15th January

Portland Bill: auk spp well in excess of 50,000 (sample counted only but the feeling was that the true total could easily have been as many as 100,000), Common Scoter 18.
Chesil Cove: Black Redstart 2.
Portland Harbour: Great Northern Diver 4, Black-necked Grebe 3, Eider 2, Black-throated Diver 1.
Ferrybridge: Brent Goose 118.

Black-necked Grebes have been ever present in Portland Harbour this winter but their behaviour seems to have changed from what we're usually accustomed to: in the past you'd expect to see most if not all of them in a loose flock off Sandsfoot Castle but this winter they've been spread far and wide in much smaller groups - these two were off Billy Winters this morning © Pete Saunders:


Moth interest has been hovering between the minimal and the non-existent for most of the winter, to the extent that a few days ago we tasked Matt Ames with finding us a female Winter Moth in the Obs garden...he's up for that sort of thing!. Male Winter Moths are very routine mid-winter visitors to lighted windows at the Obs but seem to be oddly scarce elsewhere on the island (are they really or is it just that nobody looks for them/reports them?); females on the other hand need a bit of searching for and we hadn't bothered for many years. It took Matt a while but he came up with the goods for us; here's a male...


...and a female © Martin Cade: