Is this thing still on?

Can it really be a whole month since I posted anything on here? Been so busy with Extinction Rebellion stuff lately that birding has rather taken a bit of a back seat at times and blogging/catching up on nocmig even more so.

I'm not even going to attempt to summarise everything that's happened at Pulborough in the past five weeks or so and will simply endeavour to make my posts rather more 'little and often' from now on. Suffice to say it's been a relatively quiet spring so far with my own patch year list at least ten species down on this time last year and wader passage still yet to really get going. The cold northerly-dominated spell in late April/early May is clearly holding a lot of stuff back, it seems.

Highlights of the past week or so have been a lingering septet of Whimbrel - usually on the Mid Brooks although venturing onto the north side for a time on the 4th - a pair of Black-tailed Godwits and 1-2 Little Ringed Plovers. Gary Trew had an Oystercatcher on the 30th which sadly had gone by the time I got there in the evening. At least two singing Cuckoos are on site now with a third bird seen - possibly a female - in flight past Hail's View on the 4th. Nightingales were rather later arriving this year than last with the first singing male heard on the 15th. This was joined by at least another three over the next few days but this past weekend I've only been hearing a couple singing around the nature trail, so some have either moved on or quickly paired up and stopped singing.

Whimbrels at West Mead, photo by Paul Davy

Other bits of note from earlier in the spring were my first patch Osprey (at last!) over the North Brooks on 21st April and a Stone-curlew which I picked up on nocmig flying over on 22nd March. Two drake Garganeys were kicking around for a while in April but seem to have moved on now. Lapwings and Redshanks are again breeding in good numbers it seems, with the first Lapwing chicks already waddling about on the Mid Brooks and receiving much adoration from visitors.

Garganey on the North Brooks, 21st April

It may still have been chilly in the wind this morning but my first Broad-bodied Chaser and Dingy Skipper of the year were an encouraging sign of warmer days to come and mid to late May was when things started getting really good last year so I'm hopeful that spring isn't a total write-off just yet!

Greenshank at West Mead on 20th April

Amorous Redshanks at West Mead, 5th April

LRPs at West Mead, 5th April

Broad-bodied Chaser, 6th May

Dingy Skipper near Wiggonholt Church, 6th May

Kestrel at West Mead, 6th May

Med Gulls - this flock of 16 flew north on 12th April, part of what was a good passage for them this year

Stone-curlew over Pulborough, 22nd March

Pulborough, late March

As is so often the case, March this year delivered a rather hesitant trickle of migrants for most of the month before ending with a rush of arrivals in the last few days.

The first Little Ringed Plover of the year is always a very welcome sight and this year's came at Winpenny on the 17th (Steve Chastell/Paul Davy) with at least two or three present on a number of days later in the month and perhaps as many as five on the 31st with two on the South Brooks early afternoon and three from the Hanger in the evening.

Little Ringed Plover. Photo: Carey Lodge

Redshanks and Lapwings are both well and truly back on territory, with at least ten of the former around most days now, making their presence heard from all around the reserve!

The high pressure towards the end of the month slowed down any visible hirundine arrivals - many presumably cruising over at altitude - with just a handful of Sand Martins and a couple of Swallows and House Martins reported. That was until today when a shift to rather more unsettled weather and a brisk northeasterly brought down impressive numbers. Around two hundred mostly Sand Martins were feeding over the North Brooks this evening along with at least half a dozen Swallows. 

The widespread arrivals of Garganeys on the 23rd/24th initially fell rather short of Pulborough with a single drake found by Paul Davy at Waltham Brooks on the 24th. By the end of the week though a drake made a couple of appearances on the patch, first on the North Brooks on the 28th (Tracy Bain) then at Hail's View on the 29th (Alan Baker, C&J Moore, Paul Davy). By today there were two drakes and a female at Waltham, so presumably the Pulborough individual is among that trio. Hopefully I'll catch up with another on the patch at some point this year!

Black-tailed Godwits at West Mead

A female Merlin continues to be a fairly regular sight around the place, mostly recently flying low over the Hanger this evening, putting the wind up the hirundines out on the North Brooks (although it did make counting the latter a lot easier as they all flew up high in a tight flock!)

A first winter Little Gull was seen on the 15th and the 18th, while the long staying pair of White-fronted Geese at last departed this week, last reported on the 26th. 

The common warblers are certainly coming in thick and fast now with the first singing Willow Warbler in Black Wood from the 29th and at least a dozen Chiffchaffs and half a dozen Blackcaps noted on most visits.

Remarkably, aside from a distant glimpse of a probable from the Hanger this evening, I've managed to get through March without a single patch Wheatear, and I haven't heard of any reports from anyone else either. Hopefully there'll be one any day now - the forecast for the coming week doesn't look brilliant with just a whiff of southerlies on the cards on Thursday but the possible showers and northerly winds should bring down anything that does try to make it through. 

Onto nocmig and, when the wind at last abated, a series of night recordings in the third week of the month proved productive with Dunlin, Little Ringed Plover (video below) and a flurry of Common Scoter the highlights. As ever I've still got a backlog of recordings to go through so am looking forward to seeing what else was captured. For regular updates on my nocmigging check out Trektellen.

2018 Nocmig Review

2018 was my first full year nocmigging here in Pulborough. For a bit of an intro to it all, check out my blog post from earlier in the year.

It took me a while to get into the swing of it in the spring but once up and running the year produced a nice selection of species from 57 nights' recording. Obvious highlight was the Yellow-browed Warbler on 8th October but other bits of note were Common Scoter, Brent Goose, Bewick's Swan, White-fronted Goose and a reasonable selection of waders including patch scarcities such as Oystercatcher and Whimbrel. Also noteworthy was the sensational movement of Dunlin on 15th/16th November with at least 147 calls from a minimum of 39 birds.

I was a bit late getting started with recording again in the autumn due to the very worthwhile distraction of my wedding, so missed out on the chance of getting an Ortolan Bunting in what seemed like another good passage of them. Hopefully now I've got the hang of it all I'll be able to hit the ground running in 2019 and record more frequently.

Check out the table below for the full list - note that some species such as Barn Owl, Skylark and Moorhen are mostly likely to be local birds but have been included in here for posterity and completeness. I've tried where possible to omit birds that were clearly just piping up in the dawn chorus nearby such as Chiffchaff, House Sparrow or Woodpigeon.

Pulborough, mid-late November.

There’s a lot to love about this time of year. The arrival en masse of wintering wildfowl, thrushes, finches, owls, crisp frosty mornings, the excitement of cold weather movements bringing with it an increased chance of something scarce or rare. What’s not so great is the heavy reduction of available time in the field due to the dwindling amount of daylight, which inevitably increases the chance of missing stuff, especially when one's patch is such a well-watched reserve as Pulborough.

As such I’ve no new year ticks to report since my last update on here although I’m still smarting from missing the Red-breasted Merganser on the 16th. Unlike Cattle Egret and a few other dips this year which I’m reasonably confident I’ll grip back at some stage, there’s only been one previous documented record of RBM at Pulborough, back in 2009. Hopefully I won't have to wait another decade for the next one!

Gutted!

The Brooks are filling up nicely now thanks to a fairly wet second half of November and the flocks of Wigeon, Teal, Lapwing etc are now getting sizeable - best appreciated when a passing raptor sends the whole lot piling up into the sky with an almighty whoosh! As has become the norm here the wintering Black-tailed Godwit numbers are now well into three figures too, former warden Pete Hughes reckoned there were around 300 first thing this morning.

With actual patch birding now restricted to (often wet) weekend-only sessions my attentions have turned rather more towards nocmigging, the dark and stormy evenings of late providing the ideal opportunity to catch up on a backlog of recordings from earlier in the autumn. With more and more birders venturing into this new extension of ornithological study this autumn in particular has proved revealing in terms of the nationwide scale of some species' movements. A busy night for Redwings on the 14th-15th November was accurately reflected in Pulborough when I recorded 322 calls in ten hours.

Redwing/Wigeon duet

Assuming each call represents at least one or two birds, but likely many more, it's fair to assume at least a thousand birds passed over the house that night. Likewise, when Simon Gillings and Jon Heath - both Cambridge-based 'nocmiggers' - reported an unusually high count of Dunlin the following night (15th-16th), I was keen to discover if my own recording reflected this, which it did indeed as a total of 148 flight calls were logged from a bare minimum of 38 birds. The true count was likely far higher. Take this clip below, for example. It's quite evidently more than one bird (I put it down as two) but as others have pointed out it could be four or five or more.

It's really quite incredible to think about such swathes of birds moving above our heads while we're sleeping. As I've said before, migration is for my money the most fascinating aspect of bird study - and so intrinsic to our understanding of birds in general - and nocmigging is, I'm discovering, an opportunity to glimpse just that little bit further into their world and start to fill in the gaps in terms of what birds are moving, when and why.

Pulborough round-up, late October

Great to finally complete the set of British Owls on my Pulborough list recently with the addition of Short-eared Owl, seen first from behind the visitor centre on the evening of the 23rd then subsequently added to the garden list the following evening, seen over the North Brooks from my attic - then again on Sunday evening quartering up and down the banks of the Stor.

Short-eared Owl over the North Brooks on Sunday. Photo by Istvan Radi

Keeping with the (sort of) nocturnal theme, the nocmig adventures continue as I'm still working through the past week's backlog of recordings. A recent highlight was what sounded like at least two or three Brent Geese flying over not long after midnight on the 19th. There's always a few vismig records of this species in the southeast at this time of year as they 'cut the corner' from the east coast to the south coast, but still a nice one to get on nocmig and only my second record since I started recording at the end of last year.

Other highlights from the past weekend were at least three each of Marsh Harrier (including an adult male) and Red Kite on Saturday plus two Shelduck, a Little Egret and a heard only Water Rail below the Hanger. Duck numbers continue to increase with at least four hundred Wigeon and eight Pintail on Sunday. Eighteen hundred Woodpigeons flew southwest in an hour on Saturday morning, while down on the South Brooks a White-fronted Goose bearing a red leg ring was in with the Greylags - presumably not a wild bird as I believe it's been seen on and off a few times in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, on Sunday morning Paul had a Ruff with the Lapwings at Hail's View; a species that has been notable by its absence at Pulborough this autumn, especially compared to last year when we had a pretty remarkable count of 26 together on one day in late September. Presumably not a good breeding season for them, as has been the case for many shorebirds it seems.

Gary Trew had a ringtail Hen Harrier over the South Brooks yesterday and a Dunlin with the Lapwings on the North Brooks, while the Hen Harrier showed again today for Russ Tofts followed by another Short-eared Owl sighting and Woodock over the car park via Gary T.

Nocmig gold - YBW!

I've been nocmigging pretty much every other night so far this month, weather permitting, which means I've inevitably ended up with a bit of a backlog of recordings to go through. A dark and rainy evening last Sunday provided the perfect opportunity to do a bit a of catching up and I set about working my way through the night of the 8th/9th.

A nice and clear Water Rail was a good start but there wasn't a huge amount else of note until an odd little 'V' shape at 23:25hrs caught my eye. Clearly rather quiet, I initially took it to be a slightly odd Redwing call, but then the penny dropped. I checked on Xeno-canto and, sure enough, the recordings and sonograms on there proved that mine was a perfect match for Yellow-browed Warbler. Given the numbers in the country at this time of year I suppose it's inevitable that many must fly straight over at night, but it's still quite extraordinary to imagine this tiny little bird calling as it cruised over Pulborough. A Sussex, Pulborough and garden tick triple - or at least it would have been had I not been asleep at the time!

Sonogram of the YBW over Pulborough and one from Xeno-canto to compare (below)

And here's the Water Rail from earlier in the night

Pulborough, late September

Well, what a quiet September that was. The continuing low water levels and an almost total absence of easterlies didn’t help and I spectacularly managed to get through the month without a single patch year tick. It's been good to see some signs of the seasons changing though with a few Wigeon around now and the welcome return of at least two Marsh Harriers, again a regular sight quartering over the Brooks. The bulk of the hirundines and summer passerines cleared out pretty sharpish towards the end of the month, meaning we are now in that rather odd limbo period as we await the arrival of most of the wintering ducks and thrushes.

The month ended with a bang for some though as lucky regular Paul messaged me first on Saturday evening while I was in London informing me of two Great Egrets on the North Brooks and then again Sunday afternoon asking what looks like a Little Egret with a yellow bill that hangs around cows... Cattle Egret of course! Evidently two were briefly on the North Brooks that morning before flying east. Particularly galling that one as they would have been a Pulborough tick and also because I was actually on site that morning! Fingers crossed there'll be more to come, given how many are in the country at the moment.

One of the two Cattle Egrets on the 30th (photo: Paul)

The two Great Egrets on the North Brooks on the 29th (photo: Paul)

Now we’re past the equinox and the nights are growing longer than the days, before and after work birding time is limited so it’s full on nocmig season again! I put the microphone out most nights in the last week of September and was rewarded with my third Common Scoter of the year on the 22nd, the first Redwing of the season (25th) and another Oystercatcher (28th). I'm excited to see what else I manage to pick up in the coming weeks, this being my first full autumn of nocmigging.

Common Scoter

Redwing

Oystercatcher

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.

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.

Pulborough, mid-August: getting busy!

Return migration has really stepped up a gear in the past few days it seems - particularly on the passerine front - and this morning at Pulborough was without doubt the best visit of the autumn so far. After the disappointment of missing Clive Hope's Pied Flycatcher a couple of weeks ago and then yet another Osprey last weekend which, from Gary Trew's description probably flew right over my house (!), one of my patch bogey birds fell at last today with a male Redstart working its way along the hedge just north of Redstart Corner.

Redstart

While I was watching it I heard a Yellow Wagtail fly over, my first of the year and later followed by another heard only at the Hanger and a third being chased around the North Brooks by the Pied Wagtails. This species came tantalisingly close to being added to the patch year list a few days earlier with several calls recorded during my first nocmig session of the season on Monday night, but more on that later. The hedgerows were teeming with warblers today, largely Blackcap, Chiffchaff, Whitethroat and a few Willow Warblers, but also a Garden Warbler near West Mead, a Reed Warbler near Winpenny and at least five Lesser Whitethroats dotted about. Best of all though was the Tree Pipit kicking about in the Blackthorns near West Mead. Only my second record of this species here.

Tree Pipit (and Song Thrush)

There were potentially as many as ten Whinchats about with 4-5 seen on the North Brooks and the same amount on the South Brooks. Reported by others but not seen by me were two Spotted Flycatchers on the far eastern side of the reserve and three near Winpenny later in the day, and a Wheatear on the North Brooks. Good numbers of House Martins and Sand Martins, with the latter mostly streaming straight through while the former were lingering and feeding over the site. These inevitably attracted the attentions of a Hobby which plunged straight through the middle of a flock above the path down to Nettleys. A juvenile Marsh Harrier was again doing the rounds - I saw it from Redstart Corner and later from the visitor centre but others also saw it quartering over the North Brooks. Other than sixty-odd Lapwing there wasn't too much of note on the wader front today, with just two Dunlin and three Green Sandpipers on the North Brooks. Indeed it's been a little quiet on that side of things lately with nothing majorly noteworthy since my Wood Sand a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully September will bring a few more goodies.

View from 'the Obs' (attic) during one of the recent storms

Interestingly my first nocmigging attempts of the autumn this week have provided a bit more wader variety, in particular my first recorded Whimbrel(s) over the house, with six calls from an indeterminable number of birds recorded very early Tuesday morning. Other bits of note include the aforementioned Yellow Wags, a Common Sandpiper, a Little Ringed Plover and a Snipe. Quite a few strange tics and whistles too, particularly on Monday night - most of them as yet unidentified. Ortolan Bunting next?...

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!