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Showing posts from April, 2018

A wildlife-filled weekend!

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Unfortunately its the end of the holidays and this weekend I made the most of the nice weather and went bird ringing as well as visiting RSPB Pulborough Brooks. It was a 4:45 start on Saturday, arriving at Cissbury Ring as the sun was rising on the horizon. On the walk down past the fields a male yellowhammer sang loudly from the top of the hedgerow and numerous skylarks blurted out their song all around me. The thick fog magically seemed to clear as I arrived at the ringing site. It was quiet bird wise, catching only 20 birds, including chiffchaffs, blackcaps, wrens, bullfinch and a willow warbler which was nice as I hadn't seen one yet this year.  Willow warbler in the hand After hearing 8 ring ouzels had been reported at cissbury ring I decided to have a quick look on the walk back to the car. Luckily enough within 5 minutes I spotted 4 of them close together, hopping around and reappearing above the mounds as they were feeding. Surprisingly I had never seen

Spring birding

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On Saturday I was finally able to get out and do some birding! The weather didn't look very promising but I decided to go down to Pagham Harbour anyway. We started off by walking down to the left side of the habour, stopping to have a look at the feeders that were just outside the vistor centre. A brightly coloured chaffinch, house sparrows and a female blackcap were making the most of the seed that had been put out.  Male chaffinch Walking down the path I spotted a chiffchaff skulking around the vegetation and a dunnock singing very loudly. We then were at the start of the mudflats, which the majority of had been covered by the high tide. All of the waders were crammed on to the remaining land, which included redshanks, curlew and lots of snipe which were hiding in among the grasses. There were also lots of black-headed gulls which were flying around and being extremely noisy! We then drove down to Church Norton and walked to the beach. Looking out to sea with my scope I