what happened in January

well, January was by and large a quiet month for me birds wise. The only time I really got out was on New Year's Day, and after reaching 200 last year, I haven't bothered with a yearlist this year. Too much effort, and I found myself focusing on my list more than the actual birds on occasions. Personally, I think birding is a far happier thing to do if you are appreciating the bird for being a bird. For being unusual, fr being commonplace, for being an ID challenge, for being drop-dead gorgeus, for having a nice song, or simply being charismatic. But I don't think a true birder should appreciate birds solely for a tick.

2011 started with an expedition to Pett Levels. A RED-BREASTED GOOSE had turned up here, along with 300+ White-fronts and a few Barnacle and Brent Geese. I thought that was all the geese we would see, but birding can be full of surprises...

Joining me and dad on this New Year's Day trip were Dave, Katie and James Beadle (our company on the canadian trip), Rick Munday and Nick Pope. As our cars drove up to Pett Level, a 300+ strong skein of geese circled over the marshes. Setting up the scope, we quicky found the RED-BREASTED GOOSE, along with 300+ White-fronted Geese, 70+ Barnacle Geese and c30 Brent Geese. Looking at the Brent's closer, we found 11 of them were PALE-BELLIED, a very high count of a very scarce species in Sussex. I then checked the see, which held 50+ Great Crested Grebes and a handful of Red-throated Divers, but not a lot else. The pools and fields had plenty of waders, Lapwing in the thousands, three figure numbers of Curlew and smaller numbers of Dunlin, Golden Plover and Redshank. A few more Dunlin were roosting on the beach with 40+ Turnstone and a few Bar-tailed Godwit. Ducks were also in plentiful supply, with thousands of Wigeon, hundreds of Teal and Mallard and two-figure counts of Pochard, Tufted Duck, Gadwall and Shoveler. A Stonechat flitting around a ditch and fenceposts by the road was a nice find, especially given the December we had had.

What happened next all happened so quickly I can't quite recall exactly what happened. But Rick put up a shout of two BEAN GEESE. No sooner had he put everyone on them than we noticed there were actually six. But they were very distant and difficult to identify. Their short necks and stubby bills immediately excluded Taiga Bean, but they were too distant to see the bill or leg colour on reliably. However, two had silvery-coloured backs, and four where browner coloured, so we concluded they were 4 TUNDRA BEAN GEESE and 2 PINK-FOOTED GEESE. Both rare birds in Sussex, and the Pink-feet a new sussex bird for me.
We walked to get closer, but a Peregrine put everything up. After about 15 minutes the geese came back, and we wanted to try and see they grey geese again. But now there were eight of them! After quite a lengthy debate between Dad, Nick, Rick and myself (the Beadles had departed by now) we eventually decided there were now six PINK-FEET and two TUNDRA BEAN GEESE! However, considering the possibility some of the geese may have been out of sight before they were spooked, and sme mya have come into view, I'd say there were at least six Pink-feet and four Tundra Bean Geese, as we had been confident of our ID's the first time around, there were only two that looked like Pink-feet that time. Oh, and while we were sorting out this great debate, we were having to avoid being distracted by the Red-breasted Goose, which literally seemed to glow amongst its duller companions. And the Black Brant was nice too. And I don't exactly see White-fronts, Barnacle Geese or Pale-bellied Brents every day either! By the end f the day we had ammased the following total from Pett Level

• c300 White-fronted Goose
• c70 Barnacle Goose
• 19 Dark-bellied Brent Goose (branta bernicla bernicla)
• 11 Pale-bellied Brent Goose (branta bernicla hrota), if I'm not mistaken this is the largest group of this race in sussex for many years
• 1 BLACK BRANT (branta bernicla nigricans)
• 6 PINK-FOOTED GEESE
• 4 TUNDRA BEAN GEESE (anser fabilis rossicus)
• 1 RED-BREASTED GOOSE

• c2000 Lapwing
• c100 Curlew
• c100 Dunlin
• c50 Golden Plover
• c40 Redshank
• c40 Turnstone
• c20 Bar-tailed Godwit

• c3000 Wigeon
• c200 Teal
• c200 Mallard
• c40 Gadwall
• c20 Shoveler
• c20 Pochard
• c10 Tufted Duck

plus a Stonechat. I feel I should mention that Stonechat.



click on these photos to enlarge them and (hopefully) see where the rarer geese
are amongst the hordes of White-fronts, Barnacles and Brents!



To round off a brilliant day, we saw three WAXWING as we drove through Winchelsea, as they perched on telegraph wires above the road.

After this day, I did very little birding in January. On the 10th I saw 3 Purple Sandpipers at Newhaven East Pier, getting great views of one very confiding bird. But other than that, the only birds were a Stonechat that has wintered in a small little reserve along Seaford seafront, known as the Old Brickfield, a Blackcap seen in a garden walking to school on the 31st and regular singing utbursts from Robin, Song Thrush, Blackbird, Great Tit, Dunnock, Wren, Greenfinch and Goldfinch

Back Blogging

Apologies to my (very, very, very few) readers (in fact I think I'm the only person who ever reads this)  but with schoolwork, GCSE's and general laziness I have largely given up on this blog in recent times. The last time I posted, I was covering birds I had seen on the third of December! Since then, I haven't got out birding all that much but I'll attempt to round up what I have seen recently.

The first few weeks of December where pretty dull. I dipped on a WHITE-TAILED EAGLE by five minutes on the 12th (!), having seen two WAXWINGS in a tree just outside my school two days previously. On the 6th I had gone to Arlington Reservoir with my dad, seeing 40+ Pochard but not a lot else. In Seaford, atleast three Grey Wagtails were wintering, but Redwing numbers were low and Fieldfares were practically non-existent.

At the beginning of December, my british yearlist was ay 194, with the most recent additions being in Scotland at the end of October. I was hoping to reach 200 species by the end of the year, but by December 22nd this was looking very unrealistic, I was still on 194. However, I thought the snow might warrant a walk along the Cuckmere. An Unusual find was six Egyptian Geese on the riverbank! Two adults and Four Juveniles by my assumptions. Maybe the cold weather brought them down from the Arun, or Norfolk, or maybe even from the growing Dutch population. Or maybe they just jumped the net from Drusillas, less than two miles away....  Anyone's guess, and they could easily have been 'wild' (as wild as an Egyptian Goose can be at any rate), but I didn't count them as anything more than an intriguing novelty this time.
However, I did also see a Merlin at Charleston Reedbed, being mobbed by several crows, and outmanouvering them all. And down at Cuckmere Haven were 40+ Barnacle Geese, almost certainly wild given the weather at the time. These two yearticks took me to 196, while I also saw a Water Rail near Charleston Reedbed, 9 Gadwall north of Exceat, and at Cuckmere Haven a Shoveler, a Pintail, 4000+ Wigeon and 200+ Teal. The Wigeon were a very notable count.
The following day (23 Dec)at Cuckmere Haven I saw no yearticks, but I did see 4000+ Wigeon and 200+ Teal again, alng with 3 Pintail (2m 1f), 9 Gadwall, 4 Goldeneye (2m 2f), 40 Pochard, 30 Tufted Duck,
 57 Barnacle Geese, 3 Dark-bellied Brent Geese, 4 Snipe, a few Rock Pipits, 10 Ringed Plover, 5 Dunlin, 2 Golden Plover and the highlight, 35 WAXWING in the hawthorns along the side of the A259, present for about five minutes before moving on towards Friston Forest.

these Egyptian Geese protested against Mubarak several months early, by refusing
 to go back to their Pen in Drusillas  -22/12

I spent Christmas in Worcestershire with family. At my aunt's house I passed some of the hours staring out the window, from which I saw all the common garden stuff. Long-tailed Tits were regular, as was a male Blackcap that often took complete control of one of the peanut feeders. I also saw a Coal Tit (common for most but very rare in my local area). Redpolls and Siskins were regular fly-overs, and we found a small flock of both in the Alders further along their road. My aunt's five-acre orchard also held a lot of thrushes, mainly Fieldfares, with smaller numbers of Redwing, quite a lot of Song Thrushes and atleast three Mistle Thrushes.
On Boxing day, after a night where it reached -25 C, the River Severn five miles away froze over. This was the onyl the third time in the last hundred years that had happened, following the winters of 1947/48 and 1962/63. It was spectacular, althugh not quite ice-skatingly thick as I tried to convince everyone it was! A Mandarin on an unfrozen part of the river was yeartick 197, a Kingfisher flew around, wondering what the hell it was going to eat, and Tufted Ducks and Mallards were waddling about on the Ice. On Dec 27th we drove back to Seaford, seeing a few Red Kites as we went.

Blackcap that terrorized a peanut feeder

well if you don't know what this is why read a birding blog? ;)

taken, fittingly, on December 25th

blue baby-feeing device

Black-coloured baseball hat

the River Severn, after the coldest of weather spell since 1962- 26/12

shaky shot of a Mandarin- 26/12

On the 29th, Dad and I went down to Cuckmere Haven again, seeing 74 White-fronted Geese (yeartick 198)
 and 51 Barnacle Geese, along with a drake Goldeneye and 15 Dunlin. In Seaford, we saw 13 Waxwings in a crabapple tree in Vale Close, about five minutes walk from our house. The following day, with a day to spare, I got to 200, with the addition of Knot and Purple Sandpiper at Newhaven Tide Mills. Here, I also saw 50+ Dunlin, 25+ Redshank and a single Dark-bellied Brent Goose, while at Piddinghoe Pond I saw a redhead Goosander, a Grey Plover and a Common Sandpiper.

The last day of December, I spent out with my Dad and some friends. Dave, Katie and James Beadle (who we stayed with much of the time on our Canada vacation), Brian Cox and Rick Munday. We started out at Arlington Reservoir, where we saw 2 Goldeneye (1m 1f), 70+ Pochard, 100+ Wigeon and another redhead Goosander. Following that, we visited a site near Alfriston, hoping to see Jack Snipe. There were none here, but we did flush up abut 20 Common Snipe, sparking one memorable chase between a Snipe and a pursuing Peregrine. We also all got one hell of a fright flushing up a Pheasant from the middle of the watermeadow! We then saw my Drusillas-origined Egyptian Geese near Litlington, and at Cuckmere Haven, a Common Seal was hauled up on the bank, a few Dunlin were along the river, and the meanders still held around 20 Pochard.

Goosander at Piddinhoe- 29/12

Brent Goose at Tide Mills- 29/12

Very blurry Knot at Tide Mills- 29/12

Common Seal-phocas lethargicus 31/12



blurry photo of Pochards, Little Grebes and Wigeon - 31/12



slightly less blurry photo of some Pochard -31/12

Atleast my next post will be concerning 2011!  Ever-optimistic, signing out and unsure when I'll be back...

my 2010 yearlist ended on 201 birds, with six added in the last nine days of the year, as follows;

195. Merlin- 22/12
196. Barnacle Goose- 22/12
197. Mandarin -26/12
198. White-fronted Goose-29/12
199. Knot-30/12
200. Purple Sandpiper-30/12