Merlin 😢

I had to call the blog Merlin but there is no picture. Fortunately Dave and another birder were in the hide with me at Pulborough when the bird came through and they both confirmed the sighting. If they hadn't been there I would probably have doubted what I saw. This is a lifer for me and one that I have waited so long to see. There have been a couple of possibles in the past but I have never been confident enough to claim the sighting - this time I am.

Strange though I feel only disappointment. I didn't get the picture and my number one target and bogey bird has now disappeared. Probably the right decision though. It went through fast and if I had tried to get it in the frame and in focus I would come away with nothing. No picture and insufficient observation time to make the identification.

Lets just hope the London Buses cliche comes true and now the first one has been seen many more will come along. The next one sat on a post in front of the hide please.

So what else was about at Pulborough. Black-winged Stilt, I saw so many in Spain a few weeks ago but one on the local patch is always good to see even if it was 250 metres away.

Black-winged Stilt and Black-tailed Godwit

Three or four Common Sandpipers were also good to see. They seem to have been in short supply for the past couple of years

Common Sandpiper

Common Sandpiper

A pair of Egyptian Geese with six or possibly seven goslings. Spring is definitely here.

Egyptian Geese

Five or six Nightingales around the Pulborough site with lots of people trying to get a view of them. I always wonder why. It's quiet a boring LBJ if you discount the song. Surely a bird to listen to rather than to chase around. Which is probably just as well as most of the spots where you normally get a good view look a little overgrown this year. We had one view of a bird deep in cover but there was no chance of a picture so here is one from a couple of years ago

Nightingale

A few other birds around, a Jay keeping its distance as they do, Cuckoo, Whitethroats, a Wren carrying a white feather in its bill which caused us great confusion but I still haven't seen a Lesser Whitethroat or Garden Warbler.

A few Orange Tips around, the butterfly that really gets the butterfly season off to a start. Pearl Borders next, I will have to start carrying the macro lens.

Orange Tip

To finish off, yet another picture of one of my favourite birds, the Dunnock. A much underrated bird, who needs Bluethroats when these are in every garden?

Mallorca - s'Albufera

I have just returned from a weeks birding in Mallorca. It was good but perhaps not quite as good as I expected. We saw around ninety five species and I ended up with fourteen life ticks so it can't all be bad. However, we lost a day to bad weather, travelling around the island was a nightmare, with thousands of racing cyclists clogging up all the roads, and despite generally good lighting conditions the picture opportunities were limited.

So much for the moans, how about the good points. The main one, in a week, I only saw one dog walker, bliss, no disturbance for me and no disturbance for all the ground nesting birds.

We stayed near Puerto Pollenca giving easy access to the Albufereta, the S'Albufera, the Boquer Valley and the mountains in the north of the island. It was also close to our first target bird the Audouin's Gull.

In the 60s this species was down to around 1000 pairs worldwide. Conservation has enabled a recovery in numbers but it is still endangered and one of the worlds rarest gulls. You wouldn't think so standing on Pollenca beach. Wave a bread roll in the air and you have plenty of volunteers to have their picture taken.

They even come in pairs although there wasn't much sharing of food between them.

Still at least it gives them something to do whilst waiting for the next bread roll.

Our first full day was at the Park Natural de s'Albufera. It is a great place but don't go there on a Sunday. The locals use it as a somewhere to go for a walk with the family and it was full of people. Weekdays it is a bit quieter. You see a lot of the birds that you would find in a wetland in the UK but there are also some unusual ones and some like the Black-winged Stilt are just a bit more common than at home.

Black-winged Stilt

The Park also gave me four life ticks in Purple Swamphen, Collared Pratincol and Squacco Heron, although none of them gave me a decent picture, and Zitting Cisticola that gave me no picture at all.

Purple Swamphen

Collared Pratincol

Squacco Heron

Not life ticks but other great birds seen included Osprey, Great Reed Warbler, Night Heron, Red-knobbed Coot, and the very common (over there) Kentish Plover.

Osprey

Great Reed Warbler

Night Heron

Kentish Plover

Red-knobbed Coot

The Red-knobbed Coot is part of a program to reintroduce the bird to the Albufera from mainland Spain, hence the neck band.



On the southern edge of the s'Albufera you will find the Depuradora, a sewage works with an observation platform giving views across the settlement pools. This and the narrow road leading to it were the must visit location for our trip and the next blog will cover this area.

Black-winged Stilt

I was back at Pagham Harbour Ferry Pool early this morning and fortunately so was the Black-winged Stilt. It was hiding behind the reeds when I got there but then came out, gave me a chance to take a couple of distant shots and then flew to the back of the pool where it was beyond my range. It's not a brilliant shot but I am happy to have it, although I wouldn't complain if it decided to give me a close up exclusive.

Black-winged Stilt

There were about sixty Black-tailed Godwits on the pool and another larger flock wheeling out over the harbour. Other birds of interest were a Little Ringed Plover, a majestic looking Grey Heron, and a Spotted Redshank.

Little Ringed Plover

Grey Heron

Black-tailed Godwits with what looks like a Spotted Redshank turning summer plumage on the left

I had a walk around Northcommon Farm but all the migrants from the past couple of days seem to have moved on. All I could see were three Wheatears and a very distant Hobby passing through in the fields at the end of Golf Links Lane.

Hobby

Church Norton was very similar with just a few of the usual suspects on the water and in the bushes and a couple of possible Whimbrels out in the harbour. The church yard itself was being subjected to its usual cut and burn maintenance so there was little point in looking in there. The only bird worth photographing was this Lapwing seen in the fields by Rectory Lane.

Lapwing

I finished up at the North Wall which has been very disappointing of late. At least today there was a good level of water in the Breech Pool although it has probably wiped out anything that had started to nest in the dried out conditions that have prevailed of late.

There were two Wheatears feeding along the wall and a couple of Little Grebes in one of the pools.

Wheatear

Little Grebe

Another great day, the birding has really taken off over the past week.

Medmerry Black-winged Stilt

I was in two minds about going out today. The weather did not look so good and the birding has been a bit slow of late.The decider was a pair of Black-winged Stilts still being reported at Medmerry. I had seen a pair down at Dungeness a few weeks ago but these were Sussex birds and so a patch tick.

I started the day off at Pagham Harbour Visitors Centre with another two hours wasted trying to get a picture of the resident Cuckoo. Again I had plenty of views but I just could not get it in the viewfinder either perched up or flying - very frustrating. The consolation was a Wood Sandpiper on the back of the Ferry Pool. I managed a couple of record shots but it was too far away for a decent picture. Fortunately a couple of friendly birders let me have a look through their telescope and I was able to see the diagnostic features.

No pictures of the Cuckoo or Wood Sandpiper so you will have to make do with a Chaffinch

The Black-winged Stilts had been reported on the scrape at the end of the footpath on the Earnley side of Medmerry. It's a long walk in, particularly if the birds have flown when you get there, but if you don't look you don't get to see so walk it was. I am glad I went. The Stilts were still there as were some other interesting birds although they were all a bit distant.

Black-winged Stilts

Given that the environment is only about a year old the bird population is building up nicely. I just hope these are new birds and not just ones that have been attracted away from Pagham Harbour. There were a number of Avocets there and they appeared to be sitting on nests. I only saw one younster but that was being well cared for by the parent who was seeing off any Gulls or Crows that came close.

Avocet

The Avocets are very protective parents and even the Stilts were expected to keep their distance.

Not really a threat but see it off anyway

There was also a Curlew Sandpiper putting in an occasional appearance. Again very distant but this time the record shot is just about acceptable. You can see the diagnostic features, long black legs, pale stripe over the eye, slightly downcurved bill. The white underside is gradually disappearing as the bird moults into its red summer plumage

Curlew Sandpiper

I had a couple of hours left and a choice of things to do. I could head off to Whiteways and look for the Turtle Dove or have a look around Church Norton for a Flycatcher or other migrants. I chose Church Norton which was probably the wrong decision as the Turtle Dove was found at Whiteways.

Nothing was found by me at Church Norton apart from the rather odd behaviour of a cock pheasant. He was stood on one of the old gravestones as I walked through the church yard and he was still there when I came back half an hour later. I went over to investigate and he was rather reluctant to move away, letting me get within five or six feet before he moved off. There was no name on the gravestone, it had worn away with time, but I did wonder if he had found the remains of an old game keeper or poacher and had been dancing on their grave.

Pheasant on gravestone

I also took a couple more pictures of butterflies when I was out on Monday. Not enough for a blog but they are worth adding here.

Common Blue

The Wall Brown has to be one of the hardest to photograph. I am used to chasing Brimstones or Orange Tips over long distances but at least they stay at a reasonable height. The Wall likes baked hard bare mud where it waits until I get down alongside it laying on my belly when it then takes off and lands ten feet away. This is a game that we pursued over a couple of hours in the hot sun on Monday afternoon. I got my record shots but it was hard work and I am going to have to do it all over again to try to improve on the ones that I got.

Wall Brown

Wall Brown closed wing shot.

Black-winged Stilt

We set off today with rather ambitious plans. Rye Harbour for the Kentish Plover and Little Stint; Dungeness for the Black-winged Stilt, and the Little, Arctic, and Common Terns; and Sandwich Bay for the Blue-winged Teal and Garganey. Its not really us, its not what we do. Its a twitch, there would be little time for photography and little time to observe the birds, but we had to go, the Black-winged Stilt alone was worth the trip.

The day did not go to plan. We never made it to Sandwich Bay, we wasted time chasing a bird that was not on our list, and we wasted time because neither of us was willing to move on without getting pictures of the birds, however bad those pictures turned out to be. But we did see some great birds.

Our first stop, Rye Harbour, was where it all began to go wrong. We could not find the Little Stint or the Kentish Plover and we should have accepted that and moved on. Instead we were tipped off by the warden to a Temminck's Stint and Curlew Sandpiper. A long walk and extensive search and an hour and a half later we had little to show for our efforts. We saw Avocets, distant Little and Common Terns. and a Whimbrel but none of our target birds.

Whimbrel

Avocet

In the end we had to accept defeat and move on even though three of the birds we were searching for had been see by others. The consolation prize was that Dave managed to pick up  a House Martin as we arrived back in the car park, another first for the year.

A quick stop at Scotney Pits gave us nothing new and on arrival at Dungeness we headed straight off to see the Black-winged Stilt.

Black-winged Stilt

The pair were still there so it was a life tick for me. We should have been able to get some great pictures but just after we arrived the Nuclear Power Station started venting steam and the noise caused most of the birds to relocate. The Stilts were still visible but they were further away. I don't know if it was the beauty of the birds in flight or the thought that I might be getting showered with nuclear particles but I just watched them go and forgot to take a picture.

Black-winged Stilts

There were a  small group of birders gathered there but most were waiting for another bird, a Wood Sandpiper, that was skulking in the reeds. As before we could not let it go and we stood around for about two hours waiting for the bird to appear. The best shot I got in that time was the one below. People who had seen it earlier confirmed that it was a Wood Sandpiper but there is nothing here that I can use to identify it.

Possible Wood Sandpiper

Even when the power station stopped venting steam about an hour later the bird stayed hidden in the reeds. Fortunately there were plenty of Whitethroats, Sedge Warblers and Cettie's to keep us busy although as usual the Cettie's managed to avoid having their pictures taken.

Sedge Warbler

Whitethroat

Having wasted a couple of hours and with the rain setting in we aborted the last part of our trip and retired to the ARC hide. This gave us Black Terns and there were probably Arctic Terns as well but we could not separate those from the Common Terns at the distances involved.

So not a completely successful trip but I came away with six year and one life tick so I can't really complain.