CROYDON RSPB MEMBERS' GROUP - TRIP REPORT

A day of unbroken sunshine at the height of the autumn migration season spent exploring one of the South Coast's prime birding sites under experienced guidance - the recipe for a successful outing, or what? Starting at bushes behind the Visitor Centre, plenty of the commoner warblers were showing and there were just sufficient tantalizing glimpses to suggest that something more unusual was present. A couple of hundred yards further on and we were at the Ferry Pool, scanning over an entirely different habitat of shallow brackish water with bare muddy margins. The highlight here was a small, rather mobile flock of curlew sandpipers, together with single black-tailed godwit, ringed plover and common sandpiper. A herd of cattle arriving to cool off in the water was accompanied by several yellow wagtails. Pressing on down the west wall of the harbour, our attention was divided between more waders and some ducks out on the saltmarsh to our left (a spotted redshank among many common redshanks, curlews and grey plovers and a wigeon among the mallards and teal) and parties of whinchats and spotted flycatchers in the fields and bushes to our right. Meanwhile, a hobby, a sparrowhawk and a single late swift were picked out amongst the hundreds of whirling hirundines overhead. Beyond Church Norton, a pied flycatcher was found with a further half dozen spotted flycatchers, hawking insects from the bare branches at the tops of dead trees. With so many birds to catch up with, our party became rather strung out, and arriving on the beach, only one or two people were in time to see a purple sandpiper flushed from the water's edge - a particularly good record for September. As some compensation, several backmarkers had fine views of a female redstart in the churchyard.

While relaxing on the shingle for lunch, we were able to study great crested grebes in both summer and winter plumages loafing on the sea, differentiate between Sandwich and common terns fishing just offshore and strain to detect distant gannets out towards the horizon. Soon after resuming our walk, there was a close-range view of a single whimbrel in the horse paddock behind the beach, followed by the rare opportunity of studying the remarkably intricate, cryptic plumage of a wryneck through scopes from about fifteen yards distance, as the bird hammered vigorously at the pebbly ground to uncover ants. Although quite widely distributed as a breeding bird in Britain during the first half of the last century, this small aberrant woodpecker now occurs only as a scarce passage migrant.

Making our way back to the cars, several wheatears, a little tern, coveys of both grey and red-legged partridges (of dubious status considering the breeding pens nearby), a sedge warbler and three greenshanks were added to our lists. Then, interrupting our journey home at Ivy Lake near Chichester, a winter-plumaged adult black tern was seen, perching on a bouy and unphased by the antics of novice water-skiers nearby. Ruddy and tufted ducks were also here.