Bright blue sky welcomed me to Pulborough brooks this morning but the wind was still a little cool. The arable field in front of the visitor centre is awash with colour from seed bearing flowers and looks fantastic. This should be a great food resource for winter finches – oh no, did I mention the W word!
Every elderberry bush seemed to contain one or more blackcaps giving themselves away with a repeated hard “tak”. Chiffchaff and willow warblers were also very abundant around the trail and four redstart near Winpenny seemed to disappear into thin air after a sparrowhawk zipped along the hedge line. Also seen from Winpenny, a single hobby and a spiraling column of nine buzzards. Shortly after, a lesser whitethroat was seen from the public footpath and I also spotted a very small grass snake that may have been dropped by a bird as it was very sluggish but showing no obvious injury – I moved it off the track just in case.
The north brooks were fairly quiet with six dunlin among the distant lapwing. Two snipe made the wrong choice of which side of a tussock to hide behind making them easy to see for a change.
Great views of a female brown hairstreak and a perching migrant hawker made my day.
Thanks to Gary for his update and photos - the brown hairstreak and migrant hawker photos were taken with Gary's mobile phone through his telescope!