Little Gull and Little Tern

With the small car park in Easton Lane now open, the Stilt Pools at Medmerry seem a little more accessible, but it can still be a bleak walk in when the cold south westerlies are coming in off the sea. Some days you get down there and there is just nothing to look at. Fortunately today was just the opposite. A nice sunny day and lots of birds. Photography is difficult, you are just that bit too far away from the action, but today there was certainly a lot to look at.

Perhaps the best bird of the day was an adult Little Gull. When I arrived it was asleep on the back of an island and I could well have missed it. So my thanks to Peter Hughes the warden for pointing it out. I had to wait a while for it to fly and then had about ten minutes of trying to photograph it before it moved on. Good practice for the Little Terns that were to come.

All I could see at first was just the one Little Tern out on the back of a sandy bar. Perhaps more came in or perhaps they had been better hidden hidden but eventually there were five or maybe six present.

I always forget just how small the Little Terns are. The picture below shows one alongside Black-headed Gulls which themselves are at the smaller end of the Gull family.

Small, fast, highly manoeuvrable, and a nightmare to try to photograph. You need a big lens on to get close enough for a picture but even if you can track them my lens will not focus fast enough to get the shot. The pictures below are not perfect but you should see the hundreds that have been deleted as unrecognisable

The islands look a bit short of the shingle that the Little Terns like for nesting but there is always a chance. They would at least get some protection here as the Avocets that nest at the site are very aggressive parents and see off a lot of the predators.

Also present were at least six Little Ringed Plovers. This pair look as though they are trying out nest sites.

There were a lot of other birds using the pools including a Common Sandpiper, and a brilliantly coloured Yellow Wagtail.

Common Sandpiper

Yellow Wagtail

Catching a fly -  at 1/2000 of a second and still not sharp

Also a lot of birds in the long grass around the pools.

Meadow Pipit

Meadow Pipit

Skylark

Nice also to see some young about. This young Moorhen even looks halfway pretty.

Other shots taken this week. A Black Swan On Chichester Gravel Pits. They always take a nice picture. I wonder how long it will be before they are on the British list.

Tuesday it was back to Pulborough with Dave so that he could catch up with the Nightingales. He is just back from a weeks birding in Spain with stories and pictures of Bee Eaters, Collard Pratincoles, Squacco Heron, Gallinule, etc. etc. See his blog here for some good pictures but I think good old British Nightingales take some beating

 A great weeks birding so far. Spring seems to be on hold at the moment but that just means that when the cold weather stops we still have the spring migration to come - I hope.

Black Tern

I have had a few trips out birding over the past week but they have mostly been on sea watches or looking for Terns arriving on the coast. Their have been a few good birds about but the picture opportunities have been limited.

Chichester Gravel pits are always a good place to look at this time of year and true to form on Sunday there were hundreds of birds hawking over the water. Black Tern and Little Gull were the highlights but dozens of Common Terns, Swifts, House Martins, Swallows, and a few Sand Martins added to the excitement.

All the birds were distant but I still managed a few record shots.

Black Tern and Common Tern

The Common Tern below helped me to a new first, the first time I have photographed a flying insect at about 100 metres. I knew that the Terns were agile in flight but I hadn't realise that they could also turn their heads through a hundred and eighty degrees.

It would be interesting to see the equation of energy expended over energy gained!

Common Tern

My sea watches at Selsey Bill did not prove very fruitful. I saw plenty of Terns going through but in general things were quiet and I also managed to miss the few Skuas that were present.

Common Tern

Little Tern

The Breech Pool at Pagham North Wall had a little more water in it when we visited on Sunday but most of the bird life seems to have abandoned the area. There were a few Sedge Warblers in the reeds, one Little Ringed Plover and a single colour ringed Avocet that flew soon after we arrived.

And today, Monday, was meant to be distant shots of the Red-rumped Swallow at West Marsh Eastbourne. Except nobody thought to tell the swallow and I had three hours staring at a birdless lake and didn't take the camera out once.

Not much of a birding week but the Black Tern was good to see. I thought about not doing a blog but then this is my diary of what I see and you have to accept the bad days along with all the good ones.

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.

Little Tern

Being determined to catch up with a Little Tern I had another trip over to Rye Harbour. This time I was more successful, although I didn't quite get the crystal clear image I had envisaged of the male Little Tern passing a fish to the female. At about 100 metres distance and barely visible through the binoculars this falls more into the Kitsonian school of photography than the style I had been looking for. Still I follow the mantra of

 - see the bird
 - get a record shot
 - get a quality picture

To you this may look a rubbish picture but at the moment it takes pride of place in my collection and gives me a life tick. Just a pity that it doesn't look quite as good as the shots of the decoys that I had in a previous blog, but it will do until I can get a better picture.

best kept as a small image!

(Apologies to those that don't get the Kitsonian reference and no disrespect is intended to a birder who has more knowledge than than I will ever get in my lifetime).

Rye Harbour held the expected Common and Sandwich Terns along with Black Headed and Mediterranean Gulls. There were also Dunlin, Godwits, Wheatear, and lots of Avocets although I missed the two Knot that were reported later that day.

Avocet

I had then planned to return via Pett Levels but after being told of a Redstart showing well at Dungeness Power Station I headed off there instead. Bad mistake, I could not find the Redstart and others that went to Pett Levels did get to see a Turtle Dove which was the next target bird on my list. However, there was consolation in a Marsh Harrier over the ARC pit.

Marsh Harrier

Would have been a great picture if the bird had a head!

Out again around Arlington Reservoir the next day, with Dave who seems to be getting fed up with being at home ill. Either that or he is not happy that my year list is now longer than his. We were looking for the Turtle Dove and we did have a possible sighting but we could not relocate the birds so this will have to wait for another day.

We spent most of the day with Dave happily photographing his Orchids and insects and with me thinking that I need to invest in a decent Macro lens. I think I will keep the Dragonfly and Butterfly shots for a separate blog but I was pleased with one in flight shot and it gives me hope of capturing some of the more difficult Dragonflies that never seem to settle.

Beautiful Demoiselle in flight

Nothing very exciting on the birding front but nice views of a Collared Dove and the much under rated Dunnock.

Collared Dove

Dunnock

One of the highlights of the day came whilst we were having a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea. We had been watching a Mistle Thrush gathering food and taking it to a nearby nest. All was going well until a Jay strayed a bit to close. A couple of very aggressive parents soon saw it off. It was all too fast for me to get a picture but here is a more peaceful shot of one of the birds.

Mistle Thrush gathering food