tern, a distant Osprey caught a fish, and a flock of c30 summer plumaged Dunlin, 6 Black-tailed Godwit and 7 Curlew were in the Wareham Channel. At Middlebere there were 3 sum plum Cattle Egret on the mud with 4 Spoonbill also there and the first 2 Spotted Flycatcher of the year. There were also 5 sum plum Cattle Egret in the Lower Frome Valley.
Red-necked Phalarope – Pilots Point, Studland – Aidan Brown
Spotted Flycatcher – Middlebere – PennHillMan
Cattle Egrets – Middlebere – PennHillMan
Spring seems to be creeping along with more displaying and nest building birds today, including multiple Raven pairs/territories…
Find out moreAlthough you couldn’t see further than 100m for much of the day, there were birds to be found…
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