Portland, Spring 2021, Part #1

To the island of Portland we shall go, for a week of migratory excitement. Or so we hope.

In this first entry, covering the events of April 25-26th, 2021, we have a bit of an explore.

A morning walk up the cliff

Day one starts with a walk up to the West cliffs of the bill from our cottage in Fortune's Well. Dunnocks and their squeaky wheeled song are everywhere, but we pick up our first Wheatears as we crest the hill.

From there we jink left, taking in the Tout Quarry (more Dunnock, some Linnets also, signs of art, run away, run away!) and then the King Barrows quarry (a pair of Stock Doves, more Linnets). This brings us out on the coast path on the East side of the island. The little bushes between us and the sea here are full of Blackcaps and what must be either Chiffchaff or Willow Warblers - they aren't showy or noisy enough for us to be sure.

We descend back into town via the high angle battery and Verne Common; have a quick look at Portland Castle, and then return to base - a good little orientation walk.

An afternoon walk around the Bill

In the afternoon we head up to the Bill lighthouse. It is windy - despite the sunshine we both need our coats, hats and scarves on. We find a sheltered place to pitch the scope and give the churning sea a good staring at. A nautically inclined colleague later informs me this is an infamous Tidal Race.

There are the usual gulls hanging around the end, but the rough weather has some treats for us. Gannets are passing by the end of the bill semi-frequently. Manx Shearwaters carve by in groups of five or six. A few Guillemot energetically flap past too. Once we feel sufficiently wind-blasted, we decide to head North, along the coast path.

Immediately we get buzzed at by a pair of Stonechat. There's a hint of what we guess is the male somewhere off to our right. Mrs. Stonechat is rather more confiding, accompanying us up the path to the observation centre, before returning to where we originally found her.

We continue up the coast path for a short way along here, dallying briefly to have a look at perhaps six or seven Wheatear sharing a field with some horses. We turn right just before...what even is this not-really-secure secure looking facility? A bit of digging reveals that it once was the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment, a research facility for, well, underwater weapons, we assume. Now it's in mixed use - there's a hotel, an academy and several other businesses taking up the same space. None of which apparently are that interested in maintaining the giant fence at the Western edge. Take it down maybe?

From here we skirt around the edge of Southwell and then head ESE. More Wheatears here - another gang of five or six that start out perched on a fence line, and then relocate to a daisy-filled field as we approach.

This path eventually takes us path the bird observatory, where there are several Willow Warblers (we think).

At an opportune moment we take a right turn and start to head back out towards the bill lighthouse. Nothing further of note, other than a very pleasant half pint of Doom Bar from The Pulpit Inn.

Chesil Cove

A late start on day two, oops, but the sun is shining on, and the tide is out, so it's off to Chesil Cove to see if we can catch up with the Bar-tailed Godwits that are taking a brief rest there.

We decide to walk, and this is...a mixed choice. The road along the bar that links Portland with the mainland is really quite busy; it reminds me a little of the miserable road to RSPB Dungeness - thankfully today the weather is reasonably human friendly; warm in the sun, not too windy.

The bar eventually widens to admit a sort of common area, on our right as we walk back to the mainland. We make our way over to what looks like a path through it, rather than walking along the road. This path is quieter but harder to walk on; a mixed choice. We do get serenaded by a Skylark or two though.

As we reach the car park at Chesil Cove we re-cross the road and make a brief stop for cake at the café. Round the front of the café we take heed of the signage urging us to keep to the edge of the mud, and edge our way along what's about to become Ferry Bridge.

As soon as the mud-water boundary is visible, we can see that there are indeed loads of Bar-tailed Godwit, with a fair few Dunlin sprinkled amongst them too. Nice. A bit more looking around yields some fishing Little Tern (one of the UK's few breeding colonies can be found at Chesil) as well as some chunkier Sandwich Tern.

We also find a flock of Ringed Plover higher up the mud.

We mess around trying to get our phonescoping equipment setup satisfactorily. With little success. Another birder turns up, and requests a quick primer on the available terns. Thankfully the two species present are two we can easily separate, and are near enough for us to point out examples.

We toddle off back to base for some lunch. What a great little place that was.

Radipole Lake RSPB

The afternoon takes us into Weymouth town centre - we decide to pay Radipole Lake RSPB a visit as part of that. We've been here before, maybe six years ago on a May bank holiday weekend, and we remember it being full of Cetti's Warbler, and there being a Common Sandpiper on the mud opposite the visitor centre.

The Sandpiper is absent but the shouts of Cetti are again everywhere. We also catch up with Reed Buntings and Reed Warblers from the little offshoots of boardwalk that occasionally sprout from the main path. Otherwise, not much of note happens until we decide to explore the right fork of the main path.

Here, an unlikely sign suggests the next path offshoot is a good spot for Bearded Reedling. We are sceptical. Incorrectly, it turns out, because there's a female one in the reeds not ten feet from the little platform. We even manage to take a few photos of it, it's so close. A pair of walkers trundle past, and we hear some of their chat "apparently you get Bearded Tit there, but I've never seen them"; we're too engrossed to stop them though, sadly!

A bit further around the path we encounter the same pair and a chap on a bike, peering at a wader on a muddy island in the pond to the North. Is it a Curlew, asks bike man? It looks like one, but it is in fact a Whimbrel; the crown stripe is quite clear in the afternoon sunlight.

We give out some standard Whimbrel facts, and further bird chat ensues - we really need to get back to the car before our parking ticket expires though, so we make our excuses and head back in that direction.

We make it back in enough time to take another look at the mud opposite the visitor centre, and just as we do, a Common Sandpiper flits out on to it, and gives us a nice display of its bobbing tail. Reliable!

Evening Quarries

It's back to Portland for the last bit of the day - we're going for a walk around a couple of the quarries to see if anything interesting can be turned up. We start with an unproductive but very scenic walk around Church Ope. We follow it up with an equally productive explore of the quarry between Southwell Road and Weston Street. Well, this is going well!

Things start to improve as we move towards Portland's windmills. A bramble in a field gives up a Whinchat. We take terrible photos of it before it bails to a bigger bramble at the opposite side of the field. We walk around to see if we can get a better view, but get no joy. We do find three or four Wheatear in the same field from a different angle though.

We walk up towards the South-Eastern windmill, disturbing a couple of Wheatears and loads of House Sparrows. In a slightly elevated bit of field-hedge-bramble, there's a browner warbler poking about in it. Hmm. We can see it, so it can't be Garden Warbler, can it? We rack our brains for alternatives but find none; Garden Warbler it must be.

From here it's a short trip back to the car, and thence back to base in Fortune's Well.