This week, I was really excited about working with a team of other young conservationists/photographers/and general wildlife fans!
Connected by A Focus on Nature, our plan was to work together, and with Birds of Poole Harbour, documenting the various species and wildlife we saw on our boat trip around Brownsea Island and the harbour. Accompanied also with children from Stoughborough primary school on our morning boat adventure, our other task was to engage with the children in various activities that afternoon, relating to what we may have just seen and learned on the morning’s bird watching boat trip. However, this post will focus on images taken on the boat.
We were extremely lucky with the weather this day, it couldn’t have been more perfect for being out upon the water! The waters could not have been calmer, and there was a gentle warmth from the sun, evading the clouds in the sky.
This first shot, although not wildlife, shows the beautiful misty, calm weather we had, and the view looking over towards sandbanks. 
This image is included for the humorous value, I’m pretty happy with the timing of it! (click on the image to view it larger) We had a lot of cormorant sightings throughout the trip, some of the children made a competition of seeing who could count the most of them!
This is an image taken from the boat looking over towards the lagoon area on Brownsea island, with a huge flock of Avocet feeding and gathered in the shallow waters. Avocet are simply beautiful birds, I would have liked to have taken a close up of one of them but unfortunately there were just too far away. However what I do like about the images I did manage to take is that they display the habitats of the birds instead. 
A Northern Diver decided to pop up very close to us on the boat, and I was able to take these next two images. We wouldn’t have had this lovely pattern on the waters should the weather not been so calm. 
Some more Avocet on the lagoon again, I love that the stillness of the waters creates such strong reflections of the various birds in this particular habitat. 
Another wonderful bird we saw a number of; the Spoonbill! This photograph is of a small group of them feeding, though there were many more than this in the area. Spoonbills are not the most common wading bird so this was an exciting sight for the children, and for myself too! 
And now for the absolute highlight of the boat trip! Some of us were treated to the sighting of a hunt and kill sequence, involving a Merlin and a flock of Dunlin. This was incredible to watch, I’d not seen anything like this before. The speed of the Merlin was so impressive, and as it whipped around this flock of a fair few Dunlin it was hard to track! The Merlin in this image is in the lower right corner, you can see here the Dunlin tried change direction multiple times to escape it. The group is slowly starting to break by this point, and spread out a little further.
The birds flew so high that I actually lost sight of them, but suddenly reappeared, and the Merlin had succeeded in picking one Dunlin off from the group. The chase continued again, with the Merlin and now just one Dunlin flying across the corner of the lagoon. This action continued again for possibly a couple of minutes, until the Dunlin flew over the reedbed, and we lost track of the pair. 
The Merlin soon materialised above the reeds, clutching within it’s talons the unfortunate now deceased Dunlin. I didn’t manage to capture this in a photograph, and the Merlin swiftly flew off. This whole sequence lasted really only a matter of minutes, a prime example of the Merlin’s expert hunting skills, and I am extremely happy that I was there to witness it!
So thank you to my fellow project team and everyone involved for a wonderful day!
Charlotte Sams 