Chapter 17: The great Western

The masses of birders also helped the local economy, paying £3,000 in entrance fees and donations to the Dorset Wildlife Trust. The ferrymen got £10,000 for boat tickets, the National Trust made £ 10,000 in landing fees, and another £ 10,000 in the café for bowls of soup and rolls. 

Mo and I helped with getting the visitors onto the bird. A couple of years later, I was walking up the aisle of a train when I passed a smiling chap I didn’t recognise. Suddenly he pointed at me from his seat. A little shocked, I recoiled, then with a beaming smile he blurted out, “Western Sandpiper.” It made my day. The two Dorset Wildlife Trust wardens enjoyed deserved praise for finding the bird and their organisation of the twitch, and also because Brownsea lagoon and its amazing array of birds looked so absolutely perfect. 

It’s not surprising that Brownsea looked good. The largest flock of Avocets in Britain and at least 700 Black-tailed Godwits use it for roosting. Add Britain’s only pure pair of breeding Yellow-legged Gulls, more than 1% of Britain’s breeding Common and Sandwich Terns and one of only six pairs of Roseate Tern outside Northumberland.Top it off with up to 27 roosting Spoonbills and nationally important numbers of Little Egret, cormorant and Dunlin, and for its size it has to rank as one of the most important wetland sites in Britain. 

The National Trust manages another great place for watching waders in the harbour: Middlebere. They have built hides there and converted the farm buildings into holiday cottages. As I write this, it’s springtime and Mo and I are staying in the farmhouse, even though it’s only ‘around the corner’ from home. The main hide gives great views of the Middlebere channel and across to Arne. Spring migration of waders is well underway. 

Timing is important for seeing waders here. Get it right and you will be well rewarded. Visitors to Middlebere regularly ask why the tide always seems to be out, even when it is in everywhere else. This is because the mud is so thick here that as soon as the water levels begin to drop, the mud immediately appears. It then quickly dries out and the birds soon move on or else disappear out of sight into the main channel. 

Today, 12 May 2010, that’s what is happening. Among the waders there are over 400 Black-tailed Godwits that should really be in Iceland by now. Icelandic Black-tailed Godwits are one of the reasons Poole Harbour is so important for conservation. We look after more than 6% of the entire wintering population through the winter.

These birds love coming here because not only are there extensive mud flats, but also regularly flooded fields extending right up the Frome valley. Our winter population is currently around 2,500 birds. If you want to see them all in one go, Brownsea lagoon at high tide is your place. At low tide they split into two main feeding populations, a southern one based around South Lake and a northern one based at Holes Bay, making occasional visits to Lytchett. During periods of high rainfall, all intertidal areas are abandoned for the waterlogged areas of Bestwall and the Frome valley, the godwits returning when the water goes back down.

By March, when you think you have worked out these feeding patterns, migrant birds begin to arrive, putting the whole feeding strategy into turmoil. With impatient birds constantly flying around looking for available mud, any site can get a visit. To conserve energy, the roosting strategies also change with birds mostly staying on site. The local Spartina is regularly made use of, although for some this is still too far to go. In a race to build up fat reserves, many birds will continue to feed as the tide rises up their legs. When it reaches their bellies some will then just float on the water until the tide goes back down. Numbers peak in April, when most sites record their highest counts. Then all of a sudden they are gone. During our 2007 survey, huge numbers in April became just 27 birds in May.

So what are our 400 birds still doing at Middlebere in mid-May 2011? Perhaps they are just late. Only time will tell, but we do seem to be getting more and more first-year birds spending the summer here. In 2007 just six birds stayed through the summer, and in recent summers this has risen to 150. 

Suddenly they all take off. We look into the sky for a Peregrine but there’s nothing. The godwits settle again but seem very interested in something in the channel. They’re peering into it, occasionally spooking and flying up in small groups. Something is moving up the creek and although we can’t see it, we can follow its progress as it moves upstream, causing little disturbances on the way. 

The godwits are just a mass of mud-brown backs in winter, but now in summer plumage their deep brick-red underparts are eye-catchingly vivid. They are craning their necks to get a look at whatever is in the creek. 132 Dunlin then flush and fly round before settling among the godwits’ legs.

Bar-tailed Godwits are much more local. They eat Lugworms and King Ragworms, which are really only found in the sandy mud in the east of the harbour, along Shore Road, off Green Island and on the mud between Brownsea and Brand’s Bay. At high tide, they all roost in a tiny group on the edge of the ‘lawns’ of Brownsea lagoon.

Before the Holes Bay road was built in 1990, there used to be two gangs of Dunlin: one based in Holes Bay that exploited the north of the harbour and another based in Brand’s Bay that fed in the southern half. 90% of Dorset’s Dunlins can be found in the harbour, and they used to roost on Pilot’s Point, one time setting a county record at 8,300. One of the results of global warming is a lot of extra dog walking throughout the winter along the beach at Studland and, nowadays, the main roost site is Brownsea lagoon, and the population is estimated to have been around 3,000 to 4,000 for the last few years.

Over 10,000 Dunlins have been ringed in the harbour. The Stour Ringing Group used to catch Dunlins in the entrance to the Middlebere channel, one of which was recovered, decapitated, from an Arctic Fox burrow in the northwest of Iceland. 

In September 1975, one of the Dunlins that veteran ringer Chris Reynolds caught was found to have a Polish ring. It had flown from Gdansk to Brownsea in 13 days. Juvenile alpina Dunlin from northwest Siberia and northern Scandinavia arrive in Poole in September. The adults moult in The Wash or Waddensea and start to arrive here from October, and continue to arrive right up until January, starting the return journey to the breeding grounds in early spring. Arctica that breed in northeast Greenland and schinzii from southwest Greenland, Iceland, Britain, southern Scandinavia and the Baltic pass through Poole in July and August on their way to northwest Africa, where they moult and winter. 

I’m not sure whether the 132 that have just landed among the godwits are arctica and schinzii returning, but with their bright backs and dark bellies, I assume so. By now we can see that it’s a Common Seal moving up the channel that’s creating all the fuss. As it turns round to head back to its usual haunt off Round Island, it spooks a couple of Oystercatchers. We have 20 or so breeding pairs of Oystercatchers nesting, mainly on Brownsea. In addition, around 1500 Oystercatchers arrive here in autumn from Iceland, Scotland and the north of England. Poole Harbour is one of the most important wintering areas on the south coast for this species. 

As winter progresses, birds filter down the east coast from Norway too, arriving here between November and January. They stay till late, waiting for the arctic summer. Alan Bromby of Brownsea Island and Chris Reynolds have ringed over 1,500 Oystercatchers here over several decades. One of them became Britain’s only foreign recovery when it appeared as a vagrant in Greenland. 

Middlebere is lovely at night in late summer, especially at full moon. Waders gather here and at points along the Wareham Channel, and as the sun sets they start calling to each other. Within an hour, many of them fly out of the harbour to resume their southbound migration. Magnus and I first recorded migrant waders leaving across the heath in 2002. Here is a group of Curlews that Magnus recorded, calling wildly, outside the Middlebere hide at dusk (CD2-54). Listen to the next recording he made, and you will hear how the chaos reaches a crescendo before they all take off (CD2-55). This chaos is conveniently echoed by the physical structure of the sound. In the classic Curlew flight call, a clear rising note actually emerges from chaos, as you can see on the sonagram. After this recording was made, two flocks passed me in the dark on the top of Hartland Moor.

By using a parabolic reflector, I was able to track the first group along the woodland bordering the north of Hartland Moor, and then they headed in the direction of Lulworth. The second group seemed to head for the gap in the hills where Corfe Castle was built. Later I heard that Bob Gifford, who was staying in the ringing hut that night, had heard Curlews passing Chapman’s Pool as they headed out over the English Channel. 

At the end of the last recording there is a Whimbrel’s flight call, a series of short clear notes very different from the Curlews’ flight calls. In the late ‘70s, flocks of Whimbrel would arrive at dusk in spring, using the harbour as a staging post before moving on towards their breeding grounds in Iceland and Scandinavia. On one evening, I remember watching about 200 calling birds coming in to roost. Between 20 April and 13 May 1975, 2,070 birds were counted, many roosting on The Moors. CD2-56 is a recording of a small flock heading north in spring, made at midnight in the south of the Netherlands. A classic series of short piping notes can be heard as they take off in two waves. 

On that first evening at Middlebere in August 2002, we also heard several species of Tringa sandpipers or ‘shanks. In CD2-57 you can hear a single Greenshank that migrated shortly before the Curlews. We had a good time making those recordings, and eight years on we also recorded a party of Greenshanks getting ready to migrate (CD2-58). This time, you can hear them getting very excited, before twos and threes take off. Unlike the Curlews, they flew along the southern shore of the Wareham Channel.

Next listen to a flock of Redshanks recorded by Killian at Tacumshin in Ireland (CD2-59). Redshanks stress the first element of their flight call, which can help separate their multi-note calls from those of Greenshank and Whimbrel. Redshank’s multi-note call is shorter, faster, more continuous and less piping than Greenshank. Another call, which is a single long note, can sound slurred and has no equivalent in Greenshank.

Identifying Spotted Redshank by sound is very easy by comparison, as it has a completely different flight call (CD2‑60). If you don’t already know this call, I recommend it for impressing your friends. Normally described as chu-it, it can only be confused with Pacific Golden Plover, which has never knowingly been heard in Poole Harbour. You can often hear Spotted Redshank along the edge of Holes Bay in winter. 

Common Sandpiper’s flight call is very high-pitched, fast and piercing (CD2-61). Some years ago, I was foolish enough to let James stay at my house, and he added Common Sandpiper to my garden list by hearing it flying overhead at night. Wood Sandpiper (CD2-62) has slightly lower-pitched and less tinny flight calls than Common Sandpiper. The notes sound more or less identical, whereas in Common Sandpiper flight calls, each note is slightly lower than the one before. I once heard a Wood Sandpiper calling as it headed out across Hartland Moor, and Nick would also like you to know that he has heard one calling over his garden in Stoborough. 

Green Sandpiper is another species that we hear flying out from Middlebere at dusk, although the three in CD2-63 were recorded by Magnus in the Netherlands. The flight call is at a similar pitch to Wood Sandpiper, but each note is clearly rising in pitch, and the first note usually sounds longer than the others.

Water Rails also migrate in and out of Poole Harbour each winter, so here are the three common rail flight calls for you to listen to. This Moorhen flight call recorded by Peter Nuyten (CD2-64) has often been mistaken for a Barn Owl in Britain, and for a Long-eared Owl in the Netherlands. Coots make this toy trumpet sound while flying around at night from February to October at least (CD2-65). Water Rails can give a variety of calls in flight, but the one heard most often is a clear sharp whistle with a wavering or modulated quality (CD2-66). This flight call can be heard both in spring and autumn.

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