Red-breasted Mergansers

The beginning of a new birding year and I am off to a very slow start. We had family staying over New Year and for the first few days of January, then I was laid low by a stomach bug. Even the garden feeders let me down. The Sparrows, Goldfinches and Greenfinches that visit every day disappeared, Wood Pigeons gone, no Robin, no Dunnocks. I managed to entice a couple of Herring Gulls in with some festivity left overs but other than that it was a couple of Crows, one Starling and a few feral pigeons on the surrounding TV aerials.

I finally managed to get out for a couple of hours on the Monday and decided to target the Red-breasted Merganser at Widewater and the Purple Sandpipers at Shoreham Fort. Great idea but neither were showing, there was nothing on the sea, and very few other birds about. I ended up going home at the end of my two hours with my bird list barely reaching double figures.

Fortunately things picked up after that but with generally overcast and dull conditions picture opportunities have been limited. Still a return to Widewater on the Tuesday did give me the Merganser and also sight off the Purple Sandpipers, which were roosting in deep shadow under the pier.

Red-breasted Merganser

Red-breasted Merganser

It took yet another visit to get the Purple Sandpipers in half decent light. Not my best pictures of them but it was good to finally get the shots.

Purple Sandpiper

Purple Sandpiper

Next picture is a Water Pipit. This one taken on the tidal marsh at Appledram. Seen in isolation it is often a difficult call to tell it from a Rock Pipit. Fortunately in flight you can clearly see the white outer tail feathers that confirm the identification.

Water Pipit

The shot below is a Rock Pipit taken on very similar territory at Pagham North Wall. It was being mostly true to its name, hunting along the stones on the edge of the wall, whilst the Water Pipit was out amongst the puddles left by the retreating tide.

Rock Pipit

Also at Appledram a Greenshank in the fading light

Greenshank

A quick trip to the WWT at Arundel added a few more birds to the list. This Grey Wagtail was still foraging around the dried out duck feeding pool. The signs say that the area will be developed for a new bird pavilion. I guess that means Flamingos or Pelicans. I hope they are not making a mistake. I may not like captive birds but I always stopped to look for the Smew and to listen to the Eiders calling. Surely bringing the children to feed the ducks is (was) one of the biggest attractions of the site.

Grey Wagtail

You are never quite sure what you are going to get when you photograph Kingfishers. This one in good light at the Appledram outflow is OK but I have taken hundreds like it.

Kingfisher Appledram

I thought this one taken from the Scrape Hide at the WWT was a wasted effort, fading light, back-lit, high ISO, but it is always worth giving it a go. The "blue" feathers can give some odd effects.

Kingfisher WWT Arundel

So where does the blue streak come from? The orange plumage is the product of tiny pigment granules but its cyan and blue feathers contain no pigments.


These colours are ‘structural’. They are created by the intricate structural arrangement of a transparent feather material which, depending on its precise make-up and thickness compared to the wavelength of light, produces a range of colours from incident light – in other words from light shining on the feather with only certain wavelengths being reflected (or is it refracted?). Scientists describe this as semi-iridescent. Think of a soap bubble. It is formed from a colourless transparent liquid but when blown up into a very thin layered bubble it shows all the colours of the rainbow.


But then I struggle with this picture. The bird is silhouetted with its back in shadow, so where does the incident light come from to generate such a vivid blue streak?


For the record it wasn't Photoshop!

Water Pipit

I see Water Pipits most years but but not many of those sightings are in Sussex. I usually end up having to visit Rainham Marshes or the watercress beds at Alresford in Hampshire to be sure of seeing the bird. So Saturday, I was pleased to see a tweet from Bola, reporting one as being present in the horse field on his Climping patch.

I couldn't make it Saturday but I was down there before seven the next morning to see if it was still around. The thunderstorms over the Saturday night had probably prevented it from moving on and it was easy enough to find. Getting a picture was a lot harder. It was either a long distant shot from the field gate or try to get a shot over a high hedge with branches and wire fencing obstructing the view.

Neither option was really satisfactory but in the end I did get a reasonable record shot even though most of my attempts ended up in the wast bin.

Water Pipit

Earlier in the week I had visited Pulborough Brooks and Pagham Harbour in an attempt to connect with some of the Spring migrants that were starting to arrive. Whitethroats and Sedge Warblers were around in good numbers but Hirundines were limited with House Martins being the only ones I saw.

Whitethroat

Sedge Warbler

Other nice birds around, a Great White Egret from the Hanger hide at Pulborough Brooks.

Great White Egret

Kestrel

Linnet

Treecreeper

a lot of very vocal Dunnocks

and a few Buzzards soaring on the thermals.

 also my first Cuckoo of the year heard calling from the North Wall and lots of Cetti's heard but not seen - or at least not seen long enough to photograph.

Water Pipit 2

I was a bit disappointed with the shots I took of the Water Pipit. The lighting was good that day but I just did not manage to nail it, so Friday afternoon I went back for another go. It looked OK when I left home but by the time I got to Apuldram the light had gone and it was starting to rain. I took a few quick shots but lack of contrast or dull lighting conditions, meant that when I got home I found that the pictures were not really sharp.

Water Pipit - nice grass but the bird is a bit soft

It looked like a wasted trip but then it's always worth checking every shot. Sometimes when everything seems wrong you just get lucky and I ended up with the shot below. A Water Pipit with attitude.

Earlier in the week we had a day looking for Geese at Scotney and Pett Level. They were all a bit distant for photographs but we did have a successful day for year ticks. White-fronted, Pink-footed, Greylags, Canada, Barnacles, Emperors, but we missed out on the Bean Geese. We had seen the Taiga the week before and only needed the Tundra at Scotney for the full set. We thought we had them but blowing the pictures up on the big screen when we got home they looked more like a couple of juvenile White-fronted than the Tundra Bean Geese we were looking for.

The day also gave us year ticks for Black-throated Diver on Scotney, Red-necked Grebe on a pool at Camber, a Bittern on the ARC Pit at Dungeness, and Bearded Tits at Pett Level.

Bearded Tit

Bittern on the far side of the ARC Pit

Red-necked Grebe

The picture of the Red-necked Grebe was taken at a distance of  of about 230 metres and then heavily cropped. It's not good but it is the best image of this bird that I have ever managed to get.


I think I might be going back for another go at the Water Pipit.

Water Pipit

Having spent six hours on Tuesday, in the freezing cold, waiting for a Serin to appear and then having gone home without seeing it and without taking a single picture we decided to spend Wednesday  on some more reliable subjects.

First stop should have been Apuldram Church but I took the wrong turn so we made a revisit to the Cattle Egrets at Church Lane Warblington. There had been eight of them in the field with the cattle last week but this time there were no cattle and only the one Cattle Egret and that was too far away for a photograph.

Moving on we tried the Nore Stream. Plenty of dog walkers and the usual wildfowl but very little of interest. Which eventually led us back to our intended target, the Water Pipit at Apuldram. We had a quick look at the Yellowhammer flock in the horse paddock on the way but we were both keen to get to the river.

Dave spotted it as soon as we arrived. Fairly close and easy to see but very difficult to get a clear shot of it against a clean background.

Water Pipit

There were a couple of Rock Pipits in the area which was useful for comparison purposes. One of these seemed to want to occupy the same tuft of grass as the Water Pipit which resulted in frequent disputes and pursuits when the Water Pipit reappeared. This was some feisty bird and it was not sharing its territory with any rockies.

Rock Pipit

You occasionally get a heart stopping moment when something unusual pops up and you think you may have found a rarity. The bird below had me scrambling to get a record shot but my hopes were dashed when Dave pointed out that it was only a Wren. True but if it were a butterfly I would call it an aberration and would be searching the records to be able to put a name to it.

Wren with a crown stripe

Apuldram is the most reliable location in our patch for Yellowhammers. There are reports of the flock being thirty to forty strong although I usually only see around six. The manure heap seems to offer plenty of food for the foraging birds but photographing them against the yellow straw is always difficult. There are better opportunities when they perch up in the trees but to get close you often end up photographing into the sun.

Yellowhammer

We made a quick visit to the Bill but it all looked very quiet and with Church Norton and the North Wall failing to produce much recently we decided to head over too the wetland centre at Arundel. The Great White Egret if still present would be a patch first for me.

A good choice as it turned out. With most of the water frozen over there were some good picture opportunities. It was nice to get a couple of pictures of the GWE  where it did not look long necked and awkward.

Great White Egret

There were half a dozen snipe present but it was a choice between photographing them or following the GWE hoping that it would fall through the ice.


The Shelduck gave good picture opportunities from the hide and we saw our second Grey Wagtail of the day.

Shelduck

Grey Wagtail

Later we saw a couple of Water Rail. Icy conditions always seem to bring them out into the open.

Water Rail

A really enjoyable days birding spoilt only by a report that the Serin has been seen again at Tide Mills. It looks like another long day in the cold tomorrow.

Water Pipit

Monday morning and it was a choice of go back to Titchfield Haven and risk dipping the Penduline Tits for the fifth time or find a new target. Fortunately there had been a few reports of a Water Pipit on the Cuckmere and having missed out on seeing one last year I decided to give it a go.

The directions were really good. Two hundred metres north of the Charleston reedbeds on the east bank of the Cuckmere (just by the metal gate). I found the spot but there was no Water Pipit or for that matter no small birds at all. A two hour wait in really cold weather and I was ready to call it a day. As often happens I was about twenty metres down the track when a bird flew in over my head from the west side of the river. A quick dash back to the gate confirmed that it was the Pipit.

The pictures are not great, it was a long way off and did not stay on view for long but I was happy to have got the record shots. It did stay in the area, feeding on the flooded part of the field, just south of the gate, but once on the ground it was even harder to photograph.

Water Pipit

Next stop, once I had my circulation back, was Tide Mills. The tide was out so there was no chance of Purple Sandpipers on the pier but the Black Redstart did put in an appearance. It looked to be a fabulous bird but I just could not get it framed the way I wanted. If it sticks around I will be going back for another try.

Black Redstart

A Meadow Rock Pipit feeding in the puddles makes a nice comparison with the Water Pipit above. The Water Pipit being a much smarter looking bird with a richer brown above and extensive white below.

Meadow Pipit - whoops made a mistake its a Rock Pipit
I was so pleased to have got the Water Pipit that I didn't really give it any thought. Thanks to Ian Ballam for pointing out the error.

Other pictures taken recently on my abortive trips looking for Pendulines - the ubiquitous Stonechat, always good for a picture.

Stonechat

A Goldcrest in the Wetland Centre at Arundel

Goldcrest

and a Nuthatch in the New Forest

But that still leaves me with the problem of getting to see the Penduline Tits.

Penduline Tit

Another early start, picking Dave up at 06.00 and heading out to Kent. Our first destination was Stodmarsh NNR to see if we could locate the Penduline Tit. The weather on the way down was not promising. There was dense fog in places with cloud cover above but we arrived with the sun breaking through and were able to quickly locate the bird.

Penduline Tit on Reedmace

Our last encounter with a Penduline Tit had involved distant views through moving reeds and whilst we had left happy to have seen the bird the pictures were not very good. This time we were more lucky, the bird came close and at times was perched out in the open.

Colours blend in well in the reed bed.

The thin mask and lack of red spotting on the breast suggest this is a female

As there had been various reports of between twenty and thirty Water Pipits at the Marsh Hide we felt obliged to struggle through the mud to have a look. There were only two visible in the distance when we arrived so no picture opportunities but still worth seeing. We also had views of two or three Marsh Harriers circling over the reserve.


Our next destination was the ARC Pit at Dungeness with the target bird being the Smew. We did locate the female (redhead) in the distance but there was no sign of the drake. However, there was a bonus sightings of a Great White Egret and there were also Marsh Harriers flying over the area.

Poor shot but an unusual bird - Redhead Smew

Great White Egret

Spring was in the air and the Goldeneye were getting amorous.

Goldeneye displaying

Making sure she doesn't escape

Either mating or attempted drowning

Still looking good

The one disappointment was that the Tree Sparrows at  Boulderwall Farm were not very visible. We still had three of our target birds for the day to look for so could not afford the time to wait.

Scotney Pit found us just inside the Sussex border when Dave located the drake and female Scaup through his scope. No chance of a picture using the camera or with the phone camera through the scope when I gave it a try. I will have to read up on how to do this. Next stop was Pett Level where we were hoping to see White-fronted and Pink-footed Geese. Dave found the Pink-footed but we had to get the Collins guide out so that he could convince me of what we were looking at. Good to have him along as I would not have spotted the Scaup or Pink-footed without his help.

Pink-footed Goose

We did not get to see the White-fronted Geese but whose complaining. We had five of our six target birds for the day and a few other good sightings as well with 50 different species seen. Its always worth leaving something for another day.