Brenda Chapman
Here we are in September and the temperature is dropping. All the summer birds are on their way south, there have been large parties of swallows, house and sand martins going over, and lots of small birds such as redstarts, spotted flycatchers and warblers hanging about at Church Norton waiting for favourable weather. I was lucky enough to have a good view of a wryneck earlier this month.
Coming the other way from the continent, I have had a couple of hummingbird hawk moths on my buddleia recently and quite a lot of red admirals which have come over. The influx of painted ladies that we had in 2009 did not happen this year; in fact it has been a pretty poor year for butterflies altogether, although earlier orange tips and common blues did well. Ivan Lang, the conservation warden at Pagham Harbour Nature Reserve, keeps his moth trap active all year and has had some good results, the best being the very rare marsh dagger (Apatale strigosa) in the summer. He even had moth twitchers coming to see it!
Winter birds are beginning to arrive: there are already pintail and widgeon in theharbour at Pagham, and lapwing numbers are building up. There were more lapwing nesting on the reserve this year, so some of these are our own birds, but most will becoming from abroad. Flocks of knot, golden plover, and bar-tailed and black-tailed godwit are also increasing. The bushes on the reserve are loaded with hips, haws, blackberries, sloes and elderberries, and there are large numbers of spiders – including wasp spiders – and big hatches of craneflies, so there is plenty of food around at the moment for small birds as well.
The talks between West Sussex County Council and the RSPB about the takeover of the management of the reserve are still going on. We hope to have some news in the next month or so.
I am always pleased to see any members of the ENHS who come to visit the nature reserve. Very best wishes to you all from your president.