Sightings29/10/2018

Harbour Update – posted 28/10/18

Another fine but chilly day which seems to only look as if its going to last a few more days before warmer weather from the west arrives later in the week. With these clear sky’s and big bright moonlit nights its no surprise that winter thrush’s such as Redwing and Fieldfare were more conspicuous today, certainly at Arne where good flocks of both were seen in the hedgerows at dawn along with several Brambling and a Firecrest in the car park. There were 41 Spoonbill out on Shipstal and 100+ Brent Geese in Arne Bay along with 300+ roosting Oystercatcher on Shipstal Spit. There was also some thrush passage at Lytchett Bay with 60+ Redwing and 20+ Fieldfare. In the Frome Valley just a single Cattle Egret was feeding in with cattle along Swanage Road which is nice, but considering there’s currently a flock of 50+ over at Abbotsbury we’re sure they wouldn’t mind at the Swannery if we borrowed at least 20 for a week or so! Last night we also witnessed some amazing nocturnal migration using our Pulsar XQ50 Thermal Imaging scope. Although it doesn’t allow you to positively ID each bird flying over it does give you an insight as to how intense migration is on certain nights. We saw on twitter the evening before that a huge number of birds had been seen (via a radar track) leaving the Dutch coast, heading in a SW direction towards the UK. So, we thought we see if we could see any moving last night and we were astonished at just how many birds were on the move, although so high that that there was no chance of being able to hear them, even when using our sensate sound recording equipment. What’s even more amazing is when you consider that we were only looking at one patch of sky and that there must have been thousands more birds passing over other areas too. A true nocturnal spectacle.

Eurasian Spoonbill – Brownsea Lagoon – Nick Gadenne

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