Pulborough (mostly), early September

A decent session today, the third consecutive day I've visited the patch after a brief hiatus for our wedding and 'mini-moon' - the latter a very pleasant couple of days in Lyme Regis which produced only my third UK Dipper on the river near the town mill.

Dipper, Lyme Regis

Back to Pulborough and today saw me spend a very rewarding eight hours at the Brooks. Aside from the usual 110+ Lapwings, wader interest was provided by just 3-4 Green Sandpipers and a Common Sandpiper on the North Brooks. The ongoing ditch clearance work here is starting to attract the attention of certain other species, with at least five Whinchats hopping about on the freshly dredged mud and a single Wheatear perched on a nearby fence. Yellow Wagtail and Raven were heard but not seen.

A female Redstart was on the fence near West Mead while three males of various ages were working their way along the fence near Winpenny, along with a Reed Warbler. At Redstart Corner three Lesser Whitethroats were feeding on blackberries in the same scope view; my first record of this species here this month.

Reed Warbler

A good day for raptors with four or five Hobbies about, at least five each of Buzzard and Kestrel and singles of Sparrowhawk, Red Kite and Marsh Harrier. A juvenile Peregrine caused chaos on the North Brooks but spectacularly failed to catch anything.

An almost constant movement of House Martins was going on throughout the day, but as our location changed it was almost impossible to keep track of numbers. Certainly many hundreds of birds involved with probably fewer than one in fifty of them a Swallow.

Away from the patch, a trip down to the coast yesterday produced at least seven Yellow Wagtails and five Wheatears along the beach at Climping, while at least ten Sandwich Terns fed just offshore and six Oystercatchers flew east. At Littlehampton there were a few more Oystercatchers along the beach along with a rather incongruous Little Egret wading about in the surf with the Herring Gulls.

Yellow Wagtail on the beach at Climping

Nocmigging has taken a bit of a back seat in the past couple of weeks but my most recent attempt on the night of 25th/26th August was the best of the autumn so far. From now on I'm going to be recording all my nocmig data on Trektellen; results from the aforementioned night below along with one of the Oystercatcher call sequences.

A trip to Dorset

I'm really not much of a twitcher and if a rarity is much more than an hour away from home I tend to think long and hard before generally losing interest. But when news broke on Twitter just over a week ago via Debby Saunders that her husband Pete had just found an adult Ross's Gull at Ferrybridge I was interested! Thankfully the bird did the decent thing and stuck around until the weekend when Amy Robjohns and I met up with Ollie Simms and Drew Lyness pre-dawn on Sunday and headed down to Weymouth. We were en route to Ferrybridge when Ed Stubbs alerted us to the fact the bird had been seen at Lodmoor (massive thanks to Ed for that, otherwise we would have likely missed it!) so we quickly detoured and within a minute or two of leaving the car we all had eyes on this stunning little gull.

Adult Ross's Gull, Lodmoor, 25th February

It was all too brief an encounter, however, as all the gulls kept getting spooked and after a couple of circuits of the lake the Ross's eventually gained height and headed out to sea. After a couple of hours spent pootling around the local area racking up a few new birds for the year (although I'm not year listing this year) - Shag, Gannet, Common Scoter, Red-breasted Merganser, amongst others - news broke again just after we'd left the RSPB Radipole reserve that the bird was back on show at that very site, so we again did an about turn and joined the swelling crowd of birders watching the bird. This time it treated us to close and prolonged views of it swimming, preening and having the odd little fly about and we all left very happy indeed!

A meandering route home took us first to Morden Bog where we found the regular Great Grey Shrike but sadly no other heathland specialists of note - though a Snipe and a couple of Ravens were nice - before we headed on to Stanpit Marsh where the Stilt Sandpiper had just done a bunk and decided not to reappear for us before dusk. A Spotted Redshank was a nice consolation, however. A thoroughly enjoyable day in good company. I really should do this more often.