A big thank you to Chris Brown for looking after the sightings board while I was away on holiday. Not a good week to be out of Sussex by all accounts especially as it appears that the Trumpeter Finch has now gone...!

Nuthatches have reared young in a nest box in our Crawley garden again this year. Two fledged on Wednesday. We have been watching them on TV - day and night - for the last 6 weeks since they first took an interest in the box. It has been amazing. But sadly we have to go back to scheduled TV progammes again now.

The Trumpeter Finch sticks mainly to the fenced off area viewed from the south west end of the sewage works complex. I got the 12A (or 12) bus and connected with the bird within a few minutes with luck and the help of observers that saw it the night before. Its about 30-40ft away near the bare patch of earth right on the edge of the cliff feeding on thrift seed. Really is a special bird if you've got the chance to go, I was supposed to be revising but hey.........

The Trumpeter Finch was still present at 7pm this evening on the cliffs close to Telscombe Tye lay-by. Although sometimes difficult to find amongst the thrift it occasionally popped out into the open giving those present unrestricted views of this beautiful little bird.

I saw the first summer male Trumpeter Finch very well early this morning in the company of Ads Bowley. The bird was affording tremendous views, showing down to less than 50 feet and feeding avidly on the seed heads of thrift, apparently unconcerned at our presence. It was virtually in continuous view for at least an hour before flying off west presumably to the other side of the pumping station. The following may be of interest. Whilst watching the finch we were joined by a man from one of the white houses above the pumping station. He said he was not an avid birder but had a reasonable knowledge of the birds in the area and professed to have seen the Trumpeter Finch on Monday afternoon 2 June in his garden hopping around his wife's Mini Cooper before flying off down to the cliff edge. He told me he had recognised it was something very different from what was usually around.  He had looked in his book on British Birds to try to identify it but was unable to find it. However on looking at the bird through my scope at virtually point blank range, he confirmed that this was the bird he had seen and told me he had posted the fact that he had seen the it on Monday on Bird Forum whose address he had found on the net.