Top Paragraph
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.
At last, a really pleasant autumn day. This must be an opportunity for me to photograph the Eider duck which has been around the harbour for three weeks or so, but usually too far away for even a record shot of the bird. However having tried in the morning to locate the eider and failed I made a second attempt at 2.00 pm and found a photographer with camera trained on the bird but still at a air distance and in less than ideal lighting conditions. I recognised the photographer as Andy Wilkes from his numerous tweets and had a pleasant conversation about birds and cameras.
The sun was almost behind the Eider but I did manage to obtain a few poor shots...
During the course of our conversation we discussed that Short Eared Owls had been difficult to see this autumn and we parted company. However a little later I caught up with Andy looking seaward and he said he'd just seen a Short Eared Owl fly in from the sea.
Sure enough the bird was hunkered down in the long grass...
It remained there some time and as Andy made off a dog walker disturbed the owl and it took off...
..and headed towards the harbour and landed in the marsh.
Yet again it was disturbed and flew over the harbour upsetting the ducks
Thanks Andy....I would not have spotted this without you!
