11th May

A second successive day when it was possible to spend all day in the field and get almost no return for your time investment despite there being several decent birds on offer: a Hoopoe - presumably yesterday's bird that had moved up the island - was photographed at the north of the island, a Nightjar was serendipitously flushed up at Ferrybridge and, after earlier uneventful seawatching at the Bill, Chesil came good with a fly-by Bonaparte's Gull and at least 2 Nightjars lingering offshore. In the continuing fair and increasingly warm weather the common migrant tally improved a little and included 25 Willow Warblers, 15 Wheatears, 5 Whinchats, 4 Spotted Flycatchers and singles of Cuckoo, Sedge Warbler, Reed Warbler and Garden Warbler grounded at the Bill and a Tree Pipit at Tout Quarry amongst the thinner selection elsewhere; overhead, hirundines and Swifts were again arriving in fair numbers everywhere. The sea was never busy but, the rarity aside, morning totals at the Bill included 177 commic terns, 49 Common Scoter and singles of Red-throated Diver and Great Northern Diver, with a selection of Black-headed Gulls and waders through off Chesil during the evening.

Spot the Bonaparte's Gull...


We'd always imagined that one day someone would get lucky with a Bonaparte's Gull passing Chesil amongst a flock of Black-headed Gulls and this evening that's just what happened when a flock appeared out of the sun (...Chesil seawatching on a cloudless spring evening is really hard work since half of the field of view is completely out of action in the setting sun and the birds are already going away from you when they get out into useable light) and just as we were lifting the camera to photograph them Brett exclaimed that there a Bonaparte's amongst them. Torn between the camera and the scope we decided to blast off a few photographs whilst they were still close enough and then switch to scoping it - fortunately the flock opened up enough that the Bonaparte's is reasonably visible in several of the frames...




...and here's the upperwing with the 'extra' marks on the primary-coverts and the narrower and more well-defined dark trailing edge to the wing visible © Martin Cade:


One tale from Portland folklore - now nearly lost in the mists of time - is the story of the so-called 'Caprimulgus petrels': the sequence of events surrounding the original discovery in the late 1980s/early 1990s of Nightjars lingering off Chesil on spring evenings and how they were at first believed to be some sort of rare petrel - the views are often at enormous range and, if you've never witnessed it before, it's the sort of sighting that permits the imagination to run riot. Quite why Nightjars sometimes linger off there in broad daylight has never been entirely explained but is assumed to be in some way related to migrating birds being afraid to come ashore until darkness falls. Whatever the reason, it's a really peculiar and exciting sight to see Nightjars lingering for ages over the sea and this evening - after a long and typically distant preamble - we were eventually treated to views close enough to allow a few record-shots to be taken, perhaps for the first time ever © Martin Cade: