As the tail end of the spring sea passage approaches, there is still that glimmer of hope that something special will pass by the coast of Sussex, however the winds have generally been all wrong for any decent movements and it would appear the best activity was at the end of April rather than in May, the month has started on a cool and generally wet note with little prospect of change for a couple of weeks. Nevertheless, today was another day with potential, an Easterly wind, and I headed to Selsey for an early sea-watch.
There was a steady movement through the first couple of hours of the morning although nothing to get the pulse racing, with 13 Brent Geese (maybe the last of Spring !) 174 Common Scoter, 14 Common Terns, 4 Kittiwake, a Red-throated Dive, 4 Whimbrel, 14 Sanderling and 14 Swallows arriving, the highlights up to 9.30am were 4 Arctic Skuas a Hobby and a Peregrine.
It had quietened down and I was considering leaving the Bill, as I wanted to be home late morning, when news came through of a Golden Oriole sighting at Church Norton. This hastened my departure. Golden Orioles are difficult birds to catch up with in Spring as reports often involves a single brief sighting of a bird in flight or a snatch of song deep in trees with the bird never to be seen. However this sighting was in the last 5 minutes and it was en-route.
I arrived at Church Norton and headed straight towards the Severals where a small group of people were gathered. Andrew had seen the bird atop a bush, grabbing a couple of pics before it vanished. After a few minutes I was thinking that this would be another typical Spring encounter when Sam suddenly called, 'there it is flying'. My instinct was just to quickly raise my bins without really looking, and luck would have it that I was straight onto the male Golden Oriole as it flew and alighted in a distant tree. It perched long enough for me to get the scope on it and grab a couple of record pictures before it vanished again.. brilliant, this was my first Spring Golden Oriole in Sussex.
I returned home fairly excited.
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| Maybe the last Brent Geese movement of Spring ? |
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| Hobby |
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| Sanderling |
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| Arctic Skua |
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| Bit distant for pics but a nice male Golden Oriole |
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| Golden Oriole |
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