Poole Harbour Osprey Project MAY to end of 2020 season

Scylla,

I did try the magnifier on the Nightjar in your clip, but as you predicted it didnt do much, in fact the bird looks better in your video.

I did take this one at 1625 today, it's your friend back again.

© BofPH

Unknown said:

I did take this one at 1625 today, it's your friend back again

Excellent, thank you - especially because I've just come here to report that it's been on the perch about 20 times today up to 16:44 (seriously, my eyes nearly popped out of my head when it popped on/off/on/off)...  but I haven't snapped it 

I'm off now, see you later.

Either side of 19:00 the Stonechat flew around and down from perch to nest, spent about 8 minutes preening, back up to perch and off.  My attempt at using the magnifier resulted in 3 different size Stoneys  

21:04 flew off from final visit:

20:22 someone landed on campost but I couldn't identify from sound.

Then there was a tantalising flash which took ages to track down and turned out to be a crane-fly-like insect:

Plenty of insects on the nest but it's not seething like some nests do.

Up to 02:30.

Big breakdown this morning but I don't think we had any visitors up to 05:30.  Then some minutes missing till I sorted the problem.

Then, 4 (I think) crows (I think) visited:

Then the Stonechat...

With magnifier:

Without magnifier:

I'm useless at manoeuvring with it :(

Then, I hope, a Great Spotted Woodpecker (I wouldn't know if it's a similar variety):

Up to 10:33.

It's a young Greater Spotted Woodpecker

scylla said:

Nothing (according to me, scrolling thru at a rate of knots and losing all kinds of critters in the skipped frames) until...

https://youtu.be/YBAVAllPVmo

Got scared off!

Back again:

Final departure.  (Note the spider-web strand - I see that the web is responsible for the clusters of "orbs" we sometimes see overnight.)

I don't think a magnifier would do us much good in this instance, at that time of the day/night.

It's continuing misty:

Only just realised the wonderful small bird life on this Poole webcam (fingers crossed we will get Ospreys breeding here). I've been listening to the bird sounds - fantastic to hear the Nightjar!

Never occurred to me that it might land on that wonderful stick (which is really popular with the birds!) - thank you so much for capturing it on video, Scylla.

Glad you enjoyed it, BIRDSONG - I'd only seen photos of a Nighjar before and it was such a thrill to find it here!

Unknown said:

It's a young Greater Spotted Woodpecker

Thank you, RICHARD - I did google images of it to try to firm up, I couldn't make it a Lesser, which would be more notable :)

Not too many of those about, although I did see one at Arne a few years back.

Great captures Scylla and so fab to see the Nightjar on the nest and hear it as well. And then the juvenile GSW, its amazing how many birds are using the nest and post as perches. Although I won't be able to get back to Arne again this year now (still shielding & its 150mls) we have been having adult GSW with 2 juv visit garden for the past week along with Green Woodpecker. I'll post some picks on another thread along with some Sparrowhawk garden pics. Keep up the posting please.

Osprey (probably CJ7) arrived with fresh-looking fish around 15.23pm and landed on camera pole. (Thanks to the livestream chatters for spotting this.) Here's a heavily cropped screenshot.

© Poole Harbour Osprey Project.