April 10^th always seems to be a good arrival date for spring migrants and the theory held true today. From all across the harbour a number of species arrived including a few firsts for the spring. Firstly a male Ring Ouzel flew north over Boarder Road, Lytchett Bay around 07:30am with 2 Wheatear and several Willow Warbler, Chiffchaff and Blackcap all fresh in at other areas of the bay. At Hartland Moor a male Redstart was along the Arne to Corfe Road with 2 Wheatear and again a decent number of Chiffchaff, Willow Warbler and Blackcap and at Swineham the years first Reed Warbler was seen along with the male Garganey, 4 Little Grebe and yet again more Chiffchaff, Willow Warbler and Blackcap. From Swineham yesterday evening the Black-necked Grebe was still present and a 1^st summer Little Gull dropped in, also 2 Marsh Harrier, 2 Sandwich Tern, 1 Common Sandpiper 100 Sand Martin and 5 Swallow. From Swineham Point 400 Black-tailed Godwit, 50 Curlew, and 1 Spotted Redshank were counted. In Middlebere an Osprey spent a lot of the day sat in the dead trees opposite the NT hide whilst 2 Spoonbill were in the channel. From Lytchett Bay yesterday 3 Bearded Tit were photographed including the embedded photo below taken by Ian Ballam and also a spring record count of 5 Green Sandpiper was noted.

Don’t forget, BoPH’s Paul Morton will be hosting a talk at the Upton Community Centre tonight at 19:30. The topic of the talk will be… ‘Birds of Poole Harbour’s first year’, what have we and the birds achieved? Why not come along for an interesting update on the work they’ve carried out in their first year as a charity.

Finally, we have now switched the Tern Camera on the Brownsea Lagoon which can now be viewed on our website simply by either clicking on the Webcams Tab at the top of the page or by clicking HERE. Over the next 4 weeks, more and more Common and Sandwich Terns will begin to arrive, settle and breed on the islands just in front of the camera. Last year was full of many highs and lows, but with the DWT fencing and re-fencing some of the Tern Islands then we should hopefully see a rise in the number of terns that fledge. Both the Brownsea Cam and Barn Owl Cam should hopefully be available to watch on iPad over the coming days. We’ll keep you posted.