American Robin

I have missed a lot of life ticks over the past few years. I don't like twitches and in particular I don't like twitches in urban areas. There is something really creepy about standing outside people's houses with binoculars and long lenses when they are opening their curtains in the morning.

So the American Robin at Eastbourne posed a real problem, a small cul-de sac on a quiet estate, the locals reported as tolerant of the crowds but for how long? It was on my county patch and although a common bird in North America it does not appear often in the UK, let alone in Sussex. I wanted to see it but my usual high risk approach of leaving it until the crowds have died down, had failed me recently and anyway did not seem appropriate, when a long running twitch was likely to antagonise the locals.

In the end I decided on an early morning visit and hopefully a short stay on site. It all worked out but the early signs had not been good. When I arrived there were already thirty to forty birders on site, gardens and roof tops were being searched and new arrivals were trying to park in the already crowded banjo. For me this was not comfortable or enjoyable birding.

However, what was enjoyable was the bird flying in within a couple of minutes of my arriving. It landed in a cotoneaster, where I managed to get a few record shots and I was then able to walk away from the site, within ten minutes of having arrived there. Checking the pictures later they were reasonable. I am sure if I had stayed around for some better light I could have improved on them but a life tick and record shot was a good result and I was walking away a happy man.

I thought about a return visit to the Hume's Warbler on the Eastbourne Seafront but having seen it twice and having failed to get a single picture in focus there seemed little point in a third visit. Instead I decided to call in on Splash Point at Seaford and Newhaven West Beach. Both turned up interesting birds.

I had been hoping for Kittiwakes at Seaford Head but there were none showing. Instead I found this ringed Rock Pipit.

It showed little fear of people and happily posed for pictures so I am sure many people will have seen and photographed it there. It was ringed in Maletangen, Møre & Romsdal, Norway 27 Sept 2021 and had already been reported three times from Splash Point with the earliest sighting on the 14 Jan 2022.

So this bird must be of the Fennoscandia subspecies littoralis and has migrated about 1500km to winter on the south coast of England. The dominant UK subspecies petrosus does not migrate.

Moving on to Newhaven I found a Gull with yellow legs on the beach. Unfortunately having yellow legs does not always make it a Yellow-legged Gull and with this one looking like all the other Herring Gulls on the beach other than for the colour of its legs I am going to have to call it as a Herring Gull. If there are any gull experts out there that can tell me otherwise I would be interested to hear from them.

Herring Gull

Other recent birds of interest 

A Redwing seen in the undergrowth at Warnham NR. It did not look to be in perfect health and was reluctant to fly but it was still actively foraging so may have survived. 

Redwing

A Bearded Tit from Farlington Marsh

Bearded Tit

and the overwintering Whimbrel from Pagham Harbour.

Whimbrel

It is good to have a bit more freedom to travel and to go out birding. The year lists for the past couple of years have been a bit disappointing and whilst I am unlikely to get back to the level of some of my previous years I am targeting 200 plus species this year.

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!