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January-February 2025
A belated roundup of the late winter period, during which pursuit of Water Pipit became a bit of a preoccupation. Combe Valley CP is a known wintering site for the species but they are typically elusive and I struggle to get a handle on numbers. Inspired by a recent British Birds article, I wondered if…
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November-December 2024
November and December can mean only one thing: gulls, and particularly the passage of large gulls which seems to occur in Sussex at this time of year. My impression is that that years passage was more protracted, with numbers never quite reaching the heights of the great westward movements of late December last year. There…
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October 2024
Coverage was a bit limited during October due to quite a bit of time away for work, but the transition into the final stages of autumn migration was apparent even so. Witnessing this was the focus of my birding, which was almost entirely at the coastal sites of West Hill and Hastings CP. With many…
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September 2024
September is when visible migration really steps up a gear and my birding time over the month was largely spent soaking it up. It was a wet and unsettled month weather wise and this may have contributed to those those days of finer weather being particularly lively. Movement seems to occur on a broad front…
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August 2024
The first half of August was warm and relatively calm, with some great days for observing migration. In the third week of the month the remains of Hurricane Ernesto passed over the UK, bringing with it strong winds and rain which largely put a hold on movement. This was followed by a final period of…
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July 2024
The long, warm days of July can mean only one thing: it’s time to start looking for that keenly awaited marker of midsummer; the arrival of juvenile Yellow-legged Gull from southern Europe. My first this year came on the 13th, with a flyby watched moving west from West Hill. In marked contrast to the riches…
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June 2024
It’s difficult to summarise the wildly variable weather experienced here during June but it certainly felt unseasonably cool for much of it. On the 1st of the month I spent the day at Rye Harbour NR (RHNR), a safe bet for interesting birding at the time of year with the last bits of wader passage…
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May 2024 birding roundup
Another month of two halves, the first characterised by fine conditions and the second more unsettled with stronger winds from the SW and N. Birding was exciting and varied, with a number of scarcities augmenting the continued arrival of summer visitors. The first big surprise came early in the month, with a Golden Oriole at…
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April 2024 birding roundup
An odd month weather wise, which made it feel quite unlike spring at times. The first half was dominated by strong SW winds while the second was characterised by winds with a northerly aspect and associated low temperatures. The intensifying layers of bird song were a reminder that migration was indeed still happening out of…
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March 2024 birding roundup
Spring slowly arrived over the month, with a trickle of migrants throughout and the odd burst of higher intensity movement. A lot of the action was at Combe Valley CP, which, with water levels remaining reasonably high, becomes a very exciting place to bird at this time of year. Eastward Dark-bellied Brent Goose passage was…