On a day trip to Rye, I went out to Rye Harbour Nature Reserve for part of the visit. It's a lovely place for a walk and for birdwatching, and it happens to have some old WWII buildings that were meant to be used for defence. A place like that makes it a good location because that means there is something for my husband - time and nature and the bonus of the WWII stuff - and I also get a good birding trip out of it. Not to say that I don't enjoy the other stuff, but I like to make it a birding trip whenever I go somewhere if I can, even if it's just birds in town that are different because we're in a different part of the country.
Accidentally, we ended up at the backside of the nature sanctuary. The walk there was lovely, through a local country, gravel road with lots of shrubbery and green fields. As a result, I came across some new birds and also some that I see less often than I might in London at the various parks I go to for bird trips. One of them was a lifer for me, the linnet. Although I had never seen one before, the bird ID Facebook page I'm a member of seems to have posts about them often enough that I suspected that's what I had seen, but I was able to confirm once I plugged the photos into the Merlin app. What I discovered as well is that I saw both a male and female, so that was pretty exciting since I don't always see both, let alone get photos of both. What's also exciting is that they are considered to be a species of concern, on the red list, and so seeing them is something I consider a privilege in the event that their populations keep declining toward extinction, and I'll know that I got to see one in my life. Of course, I hope that doesn't happen. This is one of those things that you hope isn't a special event and that in the future, I can say it was just some mundane bird that you can see anywhere!
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