Tuesday 1 January 2013

Happy new year!

Ring-billed Gull (Larus delawarensis) 
Walpole Park, Gosport 1-1-2013


Well it may be true that enthusiasm will diminish and other commitments will ensure that my name will slowly trickle down the table but I figured I may as well keep a Hants yearlist this year (I’ll be patch-listing too at Woolmer). So with that in mind I left the house before dawn this morning aiming to see the key birds on offer and with any luck get a reasonable day list as well. A change of year brought a change in the weather and there was barely a cloud in the sky all day!

First stop had to be the Glossy Ibis at Bickerley, a site I have never been to before. After a bit of faffing with a dodgy grid reference I arrived at the place I should have been on Bickerley road to view the floods where an unknown birder had the bird, nice. A quick text saw the ‘overreadies’ appear shortly after the bird disappeared. And then shortly after hearing they had relocated it, it got up high and flew off south where it was presumably the bird relocated at Stanpit in Dorset, I suspect foul play but I’m saying nothing :-)


The rest of the day was spent working my way back east where the highlights were Marsh Harrier at Titchfield, RB Gull at Gosport, Shag, GN Diver, Guillemot and SE Owl on Hayling Island. A wiz around some country lanes locally got me a Tawny Owl (sat on a branch within a meter of a roosting Pheasant!) to give me 89 species for the day.

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