8th January 2019 - West Rise Marsh

The day started out as a non-birding day and at around 9am I headed into Brighton University to crack on with some much needed essential assignment work. At around 11am I recieved a text from Dad to say that David Campbell had found a 1w female Ring-necked Duck at West Rise Marsh. After completing my work, I rushed back to the car and had every intention of driving straight to West Rise Marsh. However realisation suddenly dawned on me that I had no telescope or binoculars on me. I quickly thought what would be the quickest way to be able to get my hands on some without driving all the way home to Worthing. I decided the best thing to do would be to drive to Mum and Dads and grab the spares from their place.

As I pulled up Mum had just arrived home and I mentioned the duck and she wished to join me on the adventure. We had a smooth drive over with very little hold ups and soon arrived at West Rise Marsh. We walked swiftly to the lake and started looking at first there was no sign but we were starring straight into the sun and the light was dreadful. We moved round to the other side of the lake with the sun behind us and found Bob Hastings watching the bird which was loosely associating with Tufted Ducks. We enjoyed good scope views of this 12th record for Sussex and the first since 2007!

1w female Ring-necked Duck - West Rise Marsh