There was a mid-afternoon email about an unseasonal Wheatear at Swyre Head which is the highest point in the Historic Isle of Purbeck. It had been foggy all day in Swanage with eighty metres visibility, which briefly rose to four hundred metres before quickly closing in again. With the combination of no details on where the Wheatear was and the foggy conditions, I carried on making the late lunch that I was just starting. As I was eating, I had texts from locals James Leaver & Rob Johnson to say that Swyre Head wasn't foggy and they could see Portland Bill nearly twenty miles away. I quickly finished my food & drove to the car park to start the mile long walk to the headland. I was spurred on by a photo of the Wheatear, that looks like an Isabelline Wheatear. I arrived to find James & Rob looking in different directions. They confirmed it had flown down off the top to the well-vegetated hillside, but they didn't see where, or if, it landed. Sufficient to say we didn't see it that evening & a nearly four hour search in three heavy rain squalls failed to relocate the first Dorset record of Isabelline Wheatear.
