Wessex waderfest

Dorset's extraordinary run of American waders continued into its fourth weekend with a Lesser Yellowlegs at Christchurch Harbour the most recent arrival yesterday. It all started with a Baird's Sandpiper on Brownsea Island which I managed to see back on 2nd September. After a gap of about a week, Stilt and Least Sandpipers were then discovered on the same day at the same site in Weymouth. During their extended stay a Buff-breasted Sandpiper arrived on Portland, then within the last few days a Spotted Sandpiper was found among the Common Sandpipers at Abbotsbury Swannery.

Spotted Sandpiper, Abbotsbury Swannery

A tricky bird to separate from Common Sandpiper - call was one of the factors which made Steve Groves think Spotted...

...yellowish legs, short tail and plain tertial fringes appeared to confirm it

This drake Scaup was also at Abbotsbury

Not quite yet in its smartest winter plumage

What was presumably the same Baird's was relocated on the Fleet last week, and what was presumably the same Stilt Sandpiper spent a few hours at Lytchett Bay, giving a few patch listers as well as county listers something to celebrate. Trying to photograph them all involved a fair amount of dashing around after work and at weekends and I never even got as far as looking for the Buff-breasted or the Yellowlegs.

I went back to Lodmoor to try to improve on my photos of the Stilt and Least Sandpipers

The Stilt Sand was much closer but the light was not great

A hint of the rufous cheek patch can be seen here

On a different evening, in contrast to the Stilt Sandpiper, the Least was in nice light - but much further away!

Not sure if these were an improvement on my original pictures

However, it was a first for Dorset, so good views took priority over good photos

Three visits to the Fleet hoping to improve on my appalling record shot of the Baird's Sandpiper also ended in failure. More successful was a late Saturday afternoon visit to the Swannery, where we had only just been shown to Helen's Hide by finder Steve Groves when the Spotted Sandpiper flew in and perched briefly on the shore under our noses.

Couldn't find the Baird's on the Fleet but enjoyed close views of a couple of Bar-tailed Godwit

These birds were feeding in Tidmoor Cove

Bar-tailed Godwit

Bar-tailed Godwits

Even Swineham got in on the wader action with a cracking species pair of Grey and Red-necked Phalarope spending the weekend on the same pool on Arne Moors. Getting them on the patch list required scaling a small oak tree and balancing the telescope on a tripod shaped bough to view over the Frome's riverside reeds! Of course, the provenance of the Phalaropes is more open to question, though with so many congeners from the Americas in the area, it is not totally out of the question that they too might have originated on the other side of the Atlantic. Had a Wilson's Phalarope joined them that might have provided supporting evidence for the theory - but alas it wasn't to be. Still, autumn is still young...

The juvenile Red-necked Phalarope was a new bird for me in Dorset as well as Swineham

The Grey (left) and Red-necked Phalarope often fed together on Arne Moors

Quite amazing that they settled on the same small pool especially as the Grey Phalarope had been present for about a week before its smaller cousin arrived

Red-necked Phalarope

 

A grey day

Sorry, must have nodded off there for a month or so. Truth is I haven't been out much with the camera since my last post, and there hasn't really been a lot of light to play with: we seem to have been swaddled under a blanket of greyness for several weeks now in Dorset, the monotony of it all broken only by occasional rain. Fortunately, some birds still look good in these conditions, and the Great Northern Diver is one of them. This one was hanging out off Portland marina on Saturday.

I had gone down to Portland Harbour partly in the hope of seeing a Black-throated Diver which had spent most of the week in the same area. The Black-throat was nowhere to be seen, but as I took one last walk up the windswept harbour wall to look for it, a small wader in flight caught my eye and materialised into a Grey Phalarope - a good bird to find, especially in December. It landed briefly on the water, and stayed just long enough for me to get the attention of Brett and Chris, the only other two birders to see it before it flew off high to the north. The Grey Phalarope was my 236th species photographed in 2015 - I wonder if it will be the last.

Grey days

A brief break between squalls yesterday saw me and the family make a dash for Kimmeridge, our nearest stretch of coast as the crow flies if we exclude the inner shore of Poole Harbour. Two Grey Phalaropes had been blown into the bay the previous day. I lashed myself to a boulder on the water's edge to avoid being blown away by the extreme winds and, while initially elusive, the Phalaropes flew in just in front of me for a preen.

Grey Phalarope in winter plumage

Very difficult to photograph in flight with high winds shaking the camera

The phalarope taking evasive action as some driftwood approaches

A first winter bird

An Arctic breeder which winters out at sea but can be blown inshore by gales

Both birds moved up and down the bay together

Amazing how they can tolerate these conditions

Grey Wagtail on the beach

Kittiwake in the surf

One of two birds present

Kittiwake

Waterfalls blow uphill at Kimmeridge



Four Go Mad on Brownsea

I did a stress management course at work last week which, in an award winning statement of the bleeding obvious, advised anyone suffering stress to 'remove themselves from the source of the stress'. As the source of stress is generally work, taking this advice to heart I booked Friday off and went to Brownsea Island instead. Here, the only thing likely to cause stress is a rarity turning up on the mainland.

This Guillemot was just off the Quay on Brownsea

After a bit of cajoling I was joined on the trip by my wife, Claire - a rare day out for me and the fragrant one sans les enfants - and by fellow stress-dodgers Steve and Jol. Brownsea is said to have inspired some of Enid Blyton's most famous works, but as we shuffled around in the drizzle, grumbling about modernity and the price of National Trust cakes, I fear we were less Famous Five and more Last of the Summer Wine.

Grey Phalarope, Brownsea

Still, cake was not the main objective of this mission: rather, it was to see a Grey Phalarope which was spinning merrily on the lagoon among a host of larger waders. Cleggy Jol, Nora Claire and I got the first boat and saw the Phalarope almost straight away; fortunately it was still there when Compo Steve bowled over on the next ferry.

Avocet, Brownsea

Mission thus accomplished, after some quality time with the Avocets and Spotshanks, we went in search of Brownsea's remnant population of Golden Pheasant. At Jol's secret stakeout, to which we were led blindfold, he managed to just see a splash of red and gold through the undergrowth but the rest of us failed despite sitting next to him. Distracted, no doubt, by the resident Red Squirrels chasing around making squeaky toy noises.

Red Squirrel, Brownsea

Back on the mainland, after all the excitement of Brownsea, I needed to go somewhere quiet and birdless. I knew Swineham wouldn't let me down. Arriving at the Point - about as far as it is possible to go due east from my house without wading into Poole Harbour - the pager reported a Red-breasted Flycatcher, a surprisingly rare bird in Dorset, near Weymouth, another good find for Brett Spencer.

 Peacock sitting out a shower on Brownsea. 'I say, that bird looks foreign. Perhaps it's an illegal immigrant' (adapted from the inspiration for this post, Five Go Mad in Dorset. Described as a comedy film, but pretty much a documentary of our lives down here).

With less than two hours of daylight left this presented a 'should I stay or should I go' dilemma. It was resolved when a text message arrived from Steve and Jol offering a lift. To take advantage of it required a swift walk and an even swifter cycle ride to get back to Wareham before they did. Unable to get a signal, by the time I finally managed to get a pleading text out they had already passed the town centre, but gallantly turned around to pick me up.

This Red-backed Shrike kept us entertained while waiting for the Red-breasted Flycatcher

With the bike safely ditched in a hedgerow, we got to the Flycatcher site with over an hour of daylight left but sadly it was not enough time to find the bird. I went back again this afternoon and after a couple of fruitless hours searching, in a happy ending which could have been penned by Enid herself, I finally managed to catch up with it just before it went to roost.

The distance and low light made the R-B Fly unphotographable. Just after I saw it this Barn Owl appeared, illustrating the lateness of the hour

Hello Sailor

I've been avoiding pelagics for years, convinced that I was a seasicky wuss, but after my fifth in just over a week, I think I may have finally found my sea legs. The first four were on the Isles of Scilly last week - more of which later - but yesterday's was closer to home in Lyme Bay. There are several species of seabird which I have seen but never photographed, and I hadn't even gone digital the last time I went on one of the infamous Scillonian III pelagics in the early noughties. So it was time to man up, put away the sick bags, take a deep breath to fill my lungs with the smell of rotting fish.

Our main target in Lyme Bay was White-beaked Dolphin, a pod of which has been seen regularly in recent summers, but not so far this year it seems. Matt Jones, visiting from New Zealand, came along for the ride as this would have been a tick for both of us. We gave it a good thrashing but the closest we came to a seeing a cetacean was the one on my Octonauts lunchbag, which I shamefully suppressed from the others on board. Thanks for the loan, kids.

Still a brilliant trip though with perfect light and some excellent seabirds which made up for the absent dolphins. Most of these were hanging around some trawler by-catch off Berry Head for which we took a detour - Sooty, Balearic and Manx Shearwaters, Great and Arctic Skua and even a tiny Storm Petrel all joined a melee of several thousand gulls, gannets and fulmars. A bonus Grey Phalarope on the way back just as we were all nodding off capped a good day.

Now I have (i) sunburn and (ii) 8 gig of photos to sort through. A few of the early highlights below.

 

Sooty Shearwaters breed in New Zealand and thereabouts in their thousands. Matt normally can't get excited about them as there are so many down his way, but we had to marvel at the possibility that this was one of 'his' birds from Stewart Island 

Sooty Shearwater with Herring Gull

A beautiful bird which allowed a close approach by the boat

A more familiar view of Sooty Shearwater - banking to reveal the silvery underwing

Balearic Shearwater - globally a very rare bird but seen regularly off our shores at this time of year

This was one of four or five Balearics seen

Manx was by far the commonest Shearwater encountered in Lyme Bay

Good numbers passed by in a variety of directions

This one the closest to the boat...

...and this one trying its luck in amongst the melee of gulls which were feeding around the trawler.

A 'Cantona' moment in Lyme Bay

The feeding frenzy also pulled in this piratical dark phase Arctic Skua...

...and this even more menacing Great Skua

A solitary Storm Petrel stayed on the fringes of the scrum to avoid the attentions of gulls and skuas

Fulmar: plenty of these in Lyme Bay

This juvenile Kittiwake was colour-ringed - details to follow

Guillemot was the only Auk we encountered

Gannet plunge-diving

Talk about a needle in a haystack - we were fortunate that our course took us past this diminutive Grey Phalarope in the broad sweep of Lyme Bay

Female Common Scoter gave a flypast as we headed back to West Bay

It was flat calm leaving West Bay where this was a reminder of one of the many perils facing our seabirds - but has marine litter ever looked so serene?

I liked the way the hedgerow shadows the cliff edge at Burton Bradstock

People on the beach give some perspective on these mighty cliffs