One good Tern deserves another !!

…………………… and I HAVE kept my word. This week I have been able to make this blog what it is really meant to be…Bird news. Really? Yes, really.    10 ticks this week and garnered some 200 miles apart.

Tuesday 16^th April  9.30am, and I meet  Chris with her good friends Marion and Paul at the entrance to Willington Gravel Pits. It’s a bush and tree enclosed narrow lane, with periodic outlooks over disused pits, so it’s good for warblers along the pathway.  Being early Chris and I had accidentally bumped into each other at the Willington service station, me for a Cino, and Chris for a Tea. Except that the Costa machines didn’t do tea.

A nice leisurely stroll down the lane led to a slight diversion off the beaten track, for me to hear and then see my first Willow Warbler of 2019. Blackcaps could be heard all along the track, and Cetti Warbler, and I did actually eyeball a Cetti for the year list.

But it was on the second viewing platform that we were to find (for me the BOD) a Wheatear on the grass straight in front of us. Not in the most active of modes but when you think he/she has flown from Central Africa, that’s not surprising. The Wheatear is a species that I can recall where I have seen most of them in prior years. One at Lodmoor, near Weymouth… not moving a muscle; one on a bush at Attenborough GP, in Wheatear field (where else?)..steady as a rock.  And this lovely little fellow at Willington was not in a hurry.

Wednesday 17^th April and Mary and I are off for 4 nights to the Haven Hotel at Sandbanks in Dorset, overlooking the mouth of Poole harbour. 

The Haven Hotel, Sandbanks, Poole Harbour.

If you know Sandbanks (a place where property is the most expensive in the world for the price per foot.), you will know that the location is in the middle of a good birding area. For example, Ospreys, that were translocated from Scotland a couple of years ago are already back from their Xmas vacation in Senegal. The harbour also sports a good population of winter Divers, and Brownsea Island has apart from the lovely Red Squirrels, a good lagoon with breeding Avocets, Godwits and resident Spoonbills to name but a few.

Nearby is Arne, a good RSPB reserve with Sika deer, a café and Dartford Warblers; Hengitsbury Head,  with Christchurch harbour, catches many passing migrants

That’s the PR exercise for Dorset!! The Haven hotel is selling its valuable site for properties, so there is no need to forewarn you about their exorbitant alcohol costs, because you won’t be staying there!!

Wednesday, leaving Derby at 10.00am, 4 hours and 200 miles later, we have ticked the Red Kite en route (only 1 sadly)

Thursday, waiting for the open top bus to take us to Swanage, I’m rewarded with Common Terns (VERY recently arrived, I’m told) fishing by the ferry crossing.  I love the coast at Swanage, so we walk out to Peveril Point, hoping to tick a Rock Pipit—failed. But… scanning the foreshore what do I find…..a Wheatear… another one.   Good enough reason to stop for a Crab sandwich at the outdoor bar by the pier, enjoy the view and to  share a nice bottle of chilled Pinot Grigio!!

Friday, our plan to visit Weymouth and Portland has to be aborted due to hundreds of motorists deciding to do the same thing. With my local knowledge, we can drop out of the rat race and pop over to Arne. Cruising up and down Engineers Road and hoping for a Stonechat we are rewarded by a pair of Linnets dropping down on the verge whilst I map read. So that’s good.

And that just leaves my new adventure on Saturday. I am joining the “Early-Bird trip round Poole Harbour” organised by  Birds of Poole Harbour, starting at 8.00am. As the hotel does not do breakfast until 8 am at weekends, and I need to leave the hotel at 7.15, that’s goodbye to a full English AND the included Black Pudding.  It’s OK, Mary was having a lie-in and I told her she could have a double-bubble share with my black pud!!

Paul is the leader for our group of 50 birders on the chartered harbour ferry, and we spend the next 3.1/2  hours birding round the harbour, then up the long tapering channel through the reeds to Wareham. Poole harbour is, apart from the ferry channels, a very shallow harbour, and when the boat turns at Wareham, we are really churning things up.

Despite the cold at 8.00am, the wind abated, and my early tick was a pair of Sandwich Terns (another Tern!!) on a mooring buoy.  Mediterranean Gulls were added to the list, but the rich pickings for most of us was cruising to and fro near the Brownsea lagoon. 

If you have not been to Brownsea, you would not know that non-National Trust members pay for a ferry to the Island, an NT landing fee, and a fee to enter the Dorset Wildlife Trust lagoon site. So, it’s quite satisfying to peep over the wall from the boat – for free!!     And our rewards?  For  me a single Spoonbill, but for others, Grey Plover, Avocets, Dunlin, Black T Godwits.

That’s my new adventure. My 6^th different birding-boating experience.  Well recommended, and I will do it again. Paul talked the whole time, but he had a lot of good interesting knowledge, especially about “their” Ospreys.

When I had recovered my land-legs, we drove to Hengitsbury Head, still hoping for the Dartford Warbler. Nope, BUT we were both thrilled to pick up a pair of Stonechats atop the gorse.

And finally……..4 Red Kites on the home run, but my greatest pleasure was Mary spotting, twice, an overflying Jay on the A34.    I’ll convert her yet.

Happy Birding.