Long-billed Dowitcher and Goosanders

Whilst it is nice to bird away there is something about birding on your local patch, it's just that our patch stretches from Lymington to Dungeness. So we found ourselves in search of the Long-billed Dowitcher down at Pennington Marshes. It didn't take long to find the bird - well not long to be shown where it was by a kind local birder if the truth be known. Initially the bird was semi hidden in the company of three Snipe but obligingly emerged for a photo shoot.

I also recorded two ringed Mute Swans, I will pop off a report and wait to see if they have an interesting history.

Having started so well we decided to visit Mark Ash to see if we could locate an early Lesser-spotted Woodpecker but it was a dip. So too our regular Tawny Owl - it would appear that he has gone to reside elsewhere.  We finished up at Eyeworth Pond at Fritham where Martin was looking for some Marsh Tit shots and I thought we may find some recently reported Goosanders, Happily we both came away satisfied. The icing on the cake was the superb weather - spring has to be just round the corner.

 

 

I suspect that there are plenty of fish in Eyeworth

 

 

 

Far and Near

On recent birding trips the camera has remained firmly in its bag, very few opportunities have presented themselves and yesterday our visit to Pennington Marsh to catch up with the Long-billed Dowitcher was very nearly the same result. The bird remained at the far side of Fishtail Lagoon at long range. Just a record shot of a long staying vagrant.

 

Today I was confined to household duties - "the Gas Man cometh". Not really a problem but mid morning there was a tweet reporting a Savannah Sparrow just down the road in Lancing. Very inconvenient!. So I made do by recording the newt population of our garden pond at very close quarters. One female stood out from the rest by being very pale. I remain amazed by just how many newts a small garden pond can maintain - there are at least 20 present and our frog population has dwindled to two or three.