12th February

The wind of recent days finally abated but what little fieldwork there was returned no surprises, with 25 Common Scoter still off the Bill, 4 Purple Sandpipers still on the shore there and single Firecrests still at the Obs and Pennsylvania Castle.

Every now and again a quirky little detail crops up amongst the often rather mundane/expected life histories and movements revealed from all the colour-ring readings of gulls in the area. We were particularly taken by the details relating to this Herring Gull that Debby Saunders kindly sent through to us: the bird was at Ferrybridge yesterday morning and it turns out that it was ringed in August 2010 after rehabilitation at the RSPCA Wildlife Centre at West Hatch; it had originally been found oiled at Weymouth Marina in July of that year and, until yesterday, there'd only been one subsequent sighting of it at Arlingham on the River Severn in December 2018 © Debby Saunders:


Based purely on how difficult it is to see a live animal on Portland (we only saw our first earlier this winter) we've always imagined that Badgers must be pretty uncommon here but the frequency with which road casualties crop up - this one was on the Bill Road this morning - maybe suggests otherwise © John Lucas