30 May 26 - Good Night And It's Still Mid-Morning

I was just getting ready to go out Birding when I got a text, which was rapidly followed by more texts from other mates. All were saying that news of an adult Night Heron had just broken on the local Purbeck whatsapp group. Even better it was at the Rees Cox hide and had been found by Poole togger, Rich Stevenson. I knew that Rich only carries bins and a camera, so it wasn't going to be impossibly distant. I was out of the door as soon as I had grabbed the optics and camera and fifteen minutes later, I was trying to encourage the new parking National Trust machine to recognise my membership card. Finally, it did and I could walk quickly to the hide. Rich was still there and he pointed out it was sitting in the open in a bare tree on the far bank. It was my two hundred and thirtieth species for the Studland patch, not including Nightingale which I've only heard.

Night Heron: It was sitting in the open when I arrived and thus took the pressure off seeing it

After about thirty minutes, it flew around and landed in a large tree. We could just see glimpses of it. I assumed it was going to go to roost.

Night Heron

We could see it was moving around in the tree and after a few minutes, it reappeared on low branches close to the water's edge, but nearly always tucked in the shade. For the next ninety minutes, it walked around the water's edge, looking for food. Often it was obscured, but every now and then it gave a clear view.

Night Heron

Finally, something spooked it, perhaps the Sika Deer that was nearby. It flew a couple of times before it landed in the same tree just before midday. I stayed for another hour, but it didn't reappear. Perhaps it had finally decided to get some sleep. It reappeared late afternoon according to Pete Moore.

Night Heron

Night Heron

Night Heron

This is the first Night Heron for the Studland patch and also the first confirmed record for the Isle of Purbeck. There is a historical Wareham record which could have occurred in Purbeck, but there are no details of exactly where that individual was and if it crossed into the Purbeck side of the border.

The view from the Rees Cox hide: It was just to the right of the centre patch of low reeds

23 May 26 - Signs Of Spring Part 15 - Black-tailed Skimmer

One of the signs of Spring I enjoy is when I see the first old friends in the year. In this case, I had already seen a female Black-tailed Skimmer a few days earlier at Studland, but today's Blog Post features the first individual I managed to photograph in 2026.

Black-tailed Skimmer: Female. Brands Bay, Studland

22 May 26 - Signs Of Spring Part 14 - Green Hairstreak

On a quiet visit to Brands Bay, it was nice to see this Green Hairstreak. This is a species that I see less than annually at Studland. So, every sighting of this great-looking Butterfly is special.

Green Hairstreak

11 May 26 - Signs Of Spring Part 13 - Some St Aldhelms Butterflies

Keeping with the Signs of Spring theme for Blog Posts this Spring, early May has seen a big arrival of Painted Lady Butterflies. My highest day total was on 3 May when I walked from St Aldhelms to Winspit and then followed the coast path back to the Coastwatch building at St Aldhelms, before returning to the car park via Emmetts Hill. This maximised my time on the coastal footpath and resulted in my seeing fifty-three Painted Lady Butterflies, mainly in what I think is Oil-seed Rape plants growing along the clifftop. My plant identification skills are not great so don't rely on the Oil-seed Rape identification being correct. While I only saw thirty-two Painted Lady Butterflies on 11 May, I covered a much shorter length of the coastal footpath and I think there would have been higher numbers had I walked the same route.

Painted Lady: They were very active and not approachable in the sun. This was the best of the upperwing photos

The Painted Lady Butterflies were very active in the sun and rarely settled for photos, albeit I didn't try very hard to get more photos. About lunchtime, it quickly clouded over as a front arrived and they quickly became a lot more settled, although they were landing and immediately folding their wings.

The cryptic Painted Lady underwing

Dingy Skippers have also just started to fly at St Aldhelms. I saw my first flying there about a week earlier, with two more flying on 11 May, one of which posed for this photo.

Dingy Skipper

11 May 26 - An Unexpected Seawatch Species

Back on the St Aldhelms patch again. The light NE winds at the end of Dorset's Spring migration suggested there might be a few migrants. But the weather was too nice and sunny. If there had been the intermittent showers that are falling as I write this Blog Post, maybe there would have been more migrants than the singles of Blackcap, Willow Warbler and Chiffchaff that I saw.

I ended up at my seawatching rock, the Delphinus Seat, named after it was the first place I saw Short-beaked Common Dolphin on the patch. A thirty minute seawatch failed to produce more than a handful of Gannets, Kittiwakes and Black-headed Gulls drifting by. I was also keeping a good eye above the horizon in the hope of an arriving Raptor. Three in/off Swifts were the only highlight. It was time to looked around the rest of Quarry Ledge, which produced the Butterflies that will be in the next Blog Post, but nothing else.

Tawny Owl: One eye from the regular seawatching spot

The final coastal stop was my original seawatching spot above the Garden, where I spent another even quieter thirty minutes looking at the sea. However, when I seawatch at the Garden, I also check the vegetated ledge, which is a steep drop below the seawatch spot: in the hope of something in the bushes or the lone Sycamore. This ledge was cultivated up to the sixties by Billy Winspit who was the old quarryman, who owned the big house in Winspit Valley. Since his death in the late sixties, it has rewilded itself. I was doing well with Blackbird, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Blackcap, Whitethroat, Willow Warbler and Wren in the Garden, when I saw a Tawny Owl fly out from the cliff into the Sycamore. In all my many years of watching this area, it's only the third time I've seen a Tawny Owl here. After a few minutes of scanning, I found where it was sitting in the Sycamore. Finally, I was going to get my first photos of Tawny Owl.

Tawny Owl: A slightly better angle, but still only one eye

Given it's taken me over twelve years to photograph a Tawny Owl and it didn't appear worried about my presence, I was keen to get more than one eye in the photo. I made sure the scope was safety laid down on the steep slope, before slowly and carefully moving down the slope. I know a number of locals wouldn't enjoy visiting the regular seawatching spot, given the slope. This is the first time I had moved to the steeper slope that was closer to the vegetated ledge. A slip here would mean joining the Tawny Owl in the vegetated quarry and probably not being seen again, but I felt happy to get a bit closer as I couldn't see any life insurance reps around. After about eight metres I was in the best position for a photo and finally I could see both eyes.

Tawny Owl: Just to show I wasn't too close, a non-zoomed photo, other than to crop the original to the standard six by five format I use on the Blog

Tawny Owl: A crop from the last photo

It was time to leave the Tawny Owl in peace and hope the local Blackbird didn't spot it and disturb its peace. It was a good thing it hadn't rained, I wouldn't have liked to move on the steep slope if the vegetation was wet.

9 May 26 - Not Everything Wearing A Hoody Is Bad

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.

The Open Barn on a cold Winter's day (6 Feb 21)

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.

Hooded Crow: Without the proper camera, I had to make do with some poor quality digiscoping using my old IPhone, which doesn't have the best of built in cameras. The phone doesn't leave the case, so even if I was prepared to paid a small fortune for a couple of bits of plastic to fix the phone to the scope, I still couldn't get a bit of plastic that would work while the phone remaining in its protective case

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.

Hooded Crow: Note, all the markings look clean cut edges with no black feathers amongst the grey

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 Crow: Worth Matravers (27 Jun 18)

Hooded Crows remain at St Aldhelms Patch rarity with only two modern records:

• Worth Matravers (27 Jun 18)

• St Aldhelms (9 May 26).

6 May 26 - A Brownsea Wood Mouse

I was chatting to a visitor by the Dorset Wildlife Trust Brownsea gazebo, when they spotted a Mouse that was feeding in the low vegetation next to the path. A quick scan with the Bins and I was able to confirm it was a gorgeous Wood Mouse. They are a species, that I see erratically, but not uncommonly in my garden, but it is a species I never tire of watching. It was quick approachable and allowed me to take some photos, but I only ended up with one reasonable photo thanks to the surrounding bits of vegetation obscuring parts of the face or body. It finally ran across the track, where we had one final view behind the gazebo.

Wood Mouse: This was my first sighting of a Wood Mouse on Brownsea