It seems the sun went to a few people’s heads today with thousands of people flocking to Dorset to get a taste of the sun, sea, sand and heat stroke! To get away from the madness and remind our selves that Dorset isn’t always full of such carnage we ventured out on to Slepe Heath to look for Nightjars and check our route and plan safety measures to see if we can host our Nightjar walks post July 4^th. The great news is we’re pretty happy we can offer a set of safe and engaging Nightjar walks through July by reducing the number of participants from 20 to 10 and amending our route slightly. Some of our remaining trips are close to being fully booked already, but if you would like to join us here are the number of tickets left for our remaining walks and a link through to the booking page. Last night was such a treat with a minimum of 8-9 seen and plenty heard, so if you’d like a bit of (semi) normality in your life, why not join us?

July 7^th – 3 spaces left

July 14^th – 1 space left

July 21^st – 10 spaces left

July 28^th – 8 spaces left

We also checked the wetland site in the south of the harbour that we’ve been involved in over the last couple of years, which saw 6 freshly hatched Lapwing a couple of weeks ago. Well, tonight we could still see 3 young along with 3 adults meaning the site should see at least a 50% fledge rate, which is great. It was so hot today that other sightings were few and far between with female Osprey CJ7 seen briefly over the Wareham Channel, a new Marsh Harrier entered the harbour too from a great height, possibly a 2^nd cal year male but heat haze made the aging and sexing tricky. A group of 5 Crossbill passed over the Piddle Valley and 3 Hobby were again over the Slepe Heath/Hartland area.

Well, it was definitely summer today with a sweltering 30 degrees hit at Bournemouth airport. Despite the heat, a few birds had obviously moved through the night with a new Common Sandpiper at Lytchett Fields. Swift seemed to be on the move with several parties heading south-east and there seems no better time currently to see/hear Crossbill with more heard and seen along coastal sites of Dorset with an incredible 500+ moving along some sites along the NE coast of England. Female Osprey CJ7 made an appearance on a harbour platform today, the first time in a couple of weeks and 2 Hobby were very active above Slepe heath catching dragonflies.

Juvenile Stonechat – Upton Heath – Ian Ballam

There were more signs of return autumn passage over the last couple of days with the first returning Common Sandpiper seen at Swineham. There was also another Little Ringed Plover at Lytchett Fields with the date suggesting it’s an early mover rather than a local bird. Off Swineham Point, the over-summering female Marsh Harrier has remained very active in the area, but the male that showed interest in her a few weeks ago has sadly moved on. There are several post breeding flocks of Jackdaws (and other corvids) forming at the moment at different locations with large groups of c500 noted over Upton, c400 over Lytchett Matravers and c300 over Wareham, all active at both dawn and dusk, entering and leaving roost sites. Nightjar are still thrilling the crowds with birds really enjoying this warm weather and doing circuits of various heathlands at dusk, wowing those of us that venture out to go and see them. At Holme Lane GP there were 13 Egyptian Geese and 5 Little Grebe.

Common Tern – Poole Harbour – Clare Slade

It was nice to finally feel a bit of squelchy mud under foot over the last couple of days with it having been so dry over the last few months. When out and about, we rarely see Moles, in fact hardly ever, but in the last couple of weeks have seen several, manoeuvring their way across the surface of the ground. Wondering why we’re suddenly seeing these seekers of the darkness so often recently, it occurred to us that with the ground being so dry, perhaps they’re being forced above ground in search of food with earthworms becoming harder to find? We’d be interested to hear whether anyone else has suddenly begun seeing more moles in recent weeks? Bird-wise, it’s pretty much of a much-ness although more signs of autumn are beginning to creep in with the first Spotted Redshanks logged on the NE coast heading south, with Poole Harbours surely due over the next week or so. Lytchett Fields or the Brownsea Lagoon is typically where you’d expect to see one of these early returners south, but until then Lytchett Fields was only able to offer 2 Green Sandpiper, 21 Lapwing, 38 Black-tailed Godwit, 11 Redshank, 1 Dunlin and 1 Hobby…..not bad! The Brownsea Tern islands are now ‘stuffed’ with chicks which is great to see, and you’re able to watch them live on our Brownsea Lagoon webcams HERE. Female Osprey CJ7 is still about, but not visiting any nest platforms, but has been changing her behaviour slightly, even beginning to sit on channel markers out in the Wareham Channel….not something we’ve seen her do before. At Arne 2 Spotted Flycatcher were seen feeding young near the car park which is great news. After the rain today, a mass of hirundines began feeding in the river valley’s including the highest recorded total of Sand Martin so far this year with c120 in the Piddle Valley along with c30 House Martin.

Kestrel brood about to fledge – Edge of Wareham Forest

There were more elements of interest today with raptor numbers good again out in the Wareham Channel area. Female Osprey CJ7 was circling high over the Wareham Channel and even made a (now rare) visit to the Osprey nest cam briefly before being seen off by a crow. 3 Hobby were active between Arne moors and Hartland. The female Marsh Harrier seems to be playing hard to get now with very rare appearances during early morning watches but 2 Peregrine are very busy now as the chicks at Corfe seem be getting hungrier and hungrier. At Lytchett Fields a Green Sandpiper was seen along with 11 Black-tailed Godwit and c15 Lapwing.  There were both a Peregrine and Barn Owl hunting late morning at Middlebere and 3 Hobby hunting at Morden Bog along with a Cuckoo there too.

Raven – Ballard

It was a fairly quiet weekend with a few reports coming our way, including female Osprey CJ7 being sighted out over the Wareham Channel and Arne. Hobby were over Arne, Hartland, Lytchett Fields and Middlebere. The female Marsh Harrier was seen out over Giggers Island and the Sandwich Terns on Brownsea are doing well and are already growing flight feathers. It also sounds like it’s a good time to listen out for Crossbill as numerous small flocks have recently been heard moving from breeding sites to potential new feeding areas with birds being heard over Parkstone, Merley, Wareham and Arne. Below is an Autumn recording to familiarise yourself with the flight calls they make whilst on migration.

What a difference a year makes. It was June 12^th 2019 that saw all of our hearts here at BoPH go through the roof when we received a photo from one of our Poole Harbour nest cams of 2 blue-ringed Osprey on one of the Poole Harbour nest platforms, one of one we knew to be female CJ7 but the second was a mystery male. It was exciting because spring 2019 was when we could possibly see the return of one of the chicks we raised and relapsed back in 2017 return for the first time. What followed was a day of intense fieldwork around the harbour trying to track down this mystery bird to see if we identify who it was. Anyway, after several hours of trying we eventually got lucky and were able to confirm it to be one of our males from 2017, LS7. Last summer they pair boned and things were really looking good for this spring. Sadly, as we all know by now poor LS7 never made it back this, likely having dies on migration either last autumn or this spring. Interestingly, from conversations with other osprey workers around the UK it sounds as if a number of ‘adult’ Osprey didn’t arrive back this spring, possibly due to the cold and persistent NE wind stayed in place in southern Europe during the latter part of March and early April, possibly forcing migrating birds out into the Atlantic. We’ll never know what happened to LS7, but what we experienced this spring is one of the tragic realties of Osprey ecology, and all we can do is press on, hope and wait for female Osprey CJ7 to find a new mate over the coming springs. We’re confident she will, but we just wanted to take some tome today remembering LS7 and provide some nice photos of when he was active around the harbour last summer.

Else in the harbour today at Lytchett Fields a Spoonbill dropped down onto Lytchett Fields which is a good early summer record. Crossbill seem to have a good season with numerous groups in and around the outskirts of Wareham Forest. On the Brownsea Lagoon, Sandwich Tern chick totals currently stand at 175 which is great news and is apparently a higher than normal rate of productivity according to the DWT.

First image we received of LS7 on this day last year

First photo we took after tracking him down later that day

First time CJ7 and LS7 visited their ‘chosen’ nest together

Common Crossbill – Southern edge of Wareham Forest