Fishbourne Creek and West Dean Woods with Paul James and Group

Saturday 11th December 2021

12 of us met up (eventually) at Fishbourne Creek to enjoy a really spectacular morning's birding with 9 staying on to make the trip north to West Dean Woods and go one better and see a couple of real winter Sussex specialities in the afternoon.  

All in all there were over 70 species seen. Thankfully Alan P kept a list and was there from the start, unlike me who didn't read Paul's email and arrived 30 minutes late.  Alan's list is shown below.

Fishbourne Creek

• I missed out on the Red-breasted Mergansers and Goldeneye at the start and they wern't there at the end when we returned to the car parking area.  

Many of the birds were the same as when I last visited with the East Grinstead RSPB Group on 21st November 2021 but there were a few notable additions this time and I have listed them below:-

• We had a couple of Yellowhammer sightings that we didn't get last time, presumably because of the strong winds then.
• A Rock Pipit, a Kingfisher and a Yellow Wagtail were seen at the far end of the creek.
• At least 4 Greenshanks were present as well as a similar number of Spotted Redshanks.

A surprising number of birds were seen, especially when you take account of the fact that the visit was at low-tide.

West Dean Woods

There was only one thing on our minds when we relocated to West Dean Woods for the pm session - HAWFINCHES!  We were not disappointed,

• Andrew and I arrived first at Staple Ash Farm and within minutes Andrew spotted one in the treetops nearby.  Unfortunately it flew off before we could assemble our scopes. 
• Shortly afterwards, when the other 7 group members turned up, we got our scope view of one in a different tree.
• We had superb views of at least 6 more Hawfinches from the slopes near Monkton Farm.

courtesy of Paul James

• As a bonus we saw at least 3 Bramblings which were in with the chaffinches.

What a reunion!