NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Denbigh's Hillside on a warm and sunny morning is a delightful place to be. It has the lot - scenery, plants, butterflies and birds. The main purpose of my visit was to monitor the butterflies that were still on the wing. We are coming to the end of many of their flight times, and, for some species, today may well have been my last chance to observe them in 2019. Numbers were quite low considering how good the weather conditions were, with the commonest 'blue' being Adonis (although they still didn't reach double figures and were by and large tatty) but in contrast the only two Silver-spotted Skippers seen were still very fresh. It was a good morning for raptors. At least 15 Common Buzzards were in the area, and among them, for a good 10-15 minutes, was a female Goshawk, loafing around before coming in directly over my head and off towards Ranmore Common. This was 'top-trumped' by a Honey-buzzard that appeared with a Common, but then peeled away an...

I do like my chalk downland, and today, for a change, swapped my North Downs for the South Downs and spent a long day wandering across some of West Sussex's finest. I parked at the base of Chanctonbury Ring at 06.30hrs and spent a largely unfruitful hour-and-a-half in the area - maybe it was still too early, but a Whinchat and a handful of commoner warblers was not all that inspiring. I decided to return later in the day. My plan had always been to walk across to Cissbury Ring (above) via the network of bridlepaths, and no sooner had I started to do so than the birds started to appear, with Willow Warbler (3), Garden Warbler and Common Redstart (below) added to the day list. As well as being intensively farmed, the land between the two hilltops is also used to raise Pheasants, the tell-tale grain bins a common feature. This has resulted in there being plenty of game cover strips, lovely weedy areas that our wild birds also find to their liking. One particular area, that bor...

Common Redstart, Priest Hill, April Well I did put a lot of effort in locally, honest! For a change and to 'bird off piste' I adopted an area of abandoned playing fields between Banstead and Ewell known as Priest Hill. It has recently been handed over to the Surrey Wildlife Trust to manage, although there is not an awful lot that can be done bird-wise, save fence off areas from the hordes of dog-walkers and their canine friends in an attempt to protect the handful of Skylarks that breed there. Almost daily visits throughout the spring did produce a few passage migrants, most notably Jack Snipe, Common Snipe, Ring Ouzel, Grasshopper Warbler, several Common Redstarts, plenty of Wheatears and a very healthy population of Common Whitethroats were in song throughout mid-April and into the summer, with the odd Lesser Whitethroat for good measure. I neglected Canons Farm, but did manage to bump into a Ring Ouzel on May Day. Northern Wheatear, Priest Hill, May Common Wh...

I was at Priest Hill by 06.00hrs, in a fine drizzle. My hopes were up, and within the hour a Grasshopper Warbler had been located, reeling away from dense Blackthorn and Hawthorn scrub. It sang infrequently between 06.50 - 07.20hrs - I didn't even glimpse it. There had also been an obvious arrival of Common Redstarts (below), all in the scrub and hedgerow between Glyn Playing Field and Ranger's Field. A minimum of four were present, of which one was a male. They were quite flighty, but called a lot which aided observation. To complete the trio of highlights, a Northern Wheatear was present throughout the morning on Glyn Playing Field (above). Other counts: Canada Goose (5), Sparrowhawk (1), Swallow (7), Meadow Pipit (3), Whitethroat (5), Blackcap (5), Chiffchaff (7), Willow Warbler (2).

I never turn my nose up at one of these - a male Common Redstart - and it enlivened an otherwise pedestrian post-lunch visit to Priest Hill.

It has been a week of mixed work and pleasure. Sitting in an office, trying to remember how to use various software and systems does keep my mind sharp I suppose, and it also reminds me of how to interact socially. If I were just to spend my time walking footpaths and meeting birders then I would soon become a social misfit. Enough said... My visits to Canons Farm have neatly summed up the lot of a patch watcher - periods of quiet despair punctuated by moments of intense pleasure (this is all relative, you understand!). The joy has come courtesy of both male Ring Ouzel and Common Redstart (below), those eagerly anticipated 'next drawer up' migrants, not quite a Stone Curlew but better than a Willow Warbler. There has also been a marked passage of Common Buzzards. We have 14-15 local birds, with any 360 degree scan of the sky on a fair day resulting in buteo excess. We know where the territories are, where the 'spare' birds hang out, so can gage when migrants pass thro...