Trip reports

Pagham

Male wigeon swimming

Sunday, 18 February 2007

Pagham Harbour is a large estuary that offers a good range of varied habitat on the shore and is particularly good for winter visitors. An inspection of the tide tables at the visitor's centre revealed that the tide was rising so we started our day at Church Norton. Here we were treated to good sightings of oystercatcher, curlew, dunlin, common gull, herring gull, brent geese, cormorant, black tailed godwit, pintail, grey plover, ringed plover, teal, turnstone, widgeon, redshank, little grebe, great crested grebe, heron, goldeneye and greater black backed gull. A special treat was the sighting of a small number of red breasted merganser. We also found a whimbrel, a small flock of mediterranean gulls and two spotted redshank. Away from the water we had a nice picnic in the church yard where we found UK and continental black birds, a male kestrel and song thrushes in the surrounding scrub. Later we returned to the visitor's centre for an inspection of the ferry pond. Here we added shelduck,mute swan, tufted duck, shoveler, little egret, stock dove, avocet and buzzard to our sightings for the day.