Tern, Tern, Tern

Our summer holidays found us again on the Dorset coast. We took a daytrip to Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour. I went there as a teenager and was only interested in seeing the red squirrels that are supposed to live there. I didn't see any then and we didn't see any this time, but this time I only really wanted to see some birds.

As it happened, the birds of Brownsea Island are a lot more numerous and visible than the squirrels. From the café garden we could see a tern: 

Rose likes how they fly, in quite a darting acrobatic kind of way, like a swallow, equipped as they are with a similarly forked tail. There was also an oystercatcher close by:

(look at that fierce orange!)

Further into the island there were hides overlooking the water. On the mini islands in the water there were more terns nesting and spawning fluffy new terns. 

I thought the first tern we saw was an Arctic Tern but we found out it was a Common Tern. The difference between these terns is almost imperceptible.  The Arctic has a shorter bill and shorter legs but unless you see both terns sitting conveniently next to each other in exactly the same position, without moving then I have no idea how you'd be able to tell the difference. We only knew the ones we were looking at were Common and not Arctic because we were told.

And then there were some Sandwich Terns. They’re more distinct. They have black crests and seemed more dignified, quieter, stylish. They also had nests and babies.

Sometimes I can’t see how any of this would matter, but other times I feel like I could just walk around outside looking at birds all day and not need anything else at all to make me happy.

Spring and the chiffchaff

We went up to Devil's Dyke on the bus past houses that got more opulent and futuristic, whose gates got more and more threatening, the higher we went. We went to see the spring and to hear it. We went left along the ridge, down and along, with Sussex spread out below us.

Chaffinches were the first to be heard and soon we managed to spot a few, fluffy with winter fat, in the bare trees. As Rose says, this is best time for spotting birds because they are beginning to sing their whereabouts and the trees don't have any leaves to conceal them.

We also heard wrens, robins, great tits, blue tits, skylarks and a great spotted woodpecker hammering on a tree. Just below the woodpecker a little bird hopped into view. We wondered aloud what it was and then it called out its name: chiffchaff.

Usually you can hear the chiffchaff but you can rarely spot it, partly because it's so small and indistinctive, kind of light leaf colour, but this time both sight and sound converged for us. He stood on a branch and as he chiffchaffed he turned round and round, projecting his call to as many females as possible. His legs were like twigs.

Here you can hear him, and possibly see him, but I don't think so:

Here you CAN see him as a speck in the trees, right in the centre of the picture:

Wild flowers seen: Dog Violet, Celandine, White Dog Violet?

Other springlike things: butterflies chasing each other, lone bees, late sunlight, hot-cross buns I made, unidentified white tree blossom, magnolia trees in the gardens of the rich on Dyke road, fragrant evening

Here is a good picture (someone else's) of a chiffchaff: