1st September - August, Second Half

On the 22nd I had agreed to visit Hannah near Sheffield for a couple of nights. As she was at work during the day I needed a plan to do something before arriving at her pace around 7pm. I decided to leave early on Tuesday and went to Frampton Marsh RSPB on the way. Its not exactly on route, but vaguely in the right direction and it gave me the afternoon to have a wander around the reserve before getting to Hannah's. I hadn't realised until later that this actually turned out to be a better plan as the M1 was completely closed Northbound and it would have taken me several extra hours if I' driven straight there.

Frampton is a fairly new RSPB reserve in Lincolnshire on the northern edge of the Wash. I have visited once before and thought it was excellent and it was no different this time. The number of waders and waterbirds the place attracts is exceptional and in the afternoon I managed to find the following.

Spoonbill   c30

Black-Winged Stilt 5 (2 juvs)

Curlew Sandpiper 6

Little Stint 6

Spotted Redshank 10

Greenshank 10

Wood Sandpiper 1

Common Sandpiper 2

Ruff c50

Little Ringed Plover 1

Avocet  20

Other waders included, Ringed Plover 12, Knot c30, Black-tailed Godwit c1000, Dunlin c50, Northern Lapwing.

There were also 2 Garganey present and Yellow Wagtails and Marsh Harrier were notable. 

An excellent afternoon, even if the Black Stork which had been around had temporarily relocated to Norfolk.

Some of the waders with Spoonbills in the background

Garganey in flight- looks like eclipse plumage male

Curlew Sandpiper and Ruff

Curlew Sandpiper

Little Ringed Plover

Black-winged Stilts

Ruff

Sparrowhawk with prey (think its a Reed Warbler)

On Wednesday 23rd, I headed about 40 minutes north to Old Moor, which is part of the RSPB Dearne Valley reserve, again a place I have not visited before and seems another excellent reserve. Even though inland, it has a reasonable number of decent size of lakes, scrapes and reed beds.

There were another 11 Spoonbills here with 2 Wood Sandpiper, 3 Green Sandpiper, 3 Greenshank and 10 Black-tailed Godwits. A Whinchat was unexpected and there were plenty of Chiffchaffs  and Blackcaps in the scrub. A Marsh Harrier was seen, which have apparently bred here. It was a really nice way to spend a few hours.

Little Grebe

!!!!!

Part of Old Moor

Area was quite good for waders

The remainder of August I tried to get more success on Black Down with several more visits, but it has been fairly disappointing, singles of Redstart, Tree Pipit, 2 Crossbill and 2 Wheatears on the 30th were the limited highlights.

Redstart

On the 29th I made another early morning visit to Selsey, with a light North Westerly wind not always conducive to seabird passage but the precious day in a similar wind an unusual double figure count of Balearic Shearwaters had been sighted. Knowing that often there are not 2 consecutive days that are good my expectations weren't that high.

There seemed to be a few duck moving as we had 3 Shoveler, 7 Teal and 10 Common Scoter fly through and there were Yellow Wagtails, House Martin and Swallows on the move, but other than that little seemed to be moving on the sea, until we had a couple of Balearic Shearwaters fairly distantly moving West then another 2, and then two more singles, what happened next we couldn't quite believe, there was a shout to say 'I have a few birds moving East', we then picked up a line of birds that grey even longer and wider, they were all Balearic Shearwaters fluttering just above the sea and moving East our estimate was 200 birds, shortly afterwards there were 2 more groups of 20 then 18 birds. All records were broken, a morning total of 238 birds East and 13 West the most ever seen in Sussex and another seabird spectacular. Totals of other birds were

Yellow Wagtail 20

Grey Wagtail 2

House Martin 67

Swallow 75

Sand Martin 64

Tree Pipit 1

Willow Warbler 1

Sparrowhawk 1

After this I went with Paul Bowley to Halseys Farm and the North Wall at Pagham hoping for some passerine migrants. Another surprise here was a Turtle Dove which flew briefly into the Rife before sitting at the top of a Hawthorn for 5 minutes eventually moving further back then seen briefly in flight heading North, my first of the year !. Also around were 4 Lesser Whitethroat, 6 Whitethroat, 2 Spotted Flycatcher, 1 Wheatear, 20+ Cattle Egret, some nice summer plumage Grey Plover, Whimbrel and a single Bar-tailed Godwit.

Turtle Dove

Wheatear