In the Weymouth area there were two year ticks fairly close to each other. An amazingly confiding Lapland Bunting at Portland Bill and a slightly less obliging Long-billed Dowitcher at Lodmoor. The Lapland Bunting was […]
Having stopped for sandwiches we parked up just south of the Southwell Business Park so that we could walk south along the abandoned fields towards the higher light. This is the favoured area for the […]
After a day in the Weymouth area we headed to Portland and on our way to Portland Bill we stopped off at Chesil Cove and connected with the Black Redstart which showed really well on […]
On Thursday my pager bleeped at work and I knew that this meant mega alert and that a major rarity had turned up. In a perverse way I prayed it wasn’t in Dorset and I was therefore slightly relieved to see it was on the Scillies. It was, however, a bird I needed (American Cliff Swallow) and a very rare one at that. I rang Peter who had already had the mega alert on his pager and he had already made some tentative plans to twitch Scilly at the weekend, probably with Richard Baatsen […]
Early July is traditionally a quiet time for rarities being too late for spring migrants and too early for autumn vagrants. We were visiting Mum & Dad in the Caravan at Calshot and the hot weather made it a lazy relaxing day. At around 3pm, however, the pager attached to my belt shattered the calm with a Mega Alert. An Olivaceous Warbler had been trapped and ringed at Portland Bill, it had been released into the Observatory quarry but had not been seen since […]
