Thanks to volunteer Phil for his report and photos.
Recent Sightings Friday 17 November – Snipe in the autumn sunshine and a beautiful sunset
Over 30 years ago by the shore of a remote Scottish loch I caught sight of a bird with a very long bill silhouetted against the water. This was my first ever sighting of a snipe and it presented an unusually powerful image that I can still see in my mind’s eye now. Today it remains one of my favourite birds and happily can be seen at Pulborough mostly in the autumn and winter time when the birds move south, but it does take some finding.
A few yards in front of Nettley’s Hide is a small pool which until a few weeks ago was completely hidden by tall reedmace which has now been cut back and appears brown. This is a perfect place for the wonderfully camouflaged snipe to rest and many visitors sit in the hide completely unaware of their presence. Arriving mid-morning on Friday however it didn’t take me too long to find one and after a while another 2 mysteriously appeared, as if by magic.
On a brilliantly clear sunny day it was not too surprising to find a fairly constant stream of people visiting the hide and I found myself showing snipe through my scope to many of them, causing varying degrees of amazement.
I found myself wondering whether there could be any connection between snipe and the word “sniper”. I subsequently found an article on the Internet suggesting that the term originated in the 18th century with soldiers in India who used to shoot snipe for target practice – a tricky task given the fact that snipe when flushed tend to fly away in a zigzag line. Not being enamoured of the idea of one of my favourite birds being used for target practice I rather fancifully came up with my own view that a snipe hides out of sight with its eyes looking down the barrel of a very long bill – rather as a sniper does with a rifle.
A few other snipe could be seen distantly in my scope feeding openly on the edge of one of the pools not far from where a bird of prey was perching on a fencepost looking strangely like an owl at a distance. Through my scope however a sparrowhawk was revealed with its prominent and rather menacing yellow eye. After leaving the hide I heard later from a visitor that this bird had been seen to drop down and take one of the feeding snipe, only to be mobbed by a buzzard and some crows and be forced to give it up. Sad for the snipe, and the sparrowhawk perhaps, but this is nature and it’s a more fitting end than simply being used for target practice.
With much of the vegetation cut back this is a good time to look for snipe and it is a bird that repays spending time searching as you gradually get your eye in. We also hope to find breeding snipe in the spring, but in recent years it has been impossible to substantiate. The usual way of observing breeding behaviour is to listen for “drumming”. This is nothing like a typical woodpecker drumming on a tree, but a sound created by air rushing across 2 special outer tail feathers which the male bird extends sideways when diving in a display flight. A different technique for finding snipe involving two people dragging a long rope through the rushes in the hope of flushing them, has been tried in the recent years but so far has not succeeded in discovering any breeding birds.
Whether or not snipe breed on the reserve, numbers are always higher in the autumn and winter as the birds move south. In early autumn last year I undertook a ditch survey on the North Brooks and flushed around 10 snipe, scattered among the rushes fringing the ditches in one relatively small area. I calculated that if snipe were right across the reserve at the same density we would have over 100 birds present but there was no chance to further test this hypothesis. Our autumn and winter Wetland Bird Survey (WeBS) counts only record much smaller numbers, but that may be because the standard survey routes don’t take in all the many ditches on the site as it would take far too long. The British Trust for Ornithology acknowledges that snipe are usually under-recorded on WeBS counts.
Several black tailed godwits, a pair of dunlin and a solitary redshank, unusual for this time of year when they are much more often seen on coastal mudflats, could also be seen on the North Brooks. A ruff was later reported by one of our regular Friday visitors on perhaps the only visit this autumn when I failed to find one. The same visitor also reported a distant little stint on the South Brooks which had been spotted occasionally during the previous 10 days or so.
Red kite and peregrine were also present and the cream coloured cap of a marsh harrier could be seen perched on a bush on the far side of the North Brooks. At Little Hanger a few elegant pintail could be seen in the pool in front of the hide.
A large flock of Canada geese had congregated near Winpenny but more interestingly a red admiral perched right outside the hide, beautifully backlit by the strong sunshine.
If you look carefully at this photo you will see the butterfly is feeding on nectar from a late flowering bramble. Some red admirals appear to overwinter, surviving into spring when a new spring when a new batch of migrants arrive from the continent to start next autumn’s brood.
With much of the more interesting wildlife fairly distant I contented myself with admiring the bright autumn colours around the reserve and thinking that there is no better place to be on a day such as this. These photos were taken on the path down to Nettley’s Hide.
I stayed for the evening stargazing event which turned out to be somewhat hampered by a layer of broken high cloud interrupting some of the views. Some of this cloud was around at sunset but, while it didn’t help the stargazing, it did wonders for the evening sky. These photos show the sky in the south west from near the Visitor Centre at 4.35pm and just before 5pm
With a little time to spare before the start of the event I took another walk down to Winpenny in the hope of taking some night sky photos. However this photo taken at about 5.20pm still shows a little light in the evening sky.
Eagle eyed readers might spot a few stars in among the clouds while the flashing light of an aircraft can be seen more easily in the seen in the top left creating a track across the sky.
During the late autumn and winter on a fine day the reserve with its westerly aspect is a wonderful place to watch the sunset and evening sky.