Alpine Swift – The Verne, Portland, Dorset, 1^st April 1988

My attempt at capturing the Alpine Swift hawking the cliff tops at The Verne, Portland, Dorset, in April 1988, based on a drawing made soon afterwards.

Thank fuck for that!! After a dawn vigil at Peveril Point, and another attempt at midday there and at Durlston Head the previous day (for what proved to be two and one – different – birds), Paul Pugh and I finally caught up with this gem!! At this time Paul would regularly travel all the way from Wigan to Wareham by train to have a few days birding with me. This was one such occasion.

At first it was very elusive and then only viewable in the distance. However, even then it was evidently large with flashes of white. Eventually though, after terrorising and tearing around much of north-east Portland it was intensively watched as it hawked backwards and forwards along the cliff-top in front of us and over our heads (at a location we had already visited......). This was at a location at The Verne on Portland, overlooked by the imposing Victorian prison.

As we stood watching the bird with our backs to the prison the delightful inmates in various of the cells on the upper floors hoyed anything they could lay their hands on down at us...... . And all the time they did this Martin Cade (then in his pre-Portland Bill Bird Observatory warden days) stood about 10 or 15 m in front of us, watching us (as opposed to watching the swift) and just looking ultra-cool in his red Kicker boots and brightly coloured jumper. Well, he’d probably seen a good few Alpine Swifts at Portland previously and we were probably even more entertaining........ . Or just maybe (and if so I was oblivious at the time) he was watching us just in case a flying mug came too close to one of us whilst we were concentrating on the bird..... .

The bird.......? Well, it was very fast in flight and like a massive Swift / Sand Martin hybrid; Swift shape, Sand Martin plumage.

Many years later, in 2017, I saw one on a similar date (actually a few days earlier) at Baron’s Haugh Nature Reserve in North Lanarkshire. And in-between times I had seen breeding Alpine Swifts in Cappadocia, Turkey (including the bizarre apparent ‘farming’ of young birds by using purpose built lockable nest-boxes) but that’s another story..... . 

Oh, and later that same day Paul and I dashed off to deepest West Sussex to see a Little Bittern, but that is quite literally a different story, which was posted on this cure for insomnia last but one.

Alpine Swift, The Verne, Portland, Dorset, April 1988 (photograph credited to unknown).