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.

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 of 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. 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, a flock of 54 Shoveler in the harbour (usually on Ferry only) 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. Manx, the Long-tailed Duck and the Swallow puts me on 130 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.