29 Apr 23 - Spring Dotterel On The Head

I received a phone call from fellow patch Birder Phil Saunders just before 07:00, as I was arriving at the car park at St Aldhelms. That could only mean that Phil had arrived before me & had found something interesting: damn. It was a Dotterel with two Golden Plovers. Fortunately, they had landed in one of the fields and they were visible from the track by the open barn. That was less than ten minutes walk & therefore, there was a good chance of them still being there when I got there. I grabbed the scope & camera from the car & start walking, whilst phoning the news around. They were still there & showing at the edge of the second field when I arrived.

Dotterel with two Golden Plovers

Despite being a good-looking spot for Dotterel, there are not that many Dotterel records for the St Aldhelms/Winspit patch on Bubo. Steve Morrison has been collating records of the scarcer species on the St Aldhelms/Winspit patch. Steve reckons he still needs some work to pull together any missing Dotterel records, but the following sightings include five plus records of fourteen individuals:

• One North over Winspit on 20 May 68

• Two first winters at St Aldhelms Head (Chapel Field) on 7 & 9 Sep 93

• An adult and a first winter at St Aldhelms (Chapel Field) on 17 & 18 Aug 95, with three at St Aldhelms Head (Chapel Field) on 26 Aug 95 (the 1995 records are thought to involve the same individuals)

• Seven at St Aldhelms (Emmetts Hill/Chapel Field) on 18 Aug 01, one heard at St Aldhelms Head (Emmetts Hill) on 20 Aug 01 and 4 adults and one first winter at St Aldhelms (Emmetts Hill) on 26 Aug 01 (the 2001 records are thought to involve the same individuals)

• One heard at St Aldhelms Head (Eight Acres/Emmetts Hill) on 27 Aug 19.

At one point, they were spooked by a Corvid. They flew up, circled a few times and landing very close to where they were feeding. Around 11:30, they flew again, but this time disappeared off North.

Dotterel

Golden Plover

This was a lovely Spring record and only my second Dotterel record for St Aldhelms, having found the three on 26 Aug 95 in the Chapel Field with Mark Edgeller & Andy Rhodes. We were unaware of the previous sightings until we put the news out to the locals, who had been keeping their sightings that Autumn quiet.

I had a good walk up to the Coastguards, but could only add two Swifts, seventeen Wheatears and one Spotted Flycatcher. I caught up with Phil again as he was leaving. While we were chatting & swapping notes for the day, he spotted this Violet Oil Beetle in the Renscombe car park.

Violet Oil Beetle

Violet Oil Beetle

Violet Oil Beetle

Violet Oil Beetle

28 Apr 23 - A Spring Hoopoe

Late April proved to be exciting locally with a Woodchat Shrike found within walking distance of the house. Foolishly, I didn't take the camera with me when I went to look for it, so I have no photos of my own. News didn't get out to its second day on the 25th. Three days later, I received a call that there was a local Hoopoe on private land for its second day and the landowner kindly gave me permission to pop along & have a look that evening. This was the fourth local Hoopoe in the month, with earlier individuals in Swanage, Harmans Cross & Worth Matravers. Fortunately, the first two of those had been twitchable and so most of the local Birders had seen at least one of these Hoopoes this Spring. I was about the only local who had missed out on these Hoopoes as I was out of the country on the West Pacific Odyssey. This made it less of a concern that access and news about this individual couldn't be made more publicly available at the time. I drove onto the site, to find it feeding on the entrance track & spent about twenty minutes watching it feed, before it flew off the track. This was time to leave it in peace. It was looked for the following day without success.

Hoopoe

Hoopoe

Hoopoe

Hoopoe

Hoopoe

Hoopoe

This is only my third Hoopoe in the Isle of Purbeck, with the previous individuals being at Arne on 23 Apr 2011 & one I found at Greenlands Farm on 24 Apr 2014. Despite being nearly annual somewhere in the Isle of Purbeck they rarely stay around long enough to see.