Wildlife with Hugh

A pleasant surprise during the most recent farmland bird survey at Medmerry was a Richard’s pipit that flew out of one of the fields. Richard’s pipits are classed as vagrants in Britain, they breed in Siberia and parts of central and eastern Asia, migrating to overwinter around the Indian subcontinent and South-East Asia. They appear annually in Britain but not in large numbers. The ones that find their way to our shores have therefore come quite a bit out of their way.

I had planned a shorter guided outing to Nutbourne Channel, Chichester Harbour, although it ended up being not so short! This is an area where you can often get closer to wetland bird species than at most locations. There had been a lot of rain recently, fortunately this trip was on a wonderful winters day, bright and crisp.

This post contains some highlights from a fortnightly farmland bird survey, which was carried out at RSPB Medmerry last week. It was a remarkably warm day while the sun was out – t-shirt weather in November!

Last week I had the pleasure of being a birding guide on two solar boat tours around Chichester Harbour. Birdwatching from a boat is not something I have regularly done and I enjoyed the opportunity to get a different perspective of our wintering wetland birds.