After a long weekend on Romania’s Danube Delta, luxuriating in squadrons of Great White Pelicans, booming Bitterns and a wealth of White-tailed Eagles, I return to the more understated delights of a Durlston morning patrol.
From the Learning Centre bird hide, I watch our resident Dunnocks ferry morsels to their two new fledgings, as a pair of Chaffinch feed and a Wood Pigeon struts about below.
Drifting downhill, the Hawthorn is now in full blossom, the air just still enough for the sometimes-divisive scent to reach my nostrils. The night rains have brought some welcome moisture to the National Nature Reserve, softening the cracked paths and quenching the thirst of the growing vegetation. Pausing at the top of the Lighthouse track, Whitethroat flit and scratch from atop the thorns, as Skylark song drifts over from Saxon Field.
Backtracking into the Holm Oak woodlands, the tracksides are lush with Hart’s-tongue ferns, Cleavers, Nettles and Docks.
The tittle-tattle of Blue Tit, back-and-forth of Chiffchaff and strident melody of Wren rings in the air.
Descending the Clifftop Trail in the sunshine, I turn the corner near the lighthouse, clumps of gently wafting Sea Thrift springing from the bank. Pausing just beyond Tilly Whim, the Guillemot colony is in full voice, multitudes of these smartly-dressed auks on both their nesting ledge and rafting below on the calm waters, a single heavy-beaked Razorbill in their midst.
A sudden drama enfolds before me as one of our resident Ravens begins to wheel about, uttering a low, insistent alarm call. Skirting past on the trail, Fulmars wheeling below, the observation point affords a view of a hulking Great Black-backed Gull, threatening the Raven’s partner and perhaps a clutch of newly-laid eggs.
Ascending past the Castle, a Speckled Wood butterfly flits about the healthy crop of Garlic Mustard on the verge, surrounded by a verdant carpet of Stinging Nettle and Green Alkanet.