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:
