One of the birds I was very much hoping to see during last week’s visit to Weymouth was this Snow bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis), a species that has a small breeding presence in the Scottish highlands but is primarily a winter visitor elsewhere in Britain.

The first Snow bunting of the year on the Isle of Portland was sighted on the cliffs below the bird observatory on 21 October. The following day three Snow buntings were noted at various points around the island, and one was netted and ringed at the Obs – if you want to see close-up photos showing the bird’s anatomical features, check out that day’s Obs blog. Though the other two soon departed, one Snow bunting lingered at Portland Bill long enough for me to see it the day after I arrived in Dorset, on the one sunny, though already very cold and windy day.

I’d only ever seen one of these birds before and that was seven years earlier (see 316/365 Lifer: Snow bunting, 12 November 2019), so I was overjoyed that this beautiful little bird had remained long enough for me to spend time watching it. They are well known as very busy birds, constantly scurrying around in search of food, and also as very ‘tame’, seemingly ignorant of the potential dangers of humans and so often coming very close to people. Perhaps surprisingly, both these factors can make them tricky to photograph – too much movement and too close for the long lenses many photographers use. I only managed a couple of reasonable images from the very many I took but I don’t really care, as the bird’s entertainment value was immense.

I was also delighted to snap a little extra avian surprise. The Snow bunting had paused briefly to preen so I was attempting to get a video of it, when a Wheatear popped up on to the rock behind the bunting. This bird caused something of a stir amongst local birders; it was very late in the year to see an ‘ordinary’ Northern wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe) and, elsewhere in Britain, birders were spotting the more rare wheatear species, Isabelline wheatear (Oenanthe isabellina) and Desert wheatear (Oenanthe deserti). The Portland bird proved to be the exception, perhaps the last of its kind to leave our shores on its migration journey.