After a long day of volunteering on Brownsea, I was enjoying a lazy start on the next day. I had just finished my breakfast, when the phone pinged, a mobile Bee-eater around Durlston Castle. This is the only regular Purbeck site for Bee-eaters and they have a habit of hanging around. So, I grabbed the bins and camera and headed up. I had a quick look at the top of the Long Meadow, where I've seen a flock of six on 31 May 97 and seven on 15 May 19, but there was no sign. I tried a loop around the Castle but again, I drew a blank.
At this point, local Birder Rob Johnson, appeared. Rob said it had been found an hour earlier over the diagonal path by local Durlston patch-watcher, Hamish Murray, before disappearing. Hamish had then had short views by the Castle, before it disappeared. It was clearly mobile. Rob & I decided to check out the Lighthouse Gully, where I saw my other Durlston Bee-eater on 31 May 2012. By this point, we had been joined by James Leaver & Jol Mitchell. Initially, there was no sign, but about ten minutes I heard it giving a classic pantomime call: it's behind you. We turned to watch it fly past at a distance, before flying over the Lighthouse Gully for a couple of minutes.
Swanage Birder Phyl England reappeared while it was flying around the Lighthouse Gully and we waved to her to join us. Next, we saw it drop into the large Sycamore next to the bridge on the Lighthouse road, but that was about three hundred metres away. Time to walk down the road. We finally picked it up in the Sycamore when we were about sixty metres away. Time for a few record shots.
We were all aware that this is a popular thoroughfare and locals and visitors were likely to walk about twenty metres away from the tree. So, after a few minutes we walked closer until we were finally on the bridge. It was a lot closer, but more hidden behind the branches. But it wasn't worried by our presence. At least we could explain what we were watching to any passers-by and hope they wouldn't be as loud as they passed the tree.
After showing it to a couple of walkers, it decided it was time to go and bully the local Bee population and flew up and disappeared back towards the car park. After twenty or thirty minutes, it reappeared in flight before quickly flying off along the Upper Gully. We gave it a bit more time, but it didn't reappear. I walked back along the Long Meadow and it put in two short appearances before disappearing as I left the park. It stayed until late PM, but surprisingly it appeared to head off West around tea-time.
Despite having seen fifteen Bee-eaters on four dates at Durlston, I've only seen two other Bee-eaters in the Isle of Purbeck, with Autumn singles in Swanage on 29 Oct 12 and Creech Heath on 10 Sep 22. I've never seen a Portland individual, which is the other Dorset Bee-eater hotspot. But there again, I've never tried chasing one on Portland, given how mobile they can be.