It was another cold day, but at least it didn’t snow. In fact for the 2.5 minutes that the sun came out it lifted above 4 degrees……excellent!!! In all seriousness, come back spring. We’re bored of this already. The cold weather had forced a huge number of hirundines low to the water at Swineham with c500 Sand Martin feeding with 20+ Swallow and 5 House Martin. There were 2 Osprey out in the Wareham Channel late afternoon and a Spotted Redshank was calling off Swineham Point too. On the Swineham Scrapes the single Yellow Wagtail was there again and there were also 2 Little Ringed Plover, 1 Green Sandpiper but only 3 singing Reed Warbler and a Great White Egret was seen too. CJ7 was very active at the nest site today bringing in several large sticks and even carrying out her first nest cup ‘dig’ for any potential egg laying later in the season. We’ve also been analysing the photos we receive from the trail cameras and the Middlebere camera is quite interesting. Although it seems there’s been one very hungry Osprey using that platform since 17:30 on March 31^st. Looking at the photos we think it’s actually two different birds. Initially the first bird seems to be a new un-ringed female but today’s photos certainly seem to show what we believe to be ‘Beaky’. We’re now entering peak Osprey migration period and so the next few weeks could be really interesting. We still currently have two females on two different nests so you just never know…will we get lucky?

First Osprey on Middlebere platform @ 17:30 March 31st (until April 3rd at least)

Current Osprey using Middlebere platform showing different underwing pattern