A school bird boat was out this morning and the Black Guillemot once again showed well off the Brownsea SE corner. Also out on the water were 3 Great Northern Diver, c15 Goldeneye and 15 Spoonbill on Shipstal Spit. The Brownsea Lagoon was fairly flooded but still held reasonable numbers of Grey Plover, Dunlin, Black and Bar-tailed Godwit, several Greenshank, 4 Spotted Redshank and a few Knot. There were 4 different ringtail Hen Harrier in the west of the harbour including an individual that was first noted back in late October last year but not seen since. Marsh Harrier showed only slightly better totals with 5 present, but encouragingly two were seen talon locking a couple of days ago. Just playing? Its also getting close to spring migration time and you may remember last year we held a number of night migration sound recording sessions from the Frome Valley area (and my garden), well this year we have a new monitoring site in the Old Town Poole area. So far this year we’ve conducted three night recording sessions, specifically set up to monitor what’s moving around/through the harbour whilst we’re all in slumber land. On Wednesday night we had 2 Redwing, 1 Song Thrush, 1 Teal, 1 Ringed Plover, 1 Dunlin, 1 Grey Heron and 2 Wigeon over our listening station between 8pm and 4am.

Black Guillemot – Brownsea SE – Paul Morton 

Black Guillemot – Brownsea SE – Paul Morton

Dunlin Flock – Poole Quay – Paul Morton