An incredible total of 4 Wood Sandpiper were counted on RSPB Lytchett Fields yesterday morning, which has to be close to a Dorset record for this species in one place at one time. This coincided with a site record of 13 Common Sandpiper spread across both sets of fields plus 3 juvenile Ruff, 7 Ringed Plover, 20 Dunlin, 9 Green Sandpiper, 1 Greenshank, lots of Redshank, Lapwing and Black-tailed Godwit, 5 Common Snipe and 2 Whinchat. The scrub at the top of Holes Bay north saw 1 Redstart, 3 Garden Warbler, 8 Blackcap, plenty of Willow Warbler as well as a Common Sandpiper by the outflow channel.  At South Haven there were 8 Sanderling and 1 Common Sandpiper and in Brands Bay 21 Teal, 1 Whimbrel, 5 Bar-tailed Godwit, 2 Spotted Flycatcher and 2 Yellow Wagtail. On Brownsea 3 Spotted Redshank, 2 Spoonbill, 18 Avocet and 2 Ringed Plover were noted on the lagoon webcam.

I also mentioned yesterday that I would post three types of passerine calls which I recorded during a night sound recording session from my garden on the 15/08/15. Now I’m not going to pretend I know what these are, but from having had several conversations with friends and colleagues it’s suggested that these calls could be of either, Pied Flycatcher, Spotted Flycatcher and even Robin. Which is which to me is a total unknown at present but we’re working on finding out a lot more about these types of calls and will hopefully one day (soon) be able to assign them to a specific species. For now I’ll just lable them Passerine call 1, 2 and 3. The reason for showing them is to illustrate the fact that even though they sound the same, on the sonagram they are in fact quite different, possibly suggesting that each is a different species.

Passerine call 1 – slight downward inflection

Passerine call 2 – sharp rising inflection

Passerine call 3 – slight rising inflection