Turtle Dove

It has been a bit of a mixed bag so far this week. Tuesday I was out looking for Turtle Doves on the Knepp Estate. There had been a number of reports of them posted but after four hours of searching I hadn't even managed to hear one purring. There were Cuckoos calling all over the place but they were very difficult to see. At least the Storks were showing well. I assume these two were from the re-introduction scheme. They looked like Red DC and Grey CU. Odd though that they had the rings on opposite legs.

With nothing much else showing, I went over to Woods Mills to look for a Turtle Dove there. The result was exactly the same

White Storks probably from the Knepp re-introduction sceme

Wednesday morning, this time with Dave as my good luck charm, we tried Woods Mills again and one of the first birds we saw was a Turtle Dove.

Then off to find our next target, West Sussex Wall Brown butterflies. A quick trek up onto the downs and we had eight to ten of the butterflies in our sights. Great butterflies to see but very territorial and aggressive and thus difficult to photograph as they are always on the move.

Wall Brown

Wall Brown

We also managed to find a single Small Blue at Kithurst Meadow but in the scramble to get a picture it did a disappearing act and we could not relocate it. I am always surprised at just how small they actually are. Later on we had our first Small Copper at Whiteways.

Small Copper

Green-veined Whites

Green-veined White mud puddling

Brimstone

And the dragonfly season is also under way with the best seen so far, an early Brown Hawker at Rowlands Wood. I see them there most years but as ever it failed to put down anywhere for a picture.

Broad-bodied Chaser

Azure Damselfly

Large Red Damselfly

So a good day Tuesday. Wednesday we were out early looking for more of the same. This time at  Old Lodge with targets of Woodlark, Tree Pipit and Redstart. Unfortunately the weather did not live up to expectations, being cold and windy, and we only managed the Woodlark.

Woodlark

 Compensation was in the form of a Garden Warbler that Dave found belting out its song from halfway up a Pine tree in Rowlands Wood. My first of the year.

Garden Warbler

Turtle Dove

It's always difficult when you get back from an overseas trip. You have an intensive week sorting out all the pictures and publishing the blog and then it is back to reality. There is no more finding ten life ticks a day. You just hope for the chance of a year tick or perhaps an exciting shot of a common bird and that very much sums up how it has been this past week.

My first days birding back in England doesn't look too bad on paper but seemed incredibly slow and unexciting on the day. On the 12th we did our usual circuit of Pagham Harbour. Nothing much had changed. Too much water in the Breech Pool so mostly ducks and no repair to the Ferry Pool so not enough water and very few birds.

On paper it gave me two year ticks, Whinchat and Spotted Flycatcher. All very distant and no chance of a picture but I suppose I should be counting it as a good day. Picture wise it was saved by a few Dragonflys that we found just south of the pumps at Ferry Creek. They were mostly Common and Red Darters but there were also a couple of Migrant Hawkers.

Migrant Hawker

A return a few days later and at least the North Wall was showing signs of life. A good few Bar-tailed Godwits and Redshanks out on the creek along with returning Wigeon and Teal and a few distant Pintails.

Four noisy Greenshanks flew into the back of the Breech Pool and we found three Spotted Redshank amongst the Godwits at the other end of the pool

Four Greenshanks on the Breech Pool

Spotted Redshank

However, the bird we had come to see was a ridiculously confiding juvenile Turtle Dove. It had spent a few days by the Visitors Centre at Pagham completely unfazed by the people around it. Even having read reports of the birds behaviour it still came as a bit of a shock when you realised how easy it was to approach.

Either it has spent a lot of time around people that have been feeding it or it has never seen a human before and does not realise how dangerous we can be.

Lets hope it picks its migration route carefully.....

.....or those brave hunters on the island of Malta will have another easy target.

Croatia

I have just returned from a weeks holiday touring around Croatia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was not a birding or butterflying holiday but I did have expectations of getting some time out and finding a few interesting specimens. The region contains a good range of different environments and there is no intensive farming so I had seen reports of organised trips coming back with 140+ butterflies, 90+ birds, and 50 + moths, all recorded in a week. I was staying on the drier and less productive Adriatic coast but I would have been happy to settle for just a fraction of these numbers.

There was one problem - the temperature. I had been expecting it to be around 28°C. It was actually over 40°C nearly every day, peaking at 43°C in the shade when we visited Mostar. For me this is cold beer and air conditioned room time. There were supposed to be Rock Partridges on the hill behind our hotel but it was a 700m climb. I am keen but even before sunrise it was distinctly uncomfortable, by midday the climb would probably be life threatening.

The birds and butterflies also seemed to be in short supply in the heat. There were plenty of Swifts, Swallows, and House Martins around at dawn and dusk and more House Sparrows than I had expected but very little else. I did manage to scrape a few shots together over the week but it was all a little disappointing.

Spotted Fritillary

Spotted Fritillary

This Spotted Fritillary was a good find but it didn't hang around for long and most other butterflies were in poor condition. This Scarce Swallowtail was worth the chase although it has seen better days.

Scarce Swallowtail - missing a few bits.

The next two pictures are of the same butterfly. My first thoughts were a Cleopatra which would be a new species for me but then when I photographed the other side, in slightly different lighting conditions, it looks more like a Brimstone. For my first sighting I want to be sure so I think, this time, I will have to settle for a Brimstone.

Cleopatra or Brimstone

See comment from Spock below - it looks as though it was a Cleopatra. I am always happy to get feedback, especially when it gives me a new species.

The best place I saw for butterflies was a little meadow around the border post between Croatia and Montenegro. For some reason there seemed to be dozens of them flying there, mostly around the large sign that said strictly no photographs.


There were a few day flying moths in evidence. The first one below I have not been able to identify yet, the second is a four-spotted Footman. I hate to think of the hours I spend searching the web and various books trying to make these moth identifications.

Moth - not identified yet

Four spotted Footman

We only got close enough to one Dragonfly to be able to get pictures, that was the Southern Skimmer. There were good numbers of these around the fountain in the arboretum at Trsteno.

Southern Skimmer

Southern Skimmers in mating-wheel

Southern Skimmer

The last day of the holiday was the only time that I really saw any birds. It started hot and I decided to leave the telephoto lens at the hotel. I had carried it around all week without using it. I wanted to reduce the weight I was carrying and the heat haze was rendering it almost useless. It cooled down a bit during the day and the birds started to appear. Either that or I was starting to look a bit harder. All the following birds were taken with a 100mm macro lens. Not ideal for bird photography but at least a chance to practice the field skills in getting a bit closer.

Not 100% sure on this one. I think it is probably a female Blue Rock Thrush

Turtle Dove

Red-backed Shrike

Lots of insects about in the heat, I have the bites to prove it. Two interesting ones are shown below. The first is a Carpenter Bee. So called as it burrows into wood to create its nest. The picture does not give any idea of scale but these are twice the size of a Bumble Bee. Bees are usually hard to photograph. They seem to vibrate all the time and it is difficult to get a sharp picture. This one though seems less prone to movement making a sharp picture possible.

Carpenter Bee

Another insect that vibrates a lot, or at least makes a lot of noise are the Cicadas. They are hard to spot on the trees but they are everywhere. As soon as the first rays of sunlight come over the horizon and the temperature starts to rise the noise starts up and it stays with you until late in the evening. For me it is all part of the Mediterranean experience.

Cicadas

And one final good news story. These Barn Swallows got too big for their nest and their weight caused it to collapse. A local worker found them and not sure what to do he put the remains of the nest and the chicks into his safety helmet and hung it on the wall. Everyone is happy. The mother flies in about every sixty seconds with food for them. The chicks have a wonderful view of all the tourists and the tourists have a nice picture to take home. I would think that the worker is also quite proud of the little family that he saved.

Re-housed Barn Swallows

I think I just got unlucky with the week we chose and the unusually high temperatures. The countryside looks ideal for a birding or butterflying holiday and I would like to give it another go - but I will probably try June next time.

Turtle Dove

The Sussex Wildlife Trust Headquarters at Woods Mill is always a good place to look for Turtle Doves. They tend to favour  a couple of trees on the footpath down the west side of the site and often sit out in the open.

My first circuit of the site did not look very promising. There was very little moving and not much bird song. I sat for a while and enjoyed the view out over the lake and had just decided to move on to Pulborough Brooks when I heard a familiar purring coming from the other side of the lake.

The Turtle Dove was easy enough to find but it was deep in a tree and it was very difficult to find an angle for a clear shot.

Turtle Dove playing hard to get.

It called on and off for about half an hour and then flew away. It was probably about an hour before it returned. This time it found a more open perch but was left silhouetted against the sky so was still not easy to photograph. It also seemed determined to keep its back towards me for most of the time I was watching.

At last a front view but he doesn't look very happy

It's a pity he didn't want to pose for me but I'm just happy that he made it through the Mediterranean and ended up somewhere where I could see him. Lets hope he finds a mate and that the species starts to make a recovery.

There was not much else around, a few Whitethroats, a Sedge Warblers singing from deep in the reeds and a couple of Wrens singing their hearts out.

Wren

I had left the Macro lens at home so when a Dragonfly flew past me I did not at first think about taking a picture. However, on the second pass I noted more detail and could not immediately put a name to it. You can take Dragonfly pictures with a big lens but you have to stand a long way off. Vegetation tends to get in the way and its usually best to use manual focus unless they are really perched out in the open.

It took me a long time but I eventually got a few decent pictures. It looks like an immature Scarce Chaser.

The species is called a Scarce Chaser and it is scarce throughout its range in southern and eastern England. However, where it does occur it is usually abundant and West Sussex seems to be a good location for it.

An interesting days birding and it was good to see a Turtle Dove. Is it my imagination or have they become more common over the past couple of years?

Long-tailed Skua

I have been tempted by the attractions of the Dark Side (butterflies) for most of the summer and the force is strong but the thought of spending the winter counting butterfly eggs was too much for me. So today it was back to birding and a very successful if somewhat disappointing day. Successful in that I got a decent picture of a Turtle Dove, something I have been trying to get for a long time and also a picture of a Long-tailed Skua. The Skua is a life tick for me, I have probably seen them before but I only count them when I have a good record shot. Disappointing in that both birds only really gave us one pose before flying off. I got plenty of shots but they all looked the same. The Long-tailed Skua was my own fault in that it changed positions once and I missed it and then when it flew off I failed to get a single flight shot.

First stop of the day was Woods Mill Nature Reserve where the Turtle Dove has been showing well and does not seem to be disturbed either by groups of exited children running about or by the local Great Spotted Woodpecker with whom it disputes some of the best perches.

Turtle Dove

I was a bit disappointed with Woods Mill when I visited earlier in the year. Cleaning out the pools seemed to have drastically reduced the insect populations which would have a knock on effect with Dragonflies and other creatures higher up in the food chain. However, recent visits have shown a much more vibrant environment.

We had a quick stop at the Steyning rifle range as I still need to see a Brown Hairstreak but with the wind picking up and frequent showers it was soon clear that it was not going to happen. Reports were still coming in of the Long-tailed Skua on the beach between Church Norton and Selsey so we decided to give that a go.

Parking up on the east beach we had about a half mile walk eastwards to where we fond a couple of birders observing the Skua roosting on the beach. It had apparently just relieved some of the local Terns of their catch and it was now happily sitting digesting its hard won meal.

Long-tailed Skua

The bird seems healthy enough, feeding and flying well, but it seems strange that it should be hanging about on a beach in Selsey for five days now.

On the way home we stopped off at the Ferry Pool to have a look at the Black-winged Stilts. The family of two adults and three young were present so they seem to have abandoned Pulborough Brooks and returned to the Selsey area. They were showing well but with back lighting on them and with a strong wind still blowing it was not worth taking any pictures. It is strange how a bird that I had not seen until a few months ago is now so common place that it's not worth a picture. Not entirely true though, if they stay I will be returning on a better day to improve on my existing record shots.