Richard's Pipit, and other highlights from RPSB Medmerry

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.

As a large pipit with a distinctive call, the individual at Medmerry was conspicuous as it flew up and announced its presence. We were fortunate enough to see it fly three times, and it doesn’t appear to have been seen since. Not to say that anything sinister may have happened to it, hopefully the pipit has now found its bearings and is at a suitable overwintering site!

You can find out more about Richard’s pipits, including photos, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard%27s_pipit

In the vicinity of the pipit was a jolly flock of ten corn buntings. They helpfully arranged themselves in a line on a fence enabling easy counting! As fellow surveyor Mike grabbed his camera however, they all but one flew off.

A bit earlier in the day there was an abundance of common and jack snipe in their usual area of particularly soggy rough grassland. There were so many individuals in this area that it was next to impossible to pin down the identity of common or jack to every bird, there were however a minimum of 5 jack snipe and 48 common snipe. 20 further common snipe were seen throughout the day and these totals were record high counts for this survey.

Three days earlier during the Wetland Bird Survey there was a minimum of 800 golden plover on the reserve. Notably, not a single one was seen during this survey. A male peregrine falcon in hot pursuit of lapwing in the centre of the reserve would have presumably sent any golden plover present skywards. It seems that the large flock had most probably moved to another site, I’m sure they will return however as there is often a large flock at Medmerry in the winter.

After the survey was complete a trip to Fishbourne Channel proved worthwhile. A kingfisher was sat on some derelict structure in the harbour, and as usual there was a nice mix of waders and a healthy selection of wigeon on the water.

Hugh Baggaley