Red-necked Phalarope

Yesterday was a bit of a mixed bag. A short seawatch at Selsey Bill delivered one Gannet and a couple of Terns. Fortunately there was a small flock of House Martins gathering mud for nests that helped relieve the boredom.

House Martin

I made a couple of stops at the Ferry Pool to look for the Black-winged Stilt. It was there both times but right at the back of the pool and beyond the range of the camera. The pool held a good selection of the usual birds but nothing really close enough for a decent picture. The Greenshank below is probably the best of the record shots.

Greenshank

The day looked a bit of a washout until, when cooking dinner at 19.30, an alert came through for a Red-necked Phalarope on Widewater Lagoon. I had seen one on the Ferry Pool only four days ago but as with most sightings at that location it was too far away for a picture. Widewater is much smaller and usually offers much closer views. I abandoned the cooking and made my way over to Shoreham to join the gathering band of local birders.

Scope views were excellent but in the gathering gloom picture opportunities were limited. They are not brilliant but these are the only pictures I have of this species.

Red-necked Phalarope

The bird looked as though it was going to roost for the night so I was up before dawn and over at Widewater by 0500, but it was a wasted trip. There was no sign of the Phalarope.

Can't complain though. I am now down to a shortlist of just six birds that I have seen but failed to photograph.

Dusky Warbler and Hume's Leaf Warbler - Good views but just too fast for me to get in the camera's viewfinder and focus on them.

Arctic Skua  and Green-winged Teal - too far away

Woodcock - I had a picture but didn't think it was good enough so deleted it. Bad mistake.

White Stork - I was too busy watching the bird and forgot to take a picture.

Who needs a year list when faced with this challenge?

Common Scoter

Dave called me this morning to say that the Common Scoter was showing again on Widewater Lagoon. It is not a rare bird but it is unusual to be able to see one close up so I abandoned my tasks in the house and headed over there. As it happens I did not really get to see it close up. It was in hiding when I arrived and then promptly swam out into the middle of the lagoon, beached itself on the island there and I assume went of to sleep.

Female Common Scoter

I waited awhile but it did not reappear, the only consolation being that there were two pairs of Red-breasted Mergansers on the lake to pursue. Always a great bird to photograph.

Red-breasted Mergansers

There are a few resident Common Scoters over at the Wetland Centre in Arundel. They would be a lot easier to photograph but they don't have the same magic as a wild bird.

I had a quick look at the Turnstones and Purple Sandpipers on the harbour wall and then headed for home.

Little Stint

I was down at Widewater Lagoon this morning to see the Little Stint. It's a bird for which I have never really managed to get a decent picture and this looked like an ideal opportunity. It was easy enough to find but not so easy to photograph. It is only about the size of a House Sparrow so from the footpath on the bank you only get a distant shot even with the big lens.

Little Stint

You get the chance to do a digital enlargement on the computer but there is only so far that you can push it without losing the quality. The shot above, for example, starts to lose detail and sharpness and could not really be enlarged much further than shown below.

One or two of the shots came out OK but at this distance you never really get the quality you want.

How do you go about getting a better shot. Well you could try getting closer. The shot below must have been taken from the bank later on in the morning and has been circulating on Twitter.

Image taken from Twitter

The photographers will have taken really good quality close up pictures but they will have to balance this against the flack that they will get from the rest of the birding community for getting too close.

Are they doing anything wrong? Well if it was breeding season yes, but this time of year they are not really causing the bird a problem. If it was concerned or stressed it would fly away. The real problem is that you do not know how the bird will react  and there is no way of knowing if it will just take off and disappear into the distance. Then all the other birders that would like to see it miss out on the chance.

So is it acceptable and would I do it? Well probably yes if I found the bird out in the wilds and there was no one else about. In Widewater, no I don't think so. This is a LNR designated to protect rare plant and marine life as well as birds. The place has enough problems with vandals and rogue dog walkers and if bird watchers are seen wading out into the water how can you expect better behaviour from others. Its also a site that is easily accessible to a lot of people. The risk of scaring the bird away and disappointing others is just too great.

White-fronted Geese

Out with Dave today and we finally managed to catch up with White-fronted Geese a bird that we had failed to see last year. They had been reported at Cuckmere Haven and were fairly easy to find albeit that it meant wading through a lot of mud to get to them.

White-fronted Goose

 

They were in with the Canada Geese, which makes them a little easier to find, than when searching for them amongst Greylags.  They were probably feeling reasonably safe amongst such a large flock and this made them easier to approach.

White-fronted and Canada Geese

White-fronted Goose

Rain clouds were moving in when we located them so pictures were difficult. We waited a while but with the skies getting darker and the flock relocating to an adjacent field with the White-fronted further away we grabbed a few pictures and waded back through the mud to the car.

Working our way back along the coast we stopped at Seaford and at Newhaven Harbour to search for Kittiwakes and Fulmars. No luck with the former but the Fulmars were occupying nest building sites and performing aerobatics along the cliff faces. 

Fulmar - always appear to have strong pair bonding

And, it's difficult to pass Widewater Lagoon without stopping off to take yet more pictures of the Red-breasted Mergansers.

Red-breasted Mergansers

Diving

Hove - Grey Phalarope

I had just decided to pay a visit to the Gull roost at Goring when an alert came through for a Grey Phalarope on the children's paddling pool at Hove Lagoon. It seemed a bit unlikely. The pool is in a really busy area, it was a Sunday afternoon, and the first dry day for a long time. It would be packed with people, children, and dogs, and it was probably the last place I would think of looking for such a bird. Still, if there it would be a year tick and its not a bird I could guarantee catching up with later in the year.

I am glad I went and my thanks to whoever put out the alert. It was a great bird to see and it seemed to have no fear of people or dogs.

Grey Phalarope

It was overcast and drizzling by the time I got there so the pictures were never going to be brilliant but I did get a few record shots. It was not too difficult, as the bird was quite happy feeding only a few feet away from the gathered watchers. In fact I would have been better off with a smaller lens as most of the time I found myself having to back away from the bird to get the big lens to focus.

It did go out on the larger lagoon a couple of times but kept returning to the paddling pool which is only a few inches deep. They do seem to favour walking around in shallow water when they are feeding over having to swim on deeper water but I am not sure what food it would have found in the paddling pool.

On the way home I called in to Widewater to see he Red-breasted Mergansers. The weather was even worse by then and pictures were very difficult. They have been there for a few weeks now but I have yet to see them on a decent day.

Red-breasted Mergansers

Still, getting a picture of one catching a fish made it worthwhile.

Red-breasted Merganser with fish

 The gulls were out over the sea and seemed to be having a great time with the wind and waves. There is probably a lot of food being washed up and there were certainly more gulls on the sea at both Hove and Widewater than I would normally expect to see. Great to watch but all the action made it very difficult to spot anything unusual amongst them.