Hello and welcome to my blog, sorry about the delay in writing this. With the final year dissertation out the way I thought I should start making a real effort to get some of these photos and birding tales up on the blog…
Firstly, I would like to give anyone who doesn’t know us a profile of the ‘birding team’ that went to Portland over the Easter weekend. I have tried to be imaginative, and give their personal highlights (i.e. not related to birding skill, necessarily) to give everyone a better idea of how the team works.
Dan Trim
Probably the only person you will ever meet that will happily go seawatching at 6am the day after a night on the lager, bitter, cider, Baileys and whisky at the Pulpit Inn. And even after all of that produce as much on the sea as anyone else could…!
Eddie (Bear Grylls) Taylor
First time birding at Portland. Thought a kilogram of “Olives in brine” would be a tasty yet sustainable birding snack. A closet boat watcher?
Robbie Styles
I would consider Robbie the chef of the team, even though he steamed up all the windows in the observatory.
And myself (Sam White)
Maybe the other three can comment this post if they think I had any notable highlights over the weekend 
With the car fully loaded (and consequently dragging along the road) we set off at 7am towards our first stop - Radipole lake. The weekend started off well, with an impressive number of very ’showy’ (yet camera-shy!) Cetti’s warblers, loads of Hirundines and the ‘target bird’ for that morning - the Hooded Merganser:
This was a well-earned lifer for Eddie, who had been up since 5am for the drive from Bedfordshire with Dan, and a year tick for the rest of us. With a quick stop off at McDonalds, we moved on to Portland to find that we had missed what sounded like an excellent morning’s sea watch.
Our own efforts failed to produce much more than the resident Auks, Gannets and Fulmars, however we did have a good number of Manx Shearwaters rocking through with a few flocks of Common Scoter. Record shots…
Guillemot:
Shag, giving a true indication of the weather around these rocks at Portland and what the birds living there have to endure:
Gannet:
Common Scoter:
It was exciting to see the individual Swallows and other small birds coming up to the land whilst we were watching the sea, flying over our heads and continuing their migration northwards. A final highlight on the sea was a pair of Puffins, always lovely to see and a lifer for Robbie:
On the land we weren’t lucky enough to see the Grasshopper Warblers and Ring Ouzels which were rumoured to be about on the bill, however we did all get excellent views of our first Redstarts and Wheatears of the year.
Redstart, in the hand to be rung:
Wheatear:
Another photography highlight came in the form of a Skylark, which sat on a barbed-wire fence next to us and started singing away happily. Not quite sure why they have such long hind claws!
The resident Little Owl:
The semi-resident(?) Short Eared Owl:
Overall, we had a great time at Portland in the first few days on the Bill, however it was a bit thin on the migrant front and we needed something rare and tasty to finish the 4-day (Friday to Monday) weekend off nicely!
So when the pagers sounded and people started talking about a White Throated Sparrow (American vagrant species) near Winchester we all got pretty excited, even if it was a 2 hour drive away. We were fairly apprehensive at first, due to the cash limitations (we are all students!), but decided it could be a once in a lifetime opportunity and went for the twitch on our third day.
When we arrived at Old Winchester Hill, we stood back and watched the ‘more hardcore’ twitchers pushing and shoving their way through all manner of hawthorn and brambles to get a brief glimpse of what seemed to be a very elusive bird. Luckily, our patience paid off and the sparrow hopped up on top of a hawthorn bush and started singing - a stunning bird, definitely worth the drive! :
Courtesy of Daniel Trim
Very happy with our “mega” rare lifer, we returned to Portland via the Mealy and ‘greater Greenland’ Redpolls at Blashford Lakes in Hampshire.
Greenland (or Greater Greenland?) Redpoll, larger even than the Mealys that were also feeding in the area:
On the way back home, on our fourth and final day, we stopped off at Radipole Lake again, where we were incredibly lucky to get awesome, close-up views of 3 Bearded Tits:
The shot above is a poor and hastily taken record shot, but we were all ecstatic to get such close and relatively ‘prolonged’ views! And to top the whole weekend off, we had spectacular views of Marsh Harriers collecting nest material. I’m sure the others will agree that it was a brilliant weekend, with classic times birding and drinking at the Pulpit Inn…
Hopefully we will be going back in early May to catch the busiest migration time!
Tags: Birding, Birds, Birdwatching, Portland, Twitching, White Throated Sparrow
hmm, Sam’s highlights… I personally found it impressive how he dragged a gammy leg, (pretty much hanging off at the knee!), around for the rest of the trip after a drunken injury on the first night, partly caused by myself. This is something that he seems to manage every portland trip :-p.
Awesome post man, loving the initial banter!
Dan
My personal favourite of Sam highlights was the sheer amount of “videos” he managed to download on the way to the White- Throated Sparrow twitch!. It made a boring car journey very interesting!
Some great pics on here man. I really like the Wheatears, so much better than anything I managed to capture. I’m also very jealous that you managed a shot of the Beared Tit- My autofocus almost exploded with the amount of reeds obstructing the birds!
Cant wait for another Portland weekend. My body’s in desperate need of something covered in cheese and mustard!
Ed