Autumn migration has started, with a large number of Willow Warblers (or Wibblers, after their song) on the Downs: an eleven mile walk around Cissbury Ring and the Monarch’s Way found about 70 of them, as well as a Whinchat and 9 Wheatears. The mothing has been quiet, but we’ve had a few nice moths too.
Warm, isn’t it?
Being close to the sea, we were rather cooler than the record-breaking temperatures in the week, but it has still been pretty hot. The best moths have been either side of the hot days, with a plethora of new species for the garden, 5 in a fortnight, including some fairly scarce migrants.
Butterflies have also been plentiful, but the birds remain pretty quiet: that should change over the next few weeks.
Summer time…
… and the birding is rubbish. Still, there’s lots of butterflies, and the mothing is slowly picking up.
A walk up the down yesterday found Dark-green and Silver-washed Fritillaries in Sompting, Hummingbird Hawkmoths and a good supporting cast of other insects. Later we went to Knepp to find the Large Tortoiseshell that has taken up residence. It didn’t look promising, but after a while it was found drinking sap from an oak tree: rare, but not much to look at with a dull underside in the dark. Fortunately after about 20 minutes it flew out and sat in the sun at eye level close by.
Remarkably bad
Last night we went off looking for Nightjars. Unfortunately the males on our favoured common have stopped displaying around us and have moved to more inaccessible locations, making it unrewarding, until a female came and sat in front of us for a minute in reasonable light (reasonable for observation that is). The picture is bad, but remarkable that there’s a picture at all, at 2149.
A trip to the New Forest today was disappointing: only a brief view of a Goshawk and very few other raptors , and little else enlivened an otherwise pleasant walk.
Where’s Albert?
We had two more visits to Bempton while we were in Yorkshire, but both times the Albatross decided to hide from us, leaving me nothing to do but take pictures of Auks. Well, someone had to do it…
Still hanging on
Two contrasting challenges over the last two days: yesterday photographing fast-moving, unpredictable, Sand Martins in good light, and today woodland birds in appalling overcast light in the Dales.
The Sand Martins proved two things: 1) take several hundred photos and you’ll get something decent by accident, 2) they’re easier to take when perched.
The woodland birds were tough, but the camera produced some decent high ISO shots, that aren’t too bad after a bit of tweaking. The highlight was finding a Wood Warbler. They’re getting so scarce in Yorkshire that I’d given up on seeing one, so having an hour being trilled at by one was a real treat.
Bempton
We’re up in Yorkshire for the jubilee holiday, and no visit to Yorkshire is complete without at least one visit to Bempton, particularly when there’s an Albatross.
Unfortunately, Albert didn’t cooperate very much, with only a brief show of circling more distantly than last year, before flying out and settling on the sea at a distance. However, there was lots of opportunities to practice birds in flight…
Hobbies
Here’s a few hobbies: birdwatching, photography and beautiful falcons.
Having taken the plunge on a new camera and lens, I took it out on a walk on Friday to see what it could do. It can definitely focus! The Hobby was a very brief appearance.
On Saturday we went on a twitch (something of a novelty for us this year) to Kent, to see the Eleonora’s Falcon that has taken up residence. It was something of a challenge: a fast-moving falcon, among the local Hobbies, and it was also elusive. A detour to South Foreland to try and see the Sardinian Warbler was wasted time (no two-lifer day for us), but a return to Worth gave us nice views of it perched in its evening roost.
(The pictures are better than this: my gallery plugin seems to be making a mess of resizing them.)
All’s well that ends well
After a very early start on Friday to do a breeding bird survey before work, we had a late start and an afternoon visit to Woods Mill yesterday.
The transect was more interesting for migrants than breeders, with a total of 11 Spotted Flycatchers seen (including the walks to and from home). Compared with my highest total of spring Spotties of 3 in May 2019, that’s remarkable. We had a couple of Whinchats and our first Swifts of the year too.
Woods Mill was rubbish: no Turtle Doves, hardly any Nightingale action and not much else, other than a mass of Beautiful Demoiselles. We saw a Cuckoo on the way, and also had a Banded Demoiselle, but it was a big disappointment. The walk back was going to end up in the dark, so we had some hopes for owls: we needed something to make 24 miles hauling a 2 stone rucksack worthwhile. It paid off: we had a Barn Owl hunting on Bramber Brooks before a stop off in The Castle in Bramber for a beer (purely to make sure it got dark enough, you understand: the beer was a necessary evil). On the way back we had two other species of owl (including Tawny chicks), and a couple of badgers. A good end to an average day.
We had more signs of spring this weekend, with our first damsels and dragons on the brooks, while overhead a noisy Peregrine was bragging about its dinner.
A full day’s seawatch was disappointing, as usual this year, until late afternoon, after the wind had turned south east and Skuas started moving. Eventually four Poms came past at close range, along with two Arctic Skuas (and another Arctic harried a Tern just offshore from us: superb).
Meanwhile in the garden, a family of Robins, with five young, are hopping around and our Pheasant is proving approachable.