Weekend

Been a fairly quiet weekend doing family stuff but managed to get in a short session on the ferry and tramway yesterday and a good morning garden session before spending the day at the Weald and Downland Museum today.

Birding highlights included 3 Avocet on Ferry yesterday (been fairly thin on the ground round here in recent weeks) and an interesting Rock Pipit and today the garden birding was pretty good with Grey Plover a garden tick, over 3000 Woodpigeon going over, my first 5 Redwings and 2 Fieldfare of the autumn, a couple of Mistle Thrush and a few Song Thrush, the 15 or so Redpolls are still in the garden and overall there were 42 species of over 3400 individuals HERE.

The moths have been pretty quiet with the temperature down to 6 C last night but still getting the odd NFY. We have a period of quite a significant southerly airflow from Wednesday this week so that could be very interesting for moths and late autumn vagrants like Pallid Swift. 

Avocets on Ferry

Cattle Egrets at Marsh Farm 

Woodpigeons on the move (above), meanwhile they are still breeding in the garden (below)

Had this Rock/Water Pipit come off Yeoman's Field. Looked like the outer-tail feathers were white but there was no sign of any supercilium on other photos so presumably a littoralis Rock Pipit. More photos and sound recordings HERE

Lesser Redpoll in the garden 

Feathered Ranaculus- NFY

Flame Brocade- always impressed to see these 

Dark Chestnut 

 

A couple of recordings from this morning- Grey Plover going over and Redpolls in the garden 

East Head- Yellow-browed Warbler

Met up with  Marc Read this morning at dawn to give East Head and Snowhill Marsh area a bash. Turned out to be our most successful day of the autumn with Marc finding a Yellow-browed Warbler and we had a Black Redstart, 4 Woodlark, 2 Crossbill, 2 Dartford Warbler and some good vis mig including over 200 Redpoll, 60 Siskin, 4 Yellowhammer and 1200 Wigeon moving south to boot. Ebird list with a few sound recordings from today HERE , 67 species of 2746 indivduals.

We then tried for the Black-necked Grebe at Norton but dipped. A juv Red-thoated Diver was the highlight there with some more Redpolls. When I got there was a flock of 25+ Redpolls on the feeders. 

A very nice little day. Yellow-browed and Crossbill were Peninsula ticks. Now on 203 all time and 186 for the year.  

Yellow-browed Warbler (above and below). Quite a sub-dued foremost wing bar on the left side (invoking thoughts of Hume's) but overall the bird was quite bright and green tinged with more of a wing-bar on the right side too. 

Black Redstart

Redpolls on the move (above) and one in the garden (below). All the ones we saw well today were Lessers. 

Wigeon moving south

Brents building up in Chichester Harbour- about 250 now

Rustic Bunting Update

I've heard back from Magnus Robb on the first-winter (presumed male) Rustic Bunting I had on 12th October on Cape Kaliakra. I saw the bird well but briefly and sadly wasn't able to get a photograph and failed to locate it despite hours of searching. 

However as usual, at the time, I had my sound recorder on recording passively and when I saw the bird I could see it was calling and could hear it too. When I processed the recordings later I certainly had a ticking bird but I wasn't sure how to confirm it was the Rustic or one of the 200+ Song Thrush that were also on the Cape that day and calling. Original recording HERE and below. 

I tried some analysis myself last night and the sonogram looked like a tick as well as sounding like one with a shorter arm at the start of the inflection. On Song Thrush it looks more like an inverted tick and also the top of the tick has a higher frequency and the sonogram is also more needle like. 

However I wasn't certain as my sonograms were not as sharp as I needed so indeed it was time to send it to Magnus for some guru analysis and this was his reply:

Yes you definitely have a Rustic Bunting in the recording. Attached are sonagrams of the first four calls, after which it continues but is much fainter. Song Thrush can show a V-shaped call of similar duration but the descending side of the V will always be stronger than the ascending side, fading out before it reaches the initial high frequency again. In this bird the right side is always stronger and ends at a higher frequency, very typical of Rustic. Nice one!

If accepted this will be the 5th record for Bulgaria. 

Back Home

After the late night return flight on Thursday it was straight into work on Friday in London and then I've spent the weekend catching up with paperwork and post trip stuff. 

Therefore I've only had time to do the moth trap which has been actually quite interesting with a few new for years and a nice selection of migrants- now on 559 for the year and 621 all time. 

While I was away there were some great birds on Corvo including another Prothonotary Warbler, two Ruby-crowned Kinglets, Chestnut-sided and Cape May Warblers and looks like the American Goshawk from last year is now resident on the island! All the news from Corvo and Flores as usual on the Facebook group HERE. There was a westerly airflow but it wasn't from any strong weather features which just confirms that Corvo only needs some kind of westerly wind. 

A nice period of westerly winds this week on the back of some strong features too so probably more to come soon. If I had more flexibility I'd head out there this week but half term is coming up and I've got two weeks in Oman in late November and then nearly three weeks in Thailand in January so I better do some work and do family stuff and also top up the coffers as after the recent Malta investment I'm pretty broke. Fingers crossed the 'everything bubble' doesn't pop too soon, gold at record highs and everything else rallying on the global economy (which is unprecedented) so looks like the whole thing is going to blow it's top again similar to the first rinse cycle in April but possibly deeper this time. Who knows- the take home is get as much birding in while we can.  

Note to self for next autumn- 'take off' the whole period from late September to late October and don't book in any other trips until December/ January, book in nothing and no commitments, set aside enough money, let everyone know I'm out of the matrix for all that period including half term and then spend the whole period twitching the weather between Bulgaria and the Azores.  

Golden Twin-spot- the second record here

Merveillie du Jour- always welcome here. A NFY

Flame Brocade- another welcome NFY. After a period of low moth catches in September seems like things have got more interesting again with over 30 speices of 100 individuals again at the moment.

Oak Rustic

Channel Island Pug

An unseasonal Swallow-tail moth 

Bulgaria October 2025 Moths and Butterflies Update

I had the moth trap on most nights and there was quite an interesting selection of late autumn insects.

There were also quite a few butterflies on the wing mainly Red Admirals (which may have been migrants), Eastern Dappled White and Clouded Yellows and there were a few Rush Veneers in the grass on the Steppe and a few Hummingbird Hawkmoths around.  

Updated Lep project HERE, now registering 425 species for the project site, an additional 12 species this trip subject to verification. A few highlights and interests below. 

Previous update from our September trip this year with some even smarter moths HERE and from June this year HERE . Been a good year. 

Tiliacea sulphurago- moth of the trip and lifer. 2-3 of these. 

Aprophyla canescens- one of the most prominent species (above and below)

Episema glaucina- nice 

Probably Dicranura ulmi 231025 update- a better fit is Ash Shoulder-knot, Scotochrosta pulla. Thanks to Steve from the Bulgaria i-nat project. 

Agrochola nitida (above and below) one to keep an eye out for amongst the Lunar Underwings? 

Agrochola laevis- another one to keep an eye out for 

Brindled Green 231025 update- looks like this is probably an eastern species of Dryobotodes- D.carbonis

Feathered Brindle - pretty numerous. More species familiar from back home below.

Pearly Underwing 

Lunar Yellow Underwing 

The Cosmpolitan

Brown-spot Pinion

Beaded Chestnut 

Black-spot Chestnut

Vagrant Emperor 

Praying Mantis 

Bulgaria, October 2025, Day Seven

As standard I started the day off at Cape Kaliakra- the Pallas's Warbler was in the same place as yesterday but otherwise there are just less and less birds each day now with 54 species of 612 individuals HERE .

I had quite a long work list for when I was out here but that has gone out the window due to the quality of birding. I've done a bit of shopping to equip the caravan on the project plot but I was supposed to install services into the caravan and also do the haycut on the meadow. Therefore as it was pretty quiet I decided to do something. All my Bulgarian tools packed up or fell apart while I was doing the meadow so I tried using a Scythe (called a Koca in Bulgarian and not a Koza which is a Goat and at one point people thought I was trying to buy a Goat which infact is probably what I need!). Anyway I've no idea how you are supposed to Scythe (I presumed it would be in all our genes) and my 'catherine wheel' method didn't help either so basically I gave up and went birding again.

That was handy as I found a nice 'Caspain Stonechat' by Yalata and also had a couple of late Bee-eaters go over. Ebird list HERE.

Then sadly it was time to go back to the airport. What a great little trip.

Final trip report HERE. So many highlights- the Rustic Bunting, Pallas's Warbler and Caspian Stonechat were the star birds but having Quails, Corncrakes, Short-eared and Long-eared Owls flushing at my feet while a river of tens of thousands of birds were going overhead is hard to beat, the male Pallid Harrier mowing through 50,000 Barn Swallows and having a fall of passerines so intense that a Robin landed on my head is probably a better experience than finding any rarity. On top of that there was the raptor passage including what has now been confirmed by Dick Forsman as a good-as-it-gets Greater Spotted Eagle, the flock of Common Cranes (not common here), the out of place Treecreeper on the Cape and the cracking alpestris Ring Ouzel. There are so few birders out here and the scale is so big that there's so much more to discover here. I think's it time to organise a migration camp for next year now we've got the plot better established and also got a better understanding on the best winds and conditions for visible migration. This whole trip was basically a weather twitch- love it when a plan comes together. 

First-winter Caspian Stonechat- I think the 6th or 7th for Bulgaria

Male Black Redstart- there were actually more of these around today

Yellowhammer at the Cape looking rare as it skulked in the clifftop vegetation

Calandra Larks and Skylarks - there's a large flock of them south of Kamen Bryag in the fields, presumably the local steppe breeding popualation

A one minute tour of the project plot