Today was the February Poole Harbour WeBS count which always produces good counts of birds and occasionally a goodie here or there. Today it was Lytchett Bays turn to report ‘find of the day’ in the shape of an adult Ring-billed Gull, which was settled in the bay briefly before lifting off and headed towards the Wareham Channel. It was gulls galore in the harbour on today’s low tide with literally thousands littering the mudflats around the entire harbour, mostly Common Gull by the looks of things with a good spread of Black-headed, Herring, Great Black-backed, Lesser Black-backed and lesser numbers of Mediterranean Gull. There were also Yellow-legged Gulls in Wytch Lake (1) and on the Brownsea Lagoon (3). There’s no better time to try and find scarcer gull species and with so many gulls visiting the harbour each day hopefully it’s a case of when rather than if we see the likes of Iceland and Glaucous Gulls starting to appear, or perhaps even another Ring-billed Gull or two. Equally unexpected was a group of 5 Slavonian Grebe off the houseboats at South Haven, a species that’s seen big declines over the last 5-10 years. Also off the houseboats was a single Great Northern Diver and a Merlin was on Studland Heath. On the main Poole park boating lake was 1 Kingfisher, 8 Black-tailed Godwit, 3 Red-breasted Merganser and 2 Goldeneye. At Norden sewage works 1 Firecrest was present and up to 6 Chiffchaff were feeding/singing. The Lesser Yellowlegs was on Lytchett Fields early morning and Spoonbills were on Shipstal, Brownsea and in Wytch Lake and the Wareham Channel. At Swineham 11 Barnacle Geese were on the main pit. There was also a report of a ‘brown owl’ flying over the marsh at Middlebere on Friday evening.