2nd-3rd February: Pulborough and Erith

Another quiet weekend on the patch, with the cold weather sadly failing to deliver any surprises. Indeed, it seems as if the only notable cold weather movement was restricted to the southwest of the country.

Five Golden Plover over Winpenny with a flock of Lapwing on Saturday morning got my hopes up but, if anything, numbers of the latter were rather down on recent weeks, as were wildfowl. A cream cap Marsh Harrier was patrolling over the Mid Brooks on Saturday while a single Peregrine was perched out on one of the fences, followed by two together in the same area on Sunday morning. As I've mentioned in a previous post, Black-tailed Godwit numbers have tailed off now with many of the Icelandic breeders having already headed to the east coast to prepare for their journey back to their breeding grounds in the coming weeks. Nonetheless, a group of forty or so were still on the North Brooks on both days this weekend, even though the majority of the water was frozen solid on Sunday morning. The cold weather is clearly making it harder for Barn Owls as two were out hunting well before sunset on Saturday. Remarkably, still the only Owl on my patch year list!

Lapwing

With the patch proving a little slow going I've been taking advantage of the increasing daylight hours by getting out and about for the odd twitch. An after work midweek dash for the 2nd winter Glaucous Gull at Holmethorpe SP near Redhill proved successful and suitably whet my appetite for another gull-based adventure, slightly further afield, to see the adult winter Bonaparte's Gull on the Thames at Erith on Sunday. The commonest gull missing from my UK list, I'd been more than a little tempted having seen photos on Twitter from the likes of Jamie Partridge and Rich Bonser, one of the finders of the bird and, when I realised I had a fairly free weekend ahead and Erith is a little over 75 minutes drive from Pulborough, it was a no brainer really.

Glaucous Gull, Holmethorpe SP, 30th January (it was quite dark!)

With bread in hand I arrived at the pier at around 11:00 only to be told by birders present - including the other finder Dante Shepherd - that the bird had been showing really well until about ten minutes before I arrived. Typical! Thankfully more birders turned up, including Rich B, who luckily picked the Bonaparte's up just as he'd thrown the last of his bread in the water and was preparing to leave. For the next quarter of an hour or so the bird put on a great show, either bobbing about on the river or frantically flying closer to us to try and nab some Morrison's sliced white from off of the Black-headeds. The light was perfect allowing for really clear views of the dainty black bill, flesh-coloured legs and neat black trailing edge to the wing - often even without the need for bins as it was just a few metres away. A nice bonus was a 1st winter Caspian x Herring bearing a German ring (X90A) which was known to Dante and some of the other regulars. Dante also picked up at least one Yellow-legged which I didn't properly get on.

Adult winter Bonaparte's Gull, Erith

Presumed 1st winter Herring x Caspian Gull

Having been birding for just under ten years but never being much of a twitcher I have at last limped my way to one away from 300 species in the UK; what will number 300 be, I wonder?*

* Edit: after a recount it seems that the Bonaparte’s was in fact my 300th UK species! 

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.