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It was not long before they swam further away and I wandered along. It was almost time for the next walk/talk I had booked in for - on 'Scalies & Scoters' with Warden Sam. Before she began, I took a photo or two of the birds that were the subject of the talk.

These were the scaly merganzers in the waterfall exhibit where the talk was held. The lecture informed us of the facts around the birth of young to the exhibited birds and how Arundel WWT was achieving compared to others around the country and world to ensure these species continue both in captivity and the wild.

As you can see from the info-board, they are a threatened species - but here is evidence of the local success story - a bunch of this years youngsters!

This pair of Nenes kept waddling about near me as I wandered back past the blacknecked swans to continue my day out. There are two ways to tell which is the male and which the female. Firstly, the female is slightly smaller than the male - and secondly, the female wears the metal tag on the LEFT leg, whereas the male wears his metal tag on the RIGHT.

I then decided to go on the boat trip. I have been several times before, but tend to go if I have enough time and the cue is small enough to allow me on the next ride if the boat is approaching or ready to go. On this occasion, a family trio and I were the sole passengers and had an enjoyable trip which must have taken longer than the usual 20 minutes as we saw quite a lot this time. Both the family and I had been on the boat trips before. As I got to the stage, preparing to climb aboard I spotted a mommy and cygnet swan.

This shot is one of the birds we noted on our trip - the gadwell. We also encountered the sound of a kingfisher, a kestrel in a willow tree, several dragonflies, overgrown sedge, a wooden barrier walkway...

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Well, there was one head up - but the other down - so I took a shot of the info board before trying again to successfully capture the duo of live specimens.

Finally! It was then time for the first talk - about Snipes with Warden Tracy - who you will see in a photograph at FB on the Arundel WWT page for this event. I then popped in to see the exhibition on nests and talk about nests. I then pottered along to find the other duo of swan pals - the blacknecked.

I stayed to take a few photos of this pair - and to see if they were being friendly or not.

Well...they were not as companionable and curious as the Bewicks - but were not as distant as the Trumpeters - on this occasion.

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I did not stay with the trumpeters as long as the Bewicks, as they did not come over close to me like the Bewicks had. They did swim a little closer - but not very close.

I turned about as they did, ready to pass by the Bewicks again on my way to the first talk of the day - and spotted a pretty pigeon. The pigeon also seemed to show interest in the Bewicks...

It is not often I get a picture of two of my favored birds in one photograph - pigeons AND swans! I then tried to take a photo of this pair - who kept ducking as I took the pictures...

I wondered if I would ever get the tops of their heads in view - and kept trying.

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One last shot of the eider on the cafe-side lake before I moved along. I had a half hour or so before the first talk, so trotted along towards the Bewick swans - passing this little character on my way. As usual, it popped out the hedgerow and sung to me...

I arrived at the Bewick's lake - and took a few pictures, along with THIS VIDEO.

I stayed to hang out with my pals Mr Orangetag Bewick and Miss Silvertag Bewick, before wandering along to the first event I had signed up for.

Here you can see Miss S Bewick coming closer to take a look at me - maybe wondering why I had stayed around for 10-15 minutes rather than taken a quick look and rushed along somepond else.

My next brief stop was with the Trumpeter swans...

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One more shot of our bird feeders taken late September...I can count 14 sparrows - if you include the blurrs. And again, early October - where you can see our sparrows lining up for their turn of the seed - or giving up and seeking fat ball instead.

My first excursion of October was to WWT Arundel - but before I arrived, I spotted a trio of pigeons enjoying a feast on the riverbank. The first thing I did was to sign up for some walk/talks at

Autumn Discover Birds weekend

 and then settle down by the cafe-side lake with a cuppa to watch the eiders.

I took a half dozen or so pictures while sipping my hot drink, warming myself as the chills of fall were greeting me this time - definitely back to long sleeve season.

As well as my photographs, I took a video - which you can watch HERE.

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You may be mistaken in thinking the pigeons were the subject of my photo - well, they were - but..... so were the pair of teenage Nenes! In my next shot, you can see eider as well as gulls and mallards.

Before leaving the reserve and crawling back to the bus stop, exhausted and hopeful of an afternoon nap rather than shopping trip, I popped back to see the Bewicks.

One of them looked at me, but the other was feeding busily sub-surface. That concludes my September visit to Arundel WWT. Back home, and Pidge was standing in the bird bath.

My next excursion was a quickie with Liz to Pulborough Brooks. We were only there for just over an hour, as we had stopped en route for our refreshments and did not enter the reserve - just make a purchase from the shop and then take a ramble round the woodland outside. Of course, I also stopped to grab a piccie of the show pigeons.

Finally for today - here is a late September shot of the bird feeder showing how our number of sparrows have increased lately.

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I then stopped at the waterfall exhibit. You can see here the real specimen with its info board - and the one on the left of the picture with the blue tag is a male!

Here are a pair of merganzers! Here are some young merganzers - who were hiding when I tried to photograph them on my last visit.

TWO Blacknecked swans! On my last 3-4 visits, there has been one lonesome swan calling sadly....but now there are two! I was mentioning this to the staff member when he updated me on the swans and a few other birds. This pair are both new, as the other original male was no longer here. So, now we have 2 Bewick, 2 Trumpeter, and 2 blacknecked swans again - all relatively recent arrivals. It will therefore be a few more years before they have young - but....hopefully I will get to know them better by then.

Nearby was a line of dozing ducks.