Non-Stop Birding

Thursday, 9 April 2026

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. 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

Pale Pinion

Nut-tree Tussock

Lunar Marbled Brown

Pale Prominent

Powdered Quaker

Chocolate-tip

Tuesday, 7 April 2026

Back to Patch

There was quite an arrival of migrants on the Peninsula yesterday HERE in a southeast wind but it was Jacob's 9th Birthday so I had to wait until this morning to get out into the field. There wasn't too much in the way of migration while I was away so seems like this is about the fourth main migration wave this Spring.

The winds were more easterly today but it was still pretty good with one of the best seawatches from Selsey Bill this Spring HERE with highlights including Arctic Skuas, Garganeys, a large movement of Sandwich Terns, Common Scoters moving and the beginning of the Whimbrel and Barwit passage. A couple of Wheatears were also on the beach and a few Swallows, Sand Martins, Linnets and Mipits were moving north. My Ebird list from today HERE.

At about 930 I did the usual Costa coffee stop before heading to Ferry and I did the Ferry area including Long Pool and Mill Lane and back to the Visitor's area. 64 species HERE with highlights including my first Sedge Warbler of the year on the Long Pool, a couple of Blackcaps, about 15 Chiffchaffs, a few Swallows moving north and the Spotted Redshank in the Ferry Channel- now in full summer plumage.

Arctic Skua, Garganey, Whimbrel and Sedge Warbler were Peninsula year ticks, now on 142 HERE. The Arctic Skua and Sedge Warbler were also World year ticks (now on 822) .

Good to be back and looking forward to the next two or three weeks of peak migration. Basically will be waiting for the Palearctic migrants to catch up with us that we saw a few days ago in Ghana.

Male Northern Wheatear

Common Scoter and Garganeys (two birds second and third from last)

My first Skuas this year- dark phase Arctics

The beginning of the Whimbrel and Barwit passage

Sandwich Terns- the official log recorded nearly 300 birds

Spotted Redshank

Ghana Moths

The moth trapping was a bit of a dream come true with finally managing to get a decent moth trap up in the Ghanaian forests thanks to the new Lepilid that was purchased last year.

We managed to trap most nights apart from a couple of nights when staying at urban hotels.

432 records in total of 191 provisionally identified species HERE.

Surprisingly, according to ChatGPT there are only 850 or so moth species recorded for Ghana. Ghana I-Nat moth project records 798 species HERE. The I-Nat project also has me as having recorded the most species in Ghana which is frankly ridiculous as I've only been doing it a week.

In comparison to the butterflies which are well studied in West Africa, Ghana has over 950 species recorded which implies the moth fauna of Ghana is under-recorded. There are about 3500-4000 butterfly species in Africa so about a quarter have been recorded in Ghana.

Considering there are probably between 17-18000 moth species in Africa and 7000 have been recorded in South Africa alone, it implies that Ghana's moths are very unrecorded (only about 5% of the African total have been recorded in Ghana). ChatGPT also states that in the wider Afrotropical region there could be tens of thousands of moth species which are still undiscovered and undescribed.

Basically it all sounds like a very exciting area to be focused on with a real possibility of finding something exciting. It will certainly be a big task to learn the moths of Ghana but have to start somewhere so here's a few pics from this trip with some provisional identifications and will update this as I go along.

ANKASA