Leaving the south coast today? Bad decision...

Short-toed Eagle, French Pyrenees 2006.

Perhaps it's payback time for yesterday's rather smug post about the serendipity of staying on the south coast while many others had gone north for a Rufous-tailed Robin which wasn't there, and getting lucky with an Isabelline Wheatear instead. Family commitments took me inland today, to Warminster. Half-way there and the butterfly-in-the-stomach inducing wail of a pager 'mega-alert' announced a Short-toed Eagle in Devon. And it was heading east. I suggested to my (wholly disinterested) wife that right now Dorset birders would be streaming down to Lyme Regis, or perching on the cliffs of Portland, scanning the skies for this first for the county. Someone must have done so, as it was indeed seen over the sea off Lyme later in the afternoon. A further message suggesting that it had headed back to Exmouth relieved the pain somewhat, but even this turned out to be a dud, torturing me with visions of it cruising along the Dorset coast, whilst I was in land-locked Wiltshire. Small consolation that I have at least seen one - in the Pyrenees in 2006 (see picture).