A great day!

Having dipped on waxwings about 6 times so far this year, I was getting a bit frustrated. On Tuesday night, I read about a waxwing sighting in Crawley, West Sussex - about 20 minutes from here. Were we finally going to connect with these beautiful Scandinavian birds again?

When we arrived in Crawley (Southgate) yesterday morning, they were indeed there, 17 of them, perched high up in a tree. This was promising! And the sun was shining! They were trilling away and I thought they'd come down to the apple tree they had been feeding in any second. After a few minutes, they did all take off...and disappeared. Nooooooo! We waited another 55 minutes but they didn't return and it was getting really chilly, despite the sunshine. D'oh! :(

So we decided to pop down to Warnham Nature Reserve and come back for the waxwings later.

Within five minutes of arriving in the Woodpecker Hide we got lucky and got the shots we'd been wanting for weeks: one of the male sparrowhawk that perched right in front of us for a few seconds and one of a beautiful marsh tit. And in decent light...yeah!

Marshtit:

Sparrowhawk:

After a great couple of hours watching woodland birds, we went back to Crawley but the waxwings didn't appear to be there. We were about to drive off again when I spotted the waxwings up in the high tree. The light was now perfect - but would the waxwings eventually feed on the apples again? So we waited for about 20 minutes and they finally did descend onto the apple tree - about 24 of them! Absolutely fantastic!!!! We got some lovely shots and had enough time to also stop to just watch them. Wonderful birds.... :)

A great day indeed!

Arundel

We had a great day out birding at Arundel (West Sussex) yesterday. Finally some sunshine! It really felt like spring. I saw a butterfly (brimstone, see above), a bumblebee and some snowdrops (first ones I've seen this year!).

We first went to Swanbourne Lake to look for the two firecrests that were reported last week. I saw my first ever firecrest at Arundel WWT last year - so I guess they're wintering birds from the continent that really like the area and return every year.

As we'd dipped on waxwings several times in the last two weeks (every time when we got to a place where they'd been seen, they were gone or, at Epsom, ONE was there as we drove past but had disappeared when we got there with our cameras), I was not really too hopeful.

But we were lucky this time! We soon heard the call we were hoping for. At least two firecrests (at one point I'm fairly certain I saw three) were flitting around ivy, looking for insects. Fantastic little birds! One male was calling and flashing his bright orange crest. Brilliant.
Firecrests are very active little birds so it is extremely hard to get a decent photo of them. I'm really pleased I did get a few shots. This is one of my favourite pix:

We also saw a couple of goldcrests, chasing each other. One was also displaying, showing his yellow/orange crest:

We then had lunch at Arundel WWT and had a walk around the centre but didn't see much. From the car park later, we saw two distant peregrines in a tree and up to four buzzards circling above us. A majestic sight! Here's one of the photos I took:


A lovely day! :)