Hudsonian Whimbrel Twitch

June is certainly living up to its tag of mega month. It can be a frustrating time for em with family birthdays taking priority to twitching, meaning I missed the Black Eared Wheatear (ouch/!) and to be honest I probably wouldn't have ventured to Bardsey Island (north Wales) via Lee Evans Boat tours inc. anyway for the bunting that I cant even spell.

So what have I seen in between birthdays, parties and a wedding. Well, having seen the Hampshire Greater Yellowlegs with Shaun about 3 weeks ago, I found myself just up the road at Church Norton (West Sussex) about 10 days ago as I luckily had a days leave to take so pre booked the day for some birding. Luck was on my side when the day before a Hudsonian Whimbrel was found. My partner is crime on this occasion was Lee Brown. New to the birding scene, he has seen a few megas, including 2 this day, yet he's still not seen a Razorbill!

Via Twitter I got very early news at 5.10am that the bird was still there. We had to wait for Lee to do the school run and then we were off. 2 and a quarter hours later we were parking up and making the shirt walk to the reserve. The bird was showing immediately. The tide was out so we had prolonged views as it fed on the mud with some other less rare Whimbrel, allowing us to compare the difference. Unfortunately the bird was too far out for any pics.

We were somewhat against the clock as Lee needed to be back so we hot footed back to the car to drive the 40 minutes to Titchfield Haven for hopefully better views of the Greater Yellowlegs than I had 2 weeks previously. We did. We had cracking scope views as it constantly fed just 50 yards in front of us for 10 - 15 minutes, before deciding it was time for a sleep. It was time for us to head home.