Friday, 7 February 2025
Pagham Harbour- Caspian Gull
Monday, 3 February 2025
A few more year ticks
Monday is my main birding day so I targeted some more local patch year ticks today. I started off at the Bill (with Andrew, Ian ,Sarah and Co) hoping for the Red-necked Grebe (that has appeared 4-5 times out of 34 days this year so a bit of a long shot). No Red-necked Grebe but a Black-throated, a few Great Northerns and a load of Red-throated Divers plus a female Long-tailed Duck and a few Common Scoters and Mergs. Ebird list HERE .
I then went to Medmerry and walked along the west track from the car park to Stilt Pool; 61 species of nearly 3000 indiviudals in about 2 hours HERE. Local patch year ticks included Yellowhammers (about 65 of them), Dartford Warbler and finally got some Stonechats. Now on 114 (out of 143) for the Selsey Peninsula year list.
I had to cut the day short to meet up with Holly and Issac and later with Derek and Mike, local moth-ers. We met at the RSPB visitor's centre for a couple of hours discussing a few plans for moth trapping this year. Derek and Mike both do genital dissection and have very kindly offered to do some of the coleophora and cnephasia etc that I'm catching in the garden which will be very intersting. Also we discussed targeting some Peninsula and Sussex specialities later in the year and identifying leaf mines- all new areas of lepidoptery for me, so very exciting. Looking forward to all that.
Sunday, 2 February 2025
A few bits and bobs
Been pretty busy this week with work (including a big quote for the London Wildlife Trust at Hutchinson's Bank and Matt came over on Wednesday and we got a lot of the patio work done) but managed to get out in the field briefly a couple of times. Had a look at Dell Quay on Thursday on a Jack Snipe search but unfortunately no Jacks but did see the male Goldeneye that's been around.
Did a bit of garden birding yesterday morning, the main change round here is Song Thrushes are now singing after being absent for a lot of the winter. Other birds like Robin, Dunnock, Blackbird and Woodpigeon were also singing- the first hint of a spring dawn chorus this year. There were about 400 Golden Plover flying around and 350 Lapwings went over too - presumably birds moving between Chichester and Pagham Harbour.
Today Lee and Rachel visited and we had an afternoon walk to Church Norton where we found the male Long-tailed Duck that has been wintering off shore. What with Goldeneye and Long-tailed Duck, I'm now on 111 for the Selsey Peninsula for the year.
A few moths have been attracted to the garden office window in the first hours of darkness after which the temperature has been dropping fast. I tried the moth trap yesterday night but drew a blank.