A moment to celebrate.
Birds seen at or from home has always been fairly important to me both for record keeping and also the significant pleasure when you see a good bird at home that might be common elsewhere. In our previous house, Greyhound House which was fairly rural, I recorded 91 species in the 13 years I was there. I had no particular expectations when we moved to Fernhurst 10 years ago as there was some similarities in habitat to Greyhound with no real significant water bodies nearby and perhaps expected a similar number but not necessarily more. Today I reached a milestone with my 100th bird species at home, a Lesser Whitethroat. It was with a small bird flock which included a Blackcap ,Willow Warbler and the usual Tit species and was seen a few times over the course of an hour this morning. Lesser Whitethroats are not uncommon Summer migrants but for some reason in this part of Sussex we don't seem to have any population at all. At Greyhound, which is only 6 miles away, I saw them on several occasions and in the last couple of years they bred in the hedge surrounding the house.
So far this year I have seen 5 new birds for the garden list.
Common (mealy) Redpoll - Feb
Curlew - March flyover
Common Tern - June Flyover
Med Gulls - flock of 20 over the valley a couple of days in June
Lesser Whitethroat - August.
I also had a possible Great White Egret in flight in May that I got an insufficient view of before it disappeared behind trees and on 14 August with Paul Bowley, when we had just set up the moth traps an almost certain Nightjar flew over, which was both our conclusion, but the view was just too brief to conclude that I could add this to my list. Pretty unlikely it will happen again.
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| This was the first view I had of the Lesser Whitethroat in a Hawthorn near the chicken pen |
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| Lesser Whitethroat |
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