First Dawn Chorus of 2016

Wednesday 10th February 2016

This morning, for the first time this year, I noticed the dawn chorus in all it's glory!  Last year I recorded the first chorus on the 15th Feb, so it's almost the same date again this year.  I could definitely pick out the blackbirds, whose voice seems to dominate, and a robin on and off, but the other birds could have been anything!  

Over the last few weeks we have been getting about 14 or 15 different species of bird in the garden daily, it's really good to see them all back, as some have been absent for quite a while.  The most epic bird we have spotted a couple of times this week is the goldcrest, a rare bird in our garden that's for sure!  Another visitor that we only see for a few months in the winter (and have done for about 5 years) is a pied wagtail, who seems to have taken it upon itself to single handedly scare every other bird of the same size or smaller off, by flying feet first at them - only the robins seem to stand their ground now (they've learnt!)

 So as it's all action in the garden and the kibbled sunflower seeds ran out yesterday it was a good job the delivery man called  nice and early with the next big sack of seed so that no birds abandoned us for another garden.

A Circular Walk from Studland Village via Old Harry Rocks

Wednesday 3rd February 2016

We had a fantastic five mile circular walk this afternoon from the Studland village.  We parked in the National Trust car park and had a look round St Nicholas Church which is very close to the car park.  We spent a little while searching the church and churchyard for answers to clues which were meant to help us find a geocache.  We found the answers no problem but unfortunately couldn't make sense of the final location so despite our best efforts, this one beat us, maybe we'll try again another day (we seem to be saying this a fair bit lately!)  The church was an amazing old Norman building, with a really interesting interior and masses of history, it must be one of the best churches I've been in for ages.  

St Nicholas Church, Studland.

Snowdrops and crocus.

It was quite atmospheric inside, this is taken looking towards the gallery.

And this is taken from the gallery.

The walls were incredibly thick.

I read in the church information booklet that these funky little things are corbels (jutting out roof supports) and they are considered the finest collection in England. There were lots more but the middle one in this photo attracted me as I thought it looked like a Pokemon character!

We left the church and came across this thatched building, it had no information on it so I don't know what it was built for but it's very well maintained.

Close to the thatched building is this cross which is not as old as it first looks, it was built in 1975 and stands on the base of an original Saxon cross.

We then headed out of the village and uphill to Ballard Down, to join the south west coast path, where there are fantastic views across Poole Harbour and Brownsea Island in one direction and Swanage in the other.  It looks lovely in these photos but once again the wind was blowing a hoolie as it seems to in Dorset a great deal!

Swanage Bay.

Old Harry Rocks

Catkins, another sign that Spring is almost here.

One of the highlights of today's walk was within quarter of a mile of the car park, when we saw a pair of bullfinches close up, every time we tried to get a photo they flew a bit further along the footpath, we followed and tried again with the camera but off they flew, this happened three or four times until we eventually lost them. They are beautiful birds, the male is clearly identified but his bright pink chest and a black beret on his head, unfortunately Mrs Bullfinch wasn't blessed with the same lovely colour as Mr Bullfinch and is a much less showy browny colour.  By this point in the walk it was nearly 5 o'clock and although it was still quite light, dusk was approaching and the birds were having one last good old sing song, it was lovely.