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.

Friday, July 2, 2021

Photos from June and first two days of July

 Birding has been a little limited during the past six weeks but shown below is a selection of a few  photos from various walks to the North Wall and Pagham  Spit.

Great Crested Grebes  have met with some success on Breach pool and an adult with two youngsters were noted yesterday.

Sedge Warblers have been very vocal although song is now a lot less than earlier in June

Only yesterday this Reed Warbler  appeared to be gathering nesting material.


This Common Tern is a 'regular', fishing on Breech Pool.

Nesting birds on  Pagham Spit has been very disappointing due to several factors.  Lack of available live gorse bushes (many have suffered from seawater ingress), erosion of shingle resulting in few sightings of Ringed Plovers with no attempted  breeding and volume of people now being concentrated into a smaller walking area...due again to erosion of the beach.

Far fewer Linnets have attempted breeding and no Greenfinches or any other species seem to have had any success.

Tern and Gull numbers have increased considerably with great success on the harbour islands due to the work of the RSPB.

Good photographic opportunities have resulted for all three species of Tern, Sandwich, Common and Little.

 A pair of Roseate Terns have been noted during the past weeks but regrettably no photos here!



Little Terns



Sandwich Terns








Black Headed Gull


For the past two days a Cuckoo has been noted on the Spit but each time it is disturbed it flies north over the harbour towards Slipe Field area but returns quite quickly to the new Lagoon area. 

A poor flight photo!


I understand there are a number of  these Oak Egger caterpillars on the reserve and I found this one today on the 'plastic' track to the beach.


..and finally a bird of a different kind. An impressive but noisy 1941 Stearman bi-plane over the spit!!





No comments: