Pagham Harbour - Birding Roots

Pagham is a large, shallow natural harbour, silting up now at the northern end but still holding passage and wintering waders and wildfowl enough to delight birdwatchers. I have been coming here for more than thirty years and in those far off, early birding days, I was here (and at Farlington Marsh) seemingly every weekend. I have managed a couple of visits over recent weeks initially with the Mrs Bew, concentrating on the North Wall side of the harbour. I spent a short time taking photos of black tailed godwit, all now most of the way towards winter plumage, and little egret which are very common across the harbour.

Black Tailed Godwit

Little Egret

Also fortunate enough to be on that same North Wall as the sun set. This was taken on the smartphone rather than the 'proper' camera. 

Pagham Harbour North Wall

Back last weekend later with the RSPB group and having been here a couple of weeks earlier and been forced through the fields due to a very high tide, I was a bit concerned that today's high water at 11.00, might yet be a problem. As a result, we did hurry a little on the first part of the walk just to get to a spot I knew where we wouldn't get our feet wet!  

Our first decent view of the harbour mudflats nonetheless showed us a nice group of twenty or so avocet, the 'Audrey Hepburn' of the birdworld as Chris Packham calls them. Other waders in evidence included the noisy and obvious curlew, redshank, a few grey plover and small numbers of dunlin. Numbers of all of these waders will build as the winter progresses. Another early winter visitor whose numbers will increase dramatically is the Brent goose, a few were present today and even after many years of seeing and hearing them, the continual but actually quite gentle Brent calls winging their way across the harbour always give me a little lift.Other wildfowl across the now flooded harbour included wigeon, teal and the always elegant pintail.

Teal

We had, of course been seeing the odd buzzard on our walk but now something a little bit different, a harris hawk no less perched in a tree being annoyed by the local crows. This one came complete with jesses having been presumably lost by a falconer, a magnificent bird just the same. Sad to report that our illustrious group leader seemed pretty keen to 'tick' this one!

Looking across at Bird Island, the high tide had forced a mixed population of birds onto its shoreline, turnstone, dunlin, little egret, cormorant and grey heron amongst them.  Towards the end of the homeward jaunt, we spotted an elegant, long winged shape out over the saltmarsh and just had time to enjoy the sight of an early short eared owl before it dived into the undergrowth, never to emerge again. 

Still a beautiful place after so many years of visiting and as  I remarked to one of my fellow birders at the end of the day, these places do me good.