BIRD NEWS:3 & link

The second Sunday of January produced an excursion to Pulborough Brooks Reserve. LINK TO WEBSITE HERE. A friend drove my son and I along with her husband to the nature reserve and we set off along the track. We set up at one of the two lookouts with noccies and a scope next to one of the RSPB scope wardens.

You might think that needing assistance to view the birds meant a no-photo excursion, and you would be right about our main viewing. However, on the way back to my friend's car, we spotted a pair of ducks ambling along in a field. They were close enough to gt a couple of shots on the zoom.

The last photo shows a general view of the brooks taken from the trail back from the lookout where we set up for our bird watch. The first bird I spotted through the noccies was one that I was unfamiliar with. After describing it, the RSPB warden ID'd it as a lapwing - a species I do not see in my back yard, nor have seen over in Australia, though might have spotted at some time, somewhere.

Other species we saw on our excursion include pintail, mallard, shoveler, moorhen, cormorant, and widgeon. Apart from trips to Arundel, the mallard and moorhen are the only species I have had a previous awareness of sufficient to identify without assistance.

Back at the visitors center, on our way home, I took out the camera yet again. They had a collection of white doves outside and I could not resist taking a few shots of them. When loading my photos on the computer afterwards, I noticed a chaffinch had snuck into the first picture! There will be more about the cheeky chaffinch in my next post.

Finally for today - HERE is an article which may be of interest to some readers.