A New Year List

January always seems a bit weird. The start of a new year and Blackbirds, Starlings and all those birds you have paid little attention to during the year, suddenly become important again, as you try to get the year list off to a good start. Bird races are not for me but I do expect to get above the hundred before the month is out. A modest target perhaps but then my real objective is to get some decent photographs. Lighting is the key to success and cold January and February days, bright but with high thin cloud are the best. Unfortunately there aren't many of them and the useful hours in those days are limited.

The two shots below, of the Black Redstart at Shoreham Fort, show the difference lighting can make. The same bird on successive days and it looks very different.

Black Redstart

Black Redstart

January is also the time for me to make the annual trip to Newhaven West Beach to see the Fulmars as they start to take ownership of their nesting holes.

Fulmar

Actually the trip to Newhaven this year was mainly to see the Hume's Leaf Warbler. I did see it but I didn't manage to get a photograph. My second Hume's Warbler and the second time I have failed to get a picture, so my key list of seen but not photographed stays at twelve.

Truth be told I had to rely on Dave and others for the identification. I cannot pick up the call and with the brief views I had it could easily have been a Yellow Browed Warbler I was looking at.

A picture of a Goldcrest in the same area of scrub was no consolation.

Goldcrest

We have had large numbers of Gannets along the Sussex coast over the past couple of weeks, with the birds close in and giving good views of plunge diving. The lighting was appalling but they were at least good to watch.

I also failed to get a photograph of the plunge diving but I can't blame the lighting for that. It was something to do with my inability to press the shutter release at the right time.

We also had a day down at Pagham Harbour. There were a lot of birds there and I added a few to the year list but they were a long way off and there was no chance of a decent photograph. It was also very cold so we retired to the Wetland Centre at Arundel.

It's always good for a few pictures and as we drove there Dave predicted Water Rail, Bullfinch, Kingfisher, and Snipe. He was spot on, we saw all four and I also picked up on a Chiffchaff. Good practice for if I go back for another go at the Hume's.

Water Rail

Water Rail

Water Rail

Water Rail

Female Bullfinch

Kingfisher

Snipe

Chiffchaff

Not a bad start to the New Year. It's good to be out in the countryside again and even better to be getting a few photographs.

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.

Marbled White

We had a tour around a few of the local sites today looking for photo opportunities with Birds, Butterflies and Dragonflies, with Dave also keeping an eye open for any unusual orchids. It made a change to spend some time on a few of the more usual species rather than focusing on life or year ticks.

First stop was Pagham Harbour where a summer plumage Spotted Redshank was to be found on the Ferry Pool. It was a great bird to see but it stayed just out of range of the cameras. This seems to be the norm on the Ferry Pool these days. As I  remember it, in the past we would get birds closer to the road giving much better views. Perhaps it's just the volume of traffic that you now get on the Selsey Road.

The harbour at Church Norton looked really picturesque in the early morning sun but there were very few birds about. We had hoped to get improved shots of the Hudsonian Whimbrel but if it was still there it was tucked into one of the creeks out of sight.

Next stop was the meadow at Whiteways roundabout on the A29. With the morning warming up there were plenty of butterflies on the wing but the real bonus was freshly emerged Marbled Whites. Not only were they in pristine condition but they are a lot easier to photograph when they are perched out drying out their wings.

Freshly emerged Marbled White

All the above shots are males. The females have a shorter body, golden brown markings on the underside (instead of black), and a golden brown leading edge to the upper wings.

Female - Golden brown leading edge to upper wing

Female on the left - picture from June 2014

Other butterflies seen at Whiteways meadow were Ringlets, Small Heath, and Small Skippers.

Ringlet

Small Heath

Next stop on our tour was Lords Piece. If anything there were too many Dragonflies and Damselflies there. The constant movement meant that nothing had time to settle and the insects rarely stayed on a perch for more than a few seconds. This is really a better site for early morning or late afternoon visits but we did get a few shots.

Ovipositing female Emperor 

Broad-bodied Chaser

Four-spotted Chaser

Four-spotted Chaser
- this one has additional dark markings at the wing tips so is probably of the form praenubila

Another unusual sight were these two Blue-tailed Damselflies. Females come in a variety of colours but this one is an andromorph having the colour of a male. I thought the idea was that she would not be recognised as a female and so avoid harassment by the males. She would then change to a green colour when she reached sexual maturity. The strategy does not seem to have worked in this case.

Mateing pair with andromorph female

We stopped off at Pulborough Brooks as I needed to stock up on bird food. We had intended to walk down to the Black Pool to look for more dragonflies but with the time moving on and the temperature rising we decided to skip this and move on to Woods Mill.

There is a reasonably showy Water Rail with a couple of chicks that we wanted to photograph at Woods Mill. Unfortunately I think we left it a little too long and the chicks are now juveniles. We got good views of one but the mother did not show.

Juvenile Water Rail

Dave staked out a tree where we could hear a Turtle Dove purring. Having already photographed it I went off in search of Demoiselles which I had managed to miss so far this year.

Beautiful Demoiselle (male)

Beautiful Demoiselle (female)

Despite lots of purring the Turtle Dove did not show in the open but there were at least more dragonfly opportunities around the pool whilst we waited.

Four-spotted Chaser

I came home with about 400 shots in the camera. My usual keeper rate is about two in a hundred but with the pristine specimens of Marbled White it rose to about twenty five percent today. What do you do with about sixty almost identical pictures of a Marbled White?

Red-backed Shrike

It has been a strange couple of weeks. The migrants are flowing through but with the weather being so good they are not stopping at the coast. Reliable places, like Church Norton, have been very slow and when there have been birds around I also seem to have been very slow. I have missed two or three Wrynecks as well as some of the other birds I had been chasing and those that I have seen have been too far away for a decent picture.

One of the birds I failed on was the Red-backed Shrike at Sandy Point, so today I was back there having another go. For once I was not worried about pictures. In September last year we had a really showy bird at Rottingdean and it was unlikely that I would improve on those shots. However, it is an unusual bird to see and I did not want to let it go without having another try.

This time the bird was easy to find, although it stayed distant all the time I was watching it. It was also quiet mobile so I was fortunate in having help to keep track of it from Simon Colenutt. Have a look at his blog, the Deskbound Birder for some more great shots.

Having lost the Wryneck I had been chasing at Shooters Bottom to a Sparrowhawk I thought I was in for a repeat performance when one flew flew through  the nature reserve, but the Shrike stayed in cover. It is a first year juvenile and I would imagine that it will stay a while. It was finding plenty of food and with the weather being warm there is no real pressure on it to move on.

Red-backed Shrike

Red-backed Shrike

Today was really about plugging some more of the gaps in my year list. Pagham North Wall gave me a Water Rail, always a great bird to see.

Water Rail

I also realised that I had not seen a Sandwich Tern all year so I paid a quick visit to Selsey Bill. Fortunately there were no other birders around to see my one man twitch of the Sandwich Tern sitting on the post. Worse still the pictures were hopeless so I have not posted any of them here.

I felt a bit happier coming home today. I had seen a couple of year ticks and I had some pictures for the blog. Life feels good.