Dorset - 27.8.12

As it was my birthday during the week myself and my new girlfriend Carey made the most of things and headed down to Dorset for 5 nights. We set off just after 7am on bank holiday monday and got 2 minutes down the road before being confronted by a car heading towards us in our lane! Luckily a quick flash of my lights and he pulled over and even stopped, reversed and apologised. He was foreign so probably forgot which side of the road to drive on?!! We reached Dorset around 10am and stopped off at Ferrybridge briefly but here the highlight was a single Knot but the number of Ringed Plovers was amazing being well over 100.

As we wasn't able to get into our room till 2pm we headed down to Portland Bill where Carey got stuck into 50 shades of grey on her Kindle I joined a few other birders seawatching in the protection of the cafe as the wind was blowing fairly strong. Almost as soon as i'd set my scope up I got onto 2 Arctic Skuas (both dark morph) soon followed by a Manx Shearwater. A brief lull was broken by the shout of SOOTY and sure enough a Sooty Shearwater flew West. Another 2 Arctic Skuas flew by (1 dark and 1 pale morph) and then 3 more shearwaters were picked up and these turned out to be Balearic Shearwaters. 4 year ticks within an hour was a good start. 2 Guillemot scurried through and just as I was about to head for a bit of lunch I picked up 10 distant 'commic terns'. After getting into our room we had a wander over verne common towards the prison and found the first Wheatear of the trip in a quarry and 2 Swifts over the prison.