West Bexington - Wed 12 Aug

Late on Saturday afternoon news broke of an immature Black Stork around Arne RSPB and Middlebeare, the bird was still present on Sunday morning but family commitments meant I had no chance to try and see the bird until the Sunday afternoon, by which time the bird had flown and was not relocated until Tuesday lunchtime when it was over Portland. Again I was unable to do anything about it and again the bird vanished until the early evening when it turned up at West Bexington.
So when I woke up this morning I kept a close eye on Twitter and the pager and as soon as news came out that the Black Stork had been relocated in a stubble field west of West Bexington village I set off for the coast. Forty minutes later I pulled off the road overlooking the village to scan the area, and there it was! Still in the stubble field I 'scoped the bird distantly from the road knowing it would be a real trudge from the car park in the village along Chesil Beach and up to the adjoining fields. As it happened I made the right decision as the Black Stork took to the air at around 8.40am and after circling a few times it drifted off and was lost to view just before 9.00am.
Now I just want to state that there are some great pictures of the bird taken at West Bexington this morning, but the following do not fall in to that category...these were phone-scoped about half a mile away as the red arrow shows on the bottom picture!

 

 

I had tried and failed to see Black Stork in the UK on a few occasions, so it was great to finally remove the species from my dip list and ink it on to my UK list.
A walk around Abbotsbury village afterwards produced at least four Painted Ladies, a couple of Commas and Red Admirals and a Hummingbird Hawk-moth.