Following successive winter storms, they seem to be barrelling through at 6 or 7 day intervals, we have had a couple of days of calm weather albeit very murky where the day never seems to get properly light.
Last week a Black Down visit with Paul B was almost a complete blank with 2 Dartford Warblers, 2 Stonechat and 2 Goldcrest but otherwise not a bird in sight, so we tried the Furnace pond afrea where at least a flock of c150 Linnet provided some interest with 3 Bullfinch probably the highlight and unusually for nearer home a Stonechat was behind the candle factory.
The birds at home have been enlightened by a Hawfinch that I've now seen on 3 different days. Never close, it flies so quickly, alighting briefly at the top of one of the trees either in the garden or around the field, then dropping somewhere to feed. Such a colourful finch with an unfeasibly large steel blue bill a real bonus to have on the garden list for the year.
An increase in other birds feeding in the garden include up to 18 Stock Doves, a few Pheasant, 10+ Jackdaws, 10+Blackbirds larger numbers of Blue and Great Tits, 2 Coal Tits , a sporadic Long-tailed Tit family of 8 birds and a very occasional Marsh Tit. The finches feeding in the Alders have been as high as 20 Goldfinch and 30 Siskin, although the Siskin flock seems very infrequent to the area and Chaffinches have increased to 6. At least 3 Great Spotted Woodpeckers and 2 Nuthatches are fairly regular, but the Redwing all seem to have dispersed and no Brambling yet.
On Thursday I went to Selsey as I hadn't been for a while. A decent number of species with the highlight being my only Red-necked Grebe for the year with also 3 Great-Northern Divers, 15+ Red-throated Diver, 1 Velvet Scoter, 1 Slavonian Grebe, 2 Sandwich Tern, 5 Shags and a number of auks all of the identifiable ones being Razorbills.
A visit to a very cold Church Norton had us scanning through the very large Brent Goose flock that was in the field behind the car park as a Black Brant (branta bernicla nigricans)had been seen a couple of days ago, there was no sign of this vagrant sub-species but the noisy flock of c2000 birds did have 2 Pale-bellied versions (branta bernicla hrota). the field also had a covey of Red-legged Partridge and a single Redwing and Fieldfare flew over. The harbour was just receding from high tide with a number of the commoner waders species visible Grey Plover, Dunlin, Knot with 2 Bar-tailed Godwit and 30 Pintail being the best with a very distant flock of c400 Golden Plover at the other end of the harbour in flight.
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| Hawfinch |
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| Red Kite at home |
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| Red-throated Divers |
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| Great Northern Diver |
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| Some Dunlin in the harbour |
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| Brent Geese |
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