Pottering around at the Lodge

Kojak stayed over last night so we started the day off at the Bill HERE where the highlights included Great Northern and Black and Red-throated Diver, a Fulmar, a few regular seaducks, a couple of Sandwich Terns and the most unusual record was a single Yellowhammer, which are common on the Peninsula but scarce at the actual Bill. 

Kojak had a Tawny Owl from the Airbnb carvan yesterday night so I put out the noc-mig last night and still need to go through that. 

Aftter the Bill we then quickly checked out Ferry, HERE, which was pretty quiet before Kojak headed off home and I spent the rest of the day finally getting out into the garden to plant up some seeds for this year's food growing. I planted up a couple of rows of potatoes, using some of last year's crop as seed potatoes, and then sowed Sweetcorn, Tomatoes, Chillies, Peppers and some flowers and put them in the Conservatory propogator to germinate. 

Unfortunately most of the seeds I kept from last year were found by winter rodents who ate the lot so I had to 'buy-in' again although the plan this year was supposed to be to chain last year's crops. Will increase security next year. 

There were a few moths in the twin actinic last night including the year's first Clouded Drabs and Twin-spot Quaker (also Common and Small Quakers) and this afternoon I put the MOL Lure out and caught two presumed Early Oak Piercers, Pammene giganteana. Now on 16 species of moth for the year. 

Yellowhammer at the Bill

Early Oak Piercer aka Early Oak Gall Moth, Pammene giganteana. Only 16 previous records for Sussex according to the website HERE and looks like the first for the Peninsula. 

A bit of Clouded Drab variation (above and below)

The garlic that we planted in November is coming on well and we've still got carrots and spinach in the beds that survived the winter. I stuck two rows of potatoes in the spare space and the rhubarb is beginning to appear in the fence side.  I've been feeding the spinach to the live food for the reptiles. The furthest bed from the camera is planted up with perennial fruits (strawberries, black and redcurrants and also Lovage) so hopefully that will just do its thing and the middle bed is where the sweetcorn, peas and puleses will go. I also put in some potatoes in some of the pots and a good check of the fruit tree hedge on the whole of perimeter looks like its all survived the winter well. So that's the self sufficiency effort plan for this year. The daisies and violets are coming up in the lawns, primroses and lesser celendines in the front garden and the early spring bulbs that we planted are also going good. 

The 'ditch' in the front garden- I deliberately kept this 'messy' this winter (and got lucky that the flood water was not impeded)  in order to preserve the hollow stalks that might be harbouring invert larvae. We were rewarded last week with Sussex's second record of Mompha divesella which I caught at dusk here- so the plan seems to have worked. Will be going for a lot of wildlife garden features again this year with a meadow in the back and front gardens and are letting all the hedges go. Hopefully over time will build up the insect and breeding bird population in the garden. 

Garry Messenbird RIP

It was with great sadness that today we said goodbye to Beddington Farmlands Birding Legend Garry Messenbird. Garry started birding at Beddington in 1978 and birded there continously (practically daily through the 1980s) until he moved with his family to the Sussex coast in 2007. In those Beddington years (particularly in the 1980s and 1990s) he meticously recorded the birdlife of the farmlands and became a birding celebrity in 1984 when he found a Killdeer in February and a Lesser Yellowlegs in the autumn of the same year. He added countless other firsts for the farmlands and more importantly recorded the changing bird populations through some of the most important transitional years of the farmlands.  

Garry was a mentor to me and many other beddington boys and remains one of the best birders I've ever known. He had an arguably not particularly healthy disdain for authority and particularly had no time for rarities committees (he quite rightly knew that less skilled birders than him were in no position to judge his records) and he was stubbornly needless of any validation by anyone. As he didn't play by the rules, didn't submit descriptions or even attempt to provide evidence for his records (even though he often had good photos to back up everything) he may have appeared as an untrusthworthy observer for those who had never seen him in action and maybe that wasn't helped in some of his later years where older age and ill health may have also clouded some of his judgement. 

He was certainly one of a kind and indeed was the single cause of me having to conduct some writing gymnastics when I wrote the 'Birds of Beddington' as I had to have Garry's records seperate  (many of which I or others had either seen or seen the photographs of but he would never submit them to the official channels) and the official records (processed through the channels). There was then a palava when it came to publishing as some group members felt that only an official record should be published but the group agreed that this was a very unusual situation (the greatest birder in the group was a complete and utter rebel!) which required a compromised approach which we agreed to publish (after some group members withdrew their photos in protest).  Alls well that ends well and we published what was described in Birdwatch as a local birding benchmark. 

The funeral was held at Worthing Crematorium and in addition to Garry's family there was a nice turn out of Beddington birders and their wives including Grant and Marie Prater,  Kojak (aka Kevin Guest), Derek Coleman, Devilbirder (aka David Campbell), Nick and Darry Gardner, myself  and a special appearance by another Beddington legend Johnny Allan with his partner Lynn. With Johnny's appearance today it was like a funeral and a resurrection in the same day! Great to see Johnny who famously disappeared off the birding scene in 2012 in order to give up twitching and pursue a more balanced and healtheir life style (pursued his interests in history and wider natural history) and it showed today as he looked great with a big orchid list too! Great to see all the guys and what a great send off for Garry. 

We did a birding walk HERE over the South Downs after the funeral service and then on the way back Kojak and I checked out Cissbury Ring- a Sussex famous birding spot which I haven't been to before. We had Marsh Tit on the walk which was a county tick.  

GARRY'S TRIBUTE PAGE

RIP Garry- the original binoculars that he found the Killdeer with

Beddington birders, left to right: Derek Coleman, Sussex birder, Grant Prater, Dave Campbell (the soon to be new editor of Birdwatch magazine), me, Kevin Guest, Johnny Allan, Nick Bond (Garry's briding nephew) and Nick Gardner

View over the South Downs from Cissbury Ring 

Nice little day

Another break in the wet conditions today with a sunny and mild day with a light southerly wind. I started the day off at the Bill with Paul, Andrew and Ian. Highlight was my first Manx Shearwater for the Peninsula (now on 208), a bird flying west and we also had a bit of eastward passage including 54 Brents, 47 Shoveler, 5 Pintail and 16 Common Scoter. Bill checklist HERE. In comparison Dunge had a similar passage but in greater numbers HERE and Portland had Kittiwake passage thrown in HERE. 

I then deployed my new strategy for checking out Pagham Harbour taking into account the tides and the best light from various positions with the objective to get the most coverage and accurate count within a day. So I started off at Ferry and walked the Tramway, then onto Mill Lane Marsh and Pond , then did Halseys to North Wall and then had lunch before driving over to Pagham Spit and checking out the high tide roost. Then over to White's Creek and East Side for the falling tide and then back over to Church Norton to view from the benches in the good evening light. It was a pretty thorough check of the harbour and I recorded 82 species of (only) 3530 individuals HERE. Highlights included the Glossy Ibis again at the flooded road, a male Long-tailed Duck off Pagham Spit, a Red Kite and 5 Marsh Harrier over North Wall and a Pale-bellied Brent there too. There had been a clear influx of Grey Plover (I counted 525) but nearly every other species was much lower with not a single Lapwing or Black-tailed Godwit. Brents were down to just over 100. Compare today's list to just over a month ago when I did a similar full count and had 84 speices but of 13600 individuals HERE. So a drop of 10,000 birds in a few weeks and most have departed in the last two weeks. 

Other interesting quirks today included 35 Tufted Ducks between Mill Lane and the Lagoon (I think my largest count for the harbour), a flock of 54 Shoveler in the harbour (usually on Ferry only), a big drop in Med Gulls,  26 Snipe (what with the 30+ at Snowhill recently presumably they are migrants as haven't seen many this winter) and a singing Chiffchaff at North Wall.

In the Spring like conditions I was a bit dissappointed to not find any summer migrants (although the Manx Shearwater is arguably a summer migrant)  but when I arrived home there was a Barn Swallow flying round the garden (Wheatears, Sand Martins and Swallows widely arrived in the country today). 

Manx, the Long-tailed Duck and the Swallow puts me on 131 for the local year. A nice little end to a cracking little day. 

Glossy Ibis

Pale-bellied Brent Goose

Sandwich Terns acting territorial over Pagham Spit

Displaying Red-breasted Mergansers

Grey Plover- The days winner with over 500 present including this full summer plumage bird

Migrating Shovelers and Pintails off Selsey Bill (above and below) 

Had this Red Admiral and 2 Peacocks today in the nice conditions. Just Common Quakers and Hebrew Characters in the moth trap last night but a Common Plume in the 'Greenhouse' and exciting news on the probable Mompha divisella  I had with Mike completing the dissection and confirming the identification (photo montage below by Mike Bailey showing our specimen and comparable reference images of the species pair M.divisella and bradleyi which can only be seperated by dissection). According to the Sussex Moths website only the 2nd confirmed record for Sussex. 050226 update- yes confirmed by Colin Pratt only the 2nd confirmed record for Sussex. 

Birders caught up in the chaos

It's been an awful weekend in geopolitics with the US and Israel attacking Iran by intense air strikes, killing the Supreme leader and provoking the regime into a defence strategy that appears to involve a regional destablilisation. Unlike the 12 day War back in June 2025 where the conflict was more or less contained to Iran and Israel, this weekend Iran has retaliated more significantly and struck military and civilian targets with ballistic missiles in nearly every country in the Middle East, bombed international airports, shipping ports and bombed tankers in the Straits of Hormuz (where 30% of the world's oil is transported through). It's difficult to imagine that this conflict will be over in 12 days. The human cost is already mounting with hundreds of citizens killed and God only knows what will happen in the coming few days and the impact it will have on geopolitics. Vulture investors are eager for the stock markets to open tomorrow morning to bet on the resulting market volatility. It's chaos. 

My Birding Whatsapp groups have also been in chaos today with birders in Oman being encouraged to flee the south (after Salalah port was bombed) and the British Embassy have recommended that all Brits return from Oman. Meanwhile Kuwaiti birders have been responding to alarms and sirens all day while the Steppe Eagle migration has started overhead of the missiles! Our birdguide from Thailand, Deng, was at Bangkok airport ready for a 3 week trip to Ecaudor (he was so excited about it) but its all been cancelled because he had a connecting flight in the Middle East and my travel partner from Thailand, Sean Clancy is stuck in India with all flights cancelled back to the UK. 

It's difficult to say where any of this will go in the shorter term and my personal thoughts are with all the citizens (and birders!) that are caught up in these war games. Was planning on doing some work on our self sufficiency efforts at the Lodge this week so seems good timing as it's a therapeutic thing to do, to be building personal resilience when the planet starts becoming more unstable. Was also planning on doing more on Thee Bryans which also seems timely. It all helps with coping. Just a few weeks earlier and I would have been stuck in Thailand away from the family and three months earlier and I would have been evacuated from Oman. The difference of a few weeks in the history of a Regime which has been under pressure from the US and Israel for 40 years is a near miss! I've been spending quite a bit of time in the Middle East over the last couple of years with no idea that Iran could suddenly strike every single Middle East country. Shocking be so unaware of the risks and an important reminder- unless everyone is safe in this world then nobody is safe . Unresolved violent oppression anywhere only means eventually it will come for all of us.         

February Sand Martins

Fullfilled a lifetime birding mini-wish today- to see a 'summer migrant' in the UK in February. 

I was actually out this morning trying to find my own one by checking out Ferry and the Tramway HERE . Highlights were the Green Sand, 3 Red-breasted Mergansers and a flock of 160 Golden Plover flying around by no summer migrants. The new habitat on Ferry keeps looking better and better with muddy margins- there was Green Sand, Redshank, Curlew, Oystercatcher, Lapwing (only 1) and Avocet plus still good numbers of Shoveler, Wigeon, Teal, about 15 Shelducks and a few Gadwall. Also there was a Little Grebe on the flood and Coots too. 

In the afternoon news broke of 3 Sand Martins at Chichester Gravel Pits so I dashed over there to try to get the February summer migrant and indeed when I got to Peckham Copse there were 4 flying around. Found by visiting birder Colin Jupp. Very nice indeed. Also had 52 Pochard and 108 Tufted Ducks. HERE

Interesting to see the distribution of Sand Martins across the UK today HERE with no clear coastal concentration and scattered birds inland and elsewhere all the way as far north as Scotland. 

Now on 128 for the local year list . 

Sand Martin

Pochards

Golden Plovers and a single Dunlin over the Tramway. ChatGPT reckons 160 birds in here.

The Phantom Branta

News broke late morning of a Red-breasted Goose from North Wall so Marc and I met up to track it down. Marc got to North Wall first and there was no sign. The bird was reported with 2 Pale-bellied Brents and 3000 Dark-bellied Brents but that was a bit odd as in recent days there has been a big clear out of Brents from the harbour. Maybe a new group had migrated in from further south? 

We then checked out the fields east of Marsh Farm where the geese had been getting this winter. There were 300 Brents in the fields but nothing with them. 80+ Cattle Egrets was some compensation. Our next place to check was the Rookery Lane fields but only 2 Brents there.  

Marc had to get back to work but I continued the search. As there has been some movement between the harbour and the Ham fields at Medmerry I drove over to check that area but again no Brents there.

The only other place on the Peninsula that concentrates Brents is West Wittering and East Head so I went over there and indeed there were 1500+ Brents in the West Wittering fields but nothing with them. It would have been odd if I found the North Wall birds there as we generally assume the Chichester Harbour and Pagham Harbour birds are from different populations. 

I had basically checked everywhere and couldn't even find the 3000 Brents! I spent the rest of the afternoon walking round East Head to see if the Snow Bunting was still there but alas I dipped that too but there was some compensation with my first Black-throated Diver for the year and a couple of Great Northern Divers off East Head. Checklist from today HERE. 

Marc got some more information from the Bird News Services and it turned out the record of the Red-breasted Goose had come from Bird Track by a birder nobody recognised the name of. After a bit more detective work by Andrew the best explanation is that someone had put historical data into Bird Track but forgot to change the date because there was actually a Red-breasted Goose off the North Wall with 2 Pale-bellied Brents and 3000 Dark-bellied Brents on 27th February but not in 2026 but alas in 1986. 

So it appears I spent all day trying to track down a bird from 40 years ago. Got to be the deepest dip in birding history!

The Black-throated Diver puts me on 126 for the Peninsula year list. The first Wheatear appeared in the county today. 

The Brents at East Wittering (above and below)- despite the complete waste of time looking through them it was actually nice to have a good look at them as soon they will all be off to Russia

Cattle Egrets at Marsh Farm East fields- at least 80 birds

I checked out Snowhill Marsh while at East Head- the highlight was 31 Snipe feeding on the edges 

No Snow Bunting at East Head but singing and displaying Meadow Pipits and  Skylarks (above) and a couple of male Stonechats

A poor photo of one of the Great Northern Divers off East Head and a shockingly poor photo of the Black-throated (below). 

Harbour clear out

Had a quick look at Ferry and the harbour from the tramway this morning while I was procrastinating at work. The main observation was I only saw 10 Lapwing HERE (down from 4000-5000 just a couple of weeks ago). The clear out was confirmed by Les et al on East Side HERE who didn't see any Lapwings and reported that the Blackwits were down to 50 birds (1500 just a couple of weeks ago). 

I noticed on the vis-mig whatsapp that thermal imaging was revealing an exodus of birds over Surrey over the previous couple of nights (the birds were silent so not being picked up by noc-miggers). So clearly waterbirds that have been wintering on the coast are heading back in land or further afield to their breeding areas. This was a pattern I noticed when in Oxfordshire when the breeding waders (Lapwings, Redshanks, Oystercatchers and Curlews) would appear on breeding territory in late February e.g. See HERE. Presumably some of the waders there (presumably arriving now) have originated from areas like the Peninsula. 

There was also northward movements along the east coast of various species including Pink-footed Geese and Woodpigeons etc and the first Chaffinches were moving around Dungeness so clearly there is a general mass exodus occurring at the moment. Sand Martins are appear but scattered right across the country HERE. There's even been a recent Red-rumped Swallow in Ireland. 

Beside the negative sightings I also had the Green Sandpiper on Ferry and a Firecrest was singing in the discovery area (presumably a migrant). 7 Redwings were flying round the lane this morning too. 

The moth trap was more lively last night with 20 indiviudal moths including Depressaria daucella, Agonopterix hericliana and alstromeriana, Dotted Border, Early moth, Small and Common Quakers, Hebrew Character and 2 gorgeous Oak Beautys. 

Firecrest- not that many around this winter and seemingly not wintered in our garden as I haven't seen or heard one for many weeks 

Green Sandpiper 

Oak Beautys- stunning