The forecast for the morning as Storm Babet was due to hit Dorset was for a very windy day & a wet morning, with the rain becoming very heavy in the afternoon. It didn't look promising enough to face a walk in the rain to the Durlston seawatching hide and I took the easy option of the Brands Bay hide. I mistimed my arrival and just missed the last of the exposed mud. However, several visits in the previous week on the high spring tides had been good. The tides have been some of the highest I've seen in Brands Bay and roosting Waders have been regularly relocating within the bay. The appearance of a Juv Marsh Harrier on 16 Oct was good, as they are a surprisingly scarce species given their abundance in the Wareham Channel area of Poole Harbour. The following day, a new unringed Osprey made a short appearance. Both of these Raptors had stirred up the Waders & winter Wildfowl as they quartered the bay. So, I planned for two or three hours to see what happened. I'm still hoping the Forster's Tern will finally follow one of the visiting Sandwich Terns into bay, as there is still only one record of it in the Studland patch: albeit there were clearly other occasions when it must have passed through the patch.
I was still completing my first detailed scan of the bay when I got a phone call from local Lytchett Bay stalwart Shaun Robson. Was I going to be heading to LB? It was more interesting that. There was a breaking story of a probable Pallid Harrier at Wyke Down near Sixpenny Handley close to the Hampshire & Wiltshire borders. This is an area with some good farmland which has had a track record of attracting Raptors and Short-eared Owls in the past. The story was a bit convoluted & I will spare the readers of this Blog the details. Suffice to say, it sounded positive enough to say goodbye to the other Birder in the hide & head off to Wyke Down. At that point, it identification hadn't been fully confirmed as the sightings had been short, but it had been in the area for a couple of days at least. I arrived to find Ian Ballam had also abandoned Lytchett Bay. So, that left two dedicate Poole Harbour patch Birders having deserted our respective patches: it better be there. There was another Birder who I didn't recognise. A check of the latest news, had confirmed that the Juv Pallid Harrier had been seen again that morning at 08:45 & the identification had finally been established. This update also confirmed there was a Juv Hen Harrier in the area. Both were ranging widely and infrequently seen. Ian confirmed he had seen a Ringtail Harrier, but it had disappeared out of sight behind some bushes in the fields to the East of the road & hadn't reappeared in the intervening thirty minutes. It was a going to be a waiting & praying game, including praying that the on and off drizzle didn't get worse.
The drizzle did get worse & I put the hood over the camera. It should be a waterproof body, but as the cover is waterproof, I decided I might as well protect the camera. Within a couple of minutes of doing so, Ian shouted a Ringtail was behind me & was hunting over the field. As I turned he said that's the Pallid Harrier. I quickly got onto it with the bins & the strong orange on the underwing secondaries & the long thin wings, made this look promising. I quickly dropped the bins, to reach for the camera & then had to fiddle with the bloody cover which I had foolishly tied up. This cost me a few seconds as it came within one hundred & fifty metres of where we were standing, before it started climbing & flying rapidly across the next field. It briefly circled near Down Farm, before disappearing out of sight over the adjacent wood. I was able to get some photos as it crossed the field, but at a half kilometre range. The photos aren't great, but they were better than nothing.
We were joined by surprisingly few Dorset and other local Birders with only about eight of us present a couple of hours later, when Shaun Robson picked it up at 13:00. I ended up looking at the wrong group of bushes at this point and missed the brief views before it disappeared behind a low ridge. It emerged from the ridge & crossed the road close to the trees, before continuing West in front of the trees. I had distant scope views over the distant ridge before it dropped out of sight. It was far too far for any photos. The steady rain set in soon after that sighting, but James Leaver & I stuck it out for another couple of hours, before accepting the weather wasn't going to get any better. Still we had both seen it & felt we had put enough effort in & were the last to give up the search that day.
There are only three accepted Dorset records, with a couple more records pending review:
