19th - 20th November 2024.

Wednesday, 20th November: A cold and frosty start, with early cloud clearing to leave a mostly fine and sunny day, with a chilly NW wind force 4.

Climping Gap: A bit of a late start and I was joined by long term birding mate Bernie this morning. We didn't spend too long on the (5Km) patch, as we had planned to move on (to the WWT at Arundel), but the highlight of our short visit was finding a Jack Snipe in the set-aside area. Skylarks were plentiful in the area with at least 60 present, plus at least 20 Linnets, several Pied Wagtails and a Reed Bunting. Three Little Egrets and a Great Crested Grebe offshore were about it before we left.

Tuesday, 19th November: A complete change, with the onset of some wintry weather. A grey, cold and gloomy day of persistent drizzly rain with a fresh N/NW wind force 4-5.

Bilsham farm: The miserable weather encouraged me to find indoor jobs most of the day, but when the rain eased early afternoon I decided to give it a go and see if the cold weather had prompted anything unusual to visit the reservoir. Predictably it hadn't and numbers of Coots, for example, had fallen somewhat to 125, from a recent count of 185. It was otherwise fairly similar to previous recent counts and today's totals were:

Coot - 125

Canada Goose - 39

Shoveler - 34

Pochard - 5

Tufted Duck - 2

Little Grebe - 6

Pied Wagtail - 4

Also, several hundred gulls of mixed species were again present, including ten Great Black-backed Gulls, and a herd of 40+ Mute Swans were on Barnham Brooks, distantly viewable from the reservoir area.

Little Grebes in the gloom on Bilsham reservoir