A new Birding Year

 

In some ways 2022 was a disappointing year for bird watching, with only 160 different species seen in the UK. Looking back a few years the count could reach as high as 240. That is a significantly bigger number but then that did always include a weeks winter birding in Scotland and perhaps a willingness to travel further to see the birds.

This year I am determined to do better, if only by a modest degree, so I have set my target as 161. Something to aim for if I am ever lacking the motivation to get out into the countryside.

I can usually get the list off to a good start by spending an hour or so birding the back garden but this year has been a disaster. In a weeks garden birding I have recorded Herring Gull, Crow, Starling and Magpie, with the only small bird being two Blue Tits on the feeders. None of the Sparrows, Dunnocks, Thrushes, Great Tits, Green or Gold Finches or other occasional visitors that I was getting before Christmas. Even our garden Robin has gone AWOL. The Big Garden Birdwatch is going to be a bit of a let down this year.

Fortunately a trip down to Pagham Harbour got the numbers moving with thousands of ducks, waders and geese across the harbour. A really spectacular site when they all took to the air at once. A Peregrine or Sparrow Hawk would have been nice but it was only a light aircraft skimming the reserve.

As usual the waders were too distant for any decent pictures but the Snow Bunting was still present and in the same spot where I had seen it two months ago. By now it must be one of the most photographed birds in the country.

Snow Bunting

Snow Bunting

There were two female Goldeneye, one in the harbour and the other on the Lagoon and a Slavonian Grebe also out in the middle of the harbour.

Goldeneye

The Slavonian Grebe was a bit distant but still worth recording.

Slavonian Grebe

It was good to get the bird list moving a bit faster. The only wader I think I missed was the Whimbrel that has overwintered for the past few years. I must check to see if it is still with us. A couple of life ticks in the local area or perhaps a few Waxwings would be a good next step.

Glossy Ibis

It has all been a bit slow on the birding front. Dave and I made our annual trip looking for a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker and had our usual result, one heard but none seen. The location chosen this year was Burnham Beeches. Plenty of Great Spotted around and drumming and one bird sounding good for a Lesser Spotted but we couldn't get eyes on it.

We did get Red-crested Pochard on Stockers lake but no picture. The Lesser Spotted takes priority so we don't usually get to Stockers until around midday and the Pochards always seem to be taking a siesta on one of the islands. Had to make do with a Goldeneye.

Goldeneye

with a half hearted attempt to impress the ladies

I had a better day out on Tuesday. A long walk around the Wrens Warren area was not looking very promising but just as I was about to leave I had sight of the Great Grey Shrike. It was distant and did not stay perched for long but at least I saw it. The pictures were nowhere near as good as those we had back in October. This time the bird seemed much more flighty and did not return to the perch I had found it on, as it had been happy to do the last time we saw it. It is probably starting to think about migrating back to Scandinavia.

Flushed with success I decided to head down to the Cuckmere to have a look for the Glossy Ibis. This one was a lot easier to find. It was visible from the road just to the east of the Exceat bridge and north of the road, foraging with a small flock of Teal. Again the bird was distant but with no cover or easy access I just took a couple of record shots from the road and left it in peace.

Glossy Ibis

Fortunately I had seen a tweet from Matt Eade reporting three Water Pipits just north of the Cuckmere bridge and I also managed to get views of  at least two of these as well as a number of Rock Pipits that were also in the area.


And finally, today, I managed to catch up with the two White-fronted Geese at Pulborough Brooks, at what was probably my fifth or sixth attempt. Very distant as things always seem to be at Pulborough and seemingly still associating with the Canada Geese so perhaps a little suspect.

Black Redstart

South Africa has spoilt me. It hardly seems worth going birding unless I am going to get ten life ticks a day and get good pictures of them all. There also seems to have been a dearth of good birds around Sussex of late. Elsewhere in the country there are reports of Alpine Accentors, a Pelican, and along the east coast a raft of rarities but nothing in my area. It all seems very flat.

To be fair, things do seem to be picking up, Long-tailed Ducks, Grebes, and Goosanders are starting to appear along the coast, and although I have yet to see any of them, the enthusiasm is begining to return.

A couple of trips out this last week gave me a lot of birds but nothing really unusual. There were two Black Redstarts on Pagham Church roof .....

Black Redstart

and a walk around Pagham Lagoon gave me a Golden Eye and a couple of  Pintails. The later I am told are unusual for the Lagoon.

Goldeneye

Pintails

An hour or so on the North Wall finally gave me decent views of the Bearded Tits that had been reported there but I could not get any pictures of them. That also meant that by the time I got round to Church Norton the tide was way out and the light was starting to go. I skipped the walk down to the beach and settles for this Whimbrel in the harbour.

Whimbrel

The good news is that the Waxwings seem to be moving southwards.

Goldeneye

With another short break being predicted in our run of stormy weather,  I picked Dave up and we headed down to Pagham Harbour to see what was about. First stop was the North Wall. Unfortunately we had decided to give Climping Beach a miss on the way and so probably missed the Dusky Warbler that was found that morning.

The tide was in and there was a lot of water in the Breech Pool but it was good to see the numbers of ducks and geese had increased significantly since our last visit and in particular to have the background noise of the Brent Geese calling to one another. Waders were still in short supply with just a few of the usual Godwits, Snipe, and Curlew although Lapwing numbers had increased significantly.

The only unusual sight was a Yellowhammer searching for food along the path. It would have made a nice addition to the blog but it was flushed by a dog walker before I managed to get a decent shot.

We had a look around Pagham Lagoon for the possible American Herring Gull that had been reported but could not find anything that matched the description. A couple of pairs of Goldeneye were the only real picture opportunity.

Other birds on the lagoon were Tufted Duck, Little Grebes and the usual gulls.

Little Grebe

Ferry Pool had a good number of birds on it. It was interesting watching the flocks take to the air and swirl around but they were all settling at the back of the pool and there were no picture opportunities. A quick check at the bill showed that there was nothing much happening there either. With the weather starting to take a turn for the worse we headed for home stopping off at the Arundel Wetland Centre on the way.

Grey Heron

Grey Wagtail

We were hoping for Bullfinches but there were none showing whilst we were there. A Heron and a Grey Wagtail were the only pictures that I managed to get. There was a good sized Long-tailed Tit flock and a couple of Goldcrests moving through but with the sky darkening over it was time to head for home.

Not the greatest days birding but at least it was good to be out in the sun - if only for a short time.

Laughing Gull

Friday 6th March

The start of a much awaited, weeks birding in Scotland, based in the Grant Arms Hotel in Grantown on Spey. Best of all I had a guide to take me around as Dave had made a number of previous visits to the area and had all the best birding sites mapped out.

First stop was on the way up when we diverted off the M6 into Cheshire and visited New Brighton to look for the juvenile Laughing Gull. On arrival it looked a bit disappointing with no sign off the bird on its usual Marine Lake pontoon and no other birders visible. A quick search along the front located it at the model boating lake about 400m away where it was happily bathing with a few Black-headed Gulls. Unfortunately it then took off and disappeared from sight.

Another search and we relocated it on the beach where it seemed happy to pose for pictures.

First winter Laughing Gull

The Laughing Gull is a rare vagrant to the UK from America where it breeds in Mexico, the Caribbean and around the south and east coasts of the USA. There are usually two or three sighting a year in the UK mostly of juvenile birds but they do not occur every year.

This is a bird that is never going to go hungry!

With the Laughing Gull in the bag we decided to pay a visit to Burton Mere RSPB. I hadn't expected much but it turned out to be an excellent site with some decent hides, lots of viewing screens and great staff. You actually felt that they wanted to give you decent views of the birds instead of what seems to be coming the norm of focusing on the shops and restaurants and keeping you as far from the birds as possible.

We only had an hour before the car park closed so it was a quick dash round to look for the Long-eared Owl. I had to ignore all the feeders and attendant birds and the viewing screens to make sure that I got back to the car before the gates were locked. It was great to see the Owl but it was the usual view of a Long-eared, buried in a bramble bush in the darkest place that it could find. Then to make it even worse it had leaves over its face.

How do they get into these roosts without tearing there feathers to bits?

Views through the bins were a lot darker than this but the camera over exposes assuming an 18% grey image to give a much clearer picture.

There was no way to improve on the picture and I was not going to disturb the Owl so I grabbed a few shots and headed back to the car.  This is definitely a site that I will be coming back to. Perhaps a week on the Wirral should be my next birding trip.

If you want to see better views of a Long-eared Owl have a look at the shots here that I took of one out in the open at Pagham Harbour.

We stayed over at Lancaster that night and continued on to Grantown the next morning. Musselburgh gave us good views of Eider, Common, Velvet, and Surf Scoter, Red-breasted Mergansers, and Goldeneye, but few were close enough for pictures. These Goldeneye in the river mouth gave the only photographic opportunities
.

Female Goldeneye

Male Goldeneye

Bearded Tits

We travelled out west today with our first target being the long staying male Eider in Fareham Creek. It should have been an opportunity for easy close up pictures but despite a lot of searching we could not find the bird and came away empty handed. Fortunately the poor start to the day was rescued when we came across a small flock of Bearded Tits that were showing well on the edge of a reed bed.

Bearded Tit

It was an opportunity not to be missed. We counted eleven birds and we had about an hour photographing them before they moved on. Almost perfect, the only thing missing was enough light to take a decent picture. I know its not worth pushing my camera above ISO 400 but to get anything at all I had to go above this, use f6.3 and try to keep the lens steady at 1/100th sec. I took over six hundred pictures and in the first three hundred I could not find a single shot worth keeping. Fortunately towards the end it brightened up a bit, probably only by a couple of stops, but it was enough to get a few acceptable shots.

Female

We finished off at Pagham Harbour. There were lots of birds visible from the North Wall but they were mostly some distance off in the flooded fields. I don't think I have ever seen so much water north of the wall. The birds were flushed a number of times whilst we watched, probably by a passing raptor, and thousands of birds would take to the air forming up into flocks of the various different species. It was like an aerial ballet with the honking of the Brent Geese providing the soundtrack.

There were Goldeneye and a Slavonian Grebe on the lagoon along with the usual birds.

Goldeneye

Displaying to impress the females

The bird I really wanted though was the Slavonian Grebe. I had already had one go at getting a picture of it and had been driven off by the heavy rain. Today looked more promising and after a bit of stalking I had the shot all lined up. I pressed the shutter and nothing happened, just a little image in the viewfinder saying memory card full. If only I had taken a few shots less of the Beardies. I had a spare memory card but by the time I had changed them over the opportunity was gone.

I just hope it stays around for a bit longer.

Dungeness

Dungeness was today's destinations with the objective of adding a few year ticks before the winter visitors start to disappear. The day got off to a slow start when a stop at Scotney Pits gave us plenty of ducks and Lapwings to look at but very few geese and other than a couple of Egyptian none of the rarer species we were looking for.

Goldeneye

The ARC hide at Dungeness was a little better. A Marsh Harrier flyby as we arrived, Golden Eye displaying, a Great White Egret, and whilst there were no male Smew we did see lots of redheads spread out over the lake. We also had a brief view of a Bittern from the viewing screen as it disappeared into the reedbed.

Great White Egret

The Tree Sparrows were on the feeders and around the garden at Boulderwood Farm as were a number of House Sparrows and Reed Buntings.

Tree Sparrow

I think we were both a little disappointed by the end of the morning. Birds like the Marsh Harrier and the Great White Egret are unusual in Sussex but in Dungeness they are quite common. We had four or five sightings of each during the day. The water levels were also very high and there were no waders around.

The afternoon livened up a bit. We spotted a female Goosander on the far side of the lake and could not believe our luck when she swam all the way over to perform just in front of the hide.

Female Goosander

After much searching of the thousands of ducks and gulls present we also found a Black-necked Grebe. As you can see below they do not always come close enough to give a good picture opportunity.

Black-necked Grebe

A local birder also put us onto a a pair of Black-throated Divers on the New Diggings Pit. We missed them in the morning but they proved a lot easier to find when we returned in the afternoon.

Black-throated Diver

We tried Scotney again on the way home. The geese were there but were on the fields on the far side of the pits so even with the scope we could not see any detail. All we saw were more ducks and Lapwings and a few Golden Plover. We also tried Pett Level . Even more ducks, a couple more Marsh Harrier sightings, and plenty of Curlew.

We have often looked over the sea wall here and seen a vast expanse of sea with nothing on it so we had no great expectations as we climbed the slope. It's always worth a look though and this time there were hundreds of birds. They were mostly Wigeon but we did manage to pick out Red and Black-throated Divers, Great Crested Grebes, and a few Auk species.

With the mist  rolling in and the sun beginning to go down the opportunity for more sightings disappeared and we headed for home. Over fifty species seen on the day and eight year ticks, it had proved to be a good day out.