4 Sept - An excellent morning's birding en route home from a family visit. First stop Hayling Island, and an Osprey flew W over the A3023 bridge, flushing the excellent selection of waders - 11 Bar-tailed Godwits (4), 6 Grey Plovers (3), a Knot, Redshank, Ringed Plovers and Dunlin - also 3 Little Egrets. The next car park to the S produced an adult Med Gull (2) in winter plumage, a large mixed wader roost containing Curlews, Oystercatchers, RPs and Dunlin - and 6 more Little Egrets. Sidlesham and Church Norton at the adjacent Pagham Harbour held a Spotted Redshank, Black-tailed Godwits, Ruff and Common Sandpiper; and the estuary gave good views of more Grey Plover and Knot, good numbers of Turnstones, RPs and Dunlin, and a juvenile Little Gull. Together with nearby Farlington, a further 16 Little Egrets were seen here, giving a total of at least 31 birds - by contrast, I only saw 1 Grey Heron. Farlington also held 100+ Black-tailed Godwits and 100+ Redshank, together with at least 50 more Grey Plovers.
Radley Gravel Pits were the final stop and the Spotted Crake (1, photo copyright Adam Hartley) was feeding out in the open, so obviously hadn't read the books.....also here, 3 Greenshanks, 3 Snipe and a Green Sandpiper.
17 spp of wader today! (and 22 in the last week.....)
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