The ship’s entertainer was singing How much is that doggie in the window? Mo, Dick Forsman and I were cruising the Finnish Gulf on the Kristina for four days. I was hoping to record the Velvet Scoters breeding on one of the islands, while Dick was employed to get everyone up at 04:30 to watch the arctic migration of ducks and geese through the myriad of small islands and promontories. It was May 2009.
My mind started to wander as I thought about my own part-time occupation as an amateur cruise entertainer. I’m one of the guides on the RSPB bird boats around Poole Harbour. It’s my job to give a commentary on the two-hour trip. You know the kind of thing:
“On the left as we look forward is Brand’s Bay.” (I’ve never mastered port and starboard.) “I think… yes there are three Eider, you can just make them out. All brown, so females or immature males, big, chunky… take a line towards those house boats… a rare vagrant until the ‘50s, the most ever seen was 135 in February 1989… 10 or 20 immature birds can turn up here in the summer, probably Dutch birds from the Waddensea, but most of the time we only have a few… Flying across the back of the boat now… Lately these three or four have been wintering in Brand’s Bay…”
“Black-necked Grebe on the left of the boat as you look forward… It’s just dived. Over there you can see the harbour mouth and how narrow it is… Male Goldeneye flying directly in front of the boat… Imagine how fast the water from this, the second largest natural harbour in the world, pours out through there… Raven over Brownsea…”
“The harbour mouth is only 400 metres wide, although 20 metres deep in places. This stops the harbour being an estuary… When a colleague from work first came down here he decided to swim across, stripped and dived in. He waded ashore 13 miles down the coast at Christchurch and was bought back in his wet underpants to his motorbike by the police… Great Northern Diver very close, just dived. Up again with a small flat fish, probably a Dover Sole.”
Coming out of my daydream, I realized that the Finnish organist was actually singing My bonnie lies over the ocean. I picked at my pickled herring and looked out of the window at the endless flocks of Eider. These come complete with White-tailed Eagles, always breathtaking in all regards, and I could see one sitting on its nest as we sailed past. I would give anything to see a White-tailed Eagle in Poole Harbour. Imagine the excitement of that on a Poole bird boat. It’s not such a fantasy. Nick had what was undoubtedly one over Hartland Moor a couple of years ago. Two Buzzards were mobbing it, and each was dwarfed by the eagle. The bird was such an awesome sight that for once Nick was speechless. We got there just too late and found him sitting on the tailgate of his car. He looked as if he had seen a ghost rather than a Dorset mega. I wonder if I’d have been able to cope. White-tailed Eagles do winter occasionally in southern Britain. Nick’s bird was probably the youngster that had been wintering in Hampshire. That bird had been ringed and was from Finland.
The Finnish cruise was rather like a grown up version of Poole Harbour’s winter bird boat, the birders thick with winter clothing, furry hats and heavy boots. By now we were steaming through hundreds of Long-tailed Ducks. They were feeding up before flying north to breed on the tundra. Some had been stuffing themselves for a month and as they settled, we could see a big splash and a plume of water. The females have to live off this fat for a month or so once they make it to the nesting grounds. Perhaps the beautiful male that wintered in Poole this year was somewhere in these flocks. A highlight for the bird-boaters on winter Sundays, we often find them somewhere around Green Island, feeding on cockles.
Poole Bird Boats evolved in 1984 from a trip that the RSPB Poole group leader Mike Diamond ran each year to watch waders. The idea was to look for Black-tailed Godwits and Curlews, and to search for wintering birds like Greenshanks. In 1992, with a little guidance from Jackie and Nick Hull and a fair bit of organisation from Colin Burt, these trips evolved into ‘the bird boat’, raising thousands for the RSPB.
I still enjoy doing the commentary, both for the mischief and to turn others on to birding as part of the RSPB’s Aren’t birds brilliant campaign. The boats go in all weathers except fog. They even go in southwest gales when it’s blowing rain into our faces. On those days Misery loves company could be a more appropriate slogan, although it only takes a Grey Phalarope to whizz past the boat or a Little Auk to sit off Brownsea to make birds brilliant again.
Public speaking from a wheelhouse while identifying whatever flies past can be tricky. There’s a gunslinger, showing off element to it all until one of the passengers catches you out. Once, as we passed Brownsea’s Pottery pier, I told everyone that you don’t get Goosanders on the open water just 30 seconds before a lovely lady pointed out a male flying right over the back of the boat.
Terry Elborn also leads bird boats and gets great pleasure in showing people anything to do with the natural world. He seemed to grow up at the bird pub, although I suppose he must have been 18 when he first came. Wanting a career in nature conservation, he first gained experience suggesting ways of making Broadstone golf club wildlife friendly, while working there as a greens keeper.
Over the years, Terry has had a run of bad luck. Every time he goes away, something good seems to turn up. He has even gained notoriety in the papers as the unluckiest birder in Britain. He has managed to arrange visits to his parents to coincide with some of Dorset’s finest rarities, including Red-flanked Bluetail and Siberian Rubythroat. Things reached a particularly low point when a golfer told him about a Great Bustard he had seen on one of the fairways at the golf club, just before Terry’s return to work. Ever sympathetic, it got so bad that the rest of us would ask him when he was planning to go away so we could book time off for twitching.
Terry is now the Natural Habitats Officer for Poole. For us birders, his greatest bit of habitat management was when he waded out in his wellies and created ‘the Elborn cut’ through the reeds at Hatch Pond. Before that, Bitterns were very awkward to see here.
Bitterns haven’t been known to breed in Poole Harbour since 1900, and they remained scarce until Shaun found one at Hatch Pond on 6 December 1997. As breeding Bitterns in Britain (try saying that after a couple of shandys) have become more successful, so we’ve seen more wintering at Hatch Pond.
Over the years, with a passion bordering on obsession, Ewan has watched Bitterns there most winter evenings. On 3 November 2006, this loyalty rewarded him with the rather unexpected and somewhat privileged sight of an Otter eating a fish. Although Hatch Pond is Terry’s pride and joy, it happens to be on the edge of an industrial estate, so hardly a classic Otter wilderness. Trevor Warrick, a pub regular, put the general reaction well: “Ewan’s claim of Otter inevitably came under close scrutiny. We wondered if he’d seen a mink, but he claimed that the beast was 2-3 feet long, which is far too big for that species. Another point of concern was: how did it get there? The nearest suitable habitat was likely to be Holes Bay, but the watercourse that flows out of Hatch Pond towards the harbour is largely culverted, so the Otter would have had to come over land. It would have had to cross several very busy roads, which seemed unlikely, and would have had the opportunity to pick up an iPod at PC World, a Whopper at Burger King and some very reasonably priced quality food items at Lidl on its way. An Otter at Hatch Pond? Yeah, right.”
“As I wandered around the edge of the pond I saw some dodgy-looking characters lurking amongst the trees. They were Ewan, Ian Lewis, Terry and another guy I didn’t know. Ewan had been there from soon after 3pm and there had been no sign of either the Bittern or any swimming mammals, be they mink, Otter or whatever. Ewan said that he had heard some unfamiliar whistling sounds up to a week previously, which he now thought were from the Otter.”
“Ewan’s time by the pond that afternoon had not been entirely fruitless. There were at least 3 Cetti’s Warblers and 2 Kingfishers about, also over 100 Magpies had come into the roost before I got there. Despite these ornithological highlights, Gryllo (Ian Lewis) had to leave just after 5pm, and I must admit I was on the point of going too, when Terry shouted ‘I’ve got something swimming out from the main channel. It looks huge. I think it’s an Otter’. I quickly got my bins onto it and as I watched, the Bittern flew through my field of view and landed on the floating vegetation in front of the reeds. The light was fading fast, but there was still enough to pick out a fair bit of detail.”
“Later, Terry picked out a bird in the sky. It was the Bittern. We all thought it was going to leave, but instead it started circling around over the pond calling – at least 5 or 6 times. Being 4th November, there were already fireworks going off all over the place in the cold, clear sky. A Bittern circling overhead calling in urban Poole, to the background sound of bangers and rockets, is something I will never forget.”
Eurasian Bittern Botaurus stellaris, Hatch Pond, Dorset, 1 February 2010 (Mike Coleman)
Trevor was describing the first record of the return of Otters to Poole Harbour. Now, if you are very lucky, you can see Otters on the rivers, Brownsea lakes or lagoon, or catching carp at Little Sea. Listen out for the Otters’ unusual calls, which I was lucky enough to record at Little Sea (CD2-67).
CD2-67: European Otter Lutra lutra Little Sea, Poole Harbour, Dorset, England, 19:18, 13 May 2010. Whistle calls while swimming, recorded at very close range. The age and sex of this animal are unknown, but a young otter looking for its parents makes the same sound. Background: Mute Swan Cygnus olor, Common Wood Pigeon Columba palumbus, Common Blackbird Turdus merula, Eurasian Reed Warbler Acrocephalus scirpaceus, Common Chiffchaff Phylloscopus collybita, Common Chaffinch Fringilla coelebs and Common Reed Bunting Emberiza schoeniclus. 100513.MC.191800.11
The Bitterns leave Hatch Pond around the middle of March, and several birders have been lucky enough to hear them go. Last year there were four Bitterns, and at 18:42 on 14 March 2010, Joe Kaplonek had found two feeding before he noticed two more circling high above the lake calling. One of the feeding birds also took flight and they circled, calling to each other for around four minutes, until two flew off high to the north. They weren’t seen the subsequent evening so presumably he had witnessed them leaving for their breeding sites. The previous year they had left one day earlier. Then in 2012 we realised that more Bitterns were leaving Hatch Pond than were wintering there. It became obvious that Hatch Pond was one of a series of staging posts for Bitterns returning east for their breeding grounds. Bitterns could be seen when the weather was suitable in evenings throughout March. A similar evening flight in the Netherlands was recorded many years ago by Arnoud, although this after the breeding season, not before it. You can hear the Bitterns’ flight calls in CD2-68.
CD2-68: Eurasian Bittern Botaurus stellaris Lauwersmeer, Friesland, Netherlands, 23:20, 1 July 2001. Flight calls by two individuals an hour after sunset. They passed directly overhead about 20 m apart, then gradually disappeared. Background: Common Moorhen Gallinula chloropus, Eurasian Coot Fulica atra, Common Grasshopper Warbler Locustella naevia and Eurasian Reed Warbler Acrocephalus scirpaceus. 01.010.AB.00000.11
Returning to the bird boat, Terry loves to get visitors to see the local seals. After a lot of discussion down the pub about which ones have dog’s heads (and come to that which dog), we think the animals most often seen in the harbour are Common Seals. I don’t think I’ve seen a Grey Seal actually inside the harbour. I’ve only recently understood that, viewed from the front, Common Seal’s flatter oval head and v-shaped nostrils can be easily told apart from Grey Seal’s vertical oval head and parallel nostrils.
Not all bird boats are for the public. Retired teacher and keen birder Phyl England organises bird boat trips for local school children, which I lead whenever possible. She visits the schools and teaches the children what to expect, while I recite doggerel about common cormorants (or shags) laying eggs in paper bags (Isherwood 1959). I’m tall and Phyl is short. Were we to put on pirate costumes, we could do a good impression of Captain Hook and Smee. I love sneaking out from the office for two hours, having no responsibilities except to provide some information and a bit of entertainment. The children’s boats are one of the highlights of my winter.
Shags prefer the Brownsea roads, the deep stretch of water straight off the sea defences where the boat lingers while we scan the lagoon. No matter how casually I mention the bird’s name, it always raises a giggle, even with the teachers.
European Shag Phalacrocorax aristotelis, diving, Shell Bay, Studland, Dorset, 8 December 2009 (Nick Hopper)
Derek Ball and his wife Kay normally take turns showing the birds to the children. Until I read his article Losing my virginity (Ball 2008), I hadn’t realised that Derek had been inspired by a bird boat outing to take up birding (and I am now rather flattered). As he put it, “because I was a virgin bird watcher, nearly every bird was a lifer! As Mark would say, I ‘had my first Shag in Poole Harbour!’” Shags, being fish-eating birds, get caught up in fishermen’s nets left overnight in Poole bay and drown, only to be brought to the surface when the embarrassed fishermen lift the nets a little later in the day. More and more of them seem to be fishing inside the harbour. Perhaps the ones with a preference for fishing outside the harbour are dead!
Three channels come off the Brownsea roads. The closest to Brownsea is the Upper Wych Channel, which goes along the southern shore. It’s at the beginning of the commercial oyster beds, two huge 30-acre patches. The little ones are grown on the sides of the old blue ferry moored alongside Brownsea’s shore, just below the heronry. When the Oysters are big enough they are dropped into an area that stretches west to Round Island in one direction and Green Island to the other. Mussels are also grown along the edges of the oyster beds, and the whole area is populated with crabs. Mussels are the preferred food for Goldeneye, which feed either side of the Wych channel, sometimes with small numbers of sea duck. Velvet Scoters also like mussels, and a couple can spend their winter at a spot equidistant from Poole Quay, Hamworthy and Brownsea. The shell fisherman used to grow Manila clams until about 12 years ago, when they populated the whole of the harbour, supporting a rather dubious industry of 40 boats. Common Scoters like to go for the clams, their fragile shells making them a bit easier to open.
The second is the Middle Ship channel, dredged to a depth of six metres for the ferries and cargo boats. This is one of the Great Northern Divers’ favourite places. However, they can be found in many other places, and some can even be seen going into summer plumage in May off Branksome. Nick had five birds on a visit to Branksome one year, some looking very smart indeed. Great Northern Divers are great fishermen, and their winter itinerary is influenced by the amount of flatfish and crabs in the harbour. The adults moult from late January, and become flightless until they prepare to return to Greenland and Iceland in April, so around Christmas they have to make a decision as to whether there is enough food to last through the next few months. The juveniles are more mobile.
The furthest channel from Brownsea is called the North Channel and is used more by pleasure craft, especially boats heading for Salterns marina. Adult Black-throated Divers really like the sandy parts in some bays and near the entrance to the harbour. Their distribution seems to be influenced by the state of dredging and sand restoration projects along the shallower beaches. One day we found three Black-throated Divers feeding in the North Channel from the bird boat. North Channel is only dredged to four metres, but it has one major advantage: I can see into it from my platform at home. So on that day I was able to quickly cycle home, rush upstairs to the verandah and get them on my garden list. The North Channel is also a favourite with Mediterranean Gulls, and from it you can also peep into the edges of the marinas to watch Red-breasted Mergansers and the occasional Goosander.
The harbour is full of old names like Salterns that relate to salt production. Wych is a name for areas where brine springs or wells are used for salt production, and no doubt if we dug down through the oysterbeds we would find the remains of salt pans. Wych channel goes right down to Shipstal on the end of Arne, sweeping west of Long and Round Island where flocks of cormorants feed on the flounders in early winter.
There are normally plenty of wintering Great Crested Grebes about as we take the Wych channel down towards Arne. Ringing recoveries suggest that the ones wintering in the harbour are mainly local breeders, and theoretically from February to April they should all be females, since the females depart for breeding lakes or rivers 50 days later than the males. There’s also a chance of getting Black-necked Grebe and Slavonian Grebe, sometimes off Arne or maybe between Green Island and the entrance to Brand’s Bay, but Red-necked Grebe is less likely.
The highlight of the boat trip is Brownsea lagoon. It started life as St Andrews Bay until it was poorly walled up and drained in the 1700s. The sea defences regularly failed, however, and were constantly in need of repair. That was until Colonel Waugh bought the island in 1852 for £13,000. He had been walking on Brownsea considering its purchase with his wife, when they discovered small outcrops of fine clay suitable for making porcelain. Charles van Raalte writes that a civil engineer then made a report estimating there to be 30 to 40 million tons of clay worth between 15 to 20 million pounds. “Here we have a retired Indian colonel, probably the most unsophisticated type of businessman in existence, placed face to face with the scientific reasoning that millions lay within reach of his hands (van Raalte 1906).
Pied Avocets Recurvirostra avosetta, Brownsea lagoon, Dorset, 13 September 2011 (Nick Hopper). The ringed bird was only four months old, being ringed as a chick at Oxfordness, Suffolk, on 29 May 2011, and perhaps not surprisingly it was seen the next spring in the Netherlands at Ezumakeeg, Lauwersmeer, on 28 April 2012.
Colonel Waugh then started to behave like the millionaire he thought he was, borrowing from a bank for which he became chairman with the mineral rich island as collateral. (On a more modern note, this is similar to Icelandic banks lending to their own directors to buy British companies, which led to similar results.) He restored the castle and clad it with a gothic façade of Portland stone. As he didn’t like the sea lapping at the back door, he filled in the river that went into St Andrews Bay. As if these changes were not enough, he built the clock tower, church, farm buildings, laundry, school house, a pier and a tramroad and a village of cottages at Maryland “for the workfolk”. According to van Raalte, “he opened clay pits and established pottery works, and started a concern called the Branksea Clay & Pottery Company with offices in London, and withal he entertained in more than princely style at the castle.” Finally, between 1853 and 1856, Colonel Waugh made a substantial sea wall when he paid for hundreds of barges of clay to be sunk in the deep parts of the bay, and bought over a million and a quarter bricks to build the wall. To provide the funds necessary for carrying out the scheme, Waugh borrowed from his bank £237,000 at 10% interest.
But there was no clay of any standard. Van Raalte suggests that the island may have been ‘salted’ with the clay to aid the sale. Waugh disappeared to Spain and his wife, who was deaf, stayed behind. Once when faced with a group of Poole folk, she mistakenly thought they wanted money, when in reality they wanted Waugh to be Mayor. She gave the game away by asking for time to pay. Anyway, it’s an ill wind, and soon what is now the bird-covered lagoon was a series of broad meadows reclaimed from the sea, with cattle grazing and the pasture divided by little canals.
Van Raalte, who bought Brownsea in 1901, recorded the birds as well as the fortunes of previous owners. His Brownsea list of 190 species included birds that would need a lot of corroboration today: Bufflehead, Hooded Merganser, King Eider, Noddy, Ross’s Gull, Night Heron, Purple Heron, Little Bittern, Killdeer, Kentish Plover and Dotterel.
Predictably, the sea wall started to leak, and over time the pastures turned into a brackish lagoon with a grass ‘lawn’ and several Spartina islands that you can see today. It is one of the most spectacular sites in Britain to see birds at any time of year, and as we will see, vitally important for many of the harbour’s birds.
On the bird boat, once everyone has ticked the Spoonbills, it’s the Avocets that most people want to see there. The lagoon is the most consistent site in the harbour and Britain for seeing them in the winter. Arriving here for the first time in the winter of 1948, they reached national importance in 1978 with just 21 birds. Most of our Avocets breed in the Netherlands, and some at least are birds that used to winter on the Exe. On 5 December 2002, a flock of 1,155 became the largest ever counted in the UK, and a count of 1,500 in October 2009 made Brownsea the most important wintering site in Britain. The Avocets’ favourite feeding area is Wych lake off Fitzworth, where they eat the mud shrimp Corophium volutator (Thomas et al 2004).
As we steam away from the lagoon between Goathorn and Green Island, Goldeneyes become more common. 185 pairs nest in Scotland, and while they may well winter with us, ringing records suggest that some of our Goldeneyes come from Finland, where they have been increasing as a breeding bird. Overnight they used to roost together on Little Sea, but the Otters seem to have put a stop to that. Now they prefer Brand’s Bay, Fitzworth or very occasionally Poole Park.
It’s not only the Otters that make them hard to count. In Important Birds of Poole Harbour, Bryan Pickess & John Underhill-Day (2002) pointed out that there were some anomalies in the counts of Goldeneye. The responsibility for recording the status of birds in Poole Harbour lies mainly with the BTO. They in turn rely on amateur bird surveyors like me to actually count the birds. The largest survey the BTO runs is the Wetland Bird Survey (WeBS), and it has been going since 1947. What Bryan had noticed was that in November 2002, there were 152 Goldeneye roosting on Little Sea, which was three times the WeBs count for the whole of the harbour for that month.