Not tonight Josephine....

 As the year goes on, I'm starting to get more into the old-normal of chasing birds. Todays trip took me down to the South coast to Weymouth. This is an area I know very well, indeed since the early 80's. Now I can combine a birding trip with a stop to see the mother-in-law!

Even by my standards I left early, on the road by just after 5! Getting ahead of the traffic meant I was at Lodmoor, my first stop, before 7.30! It was a lovely morning, if still a tad chilly for almost June. Still, I had a quick coffee and headed off to the reserve. I think Lodmoor is massively underrated, an almost urban reserve on the edge of the town but one which had more than its fair share of rare birds - long- and short-billed dowitcher, least sandpiper, Ross's gull, stilt sandpiper and more just on my lifer list!

Todays target wasn't a lifer but a rare American gull - Bonaparte's gull. This is a small, North American bird, named not after the famous man himself but his nephew, Charles Lucien. They are reasonably easy to get over here, albeit in low numbers. One has been regular at Oare marshes for some years. This one has been around for a few days now. As I got to the reserve I met another birder who had walked down the western path without any sight of it. We checked the "pagoda" and no sign from there either. The tern colony was very active though, with its noise and movement creating a lot of interest.

I left the other birder to his photography and went back to check the western path, which takes you past the best area for gulls mooching around. The usual suspects were in place - black-tailed godwits probing the mud

and shelduck alway busy around the muddy edges.

There was even, rather bizarrely, a collared dove on the mud.

Finally I got onto a gull, on its own at the back of a pool.

In breeding finery they have a smart, black hood, but now it is in non-breeding plumage.

They are smaller than black-headed gulls, and have a more delicate, all black bill.

With the light and distance against getting good photos I tried moving on to see what else was around.

At Ferrybridge, sanderling was amazingly a year-list tick for me, albeit another very distant bird. The little terns seemed to be doing well with a number on the mud by the visitor centre.

At the bill itself, a few manx shearwaters were passing by amongst the guillemots and gannets, but again way out.

With bearded tit at Lodmoor and rock pipit at the bill, I had 5 more year ticks, taking me past 170 for the year, a number I would hope to get normally by mid-February. Still, it was lovely to be out in the sun and watching the happy holidaymakers going past down the channel!