Friday 14th June 2024: Ashdown Forest and Weirwood Reservoir

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 Another family bird trip, and the chosen venue of Ashdown Forest is always a high risk strategy, offering specialist heathland birds, but also the prospect of seeing very little. I shall never be allowed to live down the visit to see ‘dead cert’ Brambling which all scarpered the day we visited!

Unfortunately, today was one of the less birdy visits. The highlight at Ashdown was a family of Common Redstarts active around the base of a substantial beech tree. We could hear a ‘hweet’ call and were discussing the options of Chiffchaff/Willow Warbler/Chaffinch as the likely source. John then called up the Merlin app on his phone, and it came up with Redstart. I had no idea they too made that sort of call. No wonder birdwatching is so difficult! Armed with this information we put a bit more effort into finding the calling bird, and this was rewarded when we found adults and ‘begging’ young flitting between the lower branches and the ground.

Elsewhere we could hear Cuckoo calling but failed to see it, and spotted Linnet, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Willow Warbler, Chiffchaff, Whitethroat, but not much else. Andy and I had brief but excellent views of a Bullfinch, which John was disappointed not to get onto, as it is missing from his year list.

With time to spare, we drove on to  Weirwood Reservoir. It had started raining now so we aimed for the car park with the bird hide. Again there wasn’t a huge amount to see here, but a female Mandarin drifted into view, and we consulted the Collins app to confirm the identification and key features. We took a short walk along the road where we had some excellent views of a Reed Warbler, singing confidently from a small bush. A Reed Bunting was also found here. Returning to the car park, John was surprised I was able to hear a Goldcrest singing from a tree in the car park, but Merlin backed me up! Unfortunately this again proved elusive, with fleeting unconfirmed views only.

A case of quality rather than quantity, but it’s always good to be out birding with my brothers!



Family birders!


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