Wryneck

It's Wryneck time again, one of the highlights of the birding year. They are always such a fantastic bird to see and to photograph. There may not be many of them but when they are feeding up, before crossing the channel, they do tend be loyal to a patch and so can be relatively easy to find.

This year there looked to be a good candidate at Farlington Marsh. We gave the Bank Holiday weekend a miss but were along there early on Tuesday morning. Unfortunately so where a lot of other people. 

My best pictures have always come from watching the birds feeding pattern and sitting down in the open where you expect it to get to in about ten minutes time. My experience is that if you stay seated and move slowly the bird will ignore you and come close. See here for some examples.

Today was a bit different. As soon as the bird was sighted there was a bit of a scrum. It's understandable, everyone wants  to see the bird and that includes me but all I got were a couple of rather distant shots before the bird took fright and disappeared.

Wryneck

Wryneck

If it's still there in a weeks time I might have another go.


There have been a lot of other migrants through over the past few days. They mostly seem to be juveniles but I am still hoping for a some better pictures and I still haven't seen a Spotted Flycatcher.

Whinchat

Pied Flycatcher

Pied Flycatcher

Yellow Wagtail

Wheatear

And from a trip over to Anchor Bottom to look for Clouded Yellows, no pictures of said butterfly, although we did see two brightly coloured males and one female. It was just too hot to chase after them up and down the slopes.


Worth going though, as there were still Adonis Blue on the wing and I needed Autumn Lady's Tresses to complete my Orchid year.

Adonis Blue

Autumn Lady's Tresses

Autumn Lady's Tresses

Thirty six species of orchid seen this year plus a number of variants and hybrids. It could have been more but it would have needed a few trips to Scotland and the north of England to find them. I am not going to do long distance twitching for single targets but combine birds, orchids, dragonflies and butterflies and the trips look more acceptable.

Long-tailed Blue

With an influx of Long-tailed Blue butterflies being reported along the south coast we headed over to Whitehawk Hill to search for them. The best information we had was somewhere around the transmitter tower, so the plan was for a search for the food plant, everlasting pea Lathyrus latifolius, and then to stake it out and wait to see what turned up.

In practice it turned out to be a lot easier than that, as there were already two people searching the target area when we arrived.

We had a number of sightings with a maximum of two in the air at any one time so probably somewhere around four to six being present. They seemed to be based over the fence in the allotments and where making occasional forays out into the scrub area looking for Everlasting Pea. Their presence in the allotments could well herald a problem for the gardeners pea crops in a few weeks time.

My photographs are both of the same specimen and show a hole in the  under wing where the eye spot should be. It looks as though the combination of eye spots and short wispy tails has served its purpose and fooled a bird into attacking the wrong end of the butterfly.

The last influx of the Long-tailed Blue was in 2015 and that year the eggs laid by the migrants resulted in fresh UK born butterflies on the wing at the end of October. My blog of the 25th October of that year shows a freshly emerged individual. These are the pictures you really want rather than the slightly worn individual above.

They are said to not be able to survive the winters in this country in any stage of their life cycle but who knows, with global warming that may change. Great for butterfly fans but not so good for gardeners or farmers as they are considered a pest on the continent.



Having found our target species early on we then headed over to Steyning to have another look for the Brown Hairstreaks. This must be the most frustrating of all the Hairstreak family but at least this time we managed to see a few and get a couple of record shots.

Still not the pictures I really want but I will get them eventually. It's good to have a challenge in life, it's just a pity that you have to take it on when it is over 30 degrees out in the sun.

Grayling and others

Just catching up on a few of the butterfly photographs I have taken over the past few weeks. Best find was probably this Grayling, a butterfly that gets harder to see in Sussex as each year goes by. This one was on Windover Hill and despite an hours searching it was the only one I could find.

Grayling

They are always a bit difficult to spot against the Chalk flints but this one did at least put down amongst some greenery making it a little more visible. Although they always settle with wings closed they will, if threatened, "pop up" the forewing flashing a patch of orange and an eye. I managed to get a half hearted response on my initial approach but it then seemed to tire of that game and just fell asleep and ignored my presence.

Grayling

Lots of lovely Brimstones along with other butterflies at Houghton Forest but perhaps not in the numbers we have seen in previous years. The high winds and stormy weather at the begining of the month may have had an impact.

Brimstone

Brown Argus

Brown Argus

Small Heath

Chalkhill Blue

Red Admiral

Lots of Silver-washed Fritillaries at Houghton as well but when you did manage to catch up with them they were in a really tatty state.



Newtimber Hill is one of the most reliable sites for Silver-spotted Skippers. They were there but again not in big numbers but then we were probably four weeks later than usual in looking for them.

Silver-spotted Skipper

Wall Brown

Chalkhill Blues still looking good though.

Chalkhill Blue

Chalkhill Blue

Dark Green Fritillary

Last but not least a Large White, we tend to ignore them but they really are quite a beautiful butterfly.

Large White

No sign of a Clouded Yellow yet or perhaps even one of the rarer migrants from the continent but there is still time.

Squacco Take 2

It was great to see the Squacco early last week but with a minor twitch going on whilst we were there, I wasn't really happy with the pictures that I ended up with. Role on ten days and with the Squacco still present I thought there might be an opportunity for some improved shots. It was better than I expected, only one person watching when I arrived and then I had the bird to myself for nearly an hour. Better still it was fishing in the rife rather than hunting grasshoppers out in the field.

They look such a soft and gentle bird when resting but when in hunting mode the steely eye and deadly finishing remind you that it is from a family of ruthless predators.

Four or five fish caught whilst I watched and a couple of insects, probably dragonflies, plucked out of the air.

It even had to dive in after one fish. Amazing how it comes up so clean after diving through all that weed and slime.

Lots of Little Egrets feeding in the field but no sign today of the Cattle Egrets. The bonus was the local Kestrel, down in the field picking off the grasshoppers and seemingly unfazed by my presence.

I am happy now, it would have been disappointing to see the bird move on without getting a decent record of its presence.

Squacco Heron

Last Friday a Squacco Heron was reported at Pagham North Wall. Having previously dipped two opportunities to see one along the south coast I was keen to have a look but with no further sightings on the Friday it looked as though it had moved on. In some ways I hoped it had. I had commitments over the weekend and would not be able to get out to see it.

Sure enough, Saturday morning it was refound and reports of sightings appeared for the rest of the day. Would it stay? The 2015 Cuckmere bird had gone within 24 hours of being reported leaving me on a fruitless search at dawn the next morning.

Six o'clock on Sunday evening and I finally made it to the viewing area just by Halsey's Farm. No sign there but I did at least manage to get a few seconds glimpse of it through reeds on the other side of the farm Not a very satisfactory view but it still counted as my first UK Squacco.

Monday morning and we were back at the farm and after a couple of hours wait it flew in and started to feed.

Squacco Heron

It's not an easy bird to photograph in flight. Collins refers to an explosion of white on take off. The eye compensates but the camera has difficulty coping with the contrast.

Squacco Heron

Once on the ground you have the opposite problem. It blends into the background and the camera has difficulty in pulling focus. Solution, take lots of frames and just hope you get a few good ones.

Squacco Heron

Squacco Heron

Squacco Heron

It was only a small twitch but you have to respect other people's right to see the bird. That inevitably means that you are too far away to get the picture that you really want. I was happy though, I had my record shots and the perfect picture could wait until the next time I was in Spain.


I have had something of a quiet summer birding wise. A focus on Orchids and a seeming lack of migrating birds late spring and early summer has left me some thirty to forty birds behind my usual totals for this time of year. Sussex can be really dead through the summer but today you just got the feeling that things were starting to liven up again.

Wood Sandpiper with Common Sandpiper in foreground

Wood Sandpiper

Wood Sandpiper on the Ferry Pool at Pagham and Common Sandpiper, below, in the Ferry Channel.

Common Sandpiper

It will be interesting to see if I can make up the numbers during the autumn migration but I fear that a few will have already gone.