Thanks to volunteer Gary for his report and photo.
Green sandpiper at Winpenny Hide.
Another hot and sunny day at Pulborough Brooks. First stop was west mead and as I walked into the empty hide something flew very close to the windows and landed out of site to the left. I dashed down to the end and there it was; a juvenile cuckoo sitting on a fence post. It then moved further away but I managed to get someone else onto it before it disappeared. I thought I heard a yellow wagtail and sure enough three gave a nice fly-past, but frustratingly there didn’t seem to be any with the nearby cattle. A couple of stonechat were the only other birds present.
Near Winpenny two fabulously fresh clouded yellow butterflies gave a good view but were too aware of me to get close enough for a photo.
As I walked along adder alley, it was nice to hear some bird song again after a few silent weeks as robins and a few chiffchaff got in some practice for next year. The hanger was the next stop and a visitor immediately pointed out a marsh harrier; it appeared to be an adult female complete with ‘landing lights’, not the dark brown juvenile of recent weeks. Unfortunately it didn’t hang around very long. Neither did the peregrine which gave a brief flypast.
The 700+ canadas and greylag were making plenty of noise, and teal, mallard, shoveler, shelduck and about 50 lapwing made up the rest of the species on the north brooks, apart from a few yellow wagtails that were just visible way out with the cattle. The bushes below the Hanger had an ever changing parade of whitethroat, blackcap, linnet, greenfinch, goldfinch and bullfinch, with the trees above adding goldcrest, nuthatch, long-tailed tit and a solitary great spotted woodpecker.
On the walk back on adder alley a common lizard scuttled across the path, and at Winpenny a close green sandpiper gave excellent views but in the heat of the afternoon little else was moving apart from grasshoppers that were exploding from ever step, and all this to the constant plaintive calls of young buzzards.
Visitor Terry Hollands took this stunning photo of a clouded yellow on the reserve, having better luck than Gary at finding one who would settle and pose for a photo!