'A Gander At The Exotic'

Swannery birding highlights of the week...

Monday 22nd to Sunday 28th April 2013...

Wildfowl...

The highlight of the week, albeit a naturalised exotic, was the Egyptian Goose that appeared today...

Today's Eygptian Goose. Probably the recent bird from Lodmoor RSPB.
Once a rare bird in Dorset, the first few Swannery records could well have been local escapes rather than wandering 'feral' birds from East Anglia and the Home Counties but due to recent western range expansion, the last few records, including this bird, are no doubt 'tickable'.

The six Scaup were still present to Saturday but  there was no sign of them this evening and duck numbers in general continued to thin out apart maybe for Shelducks...





A flock of (Common) Shelducks on 'The Bund' this week.
 

Dabblers still included a few Gadwall, Shoveler, Teal and Pintail but no Garganey or Wigeon whilst of the 'divers' a few Pochard remained among the Tufted Duck (plus the two Scaup hybrids) but there were still no mergansers.

Waders...

There was quite a good variety this week with one of the highlights being two Avocets on the meadow pool Saturday evening...



The two (Pied) Avocets on the meadow pool.



....but arguably even better were the two brief Ruffs that Charlie found at the 'Fleet Pipe' on Friday that I unfortunately missed. Whimbrel were seen or at least heard most days with ten plus on Tuesday being the best count, whilst Bar-tailed Godwits were seen on Monday (one) and Thursday (seven)...

 



The single (male) Bar-tailed Godwit.

Dunlin were seen most days too with a peak of twenty-two on Wednesday and Common Sandpipers were noted on several days with six at least on Friday...





One of this week's Common Sandpipers.



 The two pairs of Oystercatcher on territory were again briefly joined by a passing flock (of six) while singles of Ringed Plover, Snipe, Redshank and Curlew completed this week's wader tally

 

 Gulls & Terns...

Of the former there were no real surprises, just small numbers of the usual species but of the latter Charlie found our first Little Tern of the year (quite a scarcity on The West Fleet these days), which I again failed to see; Sandwich Terns peaked at over thirty; while Common Terns were still only present in single figures.

 



The Little Tern with Sandwich Terns © Charlie Wheeler



Raptors...

As last week a Red Kite flew over on Friday but the male Marsh Harrier was only seen once. The commoner species Buzzard, Sparrowhawk, Kestrel and Peregrine were all seen with varying frequency of course but any owls remained unobserved.

Near passerines...

The highlight was the continued presence to Wednesday of the Turtle Dove...

The Turtle Dove in Grove Lane this week.
It was also seen by The Swannery entrance again and in the car park and was much more skittish.

The only other 'near passerine' worthy of a mention was Tuesday's Swift, the first of the year.

 

Passerines...

This week's only addition to this spring's tally of warblers (Cetti's, Chiffchaff, Blackcap, Willow, Sedge, Reed and Lesser Whitethroat) was Common Whitethroat... we still await the expected Grasshopper and Garden Warbler. The odd Wheatear and a few Yellow Wagtails were still passing through as were a few Swallows and both Sand and House Martins. At least one Bullfinch and a Siskin were the first for a month or two and it was nice to confirm the presence of a pair of Nuthatches but in the negative there are no Treecreepers this year and even the Goldcrests seem to have moved on.

Next week...

Well it's been over a year now since my last Swannery tick (Black-winged Stilt) so how about a Red-rumped Swallow next week...I had one last year at Abbotsbury but it was out of my recording area and I've had a couple of untickable probables too over the years so as there's already been birds at Lodmoor and Portland already this spring...watch this space!