Roll on April!

Thought I best bring you all up to speed before we get into April, when it will probably all kick off on the migration front...  mind you it looks like it already has!

I was at work most of today, so missed Bun's male Redstart on Beer Head and the Osprey that flew up river mid afternoon (seems to have been several of these arrive on south coast today). A quick look around as the sun set though showed a big increase of hirundines in the valley, with 70+ Sand Martins and about five Swallows feeding over Colyford and Bridge Marsh.

Yesterday morning I enjoyed leading a tram trip along the Estuary, with six Sand Martins north, a Wheatear (my first female of the year), a Greenshank, a Dunlin and two male Shoveler the highlights...

Female Wheatear

Redshank and Greenshank (now in summer plumage)

Male Stonechat on the tram overhead!

Don't get many Wren photos so thought this was worth posting!

A couple of evenings prior to this I spent some time at our only remaining reliable Little Owl site. Great to see at least one still hanging on...

The distinctive shape of a Little Owl with a stunning orange sky backdrop

And that brings me up to date with my local bird news. April it is over to you...

Little Bunting

Although it's off patch, I just had to pay the Little Bunting that James Mc found on Trinity Hill late Saturday a visit. Full marks to James for this great find, who (thanks to news from Sue Murphy) kept on checking the flock of up to 80 Reed Buntings that are feeding/roosting here. A great example of how some clever thinking, and persistence, can pay off.

The weather this afternoon was dreadful, and Trinity Hill was fogged out and wet. You couldn't make out anything further than about 25m away, so I chose to just stand by some bushes and wait. About 30 Reed Buntings and 20 minutes later, 'tic tic'...

What a terrific little bird. Although when I say little, not that much smaller than a Reed Bunting if you ask me. Clearly shorter tailed though.  It was great to hear it call several times, so Robin-like but just a little cleaner, not so liquidy if that makes any sense.  If you're going to try and see it yourself hopefully this map helps, the red cross is where I stood...

Now back to the patch, my PWC patch to be precise. It took until today for Golden Plover to be added to my PWC list, despite up to 70 being present for most of this winter about two miles outside my PWC patch boundary!  There seemed to be a load more Lapwing in the valley too, and 'the golden one' was with a small group of Lapwing in the field opposite Colyford WTW at 9am.

My other recent PWC year tick (my first for a week in fact!) was a Little Owl on Saturday evening near Lower Bruckland Ponds. It's nice to know there are still three local spots for this declining species, but there are most definitely fewer around than five years ago.

For a damp, dreary and dull late January day, it's not been too bad at all!

Portland

Had a nice day out today with Jess and Honey. Went a little further east than usual, which was nice as I haven't been here for several years...

Didn't appear to be many sea birds offshore despite three pairs of eyes looking...

We enjoyed a really nice walk up to the slopes past the Coastguard Lookout, through the Top Fields to Southwell, back down across the the Bill Road through Eight Kings Quarry then along the East Cliffs back to the bill end.  

It wasn't a birdie trip, but was nice to see a few Wheatear, heaps and heaps of Stonechats (15 in one field!), a few Chiffs, Blackcaps and Goldcrests, loads of Mipits, and to finish the walk off perfectly...

The resident Obs Quarry Little Owl

The best bird of the day was during the journey over; a single Marsh Harrier circling by Abbotsbury Castle before it flew high east along the Fleet. Pity I didn't see the two Ibis that were going the other way though!

That's More Like It

What a beautiful spring-like day today, and it feels as though things are happening in the bird world.

Yesterday there were far more gulls on the Estuary than of late, with 70+ Common Gulls, 21 Lesser Black-backed Gulls and a new adult Med Gull. Nothing exciting no, but a vast improvement on recent times. 

And today?  Well today I've netted two patch year ticks!

With fog in the valley this morning, I spent late morning looking up for raptors at various spots around the patch. The highlight came at 10:45am when a Merlin (presumably a male) flew through north east very rapidly.  This is our first one of the year, so there's got to be a good chance it was a migrant passing through. Merlin is a bird you would expect to see here every year, but not normally until late autumn, so nice to get this one out of the way so early on.

The next year tick I found during a quick look along the Estuary mid afternoon. Avocet isn't guaranteed here every year, so I was overjoyed to see one feeding in the creek leading from the main Estuary to Seaton Marshes Hide...

Possibly the worst ever photo of an Axe Avocet

The Avocet ended up feeding right in front of Seaton Marshes Hide, so I reckon later the other local blogs will be festooned with stunning pics of it. I look forward to seeing them.

So it's 5th March, and I've already had the same amount of patch year ticks this month as I did in the whole of February!  Hopefully this is the start of the spring flood gates opening.

Now back to yesterday again, and Jess and I went 'Owling' around the patch from 17:30. This was a total success as we had excellent and prolonged views of two Barn Owls...

I've seen six different Barn Owls on patch so far this year - not bad going!

Followed by great (although very dull) views of a Little Owl that just wasn't trying hard enough to hide from us...

A ball of feathers!

I'm pleased to report that amazingly both the bird table and out table is still standing! We've been using our table every day, but so far only one bird has found the seed on the bird table...

If I was a bird I'd probably be a Wood Pigeon!

A Bit Of Ruff

Last night Jess and I went on an Owl hunt. Sadly we didn't see any, but we did hear a very vocal Little Owl near Musbury. That will do for me - patch year tick!

Today I was hoping a quick sweep of the river valley would produce the two Ruff that Tim found last night on Black Hole Marsh, and I'm pleased to say it did. They're both cracking males and were opposite Axmouth FC along with a few Lapwing, Dunlin and a Green Sandpiper.  There's obviously been some wader movement recently; our wintering Bar-tailed Godwit flock has doubled to two, five Golden Plover were on Bridge Marsh and there were again over a hundred Dunlin present. 

So my year list is on 116, with the total patch list for 2013 standing at 121. Don't forget you can keep track of my year list attempt by clicking on the '2013 patch year list' tab at the top of this blog.

I really thought I had blown it for a patch Waxwing this winter (yet again!) as numbers in the country have really dwindled since Christmas, but within the last week they have really been teasing us. At the start of the week there was a flock of 25 just five miles north of us, and today up to ten spent a couple of hours in a street just four and a half miles west of the patch.  So although it is highly annoying they haven't been on patch - they've certainly given me renewed hope that the Waxwing gap on my patch list may soon be filled...