Warblers pour in

The wind remains from the east but it was much lighter with day temperatures yesterday (8th April) reaching about 18 C by the afternoon. As it seemed like good arrival conditions I got up early before easter family stuff and walked from Halseys to Pagham Spit and then back through Honer fields. 81 species of just over 1000 individuals HERE, There had indeed been a large arrival of migrants with a male Wheatear, 10 Sedge Warbler, 4 Reed Warblers, 3 Whitethroats, 2 Willow Warblers, 21 Chiffchaffs, 2 Barn Swallow and a few Mipits going over. The Spotted Redshank was also still in White's creek (presumably a different bird to the Ferry Channel bird). Elsewhere on the Peninsula other birders recorded Little Terns, Lesser Whitethroat, House and Sand Martins, more Wheatears and a Barnacle Goose flew east with a few Brents HERE. 

The tern and gull colony at Norton was busy with over 100 Sandwich Terns and Black-headed and Med Gulls. Little and Cattle Egrets and Grey Herons were on nests in the Owl Copse colony.

Waterbirds in the harbour had more less emptied out since my last visit HERE wuth harbour populations roughly down by half from 2000 to 1000 birds over the last couple of weeks (down from 13,000 at peak winter counts). I only had 4 Wigeon, 15 Teal and no Pintails. Brent Geese were down to 2 birds. Shoveler numbers were also down to about 15 birds (mainly on Ferry). Shelduck numbers are holding up (there were even six birds in the field opposite our house). Wader numbers were right down to 80 Dunlin, 10 Knot, 30 Grey Plover and a single Lapwing. 3 Barwits included a nice summer plumage male. I'm capturing my personal data on the Pagham Harbour RSPB and LNR- Pagham Harbour area Ebird hotspot (the more people that use a single hotspot the better the overall big picture for the harbour) with the bar charts for this year capturing some of the major trends HERE.

The species diversity is maintained at around 80 species with the arrival of the summer migrants. My personal local year list now on 145. 

The night temperatures held up to around 10 C so I put the moth trap out with the best night this year for diversity with 17 species of about 40 individuals. Also the first migrants of the year- a couple of Rusty-dots. The moth year list is now on 37 species. 

Male Wheatear- quite a peachy uniform wash to the underparts so possibly a Greenland/Northern bird

The last Brents in the harbour 

Tawny Pinion -Seems like a finally got these two right with the dark thorax of Tawny (above) seperating it from Pale (below), approved by the CMR. 

Pale Pinion

Nut-tree Tussock

Lunar Marbled Brown 

Pale Prominent

Powdered Quaker

Chocolate-tip