Yet another hot day at Arne which started perfectly as the sun poked its head up over the Harbour, allowing one of our early bird volunteers to catch a glimps of Cuckoo singing at dawn, and 4 freshly arrived male Wheatears. Today was a busy day with numerous RSPB groups and school groups touring the reserve, which is excellent as that means 20 times more eyes looking for wildlife, and sure enough those eager eys managed to find 3 Med Gulls amongst our commoner black headed gulls, a woodlark sitting perfectly camoflaged on a tree stump and 2 Marsh Harriers hunting on a distant marsh. Some excellent photos of Dartford Warblers were taken today, and you'll all be glad to know that a count of 52 terrirtories was made over the last 2 days, which is fantastic count. The day continued to provide good records of Whimbrel, Sanwich Tern, Raven, and to top it all off.....an after walk strole involving myself and stve one of our volunteers produced the sighting of a Goshawk flying/hunting over the Wareham channel.......basically a GIANT sparrowhawk, but alot rarer !!!!
Paul,
as you say " a cracking day". We paid our first visit to Arne today and came away very happy having added five new species to our list of birds photographed. Dartford Warbler, Tree Pipit, Jay, Linnet and Whinchat all helped to make the day perfect for us. Thank you and the rest of your team for your help and guidance today.
Smudge Smith
PS Wish we'd seen the Goshawk.