The best at Selsey Bill this morning, despite hopeful conditions, were seven Great Northern Divers offshore and a few Common Scoter-obviously the best is still to come here!
A bike ride down from coastguards to Toe End didn't turn much up either, the best being eight Sanderling near the sea defences, a few Meadow Pipits and an adult Lesser Black-backed Gull with a few Great Black-backed Gulls on the mud.
Six excellent Whooper Swans were in White's Creek on Tuesday, well found by LP in White's Creek at Pagham North Wall, two years running for these now after a long barren period on the Selsey peninsula.
On Friday a distant Great Skua (Bonxie) was the highlight, picked up by SH heading west. More intriguing, however, was a distant bird moving across the horizon in large arcs...we were sure it wasn't a juvenile Gannet and skuas were ruled out which only really left a shearwater of some kind (or Giant Petrel of course lol) but we shall, sadly, never know...these are the ones that really bug me!
Declining a first-of-the-year Wheatear twitch at Church Norton on Saturday I headed over to Itchenor for yet another go for the partridges, this time successfully: two Grey Partridges in the Horse Pond field & two Red-legged Partridges in Rookwood Lane. The best on the water in the harbour were a few lingering Brent Geese and two Great Crested Grebes.
Over the farm today (Saturday) were at least 40 Mediterranean Gulls. We do get good numbers of these passing through in the spring so I suspect this is just the first wave.
Whooper Swans:
There wasn't much at the Bill this morning other than 26 Curlew and four Whimbrel. Later in the day a Ruddy Shelduck was at Honer 1 (found by Mike James) and I managed a five second view of it flying away over the trees, very unsatisfactory but hopefully it will be refound for a better look! Update: AW had it in off the sea at the windmill on Friday so hopefully it'll stick in the area.
At look around Honer Reservoir & Marsh Farm didn't turn the above up but there were 78 Cattle Egrets at Bramber Farm and two Egyptian Geese were with half a dozen Shelduck near Summer Lane.
It was nice to see the regulars at Selsey Bill this morning in my first proper visit for over a month due to circumstances...unfortunately it was rather quiet but a Red Kite over north (or east if you're AH lol) was a good bird, as was a Raven that I missed. A Blackcap in the bushes (missed that too) and a few Chiffs and Mipits were the best of any migration whilst on the sea a Black-throated Diver and a few Great Northerns were the highlights.
Afterwards I went to Itchenor where I had partridges...only problem was that they were Red-legged Partridges not Grey ones! Did have a cream-capped Marsh Harrier (a migrant maybe? bit of an odd place for one?) and a few Brent Geese and small birds but nothing else really of note. The camera struggled today in the gloom but a couple of pastiches (cough) are below!
Red Kite at the Bill:
