Friday 7th September

Last Friday was the first chance I had to get down to Lodmoor RSPB Reserve to see the Short-Billed Dowitcher.
I left work at 12.30pm and headed down to Weymouth arriving at the car park around 1.45pm. I started to walk up the reserve path but meeting another guy on the way back learn,t that the only view point to see the bird from was back up the road on the raised bank by the chipping centre.

The bird had apparently been in the centre of the reserve all day and was only showing intermittently.
There was a crowd of around thirty or forty people there already with scopes set up and I was soon set up beside them.
I had a wait of around 30 mins before the bird showed its self again and I was lucky enough to get two brief views when it moved through the vegetation. After that I had a couple more partial views as it stretched and preened.
I waited around for another hour or so but the bird seemed to have found a hiding place out of view and most of the crowd started to disperse.
Whilst I was there I found myself stood next to a guy who seemed vaguely familiar and when I got home I remembered who it was. It was Simon Emmerson the driving force behind the Imagined Village folk group, who is also a keen birder.