The wife and I were invited to a friends for New Year - in Dorset! I obviously started hatching plans for both my 2014 (end) and 2015 (start) year lists...... However....as we used to say in the Army (I'm sure they still say it), 'No plan survives first contact' To start with the head gasket went on the car, so, I bought a second hand one the following day but the head gasket went on that one 24hrs later!!!!
Anyway, this weekend I returned to Dorset in a nice shiny hire car (to scrap the 2nd car) with 2 days geeking re-planned.
Day 1 was spent with the nice people from the Upton/Poole RSPB group on their monthly field trip, I stumbled across this event when checking out local sightings. The weather was forecast to be treacherous with high winds and heavy rain. It was windy alright but fortunately the rain held off.
I rose nice and early and headed to Shell Bay on Studland where the group were meeting, I took the longer route and went via RSPB Arne as there had been some great reports from the day before, namely 8 Spotted Redshank, Avocets in their 100's and a few Spoonbill. I had check the tide table, low tide was at 07:00 so I arrived at 08:00 with the hope it had started to make its way back in, it hadn't. Being the first outing of the 2015, every species is new :) Middlebere contained approx. 120 Eurasian Teal, 30 Eurasian Widgeon and a fair number of Curlew and Redshank, I was unable to find any Spotted Redshank though. I only stayed for about 20 minutes as I had to get to Sandbanks. On the way back to the car I added Green Woodpecker and Long-tailed Tit.
I arrived at Shell Bay to strong winds and rain, it didn't look promising. Still, about 10 members of the group had turned up and were willing to brave the elements so the guided walk was on.
We headed for the beach which we planned to follow, the first birds were Shag, then somebody picked up some birds flying towards us - 5 Dark-bellied Brent Goose, that was me happy. I couldn't believe it when I heard some Terns screeching, but there they were, 3 Sandwich Terns patrolling up and down the shoreline with a group of Black-headed Gulls, I'd seen reports of 1 overwintering but never thought we'd find it , never mind 3..!
Our walk along the beach also presented us with Pied Wagtail, Sparrowhawk, Meadow Pipit, Cormorant, Sanderling and a further ~20 Dark-bellied Brents, a good start I thought.
We took a walk over to Brands Bay next, I didn't know there was a hide there, this time last year I stood in the bitter cold and wind, eyes streaming, looking for a Surf Scoter... No need this time, 10 happy campers squashed snugly into the hide for a scan of the Bay.
There were quite a few Shelduck, a couple of Eurasian Teal, a Little Egret and what looked like 3 Red-necked Grebe although the view wasn't good enough for me to be content they weren't Great Crested. One of the group (with Eagle eyed vision) then picked up a duck across the bay, I was the only one who'd brought a scope so was asked to have a look, it was a cracking male Pintail.
We all headed back to the cars to take a drive up to Middle Beach, we spent some time scanning the open water below us, the Black-necked Grebe never disappoint here at this time of year, we quickly got onto a group of 7, lovely little birds. There were some great beasts of Great Black-backed Gulls on the water, we also had a Red-necked Grebe in with 3 Great Crested Grebe which I found bizarre seeing on salt water. Somebody found a small raft of duck so I put the scope on and there were 8 female Long-tailed Duck with an extremely handsome male.
After way too much excitement (for me anyway), we went to look for the Ring-necked Parakeets, I wasn't overly bothered what with living in London during the week. We didn't manage to locate the Parakeets but I did managed to find a female Common Scoter quite close in on the water, one of the group had Goldcrest too.
The group called it a day at that point and we all went to the Middle Beach café for a nice brew, I managed a sausage sandwich too :o) When we returned to the cars, I could resist one last look at the Long-tailed Duck. I failed to relocate them but did find a Great Northern Diver.
I'd like to thank the Upton/Poole branch of the RSPB for allowing me to join them for their walk, I had a great morning with some very friendly people and got to see some fantastic birds which would not have been possible without their local knowledge of the area.
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