Let Osprey

A grand day's birding today. Firstly we went to a very full Arlington Reservoir. The air was full of birdsong but nothing very exciting was visible on the water, just a few mallard and a great-crested grebe or two. There was a cormorant or two about as well.

Meanwhile there was a lot of small-bird activity in the trees but this was mostly confined to sound rather than vision. In the course of our wanderings we did see chiff-chaff, blackcap, green woodpecker (in flight), goldfinches, reed bunting, sparrow and swallows darting above us. We had been hoping for a turtle dove but only managed the collared variety as we walked across the bridge and down to the church and back. We had seen a kestrel soaring and hovering but on the return journey to the reservoir we had very nice views of a red kite. Things were looking up.

The best was yet to come though and as we reached the shore of the far side of the reservoir, heading back for our lunch we noticed a really big bird with a long wingspan had appeared over the water. This was really exciting for us. An osprey!

We watched in awe for some time as he began to try and catch a fish. He made several unsuccessful attempts, plunging into the water and emerging to shake himself dry in mid-air. Finally though, he emerged with a fish and once he'd got it slung underneath in his talons neatly he began to fly North towards us looking for all the world like some kind of torpedo bomber with his trout arranged aerodynamically fore-and-aft. A helicopter clattered into view and caused him to change his mind but after it had passed he reverted to his original course and flew past us giving us brilliant views.

After that we had lunch. Nothing much could follow that. However, after lunch we headed for the coast to see if we could see any justification for the bad reports my bird-tutor had heard about the kittiwake colony this year. The tide was out and there was a fair bit of kittiwake activity with some sitting on the posts of a wooden groyne, some bobbing about out on the sea and others coming and going from the cliff face and making their characteristic kitti-waaake" cry. Happily, on scanning the cliffs with the 'scope we did see some evidence of eggs and are hopeful that the problem is only that the earlier bad weather has put back the breeding schedule a bit. Amongst the nesting kitties we also spotted a fulmar on a nest.

Finally we set off to the Seaford Head area and strolled down to Hope Gap and back. At the water's edge were a couple of curlew and once again the bushes seemed full of song. We saw and heard a number of skylarks and heard raven about. We were almost sure that we saw one fly over as it was making a characteristic raven sound. It wasn't as large as we'd normally expect but it could have been a juvenile at this time of year. We also saw meadow pipits, whitethroat, blackbird and a nice tubby thrush running through his repertoire of songs and impressions on top of a bush.

There were plenty of things besides birds to look at including wild flowers (I'm told there were a fairly uncommon vetch species, orchids, nightshades and bugloss amongst them). We also saw a number of insects including damsel flies, ladybirds and butterflies which included a number of small heath, chalkhill blue, gatekeeper, comma, speckled wood and painted lady I think