Another fine, calm day which made watching the open water areas of the harbour pretty easy. Off Jerry’s Point the 2 Long-tailed Duck were still present along with 4 Scaup, 4 Common Scoter, 5 Great Northern Diver, 6 Black-necked Grebe, 11 Goldeneye plus 27 Ringed Plover, 3 Sanderling, 7 Grey Plover and c450 Dunlin and 1 Great White Egret. In Holes Bay several Rock Pipit were present including what looked to be a littoralis Scandinavian Rock Pipit, being much paler and ‘cleaner’ than our British Rock Pipits. At Lytchett Bay another Water Pipit was colour-ringed as part of a national scheme to monitor their movements within the UK and potentially back to their breeding grounds. In Holes Bay NE a Green Sandpiper seems to have taken up winter residence which is a decent over-wintering bird for Holes Bay.

Plus, the results for our Big Poole Harbour Bird Count are in. On October 25^th many of you got out and made your sightings count by submitting them to us for the Big Poole Harbour Bird Count. Brittany, from our BoPH team has been working on the data results website which is now launched and ready to go. You can look at info for different species and sites, compare data from the winter Big Bird count, plus, we’ll be hosting more moving forward with the next being in January 2021 on the 10^th….more info to follow soon. In the mean time, you can explore the data HERE.

Finally, we’ve been contacted by numerous people regarding our binocular sales and the HQ being closed, and although we hope to be re-open for December weekends, we’ve decided that we would also move our binocular and telescope sales online to expand our service and offer you the chance to purchase our ‘Cruelty Free Range’ remotely. So, if you know anyone that’s been good this year and deserves something extra then please visit our new ONLINE SHOP HERE.

Scandinavian Rock Pipit – Holes Bay – Alison Copland