Weymouth trip birding roundup

28 Thursday May 2026

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birding, birdwatching, Black-headed gull, British birds, Common tern, Kittiwake, Marsh harrier, RSPB Lodmoor, RSPB Radipole, Sedge warbler, Swallow

The main reason for my trip to Weymouth and Portland from 7 to 14 May was to celebrate a BIG birthday and, for me, there’s no better way to celebrate than to spend time in Nature, watching the birds, butterflies and other creatures that make my heart sing. The fact that I was able to add eight new bird species to my 2026 list was a welcome bonus but certainly not a necessity – I get just as much pleasure from seeing the ‘ordinary’ birds (the Skylarks and Stonechats and the Pipits feeding their families) as I do from seeing those I don’t get to spot on my home turf. And, in fact, I didn’t even see one of the biggest birding highlights of this trip, a Bittern that was booming from deep in the reed beds during two of my visits to RSPB Lodmoor. I didn’t manage to get many great photos of the birds I saw but here are a few …

One of the artificial islands used for nesting by Black-headed gulls and Common terns (and, it seems, the occasional Canada goose). The air around these little islands is always alive with birds coming and going, and the noise is often raucous.

Though Reed and Sedge warblers and Reed buntings sang constantly from the reed beds, they were rarely visible. I got a lucky fleeting glimpse of this Sedge warbler.

Each time I went to Lodmoor, I was treated to Swallows like this one, as well as House and Sand martins zipping about overhead, and also coming down to gather mud and bits of vegetation to help build their nests.

On several days, at both Lodmoor and Radipole, I watched Marsh harriers flying back and forth, sometimes soaring, often just skimming the tops of the reeds as they hunted for food.

From the coastal path above Portland’s west cliffs, I spotted Guillemots and Razorbills, several gull species and Gannets, as well as these Kittiwakes, an adult on the right and a juvenile below left.

If you’re interested, the birds that were new sightings for me were Common tern, Bar-tailed godwit, Sanderling, Little tern, Whimbrel, Kittiwake, Great white egret, and that booming Bittern.

Pipits feeding their families

22 Friday May 2026

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birding, birds feeding young, birdwatching, British birds, Meadow pipit, pipits feeding young, Rock pipit

As I mentioned in Tuesday’s blog (Skylarks and Stonechats), the area around the Ferrybridge Wild Chesil Centre is rich in birdlife at this time of year, the lush wildflowers and thick scrub obviously providing a rich diet of lurking insects for breeding birds to nourish their young. As well as the Skylarks and Stonechats, a healthy population of Meadow pipits also breeds hereabouts, and I caught this adult with a beak full of foraged food, just waiting for me to pass by before heading in to the undergrowth to its nest.

Later that day, as I sat on a boulder eating my lunchtime snack at Portland Bill, I was entertained by another member of the pipit family busily gathering titbits to feed its family. This Rock pipit looked gorgeous as it sat on a rock, surrounded by the delicate pinks of the lush flowering Thrift, waiting for a family of humans, who were clambering around the remains of a former quarry, to move away before flying down to its well-concealed nest to satisfy, if only momentarily, the hungry tummies of its chicks.

Surprise Small blues

20 Wednesday May 2026

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British butterflies, butterfly, Cupido minimus, Dorset butterflies, Isle of Portland butterflies, Small blue, Small blue butterfly, Small blues on the Isle of Portland

I had only ever seen a Small blue butterfly (Cupido minimus) twice before my recent trip to Weymouth, the first time back in the summer of 2018 during a visit to a friend in East Sussex (see Small and blue, 27 July 2018) and the second time in 2019, during a bird club trip to Salisbury Plain (Birding on Salisbury Plain, 13 May 2019). And I hadn’t expected to see them on this recent trip but Nature played a blinder!

I was over the moon to see Small blues three days in a row, all on the Isle of Portland but all in locations where I never expected to find them. The first was on Friday 8 May in King Barrow Quarry, where I was amazed to spot three in one small area, a little colony.

The second was the following day, Saturday the 9th, in Tout Quarry, this time a single butterfly that just appeared on the path below me as if by magic.

And the third, on Sunday 10th, once again appeared as if conjured up out of thin air, this time on the grass below the National Coastwatch building near the coastal path that runs along Portland’s west cliffs.

The one time I actually went looking for Small blues, and spent two hours walking almost every small path through the Broadcroft Butterfly Reserve, where these butterflies are supposed to live, I saw none. Which only made me even more grateful to have experienced the previous three totally unexpected sightings.

Sunning

11 Monday May 2026

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bird cleaning behaviour, birding, birdwatching, blackbird, Blackbird sunbathing, Blackbird sunning, British birds

It’s an interesting way to get yourself clean but I’m sure you’ve all seen birds sunning themselves like this Blackbird, head up and beak open as if panting with the heat, body close to the ground with wings outspread. The BTO website gives two reasons for this behaviour:

It helps oil from the ‘preen gland’ to spread across the feathers, keeping them healthy and in good condition. It also drives parasites out from within the plumage. Some of these parasites feed on the feathers themselves, degrading their quality and function, and all are highly specialised, with many only found on a single species of bird.

Continue reading →

Singing Dunnocks

21 Saturday Mar 2026

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature

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birding, birdwatching, British birds, dunnock, Prunella modularis

If you live in the UK, you may not necessarily have realised it but I’m sure most of you will have heard at least one singing Dunnock already this year; they’ve been singing here in south Wales for at least a month, and, in fact, the epithet modularis in their scientific name (Prunella modularis) is Latin for ‘modulating’, i.e. varying the strength, tone, or pitch of your voice, something the Dunnock is very good at.

Today’s ‘did you know?’ information comes from the Woodland Trust website:

Dunnocks can raise several broods of chicks per year. This means the population can be maintained despite some nests being taken over by cuckoos.

As I’m sure most of you are aware, the Cuckoo practises brood parasitism, laying its eggs in the nests of certain other bird species, and then taking no part in the rearing of its offspring.

Leafmines: Phyllonocnistis unipunctella

28 Monday Jul 2025

Posted by sconzani in insects, nature, trees

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British leafmines, leaf-mining moth larvae, leaf-mining moths, leafmines on Poplar trees, Phyllonocnistis unipunctella

You could easily mistake the leafmines of the tiny moth Phyllonocnistis unipunctella for the dried trails of a snail after it had meandered around a leaf’s surface. This is due to the moth’s larvae mining just underneath the upper epidermis rather than more deeply within the leaf structure (and that can occur on the upper or lower surface of the leaf, though I’ve only found upper surface mines so far). The larvae also do not leave a trail of frass in the mine; I’ve not found any explanation for where that disappears to!

The fact that they mine so close to the leaf surface means the larvae are clearly visible within their mines, as you can see in my photos here. And, once they’ve munched as much leaf matter as necessary, they pupate in a silken membrane they create under the rolled down edge of the leaf, which you can also see in my images.

According to the British Leafminers website, Phyllonocnistis unipunctella uses three species of Populus as its larval plant: Black poplar (Populus nigra), Lombardy poplar (Populus x italica) and Black cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa). The mines shown here are from Black and Lombardy poplars found in a local park. You can see the adult moth, a pale silvery creature with a single dot near its tail end (hence the epithet unipunctella), on the UK Moths website.

Speckled woods on the wing

01 Tuesday Apr 2025

Posted by sconzani in insects, nature, spring

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British butterflies, butterfly, Speckled wood, spring butterflies, Spring colour, Wood argus

Sunday was a brilliant day for butterflies, with my first three Speckled woods of the year, each in a different location, all basking on hedgerows and flitting out to defend their territories as I passed by.

With its rich chocolately brown background colour mixed with small circular dollops of creamy yellow, it’s almost like a living crème egg … or is my imagination just being overly affected by the bombarding of pre-Easter advertisements?

My brilliant guide book, Life Cycles of British & Irish Butterflies, tells me that the Speckled wood was once called the Wood argus, the name Argus coming from the ‘many-eyed shepherd of Greek mythology’. That seems a very apt name for this beautiful creature.

False puffball

28 Friday Mar 2025

Posted by sconzani in fungi, nature

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Enteridium lycoperdon, False puffball, Reticularia lycoperdon, slime, slime mould, slime mould on dead tree

It’s been a while since slime featured here but, as it’s Fungi Friday (yes, I know slime isn’t exactly a fungus) and I happened to spot some slime yesterday, slime it is for today’s post, folks.

This particularly slime doesn’t really look like your typical example, which is presumably why its common name is False puffball; its scientific name is Reticularia lycoperdon (also known as Enteridium lycoperdon). And I spotted it in rather an odd place, growing on a stump that must have been thrown up on to the outer Barrage rocks in Cardiff Bay during a particularly high tide. You can read more about these intriguing organisms and see examples of the various stages of their life cycle on the excellent NatureSpot website.

Murmuration

26 Wednesday Feb 2025

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birding, birdwatching, Black-tailed godwit, British birds, Dunlin, Knot, large flock of flying birds, murmuration

When you hear or read the word murmuration, you probably think of Starlings and the incredible sight of thousands of those birds flying though the evening sky in perfect unison. But it isn’t only Starlings that execute such amazing aerial displays; many other species of bird perform similar feats of synchronised flying and, on Monday, I was privileged to see just such a spectacle.

As soon as I arrived at the Cardiff Bay Barrage, I saw a large flock of birds flying around the area outside the Barrage, on the edge of the Bristol Channel. Luckily for me, the birds settled on one of the mudflats and began feeding. In my almost ten years of living in the area, I had never seen so many waders doing this; they usually feed on mudflats north of Cardiff.

The flock must have been several hundred strong and consisted of three species of wader, Black-tailed godwit, Knot and Dunlin. For 45 minutes, I watched and listened to and photographed these stunning birds, sharing my delight and wonder with a man who was out walking his dog and who’d never seen anything like this sight in his many years of living locally.

Then, for some unknown reason, the Barrage operations staff opened more of the sluice gates that allow water in Cardiff Bay to flow out in to the Bristol Channel, creating a small wave that swiftly encroached on the area of mud where the flock was feeding, and eventually covering it completely. As the wave reached them, the birds took to the air, creating an ever expanding cloud of flying birds. As one, they flew around the outer Barrage area, looking for another place to land but there was nowhere. For perhaps ten minutes, they swirled high into the air, then back down towards the water, wheeling left and right in perfect harmony, before abandoning their search for more mudflats and heading northwards along the coast. It was a sublime aerial symphony that I will never forget.

M is for martin

18 Wednesday Dec 2024

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There’s always something magical about seeing the first Swallows and Swifts, Sand and House martins arrive from their warmer southern over-wintering locations – it feels like the promise of warmer weather and our northern summer is flowing along with them. I reported on the arrival of the first House martins in early April (Another new arrival, 11 April) (and you were treated [?] to one of the bird drawings I’ve struggled to produce during my self-imposed 2024 drawing challenge), and a couple of days later I wrote about the Sand martins I’d been watching as they began collecting nesting materials (Sand martin magic, 13 April). Several times that month I returned to watch the Sand martins as they went busily about their nesting preparations – the photo below was taken on one of those occasions, on the Cardiff Bay Barrage on 23 April.