Garganey are a difficult species to see in the Historic Isle of Purbeck. This is quite frustrating as they are just about annual at Swineham which borders the area. I've only seen five individuals in the area over the previous twenty-seven years of living in Dorset, including three eclipse & First Winter individuals that I've found. I reckon I only had a slim chance of seeing one for my Historic Isle of Purbeck Year List.
On 24 Aug, I had a call from Graham Armstrong to say he had found a Little Stint on the DWT Brownsea lagoon. I was just leaving Brands Bay as the tide had come up, so I headed for the ferry & thanks to connecting ferries was on Brownsea within a half hour of hearing the news. After a bit of searching Graham & I relocated the Little Stint, which was a nice Year Tick. Graham left to take over running the DWT vid-scope whilst I stayed on in the Tern hide. I noticed there were good numbers of Teal & switched from the Waders I had already scanned through to the Teal. About halfway through a lovely eclipse Garganey popped into view. I rang Graham as I headed to join him in the closer Avocet hide. He had got onto it, in the few minutes I had taken to walk around. Later he found my first Curlew Sandpiper of the year. Three not guaranteed Isle of Purbeck Year Ticks was much better than I could have hoped for. The only shame was I hadn't taken my camera that morning with me.
Today I was back on Brownsea & started by scanning the Teal from the Avocet hide. I had a suspicion the Garganey might still be around and quickly provided this to be the case. All the Ducks flew before I get a photo, but they came down by the Greenshank logs. My initial photos were uninspiring & I abandoned the photography in favour of a quick check of the Tern hide. Later in the afternoon, I had a quick look at the logs & the Garganey was still around. I pointed it out to a couple of visitors in the hide & grabbed a couple of photos from the vid-scope's TV screen.
