Alpine Swift at Crawley

I leave Brian's house on sat evening with him undecided where to go this morning, Jimmy had text that an Alpine Swift had gone to roost on the Virgin Atlantic building at Crawley by Gatwick airport.
On arriving home Brian sent a text to say he is going to come with us to try for the Swift instead of going to his first choice of Dungeness.
We meet up at 5.30 & it takes just over the hour, when we arrive just a couple of birders are here & they had not seen the target yet, it was only just getting light so it's no wonder there.
After a short while more people arrive & after a few phone calls it appears we need to be a couple of hundred yards up the road to the other Virgin building, so all in our cars to meet up with a bigger group there.
The weather is not good with fine rain had us getting in & out of the car to keep our self warm & even with Lee turning up the bird refuse's to show.
Only being 10 miles from Warnham LNR a Jack Snipe was reported there yesterday, we head there only to find it doesn't open till 10 o'clock, so not a good morning so far.
Just as we are deciding what to do for an hour the warden opens the door & let's us in,( nice fellow)
we pay a small donation & take a short walk to the first hide, we scan the lake for the Jack Snipe but to no avail.
I do see a male Mandarin Duck & a couple of Heron's & Great-crested Grebe plus Tufted Duck .
We move on to the next hide & find that it looks out on a feeding station & is well stocked with seed.
We see many Finches & Tits plus a Great spotted Woodpecker comes to feed, Treecrepper & Nuthatch plus the odd brown Rat & what I think are field mouse are seen running in & out from their nest under some moss covered logs, not to fond of these rodents but still nice to sit & watch them go about their business. A couple of Grey Wagtails  & a few Reed Bunting make up the show. A really nice clean reserve that deserves a longer visit.
The pager busts into life to tell us that the Swift had shown up at last, so a very quick 10 minute drive  gets us back to be told that the bird had not been seen for a while.
The weather has not improved with the fine rain looking set for the whole day, makes us think it's not to be our day, then we get a great sight of the Swift as it flies in & heads over the car park & goes to roost on the Virgin building.
Everybody heads round the building to locate the bird, it's visible but it's tucked right up under the gutter & although I took some photos the rain made it hard to get anything worthwhile so I delete them. So a good year tick & only an hour from home makes it a good morning after all.

Great spotted

Just going about it's feeding.

Just had to save one photo