Our Portland and Lodmoor trip is always popular, I think for two reasons we have birds and some other great wildlife and our trip yesterday was no different other than we had great weather too.
We started as usual with a sea watch at 'The Bill', it was pretty calm out to sea which isn't the best omen for sea watching and a lot of fishing boats were working off shore. The boats were attracting a few gulls mainly Herring and Great Black-backed Gulls but there were several Northern Fulmar shearing around and about. The odd Sandwich Tern was seen passing and we also record a single Whimbrel and a single male Common Scoter. Further off shore there were many Gannets patrolling, which from recent work with geolocating devices fitted to Gannets from Alderney in the Channel Island, has proved they feed off the Dorset and Hampshire coast as well as along the Normandy coast. You can read more about this project here ow.ly/PeE92 In the Obs garden we also had a super view of an Emperor Dragonfly over the pond.
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| Northern Gannet © Nick Hull |
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| Garden Tiger from our own trap © Nick Hull |
Our return walk from the obs took us over to the West Cliff here we were looking for Lulworth Skipper to add to the many Small Skipper, Small Heath, Meadow Brown, Gatekeeper, Small, Large and Marbled Whites we had already seen. Well we had hardly walked out behind the Pulpit Pub when Jackie found this small skipper species perched up on a thistle where it became the centre of attention and probably became the most photographed species of the day.
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| Lulworth Skipper - Portland Bill © Nick Hull |
Our next location was Broadcroft Quarry, a DWT reserve, here we hoped to add to our butterfly list for the day and we were successful in adding Ringlet, Common and Small Blue. We also found a family of Whitethroats and had three species of raptor, Buzzard, Kestrel and Sparrowhawk. There were a lot of Ivy Broomrape much of which had gone over but we did find a few plant still fresh looking. There was also several small stands of Pyramidal Orchid in various stages of bloom. As it was approaching lunch time and getting quite hot we decided to move on to Ferrybridge for lunch and refreshments.
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| Whitethroat - Broadcroft Quarry © Nick Hull |
After we had lunch and were suitably refreshed we scanned over the beach where we found good numbers of Mediterranean Gulls a nice little flock of Dunlin and Ringed Plover and more distantly a gathering of Little Terns resting on the Chesil Bank. There was also the odd Sandwich Tern over the Fleet to add to the mix. Unfortunately washed up on the sand were two Jellyfish one of which looked very fresh, it turned out to be Barrow Jellyfish of which can often be found off the coast at this time of year.
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| Barrow Jellyfish - Ferrybridge © Nick Hull |
We then gathered at Lodmoor where the emphasis was back to birds, other than the regular species you would expect to see here there was signs of autumn migration Black-tailed Godwit, Greenshank, Common Sandpiper and a summer plumaged Dunlin. Lots of Swift, Swallow and Martins overhead though they didn't seem to stay to long but drifted towards the south as they fed moving on to sunnier climes for the winter. Also here was another large number of of loafing Mediterranean Gull and scanning through them we found a couple that had colour rings on which I've reported so hopefully some history will arrive in due course from the project team. We added Six-spot Burnet, Scarlet Tiger, Coma, Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell, Red Admiral and Black-tailed Slimmer to our day list of insects.
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| Wing stretching Common Sandpiper - Lodmoor © Nick Hull |
Our day ended with a very happy group and we hope to see everyone again soon keep an eye out for our new programme which should be out shortly.
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