Of Birds & Cake the Blog of Paul: Twitching Time (and also cake time!!)

So twitching for my non-birding friends , is the act of going to see a specific bird, usually a rare bird, in a specific place rather than just going out for a days general birding. Today the bird in question was a Red-footed Falcon which had been knocking around the Downs north of Shoreham for a few days, at this point ,it's probably best to point out that I'm not a very keen Twitcher, a keen Twitcher would have gone on the first or second day, however what with work etc I decided to wait for the weekend, I have seen Red-footed Falcon on three previous occasions so took the risk!! Amazing how many times a bird is found on a Monday, stays all week while I'm stuck at work, then buggers off on Friday!
So what is a Red-footed Falcon? I hear you ask, well the clue is in the name a small Falcon with red feet!! They are migratory, breeding I believe in Eastern Europe/Asia having spent the winter in Africa. In Britain we get a few every year as they wander off course, todays bird, is a first summer Male, meaning last years youngster, non-breeding bird. There has been a bit of an influx this year possibly due to the southerly winds we have enjoyed this spring.
In general, Margie doesn't enjoy twitching as it can involve long periods of time standing around waiting for the target bird to appear, but she decided to come this morning to get a bit of exercise and some fresh air ,we managed to get away reasonably early and arrived at Beeding Hill car park at approximately 6.15 AM and pretty soon we were yomping along the Monarch Way , the only thing of note was the Moon and the sound of Skylarks which were all around us!!

The Moon

Now the walk from the carpark to the site, is usually full of anxiety, will it be there, will we get there in time, will Margie hurry up (to be fair she was ready at the car before me and leading the way) the tendency is to walk too quickly thus discovering how unfit you are and having to wait to get your breath back, (I have been known to run though this doesn't usually end well) although on this occasion I managed to set a constant pace we breasted the crest of the hill to see a small group of birders looking out over the field, first question "is it showing" the answer "it's on the fence post"" Hurrah!!!! Success the bird was indeed on the fence post and not that far away!!

Red-footed Falcon

And again!!

We then spent a happy half an hour taking far to many pictures and watching this charismatic bird, although to be honest it didn't really do much , chased a Kestrel off, had a couple of aerial duels with Corvids, flew down off the posts a couple of times to pounce on prey, presumably Grasshoppers or the like, it hovered a couple of times ,but frustratingly never really came close enough for good pictures and also rather annoyingly the sun spent most of the time behind a cloud ,which was a shame as the position the bird was ideal to be lit up nicely!!

Fencepost Hopping

Hovering

What you looking at

As we watched it got into a particular nasty altercation with a Jackdaw and disappeared high in to the sky appearing to drop down in the far distance behind a copse of trees, Margie having spent the last 20 minutes taking pictures of flowers, including pretty much every stage of a poppy flowers life cycle, (see pics below) suggested continuing down the path for a while to see if anything else was about.

The Copse the RFF disappeared behind! (by Margie)

Poppy (by Margie)

So we headed further along the path, although not that much to show for it a couple of distant, Hares, more Skylarks a couple of Mipits so we turned and started to head back up the hill, we hadn't gone more than ten yards when I spotted a bird flying towards us, got to be a Peregrine I said , a quick squint through the Bins proved me correct and managed a few shots as it flew right over our heads!

Peregrine Falcon

Not bad ,including the Kestrel that was 3 Falcons before 8 o'clock. We re-joined the assembled birders, social distancing was pretty well maintained whilst we were there, but the bird hadn't reappeared so we decided to head back to the car, a very pleasant, very different to the anxious semi-trot of earlier, walk in bright sunshine and blue skies , I spent some trying to get pics of the Skylarks without much success, a Woodpigeon posed nicely on a pallet and a Meadow Pipit sat patiently on a post while I failed to get a decent shot of it, Margie spent the time taking pictures of plants ,sheep and Snail shells!! We saw several birders heading towards the RRF site, but I resisted uttering the dreaded "You should of been here 10 minutes ago" (the worst sentence in birding).

Skylark

Patient Meadow Pipit

Woodpigeon

Flower (By Margie)

Snail Shell, she's obsessed with em! (By Margie)

Flower (By Margie)

Sheep (By Margie)

While I put my shoes on by the car Margie took some nice scenery shots of the view from up there which is quite spectacular

On arrival home in order to celebrate our success, I made a Chocolate Victoria sponge which i jazzed up a bit with some butter icing made from a big dollop of Chocolate/Hazelnut spread which came out quite well although the sponge is a tad dry, but luckily there is so much cream it's not really noticeable.