11th & 12th February

Saturday the 11^th February

West Sussex

As the weather was not that good this weekend we decided to do another trip to West Sussex, As the Paddyfield Warbler had been seen the last couple of days this would be our first stop we arrived at ¼ past 11 but there had been no sign of the bird so far today we stayed till 1 o’clock no sign of the bird (on checking the pager all day there was no sign of the bird today) so we now decided to see if we could find any of the other birds we were looking for today

We now set of for Shoreham Harbour as the tide was coming in we thought we had a good chance of the Purple Sandpiper, We parked at the fort car park and walked towards the west arm after a short time we found 4 Purple Sandpipers sitting on the end of the breakwater as we were walking back to the car we had 2 Rock Pipits sitting on the west arm,

 We then checked the pager and found that the Great White Egret was still on Thorny Island so we set of there to see if we could finally see it on arriving we parked by the farm to have a look at the great deep from the road on checking along the road I could see some birders watching something from the checkpoint so we walked along and joined them just as we arrived the Egret was flying across the marsh to the north of the deep we had it flying about on and off for about 15 minutes but every time it dropped down it went out of sight but we had at last seen it.

We now decided to start heading in a homeward direction and decided to come back up the A29 we stopped at Waltham Brooks nature reserve and had a look at the sewage farm where we had 4 Chiffchaff which included the Siberian Chiffchaff, we then had a look at the brooks from the railway where there is a footpath over it, from here we had 3 Short Eared Owls and a Barn Owl,(It is a pity some people cannot put the birds first you can see most of the marsh from the river bank or from the railway I know I take pictures but there were birders with cameras trying to get pictures of the Owls but all the Owls wee trying to do was feed instead they were being chased up and down the marsh) on our walk back we looked at the sewage farm from the gate and here I had a Grey Wagtail

We see a good selection of common birds today I have only mentioned the new birds for this year in the main report.

Sunday the 12^th February

London Wetland Centre at Barns

A short trip out today mainly to see if we could get any good sightings of Bittern on arriving we set of for the Dulverton hide were I had been told to look from on our way to the hide someone was watching something at the side of the path this turned out to be a close Water Rail which promptly disappeared so on to the hide we had not been in it very long when a warden said I have a Bittern which was on the other side of the area we were watching and we had good views of the bird, We no decided to have a look at Headly hide on the way round to it we stopped of for a nice bowl of soup in the cafe on arriving at the hide I was just setting my scope up to get on a Bittern I had seen on the far bank at the same time Carole also had spotted it and we had very good views of our second Bittern just a bit to far away for a picture but very good all the same, as it was getting cold again we headed of to do some shopping then home