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