Some rain through the night and a sill morning produced a nice fall of birds around the harbour including a Nightingale which was singing at the northern side of Upton Heath mid-morning. Nightingale have seen a dramatic decline in the UK and there are now NONE breeding within our Poole Harbour recording area. Our only opportunity to hear these spring songsters nowadays is if you’re lucky enough to ‘bump’ in to one on spring migration. At Lytchett Fields a new spring record count of 9 Little Ringed Plover was observed along with 2 Whimbrel, 2 Spotted Redshank (including 1 summer plumaged bird), 1 Greenshank and 159 Black-tailed Godwit. At Swineham 3 Sedge Warbler were singing along with 1 Reed Warbler, 1 Cuckoo and c20 Sand Martin. In Middlebere there were 10 Grey Plover and 66 Shelduck and at Sunnyside 3 Wheatear were on the scrape. On the tall section of the Asda building a female Peregrine was sitting out the rain mid-morning and as it warmed and dried up later in the day Dartford Warbler were very active on the local heaths with plenty of display flying. Osprey CJ7 was very active at the Middlebere nest platform again during the morning but there was a surprise appearance from a new female bird today which was also colour-ringed, albeit on the left leg. We could make out the letters PA (and we think 2) which makes it a 3-year old female from Scotland, hatched in 2016 near Loch Lomond. She’s obviously a non-breeder like CJ7, but shows that the non-breeding cohort are now arriving and making their way through the area now…so hopefully not long before we may see one of our LS birds arrive. We’ve re-started doing quite a bit of night sound recording again, and last night had a flock of Dunlin depart the harbour and head up the Piddle Valley just after sunset.
Dunlin flock – calls of night time migrants – Piddle Valley – 16/04/19 @20:57
Peregrine Falcon – Asda, Holes Bay, Poole
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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