Selsey Bill Sess

As we head into the second half of November and the wintering birds are piling in locally it seems to make sense to continue the switch from an autumn birding strategy to a winter one so today I went looking for divers and grebes and joined Andrew and Co on the daily Selsey Bill Sea Watch. Ebird list HERE. Highlights included 4 Great Northern Diver, 1 Red-throated Diver, 4 Kittiwakes, 4 Sandwich Tern a good passage of Razorbill/Auks, Shags and a few Common Scoters, Brents and Mergansers. Great Northern Diver was a West Sussex tick putting me on 174 . HERE

There's a couple of Slav Grebes off Church Norton and a Long-tailed Duck there too today and in the week there were Eiders and Velvet Scoters off the Bill so a few other interesting species about that will be nice to connect with. 

It's been too cold at night for the moth trap recently with nothing new for year this week on the few nights I put the light on. The highlight of the week in the garden was a female Goosander flying over Kyle's aviary on Wednesday and also a Lapwing going over the same day. The Tawny Owls are very vocal at the moment and on Tuesday morning I saw one along the lane on the way to London at 5am. 

Red-throated Diver

Great Northern Diver

Shags

Red-breasted Merganser

Winter Groundling (above) and another presumed South American Tomato Moth Tuta absoluta (below). Micros continue to be a theme of the very small moth catches recently. In the abscence of other interest I got driven deeper into the Gelechids rabbit hole this week and did some reading up. At some point I might need to get myself a microscope or a better macro camera. 

Found this Hedgehog in the garden when I got up this morning. After showing it to the boys we let it go back in the garden where it scurried off.