The visit to St Aldhelms felt like it was already June, despite only being the start of the second week of May. Historically this could be a great date to be out on the Dorset coast. Typically by this date, the bulk of the common Spring migrants have already passed through the Dorset coast, even more so in 2026, given this is clearly an early year. With fewer common Spring migrants expected, it's also a case where everything revolves around bumping into a less common species like a Turtle Dove, Golden Oriole etc. So, visits often feel like boom or bust from a Birding perspective. The initial walk towards the headland felt inauspicious, with many of the Whitethroats not bothering to sing today as they were already well established on their territories.
After passing the Open Barn, I followed the Barn hedge and carried onto Bonvils on the new National Trust permissive track. It reinforced my feeling that no migrants had arrived and everything was well settled in. Four Swifts were feeding over the Dotterel field, but they were perhaps from the nearby cliff breeding colony, rather than arrivals that morning. I retraced my steps towards Trev's Quarry. The two fields on the West of the track from the Open Barn to Trev's Quarry have been left fallow this Spring. They are well worth a scan for Wheatears and skulking Yellowhammers. They look perfect for a Spring Dotterel or Stone-curlew to be hunkered down in them. But none of those species were present. However, my scan stopped in the Southern end of the field at 09:55, when I saw one of the Corvids was a Hooded Crow: it was clearly a boom day. It was quite happily feeding with the mainly Rooks, with the odd Jackdaw and Carrion Crow in the field, for the next half hour. Frustratingly, it moved even further away into the Southern end of the Buff-breast field, which is next to the coastal footpath. My last distant view of it, was it feeding in the same corner of that field when I left Trev's Quarry at 12:05.
The Hooded Crow was never close. It was about three hundred metres away when I found it and that increased by another one hundred metres when it moved fields. I could have walked around to the coastal footpath, where it would have only been a couple of hundred metres. However, as I didn't have my decent camera I thought about heading out again that afternoon with it. In the end, I decided to defer the return to the following morning with the decent camera. I did return for the next two mornings, but I couldn't relocate it.
This is only my second St Aldhelms Hooded Crow, with the previous one being an afternoon/early evening visitor to Peter Williams's garden in Worth Matravers in late June 18.
Hooded Crows remain at St Aldhelms Patch rarity with very few records:
- Worth Matravers (27 Jun 18)
- St Aldhelms (9 May 26).