What a fantastic day for lots of reasons. Firstly, the big news was that finally after six months, CJ7 welcomed a male (un-ringed) Osprey to the nest cam platform! He actually first appeared at 13:40 and stayed for 15 minutes before disappearing off. Then, at 17:30 CJ7 landed with a fish, only to then be joined by the same male who then sat on the nest for another 15 minutes, looking about. We couldn’t see if CJ7 was on the perching post, but from his behaviour we think she was somewhere close. This behaviour is really encouraging as this could be a non-breeding male passing through the area who’s found a female on a nest which he could be interested in returning to next year. It’s all guess work for now, but still….at last a male Osprey on the nest cam! Today was our last Osprey cruise of the week and we also coordinated an Osprey count across the harbour which produced no less than 6 different birds, with 3 in the Wareham Channel at dawn and another 3 in Lytchett Bay. Plus sightings from Middlebere, Swineham and Slepe Heath. There are now 6 Cattle Egret at Swineham in the fields behind Curlew Cottage with the cows along with 1 Yellow Wagtail, 127 Coot and 1 Pochard around the GP. Passerine totals included 1 Redstart, 11 Yellow Wagtail and 8 Wheatear on Hartland and another 15 Yellow Wagtail near Scotland Farm. There were a minimum of 3 Marsh Harrier in Lytchett Bay and 2 around Keysworth. On Lytchett Fields there were 9 Greenshank, 4 Knot and 5 Dunlin and on the Brownsea Lagoon 15 Spoonbill, c400 Dunlin, 9 Avocet, 16 Ringed Plover and 1 Curlew Sandpiper. In the Wareham Channel a decent count of c650 Black-tailed Godwit were feeding. Across the Wareham Channel/Middlebere skyline a minimum of seven Hobby were counted. In Holes Bay there were 580 Black-tailed Godwit, 256 Redshank, 87 Curlew, 1 Common Sandpiper, 2 Whimbrel and 53 Teal.

New adult male Osprey on nest platform