Warblington - 7th February

After a survey for work I popped into Warblington near to Havant to year tick Cattle Egret. The fields around Church Lane are a regular wintering site for these ever more common birds and I quickly found five birds feeding with cattle and giving good views. My eBird list for the site can be viewed here: 

Warblington and Portsmouth - 17th & 18th November

With winter upon us I have been busy completing the first tranche of winter bird surveys at work. A visit to Warblington to the east of Portsmouth on 17th November produced a nice flock of four Cattle Egret feeding in coastal grassland with 17 Little Egret. The Cattle Egret consisted of two adult birds and two juveniles and I suspected that they were a family unit. My eBird list for the morning can be viewed here.

Cattle Egret - Warblington, Hampshire

Cattle Egret - Warblington, Hampshire

Cattle Egret - Warblington, Hampshire

Cattle Egret - Warblington, Hampshire

After a bird survey in Dorset on 18th November I popped to nearby Portland for a juvenile Rose-coloured Starling at Easton. The bird has been present since 3rd September when it was seen in the south of Portland but has since settled with the large Common Starling flock at Channel View Road, Easton. My eBird list for the site can be viewed here.

Rose-coloured Starling with Common Starling - Channel View Road, Easton, Portland

I then made a brief stop at Ferrybridge where a scan of the harbour produced two Great Northern Diver.  At Ferrybridge the small flock of Dark-bellied Brent Goose held the long staying Pale-bellied Brent Goose and Black Brant. But most remarkable was the large flock of 1,600 Mediterranean Gull loafing on the mudflats as the tide fell, a large proportion of these birds were adult. My eBird list for the harbour and ferry bridge are here and here.

Pale-bellied Brent Goose - Ferrybridge, Weymouth, Dorset

Black Brant - Ferrybridge, Weymouth, Dorset

Dark-bellied and Pale-bellied Brent Goose - Ferrybridge, Weymouth, Dorset

Part of flock fo 1,600 Mediterranean Gull - Ferrybridge, Weymouth, Dorset

Pennington Marsh - 6th November

After dropping Tobias at school I paid a breif visit to Pennington Marsh mainly to see the Grey Phalarope that had been present since 26th October on Oxey Lagoon and two Cattle Egret that were found yesterday. Arriving at the car park at the bottom of Lower Pennington Lane I quickly located one of the two Cattle Egret preening on the north edge of Efford Lagoon. After a short while this single bird flew east and joined the second bird feeding around cattle on the campsite to the north of the Lower Pennington Lane carpark. I then headed to the coast hearing a Brambling fly over and a couple of Redpoll. At the coast there were good numbers of Brent Goose, Wigeon, Grey Plover, Dunlin and Knot while to sea there were 12 Great-crested Grebe and six Eider. At Oxey Lagoon the Grey Phalarope showed well in the morning sun as it fed in the western corner of the lagoon and I watched this bird for around 45 minutes. In the scrub along the edge of the lagoon were four vocal Dartford Warbler and a Firecrest - the latter is a scarce bird at Pennington.

Grey Phalarope - Oxey Lagoon, Pennington Marsh

Grey Phalarope - Oxey Lagoon, Pennington Marsh

Grey Phalarope - Oxey Lagoon, Pennington Marsh

Brent Goose - Oxey Lagoon, Pennington Marsh

Distant shot of one of the Cattle Egret - Lower Pennington Lane, Pennington Marsh

It was a beautiful still day and so I took my sound recording kit with me, here are a mixed flock of Wigeon recorded on Pennington Lagoon with the guttural female calls shown on the sonogram as vertical broadband lines and the evocative male 'wheeoo' calls shown as large inverted 'V's.

This is a recording of one of the Dartford Warbler I saw today. The recording is a substantial length of song while the sonogram shows a short sample of the same song. This was a singing male interacting with two immature birds so various calls can be heard in the recording. The sonogram conveys the scratchy sound of the song with occasional upward, downward and near constant frequency notes thrown in.

Finally, this is the Firecrest at Oxey Lagoon with various seeping calls and a single uprising contact call.

Cornwall - 16th-20th March

A long weekend in Cornwall and nothing much planned, I wanted to relax after a busy time at work, watch the final matches of the 6 Nations and drink some wine! But there were a few birds to see and I decided to bird on the morning of 17th before abandoning the bins and relaxing (unless of course something good was found).  So, on the morning of 17th I was up at 06:30 and on my way to Helston where a Bonaparte's Gull (1st winter) had been present on the boating since 5th March. I arrived at the boating lake at 07:30 and there was no sign of the bird but in the southern end of the lake was a flock of around 75 Black-headed Gull and I decided that this was the obvious place where the bird would appear. I waited for 20 minutes with no luck and then decide to walk around the lake seeing Shoveler, Tufted Duck, Chiffchaff and Grey Wagtail. By the time I returned to the southern end a brief scan revealed the Bonaparte's, obvious because of its small size even at a distance. For the next hour or so I enjoyed good views of this diminutive gull as it loafed amongst the Black-headed Gull and occasionally uttered a distinctive tern like call.

On 19th a morning on the beach with Nigel, Alice, Sarah and the boys found us playing rugby - of sorts! Off shore there were three Sandwich Tern, my first migrants of the year.

Bonaparte's Gull, note the black bill, blackish wing markings and neat trailing edge to the wing. Helston Boating Lake.

Bonaparte's Gull - Compare the wing and head pattern to the Black-headed Gull in the background. To me this species is intermediate between Black-headed Gull and Little Gull. Helston Boating Lake.

Bonaparte's Gull - Helston Boating Lake.

Bonaparte's Gull - Note the clean white underwing and bubble-gum pink legs. Helston Boating Lake.

Bonaparte's Gull. Helston Boating Lake.

Bonaparte's Gull. Helston Boating Lake.

Bonaparte's Gull - This image is roughly to scale with the Black-headed Gull below. 

Helston Boating Lake.

Black-headed Gull (1st winter) - Roughly to scale with the image of the Bonaparte's Gull above. The greater bulk and orange to red bill of the Black-headed is distinctive and obvious. While the dark tertial centres are said to be darker on Bonaparte's this is not obvious. Helston Boating Lake.

Bonaparte's Gull. Helston Boating Lake.

Bonaparte's Gull. Helston Boating Lake.

Bonaparte's Gull - Note the distinctive white underwing with neat dark trailing 

edge to the primaries and secondaries. Helston Boating Lake.

Bonaparte's Gull - Note the distinctive white underwing with neat dark trailing 

edge to the primaries and secondaries. Helston Boating Lake.

Shoveler - Helston Boating Lake

Shoveler - Helston Boating Lake

Coot - Helston Boating Lake

Coot - Helston Boating Lake

Rook - Helston Boating Lake

With time now pressing on I spent an hour on the Hayle Estuary scanning the saltmarsh at Lelant. I quickly found the three Cattle Egret reported yesterday and one of the two Iceland Gull plus a Spoonbill - quite a nice selection for such a small area of marsh. Other birds here were Bar-tailed Godwit (3), Greenshank (1), Pintail (5), Wigeon (c.150+) and Mediterranean Gull (3).

Cattle Egret (3) with Herring and Black-headed Gull - Hayle Estuary

Iceland Gull (1st winter) with Wigeon and Herring Gull - Hayle Estuary

Iceland Gull (1st winter) - Hayle Estuary

Iceland Gull (1st winter) with Black-headed Gull - Hayle Estuary

Spoonbill with Redshank and Lesser Black-backed Gull - Hayle Estuary

Spoonbill - Hayle Estuary

Spoonbill with Herring Gull - Hayle Estuary

Eling, Hampshire - 10th January

My birding has lacked inspiration so far this year. We spent the Christmas period in the Cotswolds and the Blue Rock Thrush at Stow-on-the-Wold was just a 30 minute drive for me but I couldn’t face birding with the hordes in a town. I just couldn’t do it no matter how much I wanted to see the bird, tales of birders with ladders peering over walls, this is not me, I could not face the numpty crowds. Then on the 9th I had a few hours to spare and headed to Pennington Marsh, I picked up my camera to shoot a nice close Little Egret and the battery was dead, it was so long since using it that I had forgotten to check the battery power – school boy error. And then the heavens opened and I got a good soaking as did my dead camera. Should I give up birding in 2017, it was all a bit depressing. That said, the birding was quite nice at Pennington with two Slavonian Grebe, a Great Northern Diver, 350 Golden Plover plus good numbers of the usual Wigeon, Pintail, Teal, Brent Geese etc. At the campsite I enjoyed great views of a flock of around 1,000 Brent Goose amongst this flock was a ringed bird which had a lime (but possibly stained white) ring on the left leg with the code RRR – I am looking into the origins of this bird but I find the European Colour-ring website terribly clunky to use and responses from scheme coordinators painfully slow.

On the 10th Januray I had a bird survey to do near to Eling on Southampton Water. A quick stop for the Cattle Egret gave good views but as I walked along the road the bird flushed and flew high in to a tree. There has been a significant influx of Cattle Egret in the UK this winter and good numbers have been recorded in Hampshire, I am convinced that this bird will ultimately be joined by other birds as has happened elsewhere. My bird survey was relatively uneventful bit I had nice views of a wintering Green Sandpiper.

With a weekend in Cornwall coming up I am hoping for a few good birds for the year – oh, and I don’t think I will be giving up birding in 2017!

Cattle Egret - Eling, Hampshire

Cattle Egret - Eling, Hampshire

Green Sandpiper - Eling, Hampshire

Redwing - Eling, Hampshire

Pennington Marsh and Cattle Egret at Marchwood - 14th December

After dropping Tobias at school I had a couple of hours to kill before a bird survey at Marchwood so I popped to Pennington Marsh in beautiful sunny conditions. I spent a fair bit of time at the corner of Lower Pennington Lane before heading to the car park and walking to Efford Lagoon before heading out to the seawall, past Butts Lagoon and back past Fishtail lagoon. There were a lot of birds around especially on the Pennington Marshes floods with 100's of Teal, Wigeon, Lapwing, Shoveler and Pintail. High up was a flock of around 500 Golden Plover, these put on a spectacular show as they dropped in overhead and onto the marshes. Judging by their height I guessed that they had probably travelled a great distance to get here. On the grasslands at the campsite was a flock of around 200 Brent Goose which showed well in the beautiful morning light. Along the seawall the tide was very high and the wader roost on the saltings was inundated forcing the multitude of Dunlin, Knot and Grey Plover to fidget and lift in spirals of swirling birds. Two Bearded Tit flew over the reedbeds high to the west pining as they went. It was a lovely morning and I wished I could have stayed longer.

Brent Goose - Pennington Marshes

Brent Goose - Pennington Marshes

Brent Goose - Pennington Marshes

Brent Goose - Pennington Marshes

Lapwing - Pennington Marshes

Cormorant - Pennington Marshes

Golden Plover - Pennington Marshes

Golden Plover - Pennington Marshes

Golden Plover - Pennington Marshes

Golden Plover - Pennington Marshes

Golden Plover - Pennington Marshes

Golden Plover - Pennington Marshes

Golden Plover - Pennington Marshes

Golden Plover and Lapwing - Pennington Marshes

Snipe - Pennington Marshes

Snipe - Pennington Marshes

After my bird survey a drove up Marchwood Lane in Marchwood and noticed a flock of Little Egret in the field. I swore that one had a yellow bill but at 40 miles an hour it was hard to be sure so a quick U-turn and I was watching my first ever self-found Cattle Egret feeding with a flock of 12 Little Egret. I was pretty chuffed with this despite the species becoming progressively more common as the years pass.

Cattle Egret and Little Egret - Marchwood, Southampton

Cattle Egret and Little Egret - Marchwood, Southampton

Cattle Egret and Little Egret - Marchwood, Southampton

Cattle Egret and Little Egret - Marchwood, Southampton

Cattle Egret and Little Egret - Marchwood, Southampton