What  a beautiful morning to sit and watch our garden birds! An hour spent birdwatching from 8.15am produced 10 species, the star being a colourful nuthatch which paid a couple of visits to the mixed seed feeder. Not so many species as last year though, no doubt due to the much milder winter this year and availability of natural food elsewhere – two plump wood pigeons were spotted feasting happily on the holly berries in a neighbouring garden. The commonest birds spotted were blue tits closely followed by great tits but our friendly little garden wren decided to remain hidden and the starlings preferred to sit in the sunshine on the tops of faraway trees rather than visit our fat ball feeder as they did yesterday. All data is valuable though and I shall be sending off our results shortly to www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch. Happy birdwatching!

It hasn’t been a very exciting winter for these [search the website to see how good it was last January], but the usual species were on offer this morning. In fact the count of 15 Great Crested Grebes was the highest for me this winter, but figures of 15 Gannets, 20 auks and just 2 Red Throated Divers were below average.

A check on harbour gulls revealed nothing unusual, many adult Herring Gulls are now in smart breeding plumage. As usual, a few kept an eye on my car, just in case…

Young Herring Gull

Having just taken delivery of this on behalf of the Friends, and never having used one before, I was keen to try this , and have been installing and trying it out today.

So here is my first image, of the end of a piece of Rhytidiadelpus squarrosus, or Springy Turf Moss, which seems to be the main constituent of our front lawn [meadow] at this time of year.

Springy Turf Moss through the microscope

Angle shades caterpillar.

The bank behind St Leonards Parish Church is as always this time of year carpeted in Petasites fragrans many in flower bringing some colour and the pungent aroma of boiled sweets to this small sycamore wooded bank. Interestingly a small area of habitat almost entirely dominated by naturalised species.

Offshore there was some seabird activity with small numbers of great crested grebe, red-throated diver, guillemots and razorbills. Also a curlew flew west.

New species included great crested grebe, common scoter, guillemot and kittiwake. Birds present included 2 gannet, a red-throated diver, great crested grebe, common scoter, 3 kittiwake, 6 guillemot, and 4 razorbill. Most were feeding or flying east.

I’m not really into making lists but I thought this quest would be an incentive to re-visit locations and species that I haven’t recorded for many years. Such as walls and buildings that harbour rare ferns and roadside verges and derelict sites where scarce insects and orchids can be found. It will be interesting to see what has disappeared and what has colonised Hastings in the last ten years.

All native and naturalised species found within the boundary of Hastings & St Leonards will be eligible for this quest and species seen flying over and past Hastings are included. If anyone knows of a location for a rare species, or would like me to search out a particularly hard to find species in Hastings please post a comment with details.

So what have I recorded so far, well not much yet as I’ve been ill recently, so mostly from my flat and roof terrace. Species will be marked with a * if seen from my roof terrace mini ‘observatory’. See list below:

Steatoda grossa. A species that was difficult to find in Hastings ten years ago, it is now very common and probably occurs in abundance throughout Hastings now.

Birds
1. Red-throated Diver*
2. Fulmar*
3. Gannet*
4. Cormorant*
5. Eider*
6. Sparrowhawk*
7. Turnstone*
8. Black-headed Gull*
9. Herring Gull*
10. Great Black-backed Gull*
11. Razorbill*
12. Wood Pigeon*
13. Pied Wagtail*
14. Wren*
15. Dunnock*
16. Robin*
17. Blackbird*
18. Great Tit*
19. Blue Tit*
20. Long-tailed Tit*
21. Magpie*
22. Carrion Crow*
23. Starling*
24. House Sparrow*

Plants
25. Pedunculate Oak*
26. Hairy Bitter-cress*
27. Bramble*
28. Sycamore*
29. Traveller’s-joy*

Spiders
30. Segestria senoculata*
31. Pholcus phalangioides*
32. Clubiona corticalis*
33. Pseudeuophrys lanigera*
34. Tegenaria duellica*
35. Steatoda grossa*
36. Steatoda nobilis*
37. Zygiella x-notata*

Insects
38. Winter Moth*

As there isn’t a great deal to report at present, it seems timely to reveal some of the results of several hundred hours of fieldwork: today the raptors or birds of prey.

9 species of raptors were recorded this autumn. of which Peregrine and Kestrelare resident, and no migration activity was suspected [Although Peregrines are a conspicuous

Kestrel

predator of migrant Wood Pigeons]. Sparrowhawks are also resident and can be seen daily,  only 4 birds were considered migrants. Buzzards are a frequent sight inland , but much less so on the coast and with a total of 13 were the commonest migrant raptor recorded.  Other large migrant raptors were : a total of 5 Marsh Harriers, a  Hen Harrier and an unidentified ringtail Harrier , and 2 Honey Buzzards, probably the best birds recorded this autumn.

Two migrant falcon species were also noted: a total of 7 Hobbies and a single Merlin.

So the conclusion is that although an outstanding place for observing small birds migrating, our area is not wonderful for seeing migrating raptors, though few places in the UK are !

Looking through my photo archive I see it’s even worse for photographing migrant raptors , possibly because my camera struggles with flying birds, so the picture is of a non migrant but almost stationary individual…

A Kingfisher was staring into the water at the Bulverhythe sluice channel, always nice to see; soon after I crossed over the main road to Coombehaven.  Walking around here I heard Water Rails [stimulated to call by hooting trains but otherwise silent], glimpsed a Cettis Warbler, and had close views of a Treecreeper in a tangle of wet scrub.

[I reflected that birders with access to decent reedy areas take Cettis Warblers for granted now, but this "Hastings rarity"- 3 records removed from the British list- was not reliably recorded in Britain until 1962 in Hampshire. I saw my first in 1971 in Berkshire, standing in a line of long-haired birders fashionably attired in Afghan coats , described by an outraged local ringer as "looking like red indians !]

Treecreeper at Coombehaven