With the weather forecast New Years Day for strong winds and rain from around lunchtime, I decided to have a couple of hours out in the morning seawatching to get the year list off to a start. Birds noted in a strong SW wind from 8am included 154 Brent Geese, 1 Shelduck, 5 Feral Pigeon, 1 Woodpigeon, 2 Oystercatcher, 30 Golden Plover low west over the sea, 3 Redshank, 9 Turnstone, 43 Black headed Gull, 3 Common Gull, 35 Herring Gull, 4 Great Black backed Gull, 2 Great crested Grebe, 42 Cormorant, 1 Kestrel, 2 Magpie, 12 Carrion Crow, 1 Blackbird, 1 Robin, 2 Pied Wagtail and 3 Meadow Pipit.
With the weather better on the 2nd, I had a few hours out from 11am seawatching in a NNW wind which produced 2 White fronted Geese west, 5 Brent Geese, 4 Wigeon, 6 Pintail, 8 Feral Pigeon, 6 Woodpigeon, 3 Turnstone, 21 Black headed Gull, 4 Common Gull, 4 Herring Gull, 1 Great black backed Gull, 2 Great crested Grebe, 14 Red throated Diver, c200 Cormorant, 2 Kestrel, 31 Carrion Crow and 15 House Sparrow. Then it was on to the Bishopstone Glen area where I saw 1 Wigeon, 12 Woodpigeon, 6 Collared Dove, 1 Turnstone, 9 Sanderling, 6 Black headed Gull, 2 Common Gull, 19 Herring Gull, 2 Red throated Diver, 1 Cormorant, 2 Magpie, 2 Carrion Crow, 15 Blue Tit, 2 Great Tit, 2 Long tailed Tit, 5 Blackbird, 2 Robin, 2 Stonechat, 4 House Sparrow, 1 Rock Pipit and 1 Chaffinch. It was certainly a different type of birding in amongst all the other people out in the area but I hope with patience and perseverance, that I can continue to build a respectable year list and learn about the birds that pass through the area. I really don't know what to expect in terms of a number of birds seen during the year. I would hope 100 species is easily possible but I'm sure there may be many more. I'm really looking forward to start recording during the night in the area as hopefully on the coast, there will be a few surprises that fly over during the year but especially during migration times. There were 35 species noted in the first couple of days but this included a new bird for me in the area, White fronted Goose.
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