Of Birds & Cake the Blog of Paul: Downs Again, Steyning Again!

So where to go today? (I realise I may have taken away a lot of the jeopardy from that question with the post title!!😁) Reports, yesterday, of a showy Snow Bunting at Worthing and a Long-tailed Duck at Shoreham were of interest but neither location thrilled me very much and I wanted a walk having stayed in yesterday due to Storm Arwen, which down here at least had been rather under-whelming, different story up north of course! There had been a few reports of a Hen Harrier on the Downs at Steyning, at the Steyning Bowl to be more precise, I had little idea where this was but took an educated guess looking at the geography of the area and so found myself parked on the Bostal Road again, although this week closer to Steyning than last week. This small parking space is quite high up, the first thing I noticed was the beginning of a beautiful sunrise, the second thing I noticed, on opening the door was, it was kin freezing!!😱Luckily I was in full winter plumage with thermal everything, no long johns yet but it won't be long!! A lesser, more intelligent man would have left immediately, but not I! Manfully straight into the face of the bitter wind!! Margie, being more intelligent had elected to stay at home, mainly to take delivery of our new Heat Pump Tumble Drier, which someone had bought in a Black Friday frenzy!!! Well it at least will reduce our carbon footprint and the old one was knackered!!

I walked along the path and turned right on to the South Downs way, this was new territory for me, I spent the next 20 minutes alternating between, scanning the game cover strips and admiring the developing sunrise🌞

More brutal Hedgerow "management"

Bit dull the other way but a nice view never-the-less

Trig Point

I battled on against the icy wind, scanning all the time, lots of Common Gulls floating about doing their best Harrier impressions , not surprisingly small birds were at a premium, one Pied Wagtail and a single Stonechat about it! There were several flocks of Starlings and the occasional group of Stock Doves, but nothing of major interest. A small flock of Redwings touched down briefly and a bigger but more distant flock of Fieldfares were also present.

Common Gull

Typical habitat

Redwings

Stock Doves

I had now reached a fork in the path, with no obvious way of walking down into the bowl and the idea of having the wind at my back being very appealing, I decided to head back, at this point I spotted what looked like a Raptor coming out of the bowl towards me, could it be? Was it? surely not, Was it? No it wasn't!! I fairly quickly realised it was a Red Kite, don't think I've ever been disappointed to see a Red Kite before!! It did at least have the decency to give a close flypast in the gloom!! One the way back along the path a Deer ran across the field, not sure what type? A young Roe deer perhaps?

Red Kite

Common Gull against the last of the Sunrise

Deer, perhaps a Fallow or a young Roe? A Fallow on it's own would be unusual!

At the junction where I joined the SDW I had planned to turn right and follow that path for a while, but it was straight into the wind and after 10 yards, I thought "sod this for a game of soldiers!" and headed back to the car, after clearing the now iced up windscreen,(told you it was cold!) I decided to head down the road to the area visited last week in the hope of some Corn Bunting action and the greater hope that it would be more sheltered!!

Which it was, Hurrah!!! 😁Though not much, Boo!!😢 It was also much quieter than last week, with no singing Skylarks, although the odd snatch of Corn Bunting song kept my hopes up. I headed east, with the hope that last weeks success on the escarpment could be repeated, less birds about but had a Chaffinch and a Corn Bunting posing briefly, then a very large flock of birds mainly Linnets and Corn Buntings appeared in the distance, their panic suggested a Raptor, a Red Kite drifted west but not sure this was the cause. The flock was quite large maybe 40 Corn Buntings and a 100 Linnets, the Linnets went right and over the small wood whilst the Corn Buntings dropped into the field next to the path, but were distant. The big lens set up I have works well for small groups or single birds but is pretty hopeless at conveying the bigger picture, such as panicking large flocks of small birds!!.

Chaffinch

Corn Bunting

Starling

Common Gull

Less cooperative Red Kite

Goldfinch eye test one of them is in focus😀

Part of the Flock

So I followed the path around to the escarpment, bit windy here but at least at my back, (I have an excellent capacity not to think about the walk back), I spotted a bird on a bush right at the bottom, I had just decided it was a Song Thrush rather than an exotic large pipit, when it panicked and darted to the ground, attacked, but by what, initially I thought the blur I'd seen was a Merlin, a large flock of Starlings erupted further on, this time I spotted the culprit, Peregrine!! not that surprising as there had been one here last week!!

The Shoreham, Brighton, Seaford Head view

Margie took this exact view last week, don't think the sheep have moved

Song Thrush

Panicking Starlings

Peregrine

Going like the clappers!

Brave Corn Bunting taken the Song Thrushes perch or at least the same bush.

The Peregrine had flown along the bottom of the escarpment and disappeared around the corner at high speed, a couple of minutes later there was a commotion on the hillside above me, looking up I could see a veritable blizzard of small birds flying into the brambles presumably off the unseen field at the top of the escarpment!!

A brief description of the situation, I was on the path aprox 30 feet below the top and approx 150 feet from the bottom of the escarpment,(bear in mind I am useless at judging distance but the proportion is about right) below me is a steep slope mainly grassland with a couple of bushes, above me it's more brambly with a bit of grass. The birds were piling into the brambles from a field which I couldn't see above me, at this point I spied a path up to the top of the hill. Now I don't think it was an official path, but there was no fence or sign saying I couldn't go up and it was a clear track up the side of the hill so I wouldn't be breaking new ground, so after a brief moral argument with myself, which I won,😏I headed up!! There was indeed a field full of birds up here mainly Corn Buntings, but Skylarks as well, the birds were calmed down a bit now sitting in the brambles and heading back on to the field in small groups, I'm useless at judging numbers but would say there was at least a 60 Corn Buntings that I saw and I couldn't see the whole field (there was probably many more than that, it was amazing!!) I scanned for the Peregrine, it was very distant, high in the sky and there were two!!

Corn Buntings

Distant Peregrine

Nice posy one

Cornies in Tree

Cornies in Flight

The view of the Weald from the top

At this point things took a turn and not for the better, I could almost hear Margie saying "Karma, told you, you shouldn't go up there!" (in her defence, in my head she did tell me not to go, but I ignored her, what ya gonna do I'm a rebel at heart!!) My Knee, which for the best part of 57 years has held me up pretty well, except for the end of my budding cricket career obviously, decided to collapse, I've no idea why as I was standing still when it happened, but it was agony, not "ooh that's a bit of a nasty twinge" kind of agony, but ya actual, "this hurts so much I might be sick and faint kind of agony"!! 😱😭 It bloody hurt, as it calmed down a bit and I got my brain back, I realised I was in a bit of a predicament standing at the top of an almost sheer drop of 30 feet having to go down a tiny chalk covered path, covered in slippery grass on one leg with out breaking camera and bins worth quite a bit of dosh!! I went down, good leg first very slowly and amazingly made it down without incident, only problem now was I was about a mile from the car!! On the plus side the sun was fully out now and the wind had died down a bit!!! I started the long hobble back, so brave!! At first I was having to stop quite regularly, but the knee seemed to be getting a bit easier once I got moving, I went passed the small wood and once out in the open again thought I would stand and scan for the Peregrines, amazingly they were both in the sky high up, didn't see anything you could call a display, but they were definitely moving together the smaller Male higher up shadowing the larger Female below, at first it was all very distant and high up but as they rode the wind they slowly drifted towards me and I managed a few pics!

Alright a lot of pics, but was a fun 10 minutes, despite the throbbing knee, watching their complete mastery of the air. The knee seemed to be on the mend but despite the improving conditions decided to play it safe and head for home, stopping for a couple more pics on the way!