Apart from the putative Blyth's Reed W, the Serin's only been seen once this mrng - pre-6am in flight over the Obs - also a Spot Fly new there & a Sand Martin overhead + a Hobby thru at Blacknor. Manx much reduced offshore but 28 Balearics, a Bonxie & a Storm Petrel thru.
— Portland Bird Observatory (@portlandbirdobs.bsky.social) June 13, 2026 at 11:14 AM
Interesting acro trapped in the Crown Estate Field this mrng - suspect it's going to turn out to be a Blyth's Reed but certainly a pretty subtle one - plumage not too bad, decent biometrics, poor p4 emargination etc. No field views & no calls.
— Portland Bird Observatory (@portlandbirdobs.bsky.social) June 13, 2026 at 9:35 AM
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Still lots of Red-veined Darters active around the Yeolands Quarry pool this afternoon but again none actually seen egg-laying; House Martins constantly visiting the pool were presumably local breeders from the Grove housing estate
— Portland Bird Observatory (@portlandbirdobs.bsky.social) June 13, 2026 at 11:18 PM
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And a bit more on the Blyth's Reed Warbler. To be truthful, we rather optimistically thought this just might be a Blyth's Reed before we even reached it in the mist-net - it was laying upside down and looked so white beneath that it really didn't look like it'd be a Reed Warbler. However, in the harsh light of blazing sunshine it was surprisingly hard to interpret the colour of the upperparts so we took a quick wing measurement that at 61mm was massively pro-Blyth's Reed...
The spanner in the works though was quickly revealed to be the utter lack of an emargination on the 4th primary of the right wing (the usual wing that a right-hander examines) that a spring Blyth's Reed should always show. At first glance the left wing wasn't a lot better although closer scrutiny showed that rather than a classic-shaped emargination on the 4th primary there was in fact a noticeable progressive narrowing of the outer web of the 4th primary that was a little more positive (...even if this did require looking at the right angle as is apparent in these two photographs!). With little wrong with the other biometrics we're pretty confident this is a Blyth's Reed even if the emargination issue saw to it that it wasn't the sort of bird we were happy to put straight out as 100% certain. With any luck the DNA from a couple of dislodged feathers will eventually confirm our tentative identification © Martin Cade:
