Blackcap

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Early Spider Orchids

Image
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...
Read more

Little Bittern

Image
The Brown Booby found exhausted on Hove Beach on 2nd January took me back almost 34 years to one of the more improbable and memorable experiences of my birding lifetime. It's a tale that's been told before but hopefully people won't mind if I tell again, especially as it took place no more than a mile to the west of where the Booby was found.  On 30th March 1988 I was driving eastwards along the A259 and had stopped at the traffic lights by Hove Lagoon. Something caught my eye and to my utter amazement there in the gutter on the side of the road next to where I had stopped was what I recognised immediately as a male Little Bittern ! Once the traffic lights had changed, I drove on a bit, pulled up on the side of the road (there was less traffic then) and ran back, grabbing the bird before it could fall victim to a passing car. In the absence of anything to put it in, I sat it on the back seat of the car where it quickly adopted an erect alarm-posture. From Hove Lagoo...
Read more

Red-rumped Swallow

Image
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...
Read more