I headed to the Sailing Club first in case Wednesday’s Lapland Bunting was still in the area. A Greenshank called in alarm from the Slice Gate Saltmarsh and there were 10 Avocet on the river up towards the Yacht Club. On the sea five Eider headed east and four headed west and soon afterwards I saw 12 on the sea. I don’t think there were duplicates and so this is 21 altogether and my highest count at Needs Ore. One of the White-tailed Eagles flew over the Warden’s Hut.

I met up with Alan who arrived at the Sailing Club having had the same idea about bumping into the Lapland Bunting. Throughout the morning day we estimated that there were seven Razorbill strung out along the coast. We also watched a summer plumaged Guillemot.

There were three Peregrines, the breeding pair and a juvenile sat out on Gull Island showing browner upperparts and streaked underparts. 

A pair of Red-breasted Mergansers arrived from the east. On the female above you can see the black tips to the greater coverts which form a black line across the white wing patch, Goosander lacks this line.

I saw my first divers of the winter and there were a minimum of four, possibly as many as eight. They were all Red-throated Divers with their bills consistently held upwards. The adults showed clean white heads and the juveniles were much duskier. In flight the characteristic head nodding action was evident. A couple showed nicely on the sea albeit distantly.

Before Alan arrived I did watch a distant diver which may well have been Black-throated  – neck held up straight so no sagging or head movement and with a more elongated profile due to projecting feet. Unfortunately too distant to be certain.

We decided to walk the spit to see if we could find the Lapland Bunting in amongst the Skylarks on Warren Shore. I made a quick trip to the hides first. 29 Mediterranean Gulls on De L’Orne Scrape was a good count for December and the female Scaup was still on Black Water. She has been here for nearly seven weeks now.

On our walk out on the spit we regularly saw groups of Skylarks, probably twelve of them altogether but there was no Lapland Bunting calling amongst them. We did bump into the 1^st winter Purple Sandpiper at point black range again.

On our way back to the car we watched a Dartford Warbler calling on Pullen Marsh and a Fieldfare shacking in the distance.

Alan headed off to Blashford for the gull roost and I stopped at the Reedy Ditch where a Goshawk powered through into Silver’s Copse. At the back of the Crop Strip field the Chaffinches were flitting in and out of the corn but no Brambling. I did see a Nuthatch in the far oaks, the first one I’ve actually seen (not just heard) and also a Treecreeper and a Jay.

Nine Spoonbill flew over the Reedy Ditch heading towards Black Water and two Snipe squelched as they flushed up from Warren Corner.

On Wigeon fields there were 70 Redwing, 300 Lapwing, 30 Curlew and seven Black-tailed Godwit. As I was about to leave I picked up two Cattle Egret with the heifers around Park Farm.

After Sunday’s excellent sea watching day I returned to Mary Monts this morning. Storm Barra had passed through and I half hoped that a Grey Phalarope or Little Auk might be possible. Unfortunately, the best I could manage was a Razorbill and a Shag both heading west. Two Rock Pipits were nearby on the edge of the strip of water that lies inside the shingle beach.

I headed to the Sailing Club for a rising mid tide to see what waders were gathering. I was probably a bit early, the tide was around 1.8m and still too low. A slightly unusual sight was four Little Grebe together on the edge of the river up towards the Royal Southampton Yacht Club. Just opposite the Yacht Club eight Avocet were gathered in their favourite position.

I checked the sea in line with the eastern end of the Isle of Wight which is where the scoter were on Sunday. Amazingly the Velvet Scoter were there again. A Slavonian Grebe, a drake Eider and another Razorbill were sheltering in the slightly calmer river mouth.

At 10:30am I was stood in the shelter of the Sailing Club under the eaves when a confident ‘teu’ call grabbed my attention. I immediately thought Snow Bunting and a second ‘teu’ was followed by a lovely rippling trill. A confident bunting shape flew towards me against the bright sky. I had expected to see white underwings and black wing tips, I didn’t but the backlit silhouette probably made this difficult. It flew over the Sailing Club and so I wasn’t able to see which way it went. It had disappeared by the time I ran around to the side of the building. In an effort to relocate it I walked to the Cottages and then along the Old Spit back to the Warden’s Hut. I then drove back down Warren Lane and walked out along the shingle spit. Unfortunately there was no further sign of the bunting. I had a sound recording and so I felt confident that the identify would be confirmed later.

From along the spit I watched a White-tailed Eagle over De L’Orne and then a second eagle came closer and then flew out to the Isle of Wight. Soon afterwards four Spoonbill passed close by heading west.

I returned from the spit just before the tide got too high and I decided I would try the private areas around Great Marsh to check for any wrecked birds. Nothing unusual although I did see my fourth Razorbill of the day just out from the Beach House.

I finished the day with a trip to the hides. Yesterday’s mid-day high tide in conjunction with Storm Barra had seen De L’Orne South flooded. Adam had to head down urgently to open the gate to Lapwing South so that the cattle could escape the rapidly submerging field.

The female Scaup was still present on Black Water but the best part was seeing the flooded fields truly flooded and with lots of wildfowl and waders enjoying the new ‘lake’. Three Icelandic Black-tailed Godwit together, the middle bird is a 1^st winter with retained juvenile coverts and tertials.

I’ve included a couple of video clips of the view from the screen at De L’Orne and also the view back from Black Water gate towards the flooded boardwalk bridge.

When I got home I put the sound recording I’d made of the bunting on to Xeno Canto and soon received a comment that it was too harsh for Snow Bunting, more likely a Lapland Bunting. I canvased the opinion of five other birders and the consensus was Lapland Bunting although it wasn’t unanimous.

I was aware how similar Snow and Lapland Buntings calls are but as there had been a Snow Bunting on the spit and I’d spent many hours looking for it I assumed I’d found it and didn’t properly consider Lapland Bunting. Lesson learned!

With hindsight the trill part of the call sounded dry and not the liquid Serin-like quality of Snow Bunting. Also, in retrospect I didn’t see white wing flashes even when the bunting flew away from me (when it wasn’t backlit in silhouette). Looking at my audio recording the trill part of the call, on the sonogram at around 7 seconds (see below), is fairly high pitched with at least part of it above 5kHz where the Snow Bunting trill is usually below 4kHz. This, in my opinion, is pretty conclusive.

For the last 12 months I’ve been ‘continuous sound recording’ via a sennheiser microphone sticking out of the top of my rucksack. On most occasions I return home with eight hours of recordings which I never listen to but today was an example of when it’s worth it. I’ve included the Lapland Bunting calls here.

If accepted this will be the 4th record for Needs Ore, after two in the 1960s and one in 2012.

I met up with Ian at Inchmery for our WeBS count. Birding highlights included two White-tailed Eagles together out on the saltmarsh appearing quite amorous. It looked like our male G393 and one of the large females, perhaps G547.

Finding the Scaup out in the creek south of the quay, around a mile from Black Water, was a surprise and we enjoyed good counts of 209 Grey Plover and 53 Pintail.

The excitement highlight was getting a call from Alan who was at the Sailing Club watching three Velvet Scoter feeding out on the sea.

We had just finished the Inchmery part of the WeBS count and so we raced back to Needs Ore, thankfully the scoter were still on show as we joined Alan, Simon and Dimitri at the Sailing Club. We had a few minutes of the scoter on the sea before they flew off east revealing their striking white secondaries. A patch tick.

Velvet Scoter breed on Scandinavian coasts particularly northern Norway and they winter along the Baltic Coasts and some reach the south and east coasts of the UK. These three are almost certainly the birds that have been off Brownwich and Hill Head for the last two weeks, only 6 miles to the north east as the scoter flies.

Philip, who was watching the scoter from Lepe as they sat on the sea opposite the Coastguard Cottages watched a fourth fly west through the middle of the Solent well out from Mary Monts.

The Needs Ore part of the WeBS count included the Scaup again on Black Water. Once we’d finished the WeBS count we decided to do a bit of sea watching from Mary Monts. A Razorbill appeared about 10 metres off the shoreline and then a second bird did the same thing. The lack of vertical white line on the bill suggests that this is a 1^st winter bird.

We picked up my Black-necked Grebe from yesterday afternoon which Alan had just seen distantly from the Sailing Club and amazingly a Slavonian Grebe swam in to join it.

I spent an hour at Park Shore looking through the Brent Goose flock. Just like yesterday the geese were in an awkward position just north of Park Farm where I could only get distant views and where the long grass obscured lots of them. I did, however, manage to pick out a Pale-bellied Brent Goose. A pair of Redpoll flew over as I was searching through the geese.

The regular Bullfinch pair flitted ahead of me as I walked along the main hedge. Three Black-tailed Godwit were flushed from Venner South before they headed over to the Gins. After a September peak of 40 birds on De L’Orne Flood it is down to single figures again although in December last year 40-50 birds were seen on Exbury Fields on a couple of high tides.

Behind De L’Orne on the saltmarsh a lovely adult male Marsh Harrier quartered along the river edge and a White-tailed Eagle appeared briefly low down over the river before landing out of sight. The female Marsh Harrier later dropped onto the edge of Venner Wigeon Fields.

On Black Water the 1^st winter female Scaup was still present associating with four Tufted Duck. This was the most active I’ve seen her, she was diving every 10 seconds or so. The first Greenshank I’ve seen for a few visits was on De L’Orne Scrape, presumably here to winter.

Back at the car 10 Skylark flew over Shore Hide heading back towards Warren Shore Saltmarsh.

A two hour sea watch produced a lovely and unexpected Black-necked Grebe, my first winter record of this species at Needs Ore. Other than the summer plumaged bird on Venner in July this is the first Black-necked Grebe at Needs Ore for a few years. They used to winter here regularly often appearing inside the river mouth.

The run of auk sightings continued with another three Razorbill distantly heading east

A group of Red-breasted Merganser (6 female types, one male) were quickly followed by five Eider also heading west (3 males, 2 females).

I had planned to walk out along the spit to check on the Purple Sandpiper, to listen out for a Snow Bunting and to do the Avian Flu checks but the tide was still high (albeit falling) and so there were lots of ducks and geese feeding in the flooded outflow channel and I would have undoubtedly flushed them. I headed back to the Sailing Club instead.

A single Golden Plover and at least five Knot were in amongst the 200 Grey Plover on Inchmery Saltmarsh and a Razorbill showed distantly in the river mouth. Eight Common Gull were roosting almost all of the way to Lepe.

I finished with an hour at Park Shore. A Red Kite was circling over the fields towards Bergerie Farm and there were two Cattle Egrets together in the fields around Park Farm although no sign of anything more interesting in with the Dark-bellied Brent Geese.