Spring migrants

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 White Wagtails with some Pieds in a bare field west of Kingston Lane.

A WhatsApp message to say that there were 3 Wheatears on Shoreham Beach prompted a minor detour on the way home to Beach Green where we soon relocated the birds and watched them as they moved west along the beach towards Widewater before perching up on the roofs of the Church of the Good Shepherd and nearby houses and finally departing inland to who knows where. Also seen was a party of 14 Brent Geese flying E. A return visit to Shoreham Fort was more successful than earlier with two more male Wheatears in and around the moat. Two Canada Geese (a scarce bird locally) on the Adur Saltings was a bit of a surprise. 







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