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Pagham Birder: The Blog

A regular account of the birds seen mainly on and around Pagham Spit, the Lagoon and the North Wall plus other birding exploits from time to time.
Any news of interest regarding the ongoing erosion problems on Pagham Beach will, from now on, be shown on my other blog together with general beach photos.. Click on the link... Pagham Beach Blog on this page.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Oenanthe query

After watching 3 Rock Pipits on the harbour wall I turned around and saw a small bird on the Spit hide. It was crouching low and initially, from the colouration I thought it was a male Chaffinch. Immediately I realised it was a Wheatear but from the overall dark orangy/pinkish breast.belly and flanks it struck me that this was not a 'normal' Northern. It flew quickly to a fence post and the white rump confirmed it was indeed a Wheatear ...but the coloration was more striking. I took one distant quick shot with my 16x digital zoom point and shoot and show below a cropped and more heavily cropped  poor shot. It disappeared after about 10 seconds and despite a search and several return visits it never reappeared. Any ideas ?




On a subsequent later visit to try again it was good to see a redhead Goosander in flight showing clearly the sharp division between the brown upper neckand whitish lower foreneck....quite different to a Red Breasted Merganser.

...and then onto the beach where the Greenfinch flock was feeding alongside a few Linnets.


...before a quick look over to the off shore spit to see the impressive high tide wader roost.
left click to check species!

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