Hardly earth shattering but this morning there was a female Blackcap on the fat ball feeder in our Southwick garden, a bird I see less than annually here in the winter months.
Saturday 23rd April 2022 seems to be a bumper year for Early Spider Orchid with reports on social media of thousands of spikes on the Purbeck Coast in Dorset. Today we made our annual pilgrimage to Castle Hill NNR, near Brighton, one of the few Sussex sites for this species, where we were treated to the fabulous sight of hundreds of plants in the short downland turf on the west facing slope in the valley bottom. I was also hoping to find Early Gentian , another rare Sussex plant known from only a handful of locations, but despite a lengthy search we drew a blank. In the blustery conditions, birds were at a premium though a Yellow Wagtail and a Swallow passed overhead and at least 3 Lesser Whitethroats were heard singing. Also seen were a Kestrel , 2 Stock Doves , 5 Yellowhammers , a Corn Bunting and my first Wall Brown of the year. We then went to Mill Hill, sheltered from the north-easterly blast, where several Dingy Skippers at the bottom of the slope were new for...
Wednesday 27th April With overcast skies and a brisk NE breeze and cancellation of my planned breeding bird survey in Cambridgeshire, I convinced myself that Seaford Head would be awash with incoming migrants but my optimism soon evaporated with nothing more on my walk round than a couple of singing Willow Warblers and a Swallow . I then tried the Cuckmere where there 4 smart Bar-tailed Godwits on pools on the west side of the river near the beach, 7 Dunlin along the river itself and 6 Whimbrel in the salt marsh 200m south of the Cuckmere Inn. Apart from the waders, it was quiet, with just a feral Barnacle Goose for my efforts and the usual resident Fulmars , Stonechats and Rock Pipits on Seaford Head. I then tried Splash Point where there was nothing moving and all the Kittiwakes I saw were resting on the sea rather than on the cliff face. All I could think was that either egg laying had yet to commence or that the birds had been disturbed in some way, by Peregrines p...
In early May, Bridget and I visited Morocco for the third time using the services of the excellent Gayuin Birding Tours http://gayuin.com Most of the photographs in the blogpost that follows are mine except for a few of the better ones taken on 8th May by Hamid Birdwatching https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010514010519 Tuesday 3rd May Our half full EasyJet flight from Gatwick North Terminal departed bang on time at 06:25, arriving just over 3 hours later at a cloudy Marrakech. Immigration was the usual protracted affair (how long does it take to scrutinise a passport?) but surprisingly there was no checking of our Covid paperwork and seemingly no need for the ‘mandatory’ PCR tests we’d had done less than 48 hours before. Having reclaimed our baggage and changed some money into local currency (£1 = 11.7 Dirham), we headed out of the arrival hall where the familiar face of Hamid was there to meet us and our first Moroccan birds ( Kestrel , Pallid Sw...
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