The wider horizon more clearly seen

While obviously less than ideal from the perspective of not being able to drive or lead Knepp safaris, etc, I have to say I am weirdly enjoying this period of enforced reduced travel and hyper local nature study. I have always said I am someone who would struggle to ever become bored and have kept myself busy the past couple of weeks with regular 1km area walks as well as rekindling my love for vismigging and nocmigging, and occasionally moth trapping when time allows (although this is a little trickier to manage with only one fully functioning arm!)

From a migration point of view, it's clear we have very much turned a corner now from the dregs of summer to the days of peak autumn proper. It's still a little on the slow side but as I write this I have just enjoyed a spectacular day of Redwing passage as well as my first Fieldfares and Merlins of the season, while the straggling hirundines are still to be seen trickling south most days. It's not just migrant birds that have featured either. This morning there was another Hummingbird Hawkmoth in the garden (my third record of the autumn after a relatively poor summer for them) and southward Red Admiral migration on a scale I haven't seen for many years has been a daily feature of late. A few migrant moths have been turning up in the trap too... All in all, perhaps not the most spectacular or memorable autumn so far (albeit not for good reasons!) but it's always nice to see the seasons changing gear at this point in the year.

Again, sadly rather a lack of decent photos this time, due to not being able to use my proper camera. 

1st October

So, a whole week into my shoulder injury recovery, and with the weather looking good I decided to give one-armed moth trapping a bash. It proved a worthwhile decision as it produced various new for the garden species, including Red-green Carpet, Lunar Underwing and the migrant Clancy's Rustic.

Clancy's Rustic

Red-green Carpet

Before emptying the trap I tried a spot of vismigging from the high ground to the west of home, which proved quiet aside from 55 Meadow Pipits mostly west and a few Swallows south. Late morning, Kate dropped me off at Pulborough for a whizz round, where I had a catch up with Steve B and Josie N. Highlights here included the lingering Curlew Sandpiper (my first anywhere this year!) among the usual waders, increased numbers of ducks, a Marsh Harrier and two Hobbies.

2nd October

A walk from home to Waltham Brooks this morning was fairly quiet. Highlights on the reserve were two Little Grebes, 20 Swallows, singles of Kingfisher and Snipe and a rather late Willow Warbler among the Chiffchaffs by the main lake. Down at Thorndale Bridge were a Stonechat, a flock of 25 Siskins spooked from Alders by a Kestrel, and another 17 Swallows south. 

While having lunch in the garden I picked up an Osprey circling quite low just to the east. It was in view for a couple of minutes as it gained height before drifting south. My first record anywhere this year, and just in time as it was one that I thought was going to evade me altogether as I'd reached October without seeing one. Unfortunately I was only able to get a very ropey one-handed record shot with my little bridge camera - better than nothing though I suppose! 

Osprey

3rd October

A check of Waltham Brooks this morning produced my first Pintail of the autumn here among the Teal, Shoveler and Gadwall on the main lake, plus a single Little Grebe and heard-only Kingfisher. A few Swallows were moving south which bode well for a follow-up skywatch from the field near home. In an hour, around 160 hirundines moved south here, roughly half and half Swallow and House Martin. The only other movers during this session were a single Linnet and two Herring Gulls south, and a few Siskins south-west. Another hour vismigging later in the day proved very quiet in almost summer-like conditions, with just a few hirundines and Meadow Pipits south, although two Lesser Black-backed Gulls going the same way were my first locally for a while. The warm sunshine also encouraged a few raptors into the air including a trio of Buzzards, a Red Kite and one of the White-tailed Eagles over Amberley.

4th October

Following on from my first Merlin of the autumn north-west over the garden first thing, a lively skywatch from the high ground on the western side of Watersfield produced a pleasing selection of species including a single late Sand Martin among 114 Swallows and 62 House Martins heading south, three Skylarks west and the first Redpolls of the season here (two north-east and three south). I had planned to have a good go at vismigging locally this autumn and it's already proving rewarding, although by all accounts not a vintage vismig autumn yet.

My vismig watchpoint this morning

5th October

In sharp contrast to yesterday, this morning's skywatch from the high ground near home failed to produce much excitement, despite early promise in the form of a Snipe flying north-west. Swallows and House Martins were in notably smaller numbers. 

Late afternoon I headed over to Thorndale Bridge which produced a juvenile Marsh Harrier flushing at least three Snipe from the near side of Amberley Wildbrooks, a light southerly passage of Swallows and House Martins (16 and 7, respectively) and a weird calling Chiffchaff in the scrub by the railway, which seemingly was just a vocally aberrant collybita rather than anything more interesting. 

6th October

A skywatch from the local farmland produced a bit of movement in the form of 30 House Martins south, four Skylarks west, a couple of Siskins south and a Chiffchaff 'bush hopping' its way south through the landscape. 

Waltham Brooks, meanwhile, held singles of Marsh Harrier, Snipe and Little Grebe, a couple of Stonechat, 34 House Martin and three Swallows flying south and a single Redpoll flying south-west.

Swallow

7th October

An early morning stroll out to Thorndale Bridge to skywatch from the river bank here proved reasonably lively with a pleasing trickle of Swallows, House Martins, Meadow Pipits and Siskins overhead plus a couple of Redpolls. Two Stonechats were kicking about and a Kingfisher briefly perched up on a post near where I was stood. The alarm call of a Green Sandpiper alerted me to two birds flying up from just across the river on the near side of Amberley with a Sparrowhawk in hot pursuit, which narrowly missed catching one of them. As I was heading for home a Yellowhammer flew west, not a particularly common bird here.

Mid-morning, Kate kindly dropped me off at Pulborough Brooks where I met up with Steve Baines (and later Paul Davy) for a stroll round the trail. Highlights included the continuing Curlew Sandpiper on the North Brooks with two Ruff, around 80 Lapwing, 50+ Snipe and 550 Teal; the whole lot flushed by a passing Marsh Harrier a few times. A rather late Yellow Wagtail flew south over the Hanger, while the South Brooks held three Cattle Egrets among the cattle and a couple of Stonechats. Three Clouded Yellows were noted during the circuit.

Early after a cream cap Marsh Harrier made an appearance drifting south high over the garden, my first record of the species from here.

8th October

Despite huge numbers of Redwings arriving further north yesterday and this morning, the conditions just weren't in my favour in Watersfield and an hour up above the recreation ground in clear skies and virtually no wind produced little in the way of movement aside from 20 Linnets south-west, 18 Swallows, a few Meadow Pipits and a single Skylark south. Perhaps most interesting was a single flock of 13 Lesser Black-backed Gulls high south, which tallied with similar movements over Capel in Surrey (per Wes Attridge). Clearly a few of these on the move today. 

Looking east from the hill above Watersfield

Fast forward a couple of hours and I arrived in Merrow in Surrey to visit my mother-in-law. A 15-20 minute watch from her garden proved lively, with a few Swallows, Linnets, Meadow Pipits and Siskins over, topped off by my first two Fieldfares of the autumn chuckling their way south. 

9th October

Well, it had to happen at some point. This morning was evidently the day that the vismig tap was turned fully on in the south-east. Heading out on foot from home at around 07:45 I immediately started seeing and hearing Redwings - my first of the autumn. Fast forward two and a half hours later and I had seen over 1,500 of them, streaming mostly west in waves, with around 200 being the biggest single flock. Watching from Thorndale Bridge, it was far and away my most enjoyable local vismig session to date, with 52 species recorded including a Merlin powering west, two Woodlarks south-west (and one grounded at Waltham Brooks), Cattle Egret and Peregrine south, plus Fieldfares, Skylarks and Swallows among many others. 

A rather frustrating moment came towards the end of the session, when I noticed a line of geese tracking south-west distantly over the Downs. I'm sure they had to be Brent Geese, but the distance, lack of scope or DSLR camera and only being able to hold bins with one hand, meant I just couldn't get enough on them to be 100% certain. Still, an amazing session and a timely reminder of just how enthralling vismigging can be when it's good! It also nicely took my Thorndale Bridge eBird hotspot list to 100 species with the addition of the various aforementioned goodies!

10th October

After yesterday's vismig fireworks I was hoping for more of the same but it sadly never quite delivered despite two bites of the cherry, first at Thorndale Bridge then later up on the hill to the west of Watersfield. After an initial flurry of 70 Redwings west between 07:50 and about 08:10, no more were recorded. Indeed, there were considerably fewer birds moving in general. A few late hirundines were drifting south/south-west late morning and Skylarks were trickling south-west throughout the morning. The main mover in the second session though was Red Admiral, with 31 flying strongly south in around 90 minutes. It really has been a remarkable year for this species and the spectacle of so many of them vismigging at this time of year never fails to impress. 

What happened to summer?

It’s fair to say that 2020 has been a very strange year. A global pandemic, a spring in lockdown, an incredibly wet late winter followed by the hottest, driest spring on record... and now here we are in early July and weather and birding-wise it’s already feeling distinctly like autumn.

Late June/early July is traditionally the slump of the birding year, with weeks often passing without any new additions to the year list. In the past three weeks though I’ve added a handsome six species to the patch year list: Wood Sandpiper, Crossbill, Siskin, Redstart, Cattle Egret and Common Tern.

I've recently finished reading Simon Barnes' excellent On The Marsh, the following extract from which seems particularly apt...
"...we had seen a delightful gathering of golden plovers. They were still in their summer breeding plumage and yet these sumptuous colours were beginning to fade, were already a little rough round the edges.
They had gone over. They had completed their breeding: they were on the move. For them, autumn had arrived. Just think: all those people getting ready for what they thought were their summer holidays, unaware it was already autumn.
Jeremy Sorensen, former warden of the RSPB's Minsmere in Suffolk, used to claim that summer didn't exist at all. Looking at the world in his entirely bird-centred - avicentric - way, he was convinced that there were three seasons only: you might call them breeding, dispersal and survival. We were already in the second of those seasons, so far as some species were concerned."

When we went into lockdown, back in March, spring was just getting into its stride. Now, with pubs and hairdressers about to reopen, we birders are already looking ahead to the promise of autumnal delights, and recent days have delivered a very satisfactory selection of dispersing birds to Pulborough Brooks.

Waders in particular seem to be moving through earlier than usual, presumably indicative of failed breeding attempts. The Pulborough-grown Avocet family remain on the North Brooks, the juveniles now looking very grown up and stretching their wings in between extended naps. Today there were seven adults present too, let's hope some of them take a liking to the Brooks and return next year and we have more than one breeding pair in 2021. Black-tailed Godwit numbers are starting to increase again now after the first handful returned from Iceland last weekend; today there were 39 present, all still looking resplendent in their breeding colours. Other classic early returning species such as Green Sandpiper, Common Sandpiper and Little Ringed Plover have been on the increase too, with up to 9 Green Sand and 14 LRP in the past week. Less expected was the Temminck's Stint found by Jon Winder on Monday afternoon and seen again by Matt Palmer on Wednesday.

An adult Common Tern made a brief pitstop on the North Brooks on Sunday morning before flying south, while an adult Cattle Egret flew straight through heading southwest early on Monday. On Friday evening Pete Hughes broke the news of an adult Spoonbill on the North Brooks, which was still present as of this lunchtime; the third record of the species at Pulborough this year, and perhaps the fourth different individual. Then, early this afternoon, Lyn and Mike Hunt found two Redstarts in the species' eponymous Corner; a remarkably early date for returning birds, although evidently Matt Palmer also had one on Wednesday.

If it's this good in the doldrums, then my hopes are high for an excellent autumn to come!

Spoonbill

Common Tern (honest!)

Redstart

Lightning strikes twice

With the autumnal equinox now just around the corner and the days growing considerably shorter, my pre-work patch visits are sadly almost over for this year.

After yesterday morning's total fog-off, my initial thoughts at 5.45 this morning were that it would be too dark to get in any useful birding time at the Brooks, so I almost didn't bother. I'm glad I did...

Arriving at the North Brooks at around 6.20 I set up my scope and almost immediately found myself looking at a Phalarope! The light and distance initially hampered definite ID but, moving round to Jupp's View, I was able to confirm it as a juvenile Red-necked Phalarope - only the second Pulborough record of this species and, remarkably, just three months after the first back in June!

Red-necked Phalarope - photo by George Kinnard

I hastily put the news out and was pleased to see regulars Alan Baker and Chris & Juliet Moore arrive swiftly, who I gladly put on to the bird. Thankfully it hung around all day for plenty of other birders to connect with too.

Otherwise it's been a relatively quiet few weeks since my previous post on here, although a patch tick Pied Flycatcher on 29th August and a Marsh Tit on the 2nd of this month helped nudge the year list up to 140. Not sure this year will be the one where I reach 150 (149 last year...) but if birding teaches us anything it's to expect the unexpected. One thing's for certain, I won't let a bit of a gloomy morning put me off getting down the patch again!

Pied Flycatcher

  

Autumn?

Yes, it’s that time of year again when birders unsettle their friends, families and unsuspecting Twitter followers by dropping the A word into conversation as often as possible.

Meteorologically and astronomically speaking of course it’s utter nonsense but there can be no denying that the breeding season is over for many birds and return passage is now well underway, as has been evidenced by the amount of waders at Pulborough these past couple of weeks.

All the usual familiar species are beginning to trickle back through, and in some good numbers already with high counts of 50 Black-tailed Godwits (3rd), at least eight Green Sandpiper and nine Little Ringed Plover (12th), and smaller numbers of Greenshank (two on the 8th), Redshank, etc. A nice male Ruff just coming out of breeding plumage was present on the 9th while a Curlew flew over on the 10th.

Juvenile LRP

Best of all have been a group of six Avocet present intermittently from the 5th to the time of writing - my highest count of the species here. On Saturday I noticed that one of the birds is colour ringed and I've now received the report back from the ringer, Graham Giddens. The bird (a male) was ringed as a chick at Needs Ore in Hampshire on 16th June 2014. Since then it has toured around the Hampshire coast and wintered every year at Poole Harbour. This year it successfully reared four young with an unringed female at Normandy Marsh near Lymington. Interestingly, these six all appear to be adults so perhaps the male has left the female with the young and tagged on with this new group for summer break in West Sussex.

The ringed male Avocet on the North Brooks

Other non-wader bits of note recently include a very early returning Whinchat on the 6th - my first on the patch this year - and the first signs of Mediterranean Gull dispersal with three present on the afternoon of the 10th. Could this be the year Pulborough gets a Yellow-legged?

Recent nocmiggings

I've been getting back into the swing of more regular nocturnal recording this month, and have tried to get the mic out at least a couple of times a week - though the blustery conditions the past few days have been less than conclusive but at least gave a welcome break in which to catch up on earlier recordings.

Not a huge amount of note from the four nights recording so far in September aside from a Spotted Flycatcher on the 14th - a nocmig first - and the only wader recorded so far this month in the form of a Dunlin on the 13th.

14th/15th was certainly the liveliest one this month with a Dunnock and several probable Robin/Flycatcher calls indicating a busy night for passerine movement. At least seventeen calls that night remain unidentified though, frustratingly, which seems a common problem in the nocmig community at this time of year in particular.

The recorder was out again last night as the wind finally abated for a few hours so it will be interesting to see what that one delivers.

All data now on Trektellen.

 Bit of a head-scratcher this one but my first thought was Dunlin and others agreed. Not their usual call but certainly within their range. I wonder if the apparent drop in pitch isn't purely caused by the doppler effect of the bird travelling at speed away from the microphone - this would also explain why the second call is lower in both pitch and volume than the first.

Listening in the darkness: New adventures in nocmigging

It's been a while since I did one of these and, since I'm now living in Pulborough, I thought I'd get a new blog up and running for occasional updates on my birding in this area.

I'm loving living here so far: the new garden list is already on 101 (Temminck's Stint the latest addition, ridiculously!) and my overall Pulborough patch list is 135 (though this includes some historical ticks such as American Wigeon, Little Gull and White-fronted Goose - still no sign of the latter this winter, sadly).

The short days of winter are always hard going for any birder in full time employment and, although I'm lucky enough to work outdoors, in terms of patch birding, it's been a weekend only affair for me for the past four months. In an effort to remedy this somewhat and because I like trying new things, I've recently decided to get into 'nocmigging'. As migration is an aspect of bird study I've found particularly fascinating for some time now, I've been following a few nocturnal recorders' efforts with intrigue. Essentially, for those unfamiliar with this unusual new way of birding, it involves setting up a microphone and recording device outside overnight then analysing the spectrogram of the recording to see what bird calls were captured. With the Brooks and the River Arun now literally on my doorstep, what better way, I thought, to unlock the secrets of what flies over in the middle of the night? Judging by the results from other nocturnal recording stations around the country - the likes of Snow Bunting, Common Scoter and, famously, Ortolan Bunting, being identified flying over in the middle of the night - the answer is a hell of a lot!

Not wanting to spend a fortune on something I knew I was just testing the water at to begin with I started with a very basic set up which only cost £40 or so and produced some reasonable results. Once I was convinced this was something I wanted to do more regularly and get better recordings from, I levelled up to a HTDZ HT-81 microphone and Tascam DR-05 recorder - the same set-up recommended by Joe Stockwell in his excellent set of instructional videos - which, in total still only comes to around £120. For analysing the recording I use Audacity which is available as a free download. Again, see Joe's videos for a bit of tuition on how to use this.

So, let's cut to the chase and talk about some of the things I've recorded so far - some more expected than others. I was a little late starting in late autumn to experience the peak of thrush migration but nonetheless recorded decent numbers of Redwing and Song Thrush over in late November and early December. One thing I'm finding already is you quite quickly begin to get your eye in for what's an interesting call, and even start to recognise certain species' calls just from the shape on the spectrogram. Here's a Redwing, for example, with its distinctive downward slanting wedge-shaped 'seeep' call:

Redwing

And here's a Song Thrush with its staccato spike 'tsip!':

Song Thrush (the lower pitch calls just after each thrush call is a Greylag Goose)

Here's a Common Snipe from 29th November - sounded like it almost took the top off the microphone it was so low!

Snipe

Just the other week it was good to get my first Coot - a bit of a blue riband species for nocmiggers, and surprisingly scarce locally I've found, despite the Arun and the Brooks being so close to home.

Coot

With the Arun Valley being a well-known wintering ground for a small number of Bewick's Swans, this was one I quietly hoped I might pick up on my recordings. Sure enough, on 19th January, it happened! Sadly this was when I was still getting to grips with my new recording set-up so the sound quality is not very good, but you get the idea.

Bewick's Swan

Less expected was this single Brent Goose which called a couple of times at 23:40hrs on 10th January.

Brent Goose

Other than that, so far it's mostly been the general background hubbub from the Brooks such as Lapwing, Wigeon and Canada Goose, with the odd Tawny Owl, Little Owl and local dog thrown in for good measure.

The first real curveball came on 7th February though when I recorded this single, somewhat puzzling call at 06:08hrs.

??

My first thought was Snow Bunting, even though it didn't sound quite right. Others on Twitter suggested Lapland or Skylark. Simon Gillings from the BTO provided some valuable input, even going to the trouble of producing these comparison images of various species' spectrograms.

My mystery call/Snow Bunting/Lapland Bunting, for comparison. As Simon has suggested,
the shape of my call doesn't seem right for either, although this could be due in part to the distance
of the bird from the microphone 

Ultimately, he said he's not entirely sure it's Lapland or Snow Bunting; he did suggest possibly Bullfinch but neither of us are sure that's quite right either. One that got away I suppose, but an enticing taster for what's to come as spring approaches - I can almost hear the Whimbrel calling in my headphones as I type this!