Park Life - Blur

Wow! Mozambique, where did that come from? Our 124th nation to join the readership, what a pleasure to welcome you to the Bagsy Blog. I have fond memories of traveling through part of your country from Inhambane, south west to your capital Maputo then onward to Swaziland, South Africa and Lesotho. In the early days (1966) I spent much time cruising the Mozambique Channel and while it is always a great pleasure to have a new country join, one from the African Nation is especially welcome. It is hoped that you will pass on the link to all your friends if you find the Blog interesting.

Mozambique

Regular readers will doubtless remember this photograph (© Mike Morse) of the dismembered carcass of an unidentified bird from Burton Bradstock Beach. Some 'big guns' of the local birdings fraternity have pondered long and hard over the conundrum with Messrs Spencer, Harris, Chown and Foot agreeing it is a Teal - while on the other hand I'm sticking with Bridled Tern!!!!

The weather today, or at least most of it, can be described in 2 words, Wet & Windy which is 3 but never mind. I for one seem never to tire of American birds, so with 2 potentials at the same site there was only one direction to go - Poole Park.

The Jurassic Coast X53 service takes you to within a few hundred yard of the park, so after a brief look around the cemetery and Radipole, (Goldcrest, a few more Pochard and an absence of Redwing) it was out with the 'bus pass'.

The park is about 30 miles from Weymouth along an extremely scenic route, wending its way through a few Dorset villages and takes just 80 minutes. Both birds, Long-billed Dowitcher & Ring-billed Gull have already been seen this year, but are of such scarcity value that the small amount of effort to see them is well worth it. There is usually a variety of weird and wonderful Wildfowl here and today was to be no exception.

First to appear was one of the 'feral' gaggle of Greylag Geese, but

less expected an escapee from 'down under' a Black Swan.

Some strange genetic combinations as well, something strange has been messing with the Greylags,

while the Canada Geese have also been 'messing around'?

But then the first of the 'target' birds was seen

and all attention was focused on this

Long-billed Dowitcher, doubtless the bird that has frequented the Weymouth area for a couple of months previous to its relocation here.

With many hundreds of Gulls in attendance and widely scattered the Ring-billed Gull was never going to be easy, Black-headed were most numerous,

with just a few Mediterranean Gulls and one Gull did stimulate some interest but at great distance wasn't easy to identify. With the benefit of photographs it was considered to be a 'small' Herring Gull. I'm sure the lovely couple who were also pursuing it will be as disappointed as I am, but how nice to meet you both.

These 2 British 'red telephone boxes', once part of every corner of our country, are thought worthy of publication hopefully of interest to our overseas readers.

From here on in it was down to a few common Waders to focus the interest, with this Black-tailed Godwit

obligingly taking to the wing

and relocating at

at a better feeding spot.

Redshank were represented by c5 birds, in addition to which there were a few Oystercatchers as well.

and finally a tribute to exceptional guitarist Gary Moore who died in his sleep yesterday, age 58.

Gary Moore 1952 - 2011

Long-billed Dowitcher