Keyhaven - 4th April

The weather was sunny and warm. Highlights were Water Pipit, Spoonbill, Swallow, Willow Warbler, Cetti’s Warbler and hearing Bearded Tit.

We firstly checked out Avon Flash (the first piece of water where we had to look through the trees from the road). Here there was quite a large flock of Black-tailed Godwit, a few Teal, 2 Snipe, Moorhen and several Black-headed Gulls. A few minutes earlier Jim had seen a Spoonbill here, but it flew off before we got there. We took a different route from normal today and walked up the track near the refuse tip. As we walked we heard a Cetti’s Warbler in a bush just behind us. The people at the back got quite a good view of it. We also heard Bearded Tits over the reeds, but couldn’t see them and we heard and saw a Chiffchaff. We got to a quiet lake with small islands in and bushes around the edge. This is known as the Balancing Pond. There were several Little Grebe, a few Tufted Duck and Coot and a Lapwing displaying over the islands. A Swallow whizzed past and was only seen by a few people, but everybody saw the two Roe Deer feeding at the top of the field opposite. Soon we could hear a couple of Willow Warbler singing from the bushes. We had to go round to the other side of the bushes, passing a Snipe and a Reed Bunting, to see them. The first ones we had seen this year. We continued up the track. A few of us had brief views of a Wheatear on a grassy knoll and everyone saw 3 Mediterranean Gulls that flew over. Skylarks were singing almost constantly and we got god views of one. Little Egret and a Greenshank gave good views as they fed in wet fields on one side of the track and along the edge of the track we saw an Adder basking in the warm, spring sunshine.
We then turned down the track leading to the sea with Fishtail Lagoon on our right. We saw a few more Redshank and views of the Greenshank before we got to the sea. The tide was fairly high and Derek found a pair of Red-breasted Merganser on the sea and several Brent Geese feeding out on the mudflats. We passed a male Reed Bunting in the reeds before stopping to look at a small group of waders on the mudflats. They were 4 Black-tailed Godwit and 1 Bar-tailed Godwit with a few Dunlin dotted around. After another few metres we stopped to look at several Shoveler on Fishtail Lagoon and then 2 Peregrines flew over us. Then the people at the back saw a Water Pipit briefly. It disappeared and, sadly, we couldn’t refind it. Another Swallow flew by! AS we got to Keyhaven Lagoon we carefully looked through the birds. There were many Shelduck and a few more Shoveler. Then the Spoonbill flew in and started feeding giving us all great views. We walked back seeing a couple of Linnets on the Gorse.
Simon Curson.