26/04/09 - Keyhaven

On the 26th April we went to Keyhaven and Pennington marshes, before returning home via Calshot. We set out early for what was forecasted to be a good sea watch from Hurst spit. Unfortunately it was a lovely sunny morning and we weren’t too hopeful with the sea in the morning.

It started off very slowly, with a handful of Gannets out over the horizon, but little else moving around out on the sea so Dan and I took a break for photographing the Little Terns nearby:

Returning to the scope for a second go watching the sea, we were pleasantly surprised to get distant views of both Arctic Skua and Pomarine Skua (a lifer for me!) It was exciting to have five Whimbrel come in off the sea, just as we were leaving for the marshes…a year tick for all of us.

Photograph by Robbie.

Robbie has actually provided a map of the route we took (although this is nearly completely useless. But if you do frequent Keyhaven and that area you may have a good idea of where we walked!):

It wasn’t long before we were surrounded by Whitethroats and the occasional Reed/Sedge Warbler on the main route around the marshes. And then my second lifer of the day - Lesser Whitethroat. I have included a record shot below, unfortunately it was a lot more skittish than the Whitethroats.

Lesser Whitethroat:

Whitethroat:

We were also very lucky to stumble upon our first Adder of the year:

The Common Terns were performing well for the camera, so I have included a couple of ‘interesting’ action shots below:

Little Tern sat on the gravel:

As we continued round our planned route, we picked up a good number of year ticks, including Bar Tailed Godwits and Little Ringed Plover before grabbing a bite to eat (pork pies) and heading on to Calshot for our target bird: Nightingale.

We were lucky to get an excellent (but brief) view of this very charismatic and well-hidden bird - a great finish to the day, taking our total species count up to 88.

29/04/09 - Collared Flycatcher - Portland, Dorset

Earlier today we noticed on Birdguides that the Collared Flycatcher had moved from the private garden (the first sighting location) to somewhere ‘twitch-able’ - great news!

After finishing our morning lectures, we got ready and hit the road for Portland to potentially get our second ‘mega rare’ bird of the month (in addition to White Throated Sparrow in Hampshire).

“They don’t call it the centre of the universe for nothin” we were told, and as per usual Portland delivered:

Second image courtesy of Daniel Trim - Check out his blog, he had a much better angle…

It is hard to show just how stunning this bird really is, but the perfect contrast of the black and white feathers, combined with that classic flycatching behaviour, made this a bird that won’t be forgotten! And unlike the twitch in Hampshire for the White Throated Sparrow, it was a much calmer and friendlier crowd:

So what next?

With exams on the horizon, birding may slow down a bit but I am going to make an effort to get some new photos and trips up on here as and when I can. We are planning a day trip to Portland in the first week of may, so watch this space!

Thanks for reading, comments are appreciated.

Sam.

Firstly, I would like to give anyone who doesn’t know us a profile of the ‘birding team’ that went to Portland over the Easter weekend. I have tried to be imaginative, and give their personal highlights (i.e. not related to birding skill, necessarily) to give everyone a better idea of how the team works.

Dan Trim

Probably the only person you will ever meet that will happily go seawatching at 6am the day after a night on the lager, bitter, cider, Baileys and whisky at the Pulpit Inn. And even after all of that produce as much on the sea as anyone else could…!

Eddie (Bear Grylls) Taylor

First time birding at Portland. Thought a kilogram of “Olives in brine” would be a tasty yet sustainable birding snack. A closet boat watcher?

Robbie Styles

I would consider Robbie the chef of the team, even though he steamed up all the windows in the observatory.

And myself (Sam White)

Maybe the other three can comment this post if they think I had any notable highlights over the weekend

With the car fully loaded (and consequently dragging along the road) we set off at 7am towards our first stop - Radipole lake. The weekend started off well, with an impressive number of very ’showy’ (yet camera-shy!) Cetti’s warblers, loads of Hirundines and the ‘target bird’ for that morning - the Hooded Merganser:

This was a well-earned lifer for Eddie, who had been up since 5am for the drive from Bedfordshire with Dan, and a year tick for the rest of us. With a quick stop off at McDonalds, we moved on to Portland to find that we had missed what sounded like an excellent morning’s sea watch.

Our own efforts failed to produce much more than the resident Auks, Gannets and Fulmars, however we did have a good number of Manx Shearwaters rocking through with a few flocks of Common Scoter. Record shots…

Guillemot:

Shag, giving a true indication of the weather around these rocks at Portland and what the birds living there have to endure:

Gannet:

Common Scoter:

It was exciting to see the individual Swallows and other small birds coming up to the land whilst we were watching the sea, flying over our heads and continuing their migration northwards. A final highlight on the sea was a pair of Puffins, always lovely to see and a lifer for Robbie:

On the land we weren’t lucky enough to see the Grasshopper Warblers and Ring Ouzels which were rumoured to be about on the bill, however we did all get excellent views of our first Redstarts and Wheatears of the year.

Redstart, in the hand to be rung:

Wheatear:

Another photography highlight came in the form of a Skylark, which sat on a barbed-wire fence next to us and started singing away happily. Not quite sure why they have such long hind claws!

The resident Little Owl:

The semi-resident(?) Short Eared Owl:

Overall, we had a great time at Portland in the first few days on the Bill, however it was a bit thin on the migrant front and we needed something rare and tasty to finish the 4-day (Friday to Monday) weekend off nicely!

So when the pagers sounded and people started talking about a White Throated Sparrow (American vagrant species) near Winchester we all got pretty excited, even if it was a 2 hour drive away. We were fairly apprehensive at first, due to the cash limitations (we are all students!), but decided it could be a once in a lifetime opportunity and went for the twitch on our third day.

When we arrived at Old Winchester Hill, we stood back and watched the ‘more hardcore’ twitchers pushing and shoving their way through all manner of hawthorn and brambles to get a brief glimpse of what seemed to be a very elusive bird. Luckily, our patience paid off and the sparrow hopped up on top of a hawthorn bush and started singing - a stunning bird, definitely worth the drive! :

Courtesy of Daniel Trim

Very happy with our “mega” rare lifer, we returned to Portland via the Mealy and ‘greater Greenland’ Redpolls at Blashford Lakes in Hampshire.

Greenland (or Greater Greenland?) Redpoll, larger even than the Mealys that were also feeding in the area:

On the way back home, on our fourth and final day, we stopped off at Radipole Lake again, where we were incredibly lucky to get awesome, close-up views of 3 Bearded Tits:

The shot above is a poor and hastily taken record shot, but we were all ecstatic to get such close and relatively ‘prolonged’ views! And to top the whole weekend off, we had spectacular views of Marsh Harriers collecting nest material. I’m sure the others will agree that it was a brilliant weekend, with classic times birding and drinking at the Pulpit Inn…

Hopefully we will be going back in early May to catch the busiest migration time!

I have included a few photographs of woodland birds that I have taken in Hampshire over the last couple of months - those of you who have seen my flickr page (www.flickr.com/photos/sam-white) may have already seen some of these shots, however they are my personal favourites and I felt that instead of leaving my blog empty for the next week or two, I would give you all some photos to look at!

So here are a few of my woodland bird shots…

Blue Tit:

Nuthatch:

Chaffinch:

Marsh Tit:

Spring Robin:

Siskin:

If you would like to use or purchase any of these images then please contact me (sam@birdportfolio.co.uk). These are low-ish resolution versions, so I will be able to provide higher resolution images if requested.

I had my first Yellowhammer of the year from my bedroom window (sadly too far away to get any record shots worth looking at) which has been a highlight of my bedroom-window-birding. There are also four Chiffchaffs in the field behind my house, a sign that summer is on it’s way - now all we need here are the Swallows and we’re there!

Here is a shot of my dog Molly, who probably isn’t a great help when I go birding here:

I tried to mask her dopey and playful personality here by trying to capture the fierce greyhound deep within

I’m going to Portland over Easter weekend, so I may post some more ’sets’ of images between now and then depending on what you, the readers, think! Leave a comment below, you don’t have to sign up or anything it’s all moderated by myself. And after Portland, expect many more photos, stories and therefore blog posts!

Happy birding,

Sam White.

We arrived at Walpole lake, but had no luck finding the Ring Billed Gull - it hadn’t been sighted for a few days so this was a gamble! First ‘dip’. We were just about to leave, when Dan spotted a summer plumage Mediterranean Gull - the shot below shows the white wing tips and generally stockier appearance compared to the (winter plumage) black-headed gull on the water next to it.

As the only one on the lake, it seemed fairly ’shy’ and wouldn’t fly as close-by as the other gulls so we left for the Black Redstart, which we have seen before by the ‘Explosion!’ museum in Gosport. We searched for a good 30 minutes but no sign of the Black Redstart, so a second dip of the day.

So on we went to Portsmouth, hoping that the Purple Sandpipers hadn’t left the area around Southsea Castle - I don’t why I’m trying to make this suspenseful, you’ve presumably seen some of my photos when getting to this page!

Here are a couple of my favourites from the day:

These birds seemed really tame, and we counted about 16 individuals in total - before discovering this place, we had only seen this species at a distance from the top of a cliff at Portland! So a Hampshire tick for me and a year tick for Dan!

In slightly higher spirits, we decided to check out Titchfield Haven on the way back to Southampton. Third dip: Garganey. This was a potential lifer for me, and a year tick for Dan so it was a shame that the bird had moved from the scrapes in the main reserve up to the flooded valley out the back. We weren’t able to locate the bird around the valley, but before leaving I did get a couple of shots from the Meon Shore hide.

Shoveler:

Courting Black Headed Gulls - the combined courtship of a few hundred gulls isn’t exactly the most relaxing noise in the world, so we left fairly agitated! Still, funny behaviour to watch:

All in all a great day in the sun, lovely light for photographing the Purple Sandpipers, which definitely rescued what would’ve otherwise been quite a quiet day!

Sam.

This is a photograph that I got into the final stages of a University of Southampton/Hampshire photography competition. The judging panel included Chris Packham, who many of you will know is a well-known birder in the New Forest. I was a runner up in my category (Undergraduates), however I was extremely happy to be in the top 3 in the category!

This Great Crested Grebe was courting with a female, in early March this year at Lakeside CP, Eastleigh. As part of their courtship ‘routine’ the male birds grab a beakful of weeds from the bottom of the lake and present it to the female, showing that they can ‘provide’, This one was in the process of acquiring weeds, when I caught him jumping around erratically.

Feel free to leave a comment, or let me know if you have any questions!