The marshland you can see is the coastal walk along from Pagham salthouse to Pagham RSPB visitors center. Regular readers may be recalling RSPB Pulborough Brooks - an often visited spot. This RSPB reserve was totally different.
That spot of white in the distance is an egret. The first of many sightings during our day in Pagham - and one of TWO species of egret. In Australia, we used to have little egret and greater egret, but in the UK we have little egret and cattle egret. Later on our trip we discovered the cattle egret - a bird species I had not seen before!
I took photos of all the info boards - and most of them had a bird depicted upon them. Yes, we saw a heron later on in our trek, also!
Here is another info board....
What
is that peering down at us from a tree near the visitors center - a
black redstart? grey cheeked thrush? pied wheatear? white throated
robin? marsh warbler? sykes warbler? lesser whitethroat? marmoras
warbler? barred warbler? a spotted flychatcher? maybe a nightingale?
Well, we were not sure.....so I took some photos to check out later.
Liz considered a nightingale, and several warblers and flycatchers look similar...but....
...well, it had a thin black beak, fluffy gray plumage and dark double ring eye....but we didn't tell for sure, though settled on MOST probably a flycatcher of some sort - or a warbler, or a nightingale.....
I hope it's a pied wheatear. That's my favorite name. :D
ReplyDeleteAnd those marsh pictures are really something else.
a place i hadnt been before....a return is definitely planned at some stage
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