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A Squaccing day out at Pagham Harbour

      


 

My radio silence over the last few weeks reflects my recent lack of birding. A combination of a lack of birds that I wanted to twitch and saving my pennies for a ten day trip to Shetland at the end of next month has kept me at home. In truth there have been a few good birds around, e.g. Silt and Least Sandpipers, but they are all birds already on my UK list and with the cost of a tank of diesel for the Land Rover peaking at £140 I’ve found plenty to keep me busy at home.

 

I had a day free of other commitments on Friday and decided to get out and about and pay a visit to the picturesque RSPB reserve at Pagham harbour to see a Squacco Herron. This  is a rare vagrant to UK averaging just one record per year. It has quite a scattered distribution breeding across southern Europe into southern Ukraine and Central Asia. It is mainly migratory and winters in tropical sub-Saharan Africa. In breeding plumage the crown is a mane of yellow buff or straw-coloured feathers and its back is an attractive rusty brown contrasting with white, slightly streaked underparts. It is somewhat similar in size and shape to our Bittern.

 

I left home just after 06:00 using the newly installed Wazes app on my phone to guide me to Pagham harbour. Comparing it to the rubbish built in shat (sic) nav in the Land Rover was like comparing an abacus to a supercomputer in that its everything the Land Rover version isn’t, totally accurate on road conditions, giving updates on accidents, road works, speed cameras and traps and telling me when I’m speeding! It is also much more dynamic on adjusting and picking the fastest route. I did look at an upgrade DVD for the built in but at £165 and only updated to 2019 – really Land rover you are taking the preverbal! 

 

I parked along the road from the rather appealing looking Crab and Lobster pub overlooking the harbour wetlands and made my way along the footpath by Halsey’s farm towards the north bank. Remarkably, the Heron was in the exact same location as the last one I saw almost exactly three years ago. Having read the excellent Vagrancy in Birds, see my review here, perhaps it was not so remarkable if this bird has one of the genetic variations, e.g. reverse migration, which along with prevailing winds are thought to lead to vagrancy.

 

The bird was hunting in in the reeds along a small stream. Very conveniently, there was a bush to hid behind some 30 or so meters from the bird so I crept up to it and joined 3 other birders there. The Squacco Heron was standing very patiently and perfectly still, waiting for prey to approach. Perhaps after 15 minutes or so it decided to move and walked very slowly more out into the open searching for prey in a very crouched posture resembling a  taut spring about to uncoil. After 20 minutes or so it flew further upstream and landed near the north wall in a reed bed.

 

This was my cue to leave the Heron behind and have a slow sunny walk in the tranquil large wetland reserve. Avian highlights were a scope view of the first Curlew Sandpiper I have seen for a couple of years and two Wheatears moving along the rock fortifications of the north bank. A distant flock of white Herons were mainly Cattle Egrets, many still in breeding plumage, with a scattering of their little cousins. I counted some 30 Cattle Egrets, a sight that would have been totally unheard of in the UK only a few years ago. 



As I approached the end of the north bank I flushed a small bird that landed further up the track on a bush. Looking through my bins I had no idea what it was – narrow and thin in appearance with a grey cap, rusty brown upperparts, and white underneath. I raised my camera to get a record shot but it immediately flew off. A 30 minute search failed to relocate the bird which, in all probability, was a juvenile of some description that I did not recognise but I will never know! This reminded me of an occasion a few years ago when I was driving down the lane by Tar Lakes near Witney going home when a bird flew in front of the car that I thought was a Rose Coloured Starling. It coincided with a time when there was a small influx into the country. I went back with my optics and spent a frustrating hour looking for it no avail so again I will never know!

 

I had a very pleasant sandwich lunch by my car overlooking the wetland and decided to spend the rest of my day along the coast at Normandy Marshes where an American Lesser Yellowlegs was located. The coast line here is a bit of a bird mecca and is where I have seen many good birds over the past few years, most recently my first UK Wilson’s Phalarope.  I arrived mid-afternoon with high tide some 3 hours away at 18:00. There was no sign of the Lesser Yellowlegs, a bird I have seen a number of times before in the UK, but there was ample compensation in other waders with ten or so Greenshank feeding on the margin. A Knot was still in its rusty red summer breeding plumage which is not often seen in the south. A Little Tern was also lounging on one of the islands. As high tide approached more and more waders flew in including a hundred or so Redshank that I spent ages going through but of the Yellowlegs there was no sign. 

   







Come 19:00 I made my way back to the car where Waze told me that the main dual carriageway was shut above Swindon adding 40 miles to my journey. Just to confirm how useless the built in sat nav was it still was trying to take me along this road even though it was displaying as closed on its map!

 

 

 

 Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia! 


Comments

  1. Nice write-up Jim! I'd not heard of Waze before & always rely on Google Maps myself. Here is an interesting comparison between the two in case it's of interest:
    https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=waze+vs+google+maps

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