I cancelled our planned trip to Weymouth at the last minute as the forecast had deteriorated overnight looking like it was going to be a very wet day but five of us still went.

And so pleased we did too. We started off at RSPB Radipole Lake after driving through some heavy rain and hoped it wouldn’t continue when we got there. It was blustery with a bit of light rain but that didn’t dampen our spirits as we had heard of reports of a Purple Heron being seen the previous day which we were keen to look for.

We walked a path around the reserve listening to Cetti’s warblers, Chiffchaffs and looking over the lake at House Martins, Sand Martins and Swifts. We hoped this path would take us away from the traffic noise but it didn’t diminish much but at least the rain had stopped. We came across another lake and the most interesting item was not water birds but an otter, and also our first Marsh Harrier was spotted. The otter was not visible for long but long enough for Mike to take a couple of photos showing it had caught rather a large fish.

After lunch in our cars sheltering from another shower we went across Weymouth to RSPB Lodmoor where we saw most of our interesting birds. The first being a Spoonbill ‘spooning’ from side to side with their distinctive feeding action. We saw here two more Marsh Harriers, one quite close to and other members of the heron family ardeidaeuch such as Grey Heron, Little Egret, Great White Egret but no Purple Heron.

And on the way back to the car a ‘different’ duck/goose was seen with colouration of tans, oranges and black hanging about with a Shelduck. With further investigation from Fred we believe it to be a Shelduck X Ruddyduck hybrid.

For a day we nearly didn’t have we had a bird list of 41 plus the otter, good company and some great photographs.

Janet

Many thanks to Mike for some really superb photos.