12 Aug 26 - Solar Eclipse Back In Purbeck

There was a total solar eclipse on 11 Aug 99, which would be visible from Cornwall and the Scilly Isles. As the weather forecast predicted heavy clouds on the day, I couldn't face joining the traffic jams heading West. Dorset was predicted to have 99.5% coverage of the sun, but it would be full coverage a few miles South of the Dorset coastline. My cunning plan was to head to the coastal footpath above Dancing Ledge, where I would have a good view over the Purbeck coastline all the way to Portland. A few mates from Southampton joined me for the morning. I figured I would see the impacts of the solar eclipse over the sea.

Unfortunately, it was still cloudy in Purbeck back in 99. While we couldn't see the moon covering the sun, we did see it suddenly become very dark over Portland, as if there was about to be a tremendous storm. The darkness race East until it reached and passed us. There was also a noticeable drop in temperature, although that picked up again as the skies brightened. It had been a fun morning and given the traffic jams in Cornwall, it was a wise move to stay local. The only downside was I didn't have a decent camera in those days to capture the event. I can remember the forecasters saying there wouldn't be another full solar eclipse in the UK until 2090. There would have to be an amazing increase in life expectancy for me to see that one locally.

19:01: It was starting to get darker and fortunately, it was a virtually cloudless sky

There are occasional partial solar eclipses in the UK and the best for a generation happened on the evening of 12 Aug 26. I finished my regular volunteering day on Brownsea and without a lot of time to travel, I figured my best option was to head to the St Aldhelms patch. Unfortunately, quite a few others decided on the same plan and the car park was packed. More people parking inconsiderately on the approach road and on the private track leading to the Chapel, including one idiot car driver, who would have made it impossible for the farmer or quarry workers to get a wider vehicle past. As I've got permission to drive to the Chapel, I decided that was my best Plan B. Only a few vehicles had driven down the rough track so parking wasn't too bad when I reached the Chapel. There were quite a lot of people on the main coastal path, so I headed for the quiet of my main seawatching viewpoint.

19:07: Fortunately, this seemed to be about the peak darkness. At only 95% coverage, it was never going to be as dark as back in 99. There was a noticeable drop in temperature over the previous few minutes

Maybe I should have taken the big camera to take some close ups of the sun. However, I was worried about leaving it pointing at the sun for the duration of the eclipse, so all my photos were taken on the IPhone.

19:07: A close crop from the last photo (which I've also darkening) shows the sun was partially obscured

19:17: The light levels are starting to pick up again

19:24: The light levels continued to increase and the temperature was slowly getting warmer

19:41: It's a good job these clouds didn't appear an hour earlier

28 Jul 26 - Blue-eyed Devil Hawker

This morning I received a call from Graham Armstrong. I expected Graham to say he had seen an interesting Bird species at his local South Haven patch at the Northern most tip of the Studland Peninsula. I was half right, as Graham said he had seen five Southern Migrant Hawkers in the dried up pool there. I believe this is a new Dragonfly species for the Studland National Nature Reserve. Needless to say I headed down later that morning with the camera. I wasn't disappointed.

Southern Migrant Hawker: My first individual

As soon as I arrived at the dried up South Haven pool, I saw my first Southern Migrant Hawker. The bright blue colouration, brighter that a Migrant Hawker and the bright blue eyes quickly confirmed the identification. It landed in a bush next to some Sedges and posed for a few photos. However, it didn't give me the time to increase the aperture and so the wings aren't pin-sharp. This individual was disturbed by a second Southern Migrant Hawker and the two flew around in the first of several territorial disputes. It took a while of waiting, but finally what I think was the first individual landed again in the same area and this time it posed for longer.

Southern Migrant Hawker

The South Haven pool was totally dried out. When I saw the first local Southern Migrant Hawkers at Lytchett Bay in July 2018, they were hanging around some rapidly drying up small pools. What I think was happening was the Female Southern Migrant Hawkers were preparing to lay their eggs in the dried up pools, knowing that the pools will refill over the Winter. This would allow the larvae to hatch into the water, with little other competition. I'm now more convinced this is probably typical for their lifecycle.

Southern Migrant Hawker

I found a total of ten Southern Migrant Hawkers including individuals visible from the boardwalk. All of the South Haven pool is now dried out and I expect there would be more present, if I had explored the larger dried out Southern end of the pool. Given the numbers present, it's likely that these Southern Migrant Hawkers had hatched this Summer and this is at least the second season they have been present at South Haven.

22 Jul 26 - Summertime Snacks

The Dorset Wildlife Trust suspended feeding Birds during the breeding season on Brownsea, in line with the latest RSPB guidance. They started putting out peanuts again in mid-July. This provided an excuse for some more Red Squirrel photos on the Blog.

Red Squirrel

Red Squirrel

Red Squirrel

13 Jul 26 - Heatwave Surprises

The current heatwave has turned up some surprises in the garden. Firstly, I saw an interesting-looking Dragonfly in the front garden. My initial thoughts as it flew past the living room window, that was it was going to be my first Common Darter for the garden year list. I moved to the window to relocate it and was surprised to see it was my first garden record of a Beautiful Demoiselle. It landed, I grabbed the camera, but I couldn't get the window opened enough for a photo. In hindsight, I should have taken a photograph through the glass, but I reckoned I could get a photo from the study window, as I can open that window further. Frustratingly it flew and disappeared from sight into my neighbour's garden and didn't reappear again. The nearest regular locations to my Swanage garden are around Corfe Castle or the Corfe River Valley: both about four miles away.

Beautiful Demoiselle: This is my nineth species of Dragonfly for my garden. Latchmore Brook (3 Jun 14)

The next afternoon, I popped into the back garden to see what Butterflies were on my Buddleia bush. There were the usual species with a couple of Peacocks, a Red Admiral, a Large White, a Meadow Brown and a Gatekeeper, while a Holly Blue was flying along the Ivy hedge. Then I noticed a Butterfly completely hunched up on the gravel. I couldn't figure it out, so grabbed so photos. It turned into my first Grayling for the garden. Like the previous day's Beautiful Demoiselle, it had travelled about four miles away, as the nearest regular locations to my Swanage garden are around Corfe Castle, the Corfe River Valley or Studland's heaths. Just after this, I added another very erratic garden visitor: a Small Copper on the Buddleia. This is only the fifth year that I've seen a garden Small Copper.

Grayling: This is my twenty-third species of Butterfly for my garden

It had been a couple of great days for the garden and only a week or so before my thirtieth anniversary of living in my cottage.

10 Jul 26 - Time For A Stretch

It's been too hot to get out much during the heat of the day during the current heatwave: something I will probably regret as we get to the end of the year. As a result, I've been heading out in the mid-evening as it finally starts to cool down. Today, I had a look at Littlesea at Studland. A location I expected to be quiet, however, with two more Purple Heron sightings since the I found Studland's first individual in Jul 18 and with Purbeck's first Night Heron earlier this year, there is a very slim chance of a rare Heron on an evening visit. Albeit, it is a vanishingly slim chance. The lake in from of the hide was typically quiet, but then a Great Crested Grebe appeared.

Great Crested Grebe

Great Crested Grebe: The harsh evening light isn't always great for photography

Great Crested Grebe: Time for a stretch

Great Crested Grebe

1 Jul 26 - Childhood Memories Arriving Earlier These Days

One of my early memories from mid-August holidays during the long school break, was seeing The Cinnabar caterpillars gorging on Ragwort. I was a bit surprised to find lots of fully grown caterpillars doing this on my visit to Brownsea at the start of July. The hot, dry Spring of 2026 has been setting lots of records for flying Moths, Butterflies, Dragonflies etc, so I guess this early date shouldn't be too surprising.

The Cinnabar Caterpillars: Their bright colours are a warning sign that they are not nice to eat

For some reason, my Birding database is using this older name of The Cinnabar, rather than Cinnabar or Cinnabar Moth. As I've not got time to change all the records, photos etc I'm just going to stick with this older name.

The Cinnabar: Adult. Goring-on-Thames (13 Jun 14)

6 Jun 26 - An Emergency Trip To North Wales

Unlike the Blog Post title, I'm writing this four months after the urgent need to head to North Wales. The forecast for the Sunday was for a strong June South Westerly and I headed to the Durlston seawatching hide. I arrived to find that local Birders Phil and Rob had beaten me to the hide and they confirmed there were a few Balearics in amongst the couple of hundred Manx Shearwaters that had already passed West. At this time of year, Manx Shearwaters are often passing in much smaller numbers along the Purbeck coast during the early morning or late evening. This was an impressive movement. It wasn't long before I had added my first Balearic Shearwaters to my Purbeck Year List. Later in the morning, we were joined by Ian and Andy. The Shearwater movement was still going as lunchtime approached by which time, I had seen nearly eight hundred Manx Shearwaters and fifteen Balearic Shearwaters: both of which were my highest Purbeck seawatch totals. Surprisingly, forty-three Common Terns also heading West were the only other species of note.

By late morning I was wondering about lunch, when Phil's phone pinged. He turned to me and showed me a photo of a dark morph Western Reef Heron and said North Wales. He had my full attention, until I turned to RBA for details. This new species for the UK was showing on the Foryd Bay, a stone's throw from Caernarfon. I knew it would be a six to seven hour drive, plus I would need fifteen minutes to walk back to the car. I rang Pete Moore and gave him the heads up that he would be missing his Sunday evening dinner as I would be picking him up in about an hour. He agreed that it was a meal worth missing. I dashed home, had a quick lunch whilst making hot drinks for the journey and picked Pete up about 12:30. It all started badly when we hit a really bad traffic jam in nearly Poole. It seems all the locals had thought the crappy weather was perfect for a lunchtime shopping trip to the large Tesco store. Fortunately, the roads weren't too bad after that for the rest of the journey.

Western Reef Heron

As we got close, Pete was chatting to his pal Bradders to fine tune the local directions to where the Western Reef Heron was showing. It was down a narrow lane where a few cars were trying to leave. Being Birders most appreciated the urgency of our arrival and kindly pulled over to allow me through. I was mentally noting each of the limited number of potential parking spaces as we got closer. In the end, I managed to pull up right next to the crowd where Bradders was. Frustratingly, we got out to the news it had just flown up the estuary and out of sight. Bradders was able to show us roughly where he thought it had ended up and within a few minutes we were heading back down the narrow lane. After ten minutes of winding roads, we reached the estuary again and found three cars of Birders looking. I stopped and after a seven point on the narrow road, the car was ready for a quick return, in case the Western Reef Heron reappeared at its original location. Unfortunately, there was no sign of the Heron, after searching all the obvious gullies on the low tide. Bradders appeared and briefly pulled over to say he thought it had gone further up the estuary and he would move on and ring it they relocated it. A few minutes later, Pete's phone rang, which was good news, apart from I needed another five-point turn of the car. We quickly joined Bradders and a couple of other cars of Birders enjoying the Western Reef Heron. The other good news was it was a lot closer than where they had been watching it at the previous site.

Western Reef Heron

I finally returned home about 03:30 the following morning. At least I could have a lazy day, before the packing and preparation for the three week trip from Holland to and around Svalbard and my early hours of the morning departure for Heathrow on the Wednesday. It was good to finally connect with a pukka-looking Western Reef Heron, having chased a couple of claimed white individuals in Devon and Christchurch back in the 1980s, both of which were later reidentified as Little Egrets.

Western Reef Heron: Finally, it flew to the far side of the estuary which was a sign we needed to find a chippy, before starting on the three hundred and fifty mile slog back to Swanage