Red-backed Shrike

I was just arriving at Seaford when an alert came up for a Red-backed Shrike on the Cuckmere, just south of the Visitors Centre. It was only a few minutes away and too good a chance to miss, although it sounded as though it was on the main route down to the beach, so would soon be busy with day trippers.

I arrived at the car park and hurried down the track but it was just as I feared. I could see three or four people with their scopes and cameras pointed at a tree and even at a distance could see the bird perched out on the top. Sounds promising, but there was also a family, complete with a couple of dogs and kids kicking footballs, just about to walk between the observers and the bird - and they did. Inconsiderate or what? The bird was flushed from a perch giving clear views and with good light to a barbed wire fence where it was part concealed by the long grass.

I took a few record shots that I knew would be poor but then the bird flew off and it looked as though I had missed the chance. I searched for about an hour but then gave up and was walking back to the car when there it was, sitting in the original tree and this time completely ignoring all the people walking past. Better still it was a male in full colour plumage.

Red-backed Shrike

We soon had a mini twitch with about ten birders and various members of the public stopping to ask what was going on. A few were genuinely interested but most seemed to be more keen on taking pictures of the twitchers than of the bird.

Breast pinkish or light brown tinge dependant on lighting

Crown blue grey and back reddish brown

Fortunately things soon died down and most of the birders moved off, happy that they had their year ticks. We were left with just four bird photographers, happy to have seen the bird but unhappy, as they always are, knowing that there is a better photograph than the one they have just taken.

In hunting mode

I called in at Steyning on the way back to have a look for Brown Hairstreaks but I had left it a bit late in the day. There were a few of the more common butterflies flying but the Brown Hairstreaks were nowhere to be seen.

Common Blue - nice butterfly but the wrong colour

I am not sure who found the Shrike but my thanks for passing on the information. It was a great bird to see and to photograph.

Cackling Goose

Today I thought I would go down to Cuckmere Haven and have a look for the Cackling Goose. I think it's been there for over a month now and I was just interested to see what a half sized Canada Goose would look like. Strange enough when I did find it I was surprised to see that it looked just like a half sized Canada Goose!

I think that I had expected it to be a lot harder to find. I had spent a lot of time doing a complete circuit of the western side of the river and of course it was in the very last group that I examined. Go anti-clockwise from the Golden Galleon car park if you want to save yourself time. I had examined a lot of Canada Geese. Is this one smaller than that one? Does it have a darker breast? It gets very confusing but when you do find the Cackling it really is half size and there can be no doubt.

Cackling Goose in the centre

Size is key to finding it but even if full size the bird would look different. It has a much darker breast and belly, darker grey upper parts, a shorter neck and a smaller, more pointed beak. In some lights it also takes on a slight purple sheen. This one has a white crescent neck ring. It also had a much different call to the Canada Geese.

Showing slight purple sheen

Now for the nerdy part. Is it a Ridgeway's (minima) or  Richardson's (hutchinsii).  Having read up on them, on balance, I would have to favour the minima due to size and colouring but on the other hand there is the neck ring. It presence does not rule out minima but it is more characteristic of the hutchinsii and even more so of a third variety the Aleutian (leucopareia).

The image below is lifted from

Identification and range of subspecies within the (Greater) Canada and (Lesser Canada) Cackling Goose Complex (Branta canadensis & B. hutchinsii).

Click here to see more detail





The minima on the left, if you add a neck ring, looks like the one I saw at the Cuckmere and again you can see the purple tinge coming through.

Cackling Goose - but no purple tinge in this light

And, the final question, is it an escapee or a vagrant. I have no way of knowing but I see no reason why it should not be a "real" bird. There have been other examples of vagrant Cackling Geese recorded and verified in europe from recovered rings.

More details on identification of subspecies here.

I didn't look at much else around the Cuckmere. I am not allowing mission creep any more having missed out on the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker on Monday, but I did stop to take a picture of these Barnacle Geese. There were five in total on the river side of the circuit.

Barnacle Geese

Hoopoe

The birding has been a bit of a mixed bag of late. There has been a shortage of waders for the first three months of the year and even the usual small birds seem to be keeping a low profile of late. I have not had many good picture opportunities recently and the birding seems to have all been a bit flat. Strange then that, when I check back, the week has been quite successful with five year ticks and one life tick.

Perhaps the most rewarding was catching up with the Cuckmere Spoonbill. This was my fifth attempt at this bird. Previous visits had involve a walk along both paths on the Western side and detailed scanning of the channels and ditches. Other than the White-fronted Geese I saw nothing, but on every occasion the bird was reported on the same day. This time we parked up on Seaford Head and scoped the area from a distance. Not a very satisfactory approach but we did eventually manage to pick it up over in the lagoon on the eastern side.

Other ticks that day were a Linnet and a Black Redstart at Tidemills and Kittiwake at Seaford Head. Whilst I managed distant record shots of all of these birds the only shot worth publishing is this slightly out of focus Skylark.

Skylark

Today I visited Kent and with the M20 passing within a mile of Snodland it seemed an ideal opportunity to catch up with the Hoopoe that had been reported there. I managed to park in the wrong place but after a short walk I eventually found the bird, although I only managed four shots before it disappeared into cover.

Hoopoe - my first in this country

Feeling flushed with success I thought why not try for the two reported Garganey at Allhallows, its only a few miles away. So I did, but without any luck. If they were there they were staying in cover or were both females that I was unable to separate from the female Teal. Then I thought, there is another Garganey reported at Restharrow Scrape in Sandwich Bay, this time a male, its only a few more miles away (65 to be exact). Can I justify the mileage, I don't really go in for twitches, but then this is not really a twitch.

I arrived at the hide only to be told  the usual, you should have been here ten minutes ago it was swimming around in front of the hide, and the guy had superb pictures to prove it. I eventually managed a brief view through the bins when it appeared in a gap in the reeds. If I was just a birder I could have gone home happy. Being a photographer, I wanted a picture and I was still sitting in the hide three and a half hours later when I had to finally accept that I was not going to get a picture in the dark.

A bit of a frustrating week as far as the photography goes, my only consolation, telling my birding buddy Dave about the Hoopoe and Garganey. It doesn't quite make up for his Capercaillie and Crested Tit but it helps.

White-fronted Geese

Out with Dave today and we finally managed to catch up with White-fronted Geese a bird that we had failed to see last year. They had been reported at Cuckmere Haven and were fairly easy to find albeit that it meant wading through a lot of mud to get to them.

White-fronted Goose

 

They were in with the Canada Geese, which makes them a little easier to find, than when searching for them amongst Greylags.  They were probably feeling reasonably safe amongst such a large flock and this made them easier to approach.

White-fronted and Canada Geese

White-fronted Goose

Rain clouds were moving in when we located them so pictures were difficult. We waited a while but with the skies getting darker and the flock relocating to an adjacent field with the White-fronted further away we grabbed a few pictures and waded back through the mud to the car.

Working our way back along the coast we stopped at Seaford and at Newhaven Harbour to search for Kittiwakes and Fulmars. No luck with the former but the Fulmars were occupying nest building sites and performing aerobatics along the cliff faces. 

Fulmar - always appear to have strong pair bonding

And, it's difficult to pass Widewater Lagoon without stopping off to take yet more pictures of the Red-breasted Mergansers.

Red-breasted Mergansers

Diving