Since Sunday I have been watching the reports coming in of a small influx of Grey Phalarope to Hampshire. The storms on Sunday in the channel probably being responsible for knocking them off course. With the weather easing off it was a case of how long would they stay, there were two at Titchfield Haven and a single at the Oyster Beds on Hayling Island.
The chance to ge out didn't arise until Friday afternoon, and I decided to head for Hayling, where the likelihood was that the phalarope would show closer for the camera. There were parking places and I was soon walking along the Billy Line path, pst the spot where last week at this time I was watching the Wryneck. I walked around the old Oyster Beds where a Little Egret was fishing on the falling tide and a Curlew called as it flew out of the beds.
The Phalarope has been in the area of mud just past the last lagoon and as I walked up I could see some other birders present. On arrival I was told that it had just gone into the long grass and couldn't now been seen. I waited and it soon appeared flying out of the grass and across to an area of mud, sea weed and water.
Here it started to preen and bathe in the water.
This Arctic-breeding wader is almost regular visitor to the coasts
of the UK after storms in the autumn. They are more than often seen at the coast but can also
turn up on inland stretches of water like reservoirs and lakes. In North
America, these birds are known as Red Phalaropes, due to the birds' orangey-red
breeding plumage and like the other Phalarope species, the female is the more
colourful and leaves the male to incubate the eggs and bring up the young.
They will swim in small circles in order to create a bit of
a whirlpool that sucks up insects and small crustaceans from the bottom of the
water to where they can by plucked by the Phalarope’s bill.
There were quite a few Ringed Plover feeding amongst the sea weed and rocks, and something spooked them and they all took off, there was no visible threat but the phalarope went with them and they were seen to fly towards the edge of the tide on the other side of the bund rocks. I couldn't locate it, but would have been a long way away. Then someone said it had flown out with the plover further into the harbour.
I wait for awhile, but decided it wouldn't be coming back anytime soon. I had my year tick and some photographs, so I headed back, there were reports of both flycatchers again at the Paddocks over the road so I decided to try my luck there. Reaching the corner there was a Redshank showing well on the small pool.
As I walked along the footpath at the Paddocks there was very little about at first, but I stopped near a hawthorn bush in the side of one of the paddocks and waited. Pretty soon a Spotted Flycatcher appeared and showed very well on the adjacent fence.
The Spotted Flycatcher appears more upright than the Pied Flycatcher that was apparently about too. It also behaves more gracefully, the flycatching flight a lovely swooping action, coming sometimes low over the ground.
Streaking on the forehead and the breast and flanks give it the name "spotted".
Then hunting from the hawthorn bush.
Spotted Flycatchers are the flycatcher that we expect to see here in Hampshire, not so the Pied Flycatcher that is seen more to the west in the sessile oak woodlands of the south west and Wales. They do though turn up on passage and for some reason the paddocks here at Northney are a regular site every year. They are not so obvious, where the Spotted Flycatcher will sit out on a prominent perch, the Pied Flycatcher sits with the tree and bushes. In their breeding rounds they like to hunt just under the canopy.
I could see a bird within the bushes and eventually it showed. Lacking the streaking on the forehead and a more rounded head, this was a Pied Flycatcher.
These are mostly juvenile / immature birds that lack the "pied" black and white plumage senn in the adult male. The males too lose there black and white marking following breeding. What I could see here were the white wing flashes.
I walked back and forth getting glimpses until one, there were probably two present, showed well in the hawthorn bush. Another feature of the Pied Flycatcher is the drooped wings with the tail cocked as seen here, and of course the white in the wing and on the undertail coverts.
Looking down for any movement that would constitute something to eat.
Then to finish some of the best Pied Flycatcher photographs I have taken.
Good to be back out and I managed to get the phalarope and some great flycatcher action
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