Bird Racing

5th January,
Saturday morning I was up at 0400 hours getting ready for my first ever bird race, for those not familiar with what a bird race entails. It is basically a team of birders that race a round a county ( in my case Dorset) to see and tick off as many birds we can see against a check list, all good fun. So by 0500 hours I was out with the team looking for Woodcock, Snipe and Jack Snipe some where round the harbour, but we did not find them so went went off to look for owls. While searching for Barn Owls we heard a Tawny Owl calling away, then out of the blue two Barn Owls started flying around, there white under body showing nicely in the half light.
 Then a dash to Lodmoor, but it was still a bit to dark to see anything, though we did hear Water Rail,  we decided to head off to Portland to see if the Short eared Owls and Little Owls we about but again we failed on these.Though we did get Raven, Kestrel and surprisingly there were quite a number of Pheasants about the place. While at Portland we sea watched for a bit and soon ticked off Razorbills, Guillemot and Fulmar and the usual gull species. While here I had my first sighting of Purple Sandpipers, I have been a few times to try and see them here at Portland and at Sandbanks Ferry but always failed to see them, so it was very nice to see four of them on the rocks.
It was very good day as I got to a few places that I had not be to before like Sandfort  Castle, Thorncome Woods were we saw two wonderful Firecrest, It was a tiring day though the hours went quickly and it was soon time to get to the finishing line.
At the end of the day I added a small number of birds to my Poole Harbour Bird List.
Barn Owl, Tawny Owl, Buzzard, Sparrowhawk, Grey Plover, Knot, Greenshank,Salvonian Grebe, Cattle Egret and Chiffchaff are the ones I can think of the top of my head.
The sounds coming off Brands Bay was just magical, Curlew,Greenshank Wigeon and Brent Geese calling as the light was fading.

Bar-tailed Godwit

Brent Geese

Brands Bay

Urban Birding

1st January 2019

I kicked of the year with some urban birding for my Poole Harbour Year list.

Started off at Baiter were I saw.

Sandwich Tern x 1

Great Northern Diver x 1

Goldeneye x 3

Great Crested Grebes x 4

Brent Geese

Oystercatchers

Redshanks

Dunlin

Turnstones

these were the highlights

Great Northern Diver

Great Northern Diver diving

Then I moved on to Poole Park for the Mandarin which I found on the small pond by the station and cafe.

Also here

Little Egret

Little Grebe

Tufted Duck

Greylag Geese

Drake Mandarin

I followed this up with a trip to Holes Bay/Upton CP one of the best parts of the morning with stacks of Wigeon I would of thought there was about C300

Wigeon

and C200 Dunlin and C100 Redshank and it was wonderful to watch these wheeling about over the bay, watching from the cycle path.

Also here I found 8 Avocet, Shelducks, more Oystercatchers at least four Pintail, Teal and Shoveler and by the stone bench a large group of Black-tailed Godwits and Curlew.

Sleeping Wigeon

Holes Bay looking towards the twin Sails bridge

Looking toward Poole Town

More Wigeon

The Twin Sails Bridge

I then moved on to Hatch Pond but there was not much here a part from 17 Snipe on the cut reed bed.

One of 17 Snipe

By this time the call of Longham Lakes was to great to resist and I head over to my local patch

were I saw the Great Egret still in resident on the large island along with a few Gadwall, Wigeon, Tufted Ducks and a group of 50 Pochard on South lake and a group of 30 Pochard on North Lake.

Then I found what I thought was a Red-crested Pochard by the large island in South Lake, but with only ever seeing on male Red-crested Pochard before in full male Plumage this one through me of a bit. It looked like a RC Pochard expect the breast area was not the glossy black and the back was a greyish flat brown and the flanks  a mix of greyish brown and white, like when a tufted duck is in eclipse type plumage. The head was large and orange colour with a black hind neck, the bill was a croal redish colour and the eye was red.

A 1st winter male Red-crested Pochard? Attached a couple of picture of the bird asleep.

Possible Red-crested Pochard

another of the possible Red-crested Pochard