gryllosblog   Gryllo's (aka Ian Lewis') blog. All things to do with travel, wildlife especially birds, history, architecture and anything else that interests me.

Patty (L) on a small boat to the island of Tong in the Admiralty Islands north of New Guinea July 2012, with Eric from Sweden (R) and a french lady who wished to remain anonymous.

Of course Sanderling, seen here at Sandbanks, are a familiar migrant on both sides of the Atlantic ….

… but the same can’t be said for the almost exclusively Old World Bar-tailed Godwits

After a good look at Brands Bay and Studland Bay (Patty even got to see an American Surf Scoter here in Dorset) we moved on to Durlston, but there were few birds on show.

A tall sailing ship off Durlston. From here we went to Middlbere. It was almost dark when we arrived and we found that the big flocks of waders seen earlier in the day had departed on the tide. That evening, along with Margaret, Janis, Amber and Kara we went over to John and Anita’s in Bournemouth for a meal.

On the morning of the 19th, trainee ringer Carol and I paid our weekly visit to Holton Lee and Patty was able to handle some of the birds, after we had processed them. I have never seen someone get so excited about holding a Blue Tit or a Dunnock before. Here Patty holds a retrap Nuthatch that was first ringed in 2012.

Later, joined now by Margaret, we went to the revamped visitor centre at Ferrybridge for lunch. The large windows that once gave a view of the Fleet from the warmth of the centre are now gone, the centre seems to have been redesigned with eating rather than wildlife viewing as the priority. Margaret and Patty are at the top of Portland with Fortuneswell, Ferrybridge and the Fleet and Weymouth in the background.

Although the skies were clear there was a bitter NW wind blowing, so our visit to Portland Bill was rather brief and pretty birdless.

We ended the day at the visitor centre at Radipole where we could watch the flocks of Mediterranean Gulls flying from the Fleet to Weymouth Bay to roost. Once a scarce visitor to Dorset, this winter has seen numbers on the Fleet rise to over a 1000 for the first time and we must have seen over 400  during the day.

I had planned for us to meet up with the other local birders in the Blue Boar that evening but an England vs Germany football match took precedence for most, so the three of us went to the King Charles on Poole Quay, where this folk band were playing of all things ‘Willy and the Poor Boys’ by Creedence Clearwater Revival, not your traditional English folk tune.