Osprey Hunt

In my last blog post I said we were going to try and find an osprey this weekend, so today that's what we set out to do. I bought some new second-hand binoculars and we scoured the internet for rumours of recent sightings. We decided to make our way to 'Passie's Pond', where one had been sighted a few days before. It's some way along the Adur, the river that meets the sea at Shoreham, near Brighton. 

The river was high when we started and there were quite a few other birds about: lots of swallows sweeping over, some little egrets on an island and we saw a kingfisher zoom past us like an arrow with a bright red behind, but no ospreys on the river. We were hoping Passie's Pond would be the place.

Passie's Pond was a dilapidated fisherman's encampment. All along this fenced off part of the river there were little jetties where solitary fishermen sat with their equipment and snacks. We weren't allowed to look round the actual pond though. A bitter little bald man made it clear we weren't welcome because we weren't paying to fish, so we ate our lunch out of his sight and gazed hopefully into the sky for a glimpse of a far superior, flying, fish hunter. What strange inefficient fishers we must look like to the osprey, with our complicated contraptions, waiting for the fish to come to us. The osprey glides hundreds of metres up in the sky looking for the best fish and picks it out with speed and accuracy and authority.

We were downhearted as we made our slow way home. The landscape along the river is bleak, punctuated with crumbling windowless buildings and industrial huts. Motorways roar around you and every now and then an intimidating gun shot punches out. The grey cloud cover above added to the desolation. I've never liked this place, I thought. We said consoling things to each other, like 'at least we tried' and 'it's nice to get out of the house', 'we saw a kingfisher, that was pretty good', and it was pretty good to see a kingfisher but the day had been a failure and we were resigned to it.

Then, as we walked back down the river, Rose saw something that looked fairly big hovering over a field. I thought it was probably just another crow or seagull, but it wasn't, it was an osprey, definitely an osprey and we became more convinced as we watched it through binoculars. It flew closer and swooped down to land in the field, and was immediately set upon by some crows. It had obviously trespassed into their land and was hounded out, just like we had been hounded out of the grumpy fishermen's special pond club. The osprey flew off into some trees across the river. While it was still in sight, I scrambled to take some photos. The photo above has an osprey in it. It's difficult to see, but it's in there. It's one of the black marks in the sky. If you use your imagination you can see the majestic fisherbird being hounded by crows.

And so the day quickly flipped from a resigned failure to a well-planned success. We had seen an osprey. 

When I was young I used to copy pictures of birds of prey out of books and I decided my favourite bird was the osprey. I'm not entirely sure why, it just looked cool. Now I've seen one, in the wild. It's a very satisfying feeling.

Here's someone else's better photo of an osprey:

New birds at Beachy Head

We went to Beachy Head on this sunny September Sunday, ill-prepared for the heat. We walked from Burling Gap up along the cliffs and heathland and from the start we could see lots of little birds swooping and fluting around. There were acrobatic swallows slicing up the air. There were hundreds of seagulls noisily harassing a fishing trawler out at sea. There were some yellow/grey wagtails hopping around and what I thought were wheatears. And there was one bird sitting on the toppermost branch of a bush. I watched it through binoculars for a while. It was brown with black and white stripy bits, a finchy beak and quite a long tail; one of those fairly nondescript browny small birds. I thought it was a bunting maybe.

Further on we saw a middle aged couple in matching walking gear looking out over the heather and gorse through binoculars. We went over and asked them what they  could see. They were looking at stonechats and directed us to the spot. It was a smallish bird with a red-orange breast, white collar and black head. My binoculars are broken and you have to almost cross your eyes to focus and wiggle the two sides and sometimes it can't be done in time, so I don't think I can say I saw the stonechat as efficiently as the others but I definitely saw something red-orangey.

(Photo taken at Beachy Head, by someone else in this blog)

The birdwatching man of the couple seemed knowledgable. He told us the wagtails we saw were yellow wagtails, because grey wagtails don't generally like this type of landscape. He told us that there were wheatears about too. And he told us that the stonechat is the symbol of the Sussex Ornithological Society (SOS). I just looked up the SOS and we're thinking of joining. To go on bird outings with middle aged people would be a new geeky level of devotion to the birdwatching cause, but I think the amount of knowledge we could absorb from such experienced enthusiasts would make it worth it. 

I later looked up the browny bird I saw. I'm almost sure it was a corn bunting. They are quite rare though, it seems - on the RSPB website their status is RED. Maybe I should tell the SOS. Maybe it's a important discovery.

Corn Bunting: Even the RSPB website describes it as non-descript.

There have been sightings of ospreys over Sussex, as recent as Saturday. We might go and look for some at the weekend. There is no bird I'd like to see more than an osprey.

Unexpected birdlife at King's College, Cambridge

We haven't been on any bird searches recently, not since we went to the New Forest, but at the weekend we were given a nice little surprise sighting. Sometimes you wait around for hours and find nothing, and sometimes the birds find you.

We went to Cambridge University with Rose's parents. As we were waiting in the tall stone entrance to King's College (pictured), for Rose's dad to get the keys to go punting, we heard some twittering from above.

In between the ornate vaults of the ceiling, round grey nests were attached. They looked a bit like they were made out of cement.  As we were watching them, a few little black and white birds peeped out and dived over our heads across the lawn towards the chapel.

They were housemartins. We had seen something swooping about earlier on and we weren't sure if it was a swift or a swallow. Turns out it was neither, but in many ways the housemartin is like a cross between the two: stocky like the swift but with the colouring of a swallow and a tail almost as pointy. I had never seen a live housemartin before. I don't know about Rose. It was a real treat. 

Thanks to Martin Cook at Cambridge for taking these photos for me (and thanks to Rose's parents for taking us there on a day out).