Saturday 22nd June - BIrds, Butterflies and Bees

Spring has been strange, some beautiful early spring weather in April and May, with most of June so far being a wash out. The birds have reflected the weather, a rather late start to spring passage but the early arrivals and resident birds seemingly getting their first broods fledged before the potentially disruptive rains, Hirundines seem to have had another poor showing this year with lower numbers of Swifts, Swallows and House Martins visible and despite the weather there still seems to be a trickle of late vagrants reported, which would be expected to drop away as we are now past the mid-point in June.

My last Black-winged Pratincole in the UK was 10 years ago at Reculver in Kent, a bird I saw with Gary Howard. I did see several of this species in January this year on the Zambezi in Zimbabwe, but they are rather nice birds and still rare visitors to the UK, with the last sighting 4 years ago. Such a bird turned up at Frampton Marsh RSPB reserve in Lincolnshire on Wednesday, reports from yesterday suggested the bird still to be present in the evening despite a potential wobble in the afternoon when a Pratincole sp was reported flying over Holt in Norfolk, just a short stroll from Frampton across the Wash on Pratincole wings. Gary suggested we try for the bird today so I drove to his house in Kent and we arrived at Frampton at 7.30am after a straightforward drive North of around 2.5 hours.

The other benefit of today was seeing another reserve that neither of us had visited before. The car park was already filling up on arrival, and a short walk allowed a quick assessment of the reserve layout, a long raised seawall enclosed a freshwater marsh with a mixture of pools, reedbeds, scrapes and partially pasture, with a good network of paths.

The focus for us was obviously to see the pratincole and quickly we walked to the largest gathering of birders on the reserve overlooking part of the freshmarsh, although the pratincole was not in view there were some loosely worded comments, all third-hand, that the bird had been seen first thing in the morning in the general area we were observing.

We continued to scan and look over the freshmarsh and were impressed with the reserve. It was around high tide so a good number of waders were roosting in various groups, large numbers of Bar-tailed Godwit and Red Knot, with a few Black-tailed Godwit. Little Ringed Plovers were numerous and Dunlin, Common Sandpiper and a single Golden Plover were seen. A Red-crested Pochard was on one of the pools and 3 Spoonbill flew over and couldn't settle on the reserve before eventually departing. Even after Gary had returned to the car having retrieved something to relieve the onset of hayfever, the star attraction hadn't shown and after a couple of hours we were starting to get the feeling the bird had long since departed and maybe those confusing reports of a Norfolk pratincole from yesterday had more truth about them relating to our quarry.

We continued a full lap of the reserve taking in some of the hides and added Sedge and Reed Warblers, a summer plumaged Black-necked Grebe, a nice looking Ruff, plenty of breeding Black-headed Gulls and a few Common Terns. By the time we arrived back at the car, where overflow car parks were in full usage, it was fairly clear to us the Pratincole was not here, however we both thought the reserve itself was quite impressive and it was good to visit somewhere new.

With very little else being reported on the bird front a change of tactic was the afternoon agenda. I would describe myself as interested in all wildlife, and although tentatively keep a list of mammals, my enthusiasm has never extended to extensive record keeping of butterflies, moths or dragonflies even though I like all things natural. Gary, however, has dedicated more summertime pursuit over the years to butterflies, orchids etc and only has a couple of species to complete the full collection of British butterfiles, so it was suggested we call into a Northamptonshire site called Glapthorn Cow Pasture on the way back to see if we could find the very localised Black Hairstreak.

Finding the small woodland was fairly straightforward, it was surrounded by rolling farmland and was a well managed mixture of deciduous woods and Blackthorn scrub which was easy to navigate. Very shortly after entering, the first patch of bramble held several Black Hairstreaks all viewable at eye level along with some Large Skippers and Meadow Brown butterflies a second patch held even more of these butterflies along with a fine looking White Admiral and Speckled Woods with a whole array of bees and other insects. We spent a good couple of hours in the woodland which was very enjoyable. We saw Garden Warbler, Blackcap and Bullfinch in the woods and a Yellow Wagtail flew over the car with a Yellowhammer singing in the background.

So despite missing our main target for the day it did feel as if this was rescued by the butterfly experience in the afternoon.

Spoonbill

Dome flooded pasture with Spoonbills in foreground

Common Tern

Roosting Bar-tailed Goodwits (with Ruff 6th from left)

Ruff, almost with a ruff !

Black Hairstreak

Large Skipper

This Bee was very large.. assume some sort of red-tailed Bumble

Also a large Bee..

Grassy rides at Glapthorn

Gary rather pleased with the new Butterfly

Friday 14th June - Wet Waders

Bemoaning the lack of waders this Spring on the south coast, this awful weather was bound to blow a few birds around and yesterday afternoon a Red-necked Phalarope was seen on Pulborough Brooks, so I headed there this morning arriving around 8.30am. It was still damp, overcast and windy but thankfully not with the downpours that we had experienced in the last few days. I walked straight to the Jupp's viewpoint over the north brooks where a few birders had gathered and the Red-necked Phalarope was soon on view on one of the pools , although a bit distant, scope views were satisfying enough. It was a full Summer plumage bird, probably a male as the red was limited around the neck but mighty fine it looked too. It had a habit of disappearing from view under a bank but it was there for around 20 minutes before it flew what looked like a short distance. I relocated to the hanger where it was seen again but quickly disappeared. So after around an hour I completed the walk around the reserve . There were quite a few Sand Martins and Swifts over the brooks but other waders were limited to a pair of Avocet, 4 Lapwing and a distant Reshank. A Lesser Whitethroat was calling and Common Whitethroats and Blackcaps seemed plentiful but I was keen to reach the car before another soaking arrived !

Wednesday 12th June - Wet and Windy

The occasional dry day has now turned into a steady stream of wet and windy weather, although towards the start of last week there was sufficient dry weather early mornings for me to complete another BBS on Stanley and Lynchmere Commons on the 6th.

My key aim was to try and get a more certain position on the number of breeding Common Redstart as this common had historically been quite a stronghold in the Wealden part of Sussex. I was partially successful, but could only conclude 2 breeding territories where there were 2 distinct singing males. I had another female bird carrying food slightly away from where one of the males was singing but could not conclude this was a different pair. I did have a success with 3 Woodlark territories and 3 Tree Pipit territories. Other birds included a good number of Garden Warblers, Blackcap, Linnet and to calling Cuckoo.

Back at home I have had more sightings of the Turtle Doves, mostly one but occasionally 2 together, they must have a nest site somewhere close, but I have still yet to hear their purring song. During last weekends stormy weather an Egret flew past the house, I couldn't get bins on it but assumed Little Egret.

On Sunday 9th I had a walk around an exceptionally quiet Pagham Harbour. This Spring has been strange on the South coast with very little wader passage at all and even though we are almost now nearer to the autumn migration time than Spring, there would often be a good number of waders in the harbour at this time. Other than a small number of Black-tailed Godwit, and resident Lapwing and Curlew the whole place was devoid of birds. The bushes were more active with a good number of Sedge Warbler, Reed Warbler, Common Whitethroat, Chiffchaffs and a calling Lesser Whitethroat. The gull and tern colony at Church Norton was busy with Sandwich Terns a few Little Terns and a small number of Common Tern although the dominant species was Black-headed Gulls with maybe a dozen pairs of Mediterranean Gulls.

Common Redstart (M)

Woodlark

Black-tailed Godwit

Sedge Warbler

Monday 3rd June - More local scarcities

The weekend highlight was another view of a Honey Buzzard, a Hobby and now 2 Turtle Doves in the garden. There is definitely a pair but I don't think they are nesting close as there is no calling and they seem to disappear for large periods but seem to like feeding on the ground in the company of Stock Doves, Woodpigeons, Squirrels and Jackdaws.

Yesterday I received a message from Dave B that he'd had a Wood Warbler nearby, a singing bird, but one that appears to have only just arrived in the area. So first thing this morning I went to the locality and sure enough a Wood Warbler was in full voice in a very small area on a south facing slope. I'm not sure he will be lucky enough to find a mate but it will be interesting to see if he hangs around. Also Woodlark, Tree Pipit and Stonechats seen.

A local Wood Warbler

A very active bird, marking out a territory

Woodlark

Turtle Dove with Stock Doves and Woodpigeon in garden

Wednesday 29th May - Local Birdrace

On Monday night, Hannah agreed to join me for an evening visit to Stanley Common to see if I could find any Nightjars or Woodcock. Looking back at the previous Breeding Bird Surveys of the common there have only been sporadic records of Nightjar although at least one if not more  Woodcock are reported annually.

We arrived about 8.45pm and allowed sufficient time to stroll to the southern end of the site which has a better open habitat, officially sunset was at 9.06, but it would be up to 30 minutes after this when any activity would be expected. A Cuckoo was calling away then at 9.00pm exactly the first Woodcock appeared on its Roding flight, which it did a couple more times then around 9.20 there were two Woodcocks seen chasing each other, then a Hobby started calling and circling low over the trees , perhaps giving away a nest where it went into roost, a closer look will be warranted over the next couple of weeks. Then exactly at 9.30 a Nightjar started calling but only for around 20 seconds, we waited another 15 minutes before it started calling again a little closer. So this was a satisfying excursion.

Last year Dave B and I did a Spring Birdrace following pretty much the same route as the Winter race, keeping locally, we thought we did reasonably well notching up 73 species, given the lack of decent water bodies in the area high numbers of species are always going to be out of the question. We agreed at the end of last week to try Wednesday for another attempt as this looked as if it had the best weather, that was until yesterday, when the forecast changed to afternoon wind and rain. We decided to press on. The other obstacles surrounded road/engineering works. Thames Water closed the main access points to Blackdown car parks in the last week for a months worth of digging and the footpath to the furnace pond has been shut for reconstruction of the small damn, so we tweaked our plans slightly.

We were on the road at 4am and the first stop at Valewood was to see if we could find the Barn Owl, which had been present in Winter. We had singing Song Thrush, Robin, Blackbird and Tawny Owl, but as the light began its slow progress we became conscious of time , walking back towards the car a quick look in the barn and suddenly the Barn Owl took flight along with a Kestrel !. So successfully we headed to Blackdown, unfortunately the change in access point meant that after a short drive it was the Sussex equivalent of scaling the north face of the Eiger, and so slightly out of breath with burning calves we arrived at the top and onto the heath but surely too light for the crepuscular species who must have gone back to bed. We kidded ourselves that Nightjar and Woodcock would happily wait for the evening session and moved on to add Blackcap, Whitethroat, Willow Warbler, Chiffchaff, Garden Warbler, with 2 Cuckoos very vocal. As well as common species other heathland species such as Stonechat, Linnet, Woodlark, Tree Pipit and Dartford Warbler all fell into place and then a Redstart, which by no means was certain here, we also managed to scope Mandarin and Canada Goose on a pond in the valley, we descended back to the car having totalled 35 species.

The next stop was to Ebernoe Common, having not been there for a couple of years, it was a bit of a gamble that any Nightingales would still be singing as they often go quiet at the end of May, luckily, after a walk round the reserve where we had only really added Stock Dove and Marsh Tit, we had 2 Nightingales in full voice along with Skylark and Firecrest added it was a decent return.

Next was to a small pond Dave had identified just south of Lurgashall, this turned out to be a great spot as there were 2 Great Crested Grebes on the water along with Coot, Moorhen and family of Greylag Goose, all these being considered local rarities we also had GreyWagtail, Swift and Swallow and another good bird was Reed Warbler. We headed back towards Fernhurst and stopped at a vantage point to scan the distant Woolbeding ridge, quickly adding Red Kite and Green Woodpecker to get us to 60 species. The surprise from here was a pair of Spotted Flycatchers and a Crossbill.

We called in briefly at home adding Starling and Greenfinch, then carried on to Woolbeding, Siskin and Coal Tit went on the list before we had a gull double with Lesser-black backed and Herring, then  a female Honey Buzzard was well appreciated as was a distant Cormorant and 2 Sparrowhawks.
Walking back to the car the weather had closed in and the predicted rain had started, so any more raptor watching was off the agenda. We headed further west firstly to Cook's Pond, seeing a surprising Tufted Duck on the way on the village pond in Milland. The big coup here was Dave spotting a Kingfisher fly towards the back of the pond and luckily I got onto it before it disappeared.

We were now on 76 species, so 3 more than last year, the weather was officially awful, but we carried on to Combe Pond, and only shortly before returning to the car did we add bird number 77, a Reed Bunting. It was about 2pm and despite being soaking wet we were quite pleased with ourselves but running out of options. We decided on a long shot to head to a couple of fishing lakes at Shilinglee, which neither of us had really stopped at before and we starting to ask ourselves why until we got there, the lakes were quite large but devoid of all avian life and surrounded by rhododendrens.
So we gave that up quite quickly and headed back to the vantage point over fernhurst again as momentarily we thought it might clear a little, other than a large number of House Martins feeding the weather then closed in again including a fog, so we headed back to my house for a cup of tea and cake and decided that the weather was set for the rest of the day so we finished on a respectable 77 with 80 species definitely in with a shot next year.

Saturday 25th May - Local Birding

I arrived back from Taiwan last Sunday and spent a couple of days readjusting my time clock, I was in Germany on Tuesday, but needed to carry out another Breeding Bird Survey so on Thursday  morning (23rd) I went early to Stanley and Lynchmere Commons. I wasn't necessarily expecting much change since the last visit but that was the very start of the month so it would be interesting to see what was different.

The first success was at least one more Redstart, although I had a 3rd bird singing this was slightly outside the recording area, so I registered 2 territories. There were plenty of young birds around and the songsters were still in full voice, with Blackcap, Chiffchaff, Willow Warbler, Garden Warbler in good numbers, although only 1 Whitethroat and at least 2 Cuckoos. There were 2 Tree Pipit territories and new for the year a Spotted Flycatcher. Also pleasingly, I found another Woodlark so with 2 territories I think that is probably the maximum the site could hold. So it was a good visit, I now need to plan an evening visit to look for Nightjars.

The other success of the day was a Turtle Dove at home, that I flushed from the back of the Veggie patch, and I saw it again today, so hopefully it will hang around.