I decided to have a wander around Seaford Head today, in the hope of some Ring Ouzels or even something rarer what with all the American Warblers in the country, gotta end up somewhere right?😂 Well if there at Seaford I couldn't find em 😢😂 Having dropped Margie off at work, I arrived at about 7.30, to be honest it was pretty dire, very quiet, a few Long-tailed Tits and a Stonechat at the bottom of Hope Gap about the best!! A few Swallows, Chiffchaffs and a Blackcap the only signs of migration I could find! Though things warmed up as I headed up the west side of the Cuckmere.
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| Stonechat |
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| Greenfinch |
The wind, which had been brutal up the head, was less bothersome as I walked up the Cuckmere, lots more birds as well, with Pipits and Skylarks, lots of Little Egrets, a herd of Cows was close to the path, disappointingly no Yellow Wags or Cattle Egrets, but hundreds of Starlings were in amongst them with many more spread out across the valley, with a Rosy reported a couple of weeks ago nearby, I applied the bins diligently but couldn't find anything other than normal Starlings!! Waders were the stars, though I use the word in it's loosest possible sense! A mental Greenshank that went up and down the channel about 5 times, couple of Redshanks, a Curlew, a Lapwing, three Bar-tailed Godwits flew in with a smaller wader, I agonised over the ID for a while before coming to the conclusion that it was a Knot !!
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| Rock Pipit |
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| Dunnock |
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| Mute Swan |
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| Little Egret |
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| Cows and Starlings |
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| Black-headed Gull |
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| Bar-tailed Godwit |
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| Pretty sure this a Skylark |
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| Barwits and friend |
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| Pretty sure it's a Knot |
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| Think it's a mucky Rock Pipit |
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| Knot |
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| You can even see the Bar-tails! |
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| Skylark |
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| Greenshank |
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| Lapwing |
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| Redshank |
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| Greenshank |
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| Redshank |
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| Curlew |
As I headed back towards the sea a small Raptor nipped along the beach, seemed the be going to fast for a Kestrel and to small for a Peregrine? Since been ID'd as a Hobby!
I headed up past Harry's Bush but was pretty dead with just a couple of Buzzards flying out of the small wood!
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| Chaffinch, nice to see a couple of these today, bit thin on the ground round here! |
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| Greenfinch |
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| Buzzard |
Back at the car I was gonna call an early one, despite the sunshine the wind was still pretty strong, but I saw a large flock of small stuff above the field of Sunflowers, so decided to investigate, walked past the dung-heap, up to the beacon and back, was probably the best bit of the day, the flock was a mixture of Goldfinch and Linnets and was pretty large, there was another large flock of Starlings in the field behind the barn which got a good grilling to little effect, good numbers of Pipits in the field and quite a few Skylarks around the heap! Don't know if the farmer intends to harvest the Sunflowers or if they are there to improve the soil, but he needs to hurry up because the Linnets and Goldies are getting through em at a rate of knots!!
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| Starlings, still no Rosy!!😢 |
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| Skylark |
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| Meadow Pipits |
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| Linnets and a couple of Goldfinch |
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| Crow |
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| Linnet |
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| Difficult to capture the size of the flock |
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| Still no Rosy!! I've looked at a lot of Starlings today |
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| Pied Wagtail |
Well with all the small stuff around was bound to be a predator about, which turned out to be a very cooperative Kestrel!! Think he'd given up trying to catch stuff and was having a break!!😂
All's well that ends well and a friendly Kestrel is a good ending!!
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