2022 Birding List

 

The start of another birding year and all those common birds that I wasn't interested in yesterday become important again. I have to see them for the new year list. It doesn't make any sense but I do it every year. I get home from the first day out birding thinking that I won't make a list this year. Then I realise that there are a couple of birds that I expected to see that were missing. Sometime in the next few days I go out looking for them and before you know it the year list has started.

Blackbird joins the Year List

This year was no exception. Skylark, Common Gull, Chaffinch, Black-tailed Godwit, Oystercatcher, Buzzard, Brent Goose, all birds I would normally have expected to see at the places I visited. These were all picked up within a few days but by then the list is running.

Water Rail

Equally interesting are the birds that you do see. I found Water Rail on my first days birding, when last year I didn't manage to find it until the end of November. Better still I had Bearded Tits by mid January when some years I do not get to see them at all.

Bearded Tit

I have seen them at various places but Farlington Marsh seems to be the most reliable location and the best if you want pictures. It's still not easy, these two images are the best of around forty shots taken. In all the rest the reeds have blown in front of the bird just as I took the picture or there are heavy shadows or too many burnt out areas spoiling the pictures. You have to get the timing right. Is it skill or just playing the odds. Take enough pictures and you are bound to get lucky eventually.

Bearded Tit

A few good waders about, this Greenshank found on the Adur in Shoreham and a regular in the channel running alongside the houseboats.

 

Greenshank

A quick visit to the North Wall at Pagham Harbour gave me sight of the Cattle Egrets coming in to roost with an added bonus of this Glossy Ibis flying in just before they arrived. I had hoped for sight of a Barn Owl which would have given me some detail in the pictures rather than the silhouette of dark feathered Ibis. Just as well it has a distinctive shape which along with the curved bill make the identification easy.

Glossy Ibis

A brief sea watch from Church Norton beach added Slavonian Grebe, Red-throated Diver, Red-breasted Mergansers and Razorbill but no picture opportunities. The Razorbill below was taken at Sovereign Harbour.

Covid, Moths, Orchids and a reluctance to travel long distances to see unusual birds has resulted in significant drops in my number of sightings over the past few years. I can't get excited by 5 or 10 kilometer patches but I do feel there is more to see within my immediate area. It will be interesting to see how the bird list develops over the year.

Shore Lark

 

December the 10th and Dave and I were at Sovereign Harbour photographing the Great Northern Diver and Guillemots. That night when I got home I looked at the messages on my phone and realised we had been just a couple of miles down the coast from a reported Shore Lark at Pevensey Bay. Bad mistake, must check my phone more often.

I told myself that I already had good pictures of Shore Larks and that it was no big loss but then it was reported again and then again the next day. By the 21st it was really starting to get annoying. Then when I checked I realised that I had not seen a Shore Lark for five years.  So back I went and after a bit of searching there it was.

There is a nice strip of land as you approach the Martello Tower where I was expecting to find it. It is sparsely vegetated shingle where the bird would find grass seeds and if it was lucky a few insects. Instead it was further west in front of the beach houses where it was foraging on ground that had recently been bulldozed into sea defence banking.

It seemed a strange place to find the bird but as the next two pictures show, it seemed to be finding plenty of seeds on the ground.

Leaving it for those eleven days before I went looking, worked out quite well and I had the bird all to myself for about two hours before anyone else turned up. Although I have to confess that I spent about half that time locating the bird, when a few extra pairs of eyes would have been useful.

It is always interesting, when you spend any time with a lone bird, to note just how long it spends checking out the skies for predators. The one eye on the sky pose ends up in a lot of my pictures. It makes you realise just how precarious a birds way of life really is.

The days are short at this time of year and I wasted what was left of it looking around Horse Eye Levels. It is one of those places that can sometimes really deliver but on most occasions all you get is a few crows and starlings. The best I found was a flock of about thirty Redwings that I managed to flush. Try as I might I could not see any Fieldfares amongst them as they flew away.

Lesser Spotted Woodpecker

 

You will probably see a lot of better pictures of Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers but for me these are special. I hadn't seen one for over 50 years and I have spent many hours looking. I have been close to a few. Standing at the bottom of a tree listening to the drumming, then hearing it start up again 50 metres away, when seemingly nothing had flown from the tree I was watching. A real bogey bird.

They are not a common bird in Sussex being mostly confined to a few woods in the northern part of the county. I really wanted to see one and for 2022 I had decided to target the New Forest, Burnham Beeches, and Cassiobury Park. All places I had tried before without success but this time it was going to be different. I would get there before the trees turned to leaf and spend all day looking for the Lesser Spot rather than getting distracted by other interesting birds. In 2022 I was going to nail it.

Then reports started to come in of occasional sightings of one in the Fattengates area of Pulburough Brooks. It had to be worth a look.

Needless to say it was not easy. Six hours walking the paths around the area last week just left me frustrated. Lesser Spots have big territories and it is pure luck being in the right place at the right time. Today I spent another morning walking the paths. By one o'clock I was ready to give up and move on. One last check and in the distance was a lone small bird foraging high in a tree. Most noticeable was its speed and style of movement flicking between branches. Backtracking a bit and I had it in the bins with the red cap clearly visible.

Getting a picture was an altogether different challenge. The light was poor, the camera was struggling to pull focus through the dense tree branches and the bird was moving rapidly making it difficult to keep in frame. It was also a long way off so these pictures are big crops. They are not good but then yesterday I had no pictures of Lesser Spots so they are better than nothing, a lot better.

I only had sight of the bird for a couple of minutes and when it flew it disappeared over the hedgerows and out of view. I searched but could not find it, perhaps its large territory means that it will travel longer distances between foraging stops.

As always, I would like to get some better pictures, so at some stage I will be going back for another look but for now I am more than happy. I have my record shots and seeing it now has freed up a number of birding days that were going to be dedicated to it next year.

The red cap shows that this is a male so we could be lucky with this one staying on territory and attracting a mate to the area as well.

Long-tailed Duck

 

There have been some good birds around over the past few weeks but not many of them have come close enough for a picture. Worse still the really good one, the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker was, for me at least, a no show.

I can't claim much credit for the Long-tailed Duck below. It has been around in Shoreham Harbour for over three weeks now and seems quite happy to swim over and put on a show when you go to visit it. The only difficulty is getting some decent lighting for the pictures.

Long-tailed Duck

Long-tailed Duck

and doing its Penguin imitation

Lots of female Goosanders along the coast. This one being one of four in Pagham Harbour.

Female Goosander

My first Water Rail of the year on the Breech Pool at Pagham Harbour. Recent modifications to the harbour mouth seem to have improved the flow of water out of the pool and with lower water levels the birds appear to be returning.

Water Rail

A Great Northern Diver, a couple of Guillemots, and an inquisitive Harbour Seal from Sovereign Harbour. Unfortunately I missed the Black-throated and Red-throated Divers that had been there a few days earlier.

Great Northern Diver

Guillemots 

We also had a couple of curious Harbour Seals

Harbour Seal

A visit to Pulborough Brooks gave me picture opportunities with Jays and Bullfinches but not even a sighting of the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker I was looking for.

Jay

Bullfinch

But you can always rely on a Dunnock turning up and posing in some decent light and with a good background.

Dunnock

Lets hope the LSW stays around and is just as cooperative!

Snow Bunting

 

With a Snow Bunting being reported in the sand dunes at East Head, Dave and I thought we would pay a visit. We hadn't been there for a couple of years. It is a really beautiful place but it's spoilt by too many people and hundreds of dogs, most of them off the leash.

We wouldn't have bothered for most birds but Snow Buntings seem particularly tolerant of disturbance and are adept at avoiding dogs. They take little notice of people and so usually offer the photographers some good picture opportunities. It was worth a look.

And look we did, for about an hour and a half, walking around the tide line and through the dunes. We could see no sign of the bunting and other birders we saw were leaving empty handed. The dogs got the blame but to be fair there were plenty of places amongst the dunes where the bird could have been feeding in safety.

In the end we gave it up as a bad job and headed back to the car to move on to another location. Then, much to our surprise, as we walked across the car park and were only about fifteen feet from the car, there was the Snow Bunting waiting for us. Or so it seemed at the time. In fact we only just managed to avoid stepping on it as it scuttled across the grass in front of us.

There was a bit of a panic as we had already packed the cameras away but the bird was very obliging, staying close by until we got our record shots. In fact it stayed within 20 feet of us for the next hour.

Nothing seemed to phase the Snow Bunting, people and dogs walking by, groups coming to see what we were photographing, cars and a tractor going past, and even a Land Rover splashing through the deep puddles at speed, less than ten feet from the bird.

I don't get to see that many Snow Buntings, this being the first for a couple of years but as they are so obliging you do tend to end up with a lot of good photographs of them. It was nice to get this one, with a background of grass and water, instead of the usual pebble beach where it tends to blend in.

Our target a couple of days later was a much less obliging bird. We were after Brambling. The technique is simple, find a big flock of Chaffinches and search it in the hope that there are a couple of Brambling flying with them.

The location was Friston Forest and we found our Chaffinch flock easily enough. We also identified at least three Brambling flying with them. So far so good, but unfortunately the light was very poor. A heavily overcast day, a location under the shade of trees, and a very skittish flock of birds. Added to that the Brambling is well camouflaged when feeding amongst the Beech Mast on the forest floor.

But again, this is a bird that I don't see very often and unlike with the Snow Bunting, it's not one that I get many good photo opportunities with. We did manage to get some record shots, they are not particularly good, but this is certainly a bird worth recording here and I think we will also be going back for a second go at photographing them.