Birds, plants and more in Sussex and beyond

Wednesday 29th March The first spring Wheatear is always a delight and an eagerly anticipated event in the birding calendar.  With a change in the weather to cloudy skies and a few drops of rain, I had high hopes that today might be a  Wheatear  day, a bird  that has been thin on the ground so far this spring. My early optimism soon evaporated when we arrived at Shoreham Fort to find it devoid of  Wheatears  and not a lot else on offer either bar 38 roosting  Turnstones  at the start of the east arm and 3  Mediterranean Gulls  and 3  Sandwich Terns  moving up Channel. With news that the female  Ring Ouzel  found yesterday was still in the paddocks west of the Ferring Country Centre, we cut our losses, headed over there and had good scope views of the bird feeding along the fence line on the western edge of the paddocks. From here we continued west and then south towards the coast where we found 4 smart...

Wednesday 23rd March   Having completed our first breeding bird survey of the season near Horam, we relocated to Arlington Reservoir where there wasn't too much to see bar 2 male  Shoveler , 4 adult  Lesser Black-backed Gulls  and 2  Grey Wagtails  on the dam.Yesterday an adult winter  Bonaparte's Gull  had been found on the West Trout Lake at Chichester Gravel Pits, a continuation of the purple patch Sussex is currently enjoying. With news that it was still present this morning, I didn't need too much persuading to abandon my plans to work on a survey report and head down to Chichester instead. We got there to find just a handful of people watching it hawking for flies over the pit with some  Black-headed Gulls . Most of the time it wasn't particularly close but occasionally it would come nearer into the bay to our right, giving good views. However, I failed miserably in my attempts to photograph it, not helped by the distance and the sun be...

  Sunday 20th March Twice a year in March and November Gareth and I spend a morning at an antique bottle show held annually in Alton in Hampshire. This is an opportunity to rummage through the many stalls at the show in the hope of adding to our collection of antique bottles from Sussex towns and also meet other collectors. Today was moderately successful with two new stoneware ginger beer bottles from Lewes and Seaford added to the collection.    Having finished at Alton, our next stop was Thorney Island where a Black Brant (the N American race of Brent Goose) had been seen a few days ago. Although it was high tide, we could only find a handful of Brents at Eames Farm, all distant and impossible to scrutinise closely due to the heat haze. We quickly gave it up as a bad job and decided instead to go and have a look for the pair of Red-crested Pochard at Chichester Gravel Pits which according to BirdGuides had relocated from Ivy Lake (where they’d been for the last two ...

An early morning walk from home to Southwick Beach was rewarded with stunning views of a male Peregrine hunting over the shingle which then flew past at eye level no more than 20 metres away up on to the power station chimney. Also a Red Kite that flew NW at 07:45 much to the displeasure of the local gull population and a Rock Pipit on a warehouse roof. Thoughts of a seawatch were quickly scuppered by finding the gate of the east harbour arm padlocked though in fairness there seemed to be nothing moving up Channel in the stiff NE breeze. No sign of the Long-tailed Duck on Southwick Canal though it has been elusive recently and could still be hanging on, 5 Greenfinches there and a singing Coal Tit in gardens adjacent to Southwick Green for its second day, the first I can recall in Southwick in the 23 years we've been there.  We also found Danish Scurvygrass in flower on Southwick Beach by Carat's Cafe. This is an interesting plant that according to The Flora of ...

Friday 18th March Lesser Spotted Woodpecker is one of my favourite birds. When I first started birding in the 1970s it was a bird I saw fairly regularly in Horsham (where I grew up) in the alders along the River Arun, anywhere from Blackbridge Lane through to Kerves Lane, a distance of about two miles. On one memorable occasion I even had the good fortune to see four together near where Denne Road crosses the Arun - two pairs involved in a territorial dispute and one of the few times I've seen the butterfly display flight, in which the birds fly with exaggerated wingbeats and broadly spread wings.  The last few times I've looked along the Arun I've drawn a blank, hardly surprisingly given the calamitous decline that has occurred nationally in recent years. It's been 3 years since I last saw a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker in Sussex, so with the forecast predicting wall to wall sunshine and temperatures inland up to 16C, we visited a wet woodland in north Sussex where I...

Monday 14th & Tuesday 15th March A couple of nights away with Bridget at Hook Norton in the Cotswolds in north Oxfordshire where we went on a tour of the Hook Norton brewery, the finest example of a Victorian Tower Brewery in the country  https://www.hooky.co.uk/our-story/ The tour itself was excellent and very informative with an eagerly anticipated tasting session at the end. Highly recommended if you are ever up that way. Fortunately our visit coincided with some warm spring sunshine which made for a very pleasant walk along the Oxford Canal at Lower Heyford in which we saw Butterbur coming into flower and our first Brimstones and Small Tortoiseshells of the year. Also good to see was Spurge-laurel  and Creeping Comfrey in flower in the woods on the outskirts of Hook Norton. Spurge-laurel is  an evergreen shrub with glossy leaves found in open woodlands and hedgerows on chalky soils. Butterbur Spurge-laurel

Friday 11th March  Sadly Tree Sparrow is one of those birds that is becoming increasingly difficult to find in SE England. Even at Dungeness, where they were more or less guaranteed at Boulderwall Farm until fairly recently, they have largely disappeared and I can't even remember when I last saw one in Sussex. Over the winter we have been carrying out bird surveys on Romney Marsh. Our survey site to the north of New Romney and St Mary's Bay has plenty of House Sparrows but up until today we had failed to record Tree Sparrow in an area where according to one of the local residents they used to be regular. Over the last few autumns, I have made a number of visits to Spurn where large numbers of Tree Sparrows are still present and daily sightings are guaranteed. Their call is quite distinctive once learnt and, although the bird was not visible, I was confident that the call I could hear today coming from a hawthorn hedge adjoining a narrow lane across the marsh wa...

With spring just around the corner (though it certainly didn't feel like it today in a biting northerly wind), it's that time of the year where I inevitably start to think about taxa other than birds. A plant I've been keen to see for a while is Winter Aconite Eranthis hyemalis but with my recent health issues I haven't been able to summon the energy to go and see it despite occurring only 5 miles or so from home in Preston Park in Brighton. Winter Aconite is actually a native of Southern Europe, from Italy to Bulgaria and Turkey but it has been naturalised in the UK for a long time. The  Flora of Sussex describes it is 'scarce' occurring in 'open woodland; churchyards, road verges and other grassland and arising on shaded verges from dumped waste'. It was first recorded in Sussex in 1835 but well-known populations have a habit of suddenly disappearing for no obvious reason. Rather than drive into Brighton and struggle to find somewhere to park, we caug...

Saturday 5th March Earlier in the week, David Campbell had the good fortune to find a drake Green-winged Teal on Flat Beach at Rye Harbour. Not the most mouth watering of rarities perhaps but a good bird for Sussex nevertheless with only seven records this century and none since 2011. With no twitchable Green-winged Teal in Sussex since 2005, this was a bird Gareth especially was keen to see and I was happy to go along for the ride though I hadn't counted on being there at 06:15 before the car park was open! By 06:30 we had our scopes set up overlooking Flat Beach and, despite the sun having not yet risen, I soon found the bird some distance away with a small group of Eurasian Teal . We watched it for about 20 minutes and were able to point it out to three other arriving birders including Tom Sadler before it flew north with two Teal and was lost from view.  Having seen the Green-winged Teal, we then walked out to the mouth of the Rother where we soon found the Icela...

Sunday 27th February Since early November we have had the privilege of carrying out wintering bird surveys on a private estate near Hartfield. Sadly today was the final survey of the winter. A good tally of 46 species today included: Canada Goose (15), Mute Swan (3), Egyptian Goose (2), Shoveler (pair), Wigeon (6), Mallard (15), Tufted Duck (13), Moorhen (2), Coot (3), Black-headed Gull (75), Mediterranean Gull (1 adult), Common Gull (4), Cormorant (3), Sparrowhawk (1), Red Kite (3), Buzzard (10), Jay (1), Raven (2), Skylark (7), Goldcrest (2), Nuthatch (3), Treecreeper (2), Starling (11), Fieldfare (21), Song Thrush (6), Mistle Thrush (2), Dunnock (1), Grey Wagtail (2), Chaffinch (90), Brambling (1) and Linnet (11). Neither Shoveler nor Mediterranean Gull had been recorded in previous visits.  Both the 2020/21 and 2021/22 surveys recorded 71 species with a cumulative total of 78 species - an impressive total for an inland location in winter. Absentees ...