Brian's birding blog: White-crowned Sparrow at Hope Gap in Seaford

Thursday 27 April 2023

White-crowned Sparrow at Hope Gap in Seaford

Yesterday we headed down to Seaford in East Sussex where a White-crowned Sparrow has been reported since Saturday. It's been elusive since Saturday but having dipped one in Cheshire back in 2016 I was determined to take the chance of moving this bird off my dipped list. We arrived at 8am and quickly found the area the bird has favoured. The crowd of twenty birders/twitchers had split with some watching from the centre path some from the top path and some watching the area that had been seeded the previous evening. At about 9am Alex B saw the bird and although I was stood next to him I couldn't react fast enough to get on it. The next sighting was at 12.15 whilst we'd taken a short break for drinks. We sat it out at the seed from 1pm until 3pm but after seven hours on site we headed home. The bird came to the seed at 4.30pm and visited frequently all evening.

We added Rock Pipit and Lesser Whitethroat to the year list whilst at Seaford.

This morning after being gripped off by all the images on the socials I called Jim and told him I was going back today. He was up and ready but Dad didn't have the energy after yesterdays jaunt. We left at 7am and arrived shortly after 9am and this time as we joined the small crowd we were delighted to see the Sparrow sitting out in the open waiting for us. We watched it for another hour or so and managed to get some images as it came to seed every fifteen minutes or so but would often be obscured and remained quite skulking at times. A walk down to the sea gave us a bonus year tick when Jim found a female Common Redstart.

White-crowned Sparrow

On the drive home we made the three mile diversion to Thorndon CP paid the £2.50 for an hours parking and walked down to the lake. Luckily other birders had the Night Heron in their scopes or we may have struggled to find it as the bird was in deep cover and very obscured. Good to see Dave and Matt there but we didn't hang around too long as the bird was asleep and my sofa was calling me.