Tuesday 18 October 2011

Hook Acro - 16th October

An interesting Acrocephalus Warbler was found at Hook today which was in the end caught and ringed. Speculation about the ID ranged from Marsh Warbler to Blyth's Reed Warbler but in the hand it seemed it could only be a Reed Warbler perhaps of the eastern sub-species Fuscus. Here are a few pictures.







Wednesday 12 October 2011

Hayling Island - 11th October

I managed to spend three hours down on Hayling today where the shingle bar at The Kench had good numbers of the expected waders feeding as the tide dropped. There must be at least a thousand Brent Geese in the harbour now too. The only other bird of note here was a nice male Common Scoter hanging around the area until the tide dropped and it took flight and landed again on the water further out in the harbour.


I spent the last part of the afternoon with ACJ having a brief seawatch from Sandy PointThe highlight was this juvenile Arctic Skua which put on an excellent but brief show harassing a gull just offshore and over the beach.



Monday 3 October 2011

Pennington Marshes - 3rd October

I spent the morning on Hayling Island and having seen little else but a few Chiffchaffs, the news of a juv Rosy Starling at Pennington was quite welcome and after some initial hesitance i decided to go. The Starling took a little bit of work to track down amongst the several hundred common Starling and after a brief view perched on brambles and a few flight views it was pined down feeding on the deck in amongst the throng.



However it was picked up again in flight and disappeared off west into the distance mid afternoon.

It was good to once again connect with the Semi-palmated Sandpiper which was still showing well on the Jetty Lagoon, Pennington Marshes.


So not a bad day at all!