30th January

In markedly improved conditions there was considerably more coverage today. The Bill came up with a routine tally of 6 Purple Sandpipers, a Blackcap and a Chiffchaff on the land and 2 Red-throated Divers through on the sea, whilst a long walk up the east side of the island failed with a Wallcreeper - one day it'll be there - but saw Great Spotted Woodpecker, Chiffchaff and Firecrest at Pennsylvania Castle and Black Redstart at East Weare make the tally; the Hooded Crow was also still at the Grove pig farm. Portland Harbour returned totals of 21 Black-necked Grebes, 3 Slavonian Grebes and singles of Black-throated Diver, Common Scoter and Black Guillemot.


Badger - Portland Bill, 30th January 2015 © PBO

...having seen plenty of signs of Badger activity in the Obs garden this winter we've had the camera trap out quite a bit just lately, but by virtue of bad luck or poor placement have kept getting arse-end images of our quarry. For a change, last night we tried the known sett at the Bill and that returned some much more satisfactory results including the image above.
 
Also we used a trip to Weymouth as an excuse to call in on the Redcliff Richard's Pipit for the first time; although the views weren't too bad the strength of the wind made videoing/sound recording pretty hard work: