This morning we visited Portland on the last morning before I go back to school.
Just as we arrived, we were told of three ortolans in Suckthumb Quarry. Needless to say, they were no longer there, but I did see a first for me in Britain- an all-too-brief view of a nightingale which we flushed from a bush, allowing us to notice its distinct rufous tail. The only other birds of note around the area were several wheatears and a spotted flycatcher.
After that, we headed down to the Bill, where we came upon a nice little passage of Balearic shearwaters passing to the west. Pelagic seabirds are, along with owls, my favourite family of birds, and this was a new species for me. This slightly more chunky and duskier cousin of the Manx shearwater is very sadly now considered to be critically endangered, due to a range of threats, including predation from cats and rats, increasing development of holiday resorts around their breeding areas and being killed as fishing by-catch. 3000 pairs are believed to remain in the wild, though other figures suggest that up to 30 000 birds may remain, and remarkably it is believed to only be the females which travel to Britain, with the males travelling south, so to see 40 or so passing Portland today was a real treat, but nothing compared to the 382 which passed the Bill last Saturday! It is predicted that the species will become extinct within 40 or so years and it is a great privilege to have seen this highly threatened and increasingly rare visitor to Britain.
The day was not done yet, when a wryneck was reported in the top fields, we headed up there. On the way, we passed the strange and very intriguing sight of about 30 people trudging through the field next to the obs! Normally this is an almost empty field, so we knew something great must have been seen. It turned out to be a corncrake that had been flushed by a person waking through the field earlier. Sadly our attempts to flush the bird failed- it had clearly hidden itself away in the long grass so a potential new British bird for me was missed- not that I particularly minded after the unforgettable views I had of this species in Kenya two years ago.
We then heard of a wryneck found in the top fields, so raced up there. It had been flushed and had flown out of sight by the time we arrived, so unfortunately we missed it. Compensation came very soon however, when an ortolan bunting was find nearby and we arrived just in time to see it fly off calling towards the observatory. This was a new species in Britain for me, a really rather scarce passage migrant here that is bizarrely trapped for food in France during the autumn. My only previous sightings of the species came in Jordan last year. Around the area we also found up to 20 whinchats, 50 wheatears and 3 yellow and one white wagtails, alongside good numbers of commoner migrants like whitethroats and meadow pipits, as well as a garden warbler and a fly over tree pipit (my first at Portland).
It was also a good week at Hilfield, with two new species for the area seen by me. The first was a stunning lesser whitethroat calling from its perch in the area of our garden I call the 'warbler patch' ( because it is always swarming with blackcaps, willows and chiffs). I have been looking in this area regularly, knowing that it would be the most likely place for a scarcer bird to appear in the garden due to its abundance of berries, so to get this reward was very satisfying! The second was, like I saw at Portland, a flyover tree pipit. I first heard its distinctive, higher pitched version of a pied wagtail's call, and soon managed to find its silhouette in undulating flight right over the house. The only other bird of note seen was a peregrine that went over chasing someone's racing pigeons!
A largely non-birding trip to Brownsea Island gave me my first mainland Britain red squirrel and a flock of 8 spoonbills on the lagoon was a nice bonus.
No comments:
Post a Comment