Thorney Island Visit

I've been in this area now for about 18 months and there are so many birding sites within an hour or so that I am still orientating myself. I've been using Matt Phelps and Ed Stubbs excellent (very excellent) book, Where to Watch Birds in Surrey & Sussex and been focusing on 'my bit' in SW Sussex. Earlier on in the week I explored Amberley Wildbrooks and the Arun valley south of Amberley HERE which was a revelation of the scale of the habitat and the immense number of birds in the Arun Valley between Arundel and Pulborough Brooks. These vast natural landscapes aren't supposed to exist in the UK!

So today I went off exploring another vast landscape, this time the mighty Chichester Harbour, or rather a main part of it that I hadn't visited before. I regularly visit East Head and Snowhill Marsh area and also have visited Fishbourne Creek which are eastern parts of the harbour complex but the main part of Chichester harbour surrounds Thorney Island. Fortunately I had bumped into Kevin Tarrant at Arundel on Monday who gave me some tips about visiting Thorney as it is a bit of a challenge. The weather was good today after a week of rain and wind so I opportunitstically dissappeared for the afternoon while Holly hosted a mums and kids party at home- handy! The tide was falling so not the best time to visit though. 

Most of Thorney Island is a military base with no access but there is a coastal path around the military base which is open to the public and looks out over various parts of the Chichester Harbour complex-Emsworth Channel to the west, over Pilsey Island mudflats to the south and Thorney Channel to the east. There are also view points over the Deeps and the reedbeds. Access to the path is via controlled barred wires gates (a push button telecom system gets you to security who will give you access) and then it's a seven mile walk round the footpath which took me about three and half hours HERE mainly walking/birding. I had 76 species of very roughly 7300 individuals HERE (although I was mainly walking and doing a reccee rather than focused birding). Surprisngly I was a bit underwhelmed on the number of birds mainly because there wasn't many Brents around which are presumably out in another part of the harbour complex. I'll have to return on a rising tide. There were no highlights really, just the expected species altough there were a few birders looking for a flock of Bearded Tits in the reedbed but I didn't have time to wait for them. 

Red-breasted Merganser- a few of these on the Emsworth side

Sanderlings- the area around Pilsey Island is one of the best areas in Sussex for these. 

Bar-tailed Godwits- Chichester Harbour holds much higher numbers than nearby Pagham Harbour 

Pilsey Sands- one of only four areas of sand dunes in Sussex. East Head, another sand dune complex is opposite the channel in this image

Great deep (left), the military controlled footpath (centre) and Thorney Channel (right) 

View over the Deeps at sunset- this flooded area held the highest concentration of geese, waterfowl, Lapwing and Golden Plovers. I also viewed this area from the road by the military checkpoint. 

The year in pictures

Here's a few monthly photo highlights from 2025. I've also done a couple of local personal reviews for Spring HERE and Autumn HERE. For the numbers behind 2025 see HERE. 

JANUARY

January highlight was a trip to Kuwait with Vince , with a few new lifers and WP ticks to get the year kicked off. Crab Plovers were a highlight. 

FEBRUARY

A trip to Iceland with the family was the highlight of February, Barrow's Goldeneyes (above) and Harlequin Ducks were lifers. 

MARCH

Locally based in March, the highlight of the month was the early Spring sea passage of wintering and waterbirds past Selsey Bill including good numbers of Brent Geese 

APRIL

The Least Sandpiper at Medmerry was an incredible find by Paul Bowley

Another family trip in April took us to Cyprus where I got a few more stealth ticks including Cyprus Wheatear (above), Cyprus Warbler, Cyprus Scops Owl and jammed in on the Lesser Moorhen (below)

Back to the local patch at the end of April to witness the Pom passage off Selsey Bill

MAY

A trip to Kuwait with Vince and Julian to visit Omar and friends was incredible with us finding the first Lesser Striped Swallow (above) for the WP and six Short-tailed Shearwaters (below) on a pelagic trip 

JUNE

Back at home it was a great spring/summer for moth migrants including Striped Hawkmoths (above)

A June visit to the Bulgaria project plot in June gave us the chance to complete the wildlife pond and carry out some more moth recording 

JULY

Another month spent locally with highlights being the garden moth trapping with many highlights and scarce migrants including Bright Wave (above) and Small Marbleds (below)

AUGUST 

Another family trip this time to France, staying at Le Moulin de Pensol. Highlights included good views of Honey Buzzard (above) and some nice moths including Broad-bordered Bee Hawkmoth (below)

Back at home the great moth migration season continued with more Striped Hawkmoths (above-pictured with a Cliften Nonpariel) 

SEPTEMBER

Another trip to the Bulgaria project where we did some autumn bird migration recording and exploration and found Middle-spotted Woodpeckers in our village wood (above)

Back at home there were a few autumn birding highlights including Grey Phalarope (above) and Wryneck 

OCTOBER

The third visit to the Bulgaria project in October was incredible with finding the 5th Rustic Bunting and 7th Caspian Stonechat for Bulgaria and also having Pallas's Warbler (above) and witnessing some breath taking visible migration and falls including a large fall of Robins (below)

Pallid Harrier mowing through 50,000 Swallows 

NOVEMBER

With late October/early November being peak vagrant time locally we had this Pallid Swift over Selsey and also had Yellow-browed Warbler 

This ship-assisted Boat-tailed Grackle in nearby Hampshire was one of the autumn birding highlights. For a species that 'naturally' colonises via ships within it's range, Grackles in the WP pose an interesting case study of the mechanisms and consequences of vagrancy in an increasingly human modified world

DECEMBER 

A trip to Oman in late November/early December was a highlight of the birding year. Our group found the first Paddyfield Pipit for Oman (above) and we racked up a trip list of 232 in two weeks with plenty of lifers and Greater WP ticks

Male Lichienstien's Sandgrouse

Plain Leaf Warbler 

Jouanin's Petrel

Back home this nice male Snow Bunting was a local highlight 

Beddington Farmlands visit

It was our work xmas curry yesterday and it was quiet on the quoting front so I stretched the day out to London by stopping off for breakfast at Knepp (had a wilding full English and bought some wilding meat for xmas) and spent the afternoon at Beddington Farmlands, the first visit this year I think. 49 species of nearly 900 individuals HERE   with highlights including Green Sandpiper, Lapwings, Shelduck, Firecrest and Chiffchaff. Also had a quick walk round Beddington Park too. 

Lapwings hanging in there (11 birds on North Lake) 

Urban birding habitat shots (above and below) 

The Sussex Serengeti

I've been reading the Birds of Sussex by the Sussex Ornithological Society over the last few weeks. It's a superb county avifauna and I'm reading it like a novel, cover to cover, as the introductory sections and the species accounts are pretty gripping and the format of atlas maps, incredibly high quality photographs and concise accounts with introductory anecedotes makes for an absorbing read. It covers records up to 2011 so it's also really interesting to see how things have changed in the last 14 years. 

I was particularly intrigued by the references to the Ramsar sites in the Arun Valley so today I left the Peninsula to explore Amberley Wildbrooks, a site I have never visited before and in the evening visited Arundel Wetland Centre for the harrier roost. 

Amberley was breath taking, the scale of the site is immense and the views from the South Downs over the flood plains covered in Fallow Deer, cattle, wetland birds, quartering Harriers and Kites and patrolling White-tailed Eagles encapsulates a vast wildness which, as the landlady of the Sportsman pub said, was like the Sussex Serengeti. I had 55 species of about 2500 individuals in about 3 hours HERE with highlights included the locally resident White-tailed Eagles, an adult Little Gull, large numbers of inland wintering Black-tailed Godwits and 3 Ruff in with the Lapwings. 

The pair of Hen Harriers came in to roost at Arundel and I also jammed into the female Goosander that has been around. HERE

Red Kites over Amberley (above and below)

Inland Black-tailed Godwits

Adult White-tailed Eagles 

Adult Little Gull at Amberley

Fallow Deer at Amberley

Views over Amberley from the Sportsman Pub (above) and over towards Amberley Castle (below)

Female Goosander at Arundel

Male Hen Harrier coming in at dusk at Arundel 

Weekend Round-up

Spent most of the weekend uploading this year's bird and other wildlife records from iRecord, Ebird and iNaturalist onto iGoTerra HERE but got in a garden birding session on Saturday morning HERE where the highlights included 5 Fieldfare, 6 Redwing and a large flock of Golden Plover circling. Then we took the family to Arundel Wetland Centre so that Jacob could take some photos for his school bird photography competition and then in the evening I met up with Marc Read for night birding at Medmerry where we had a Woodcock (a Peninsula lifer) and a Barn Owl. 

Sunday was a bit of a write-off, we did some stuff around the garden in the morning before heading to London for Mia's 18th birthday party. 

The nights are relatively mild so I had the moth trap out a couple of times over last few days- a couple of Rusty-dots and a Mottled Umber was my lot. I also spent time this weekend uploading the last batch of dissection results from Mike Bailey which yielded 4 new species for the garden including a lifer for me- Summer Fruit Tortrix which wasn't even on my radar so that was interesting. Also confirmed records of  November moth (rather than November moth agg), Tuta absoluta, Blastobasis vittata, Caloptilia robustella, Coleophora peribenanderi and C.versurella . Thanks again to Mike for his intricate work. 

Woodcock at Medmerry 

Fieldfare in the garden- two of the top local year listers still need Fieldfare for the Peninsula, not a common bird locally 

Summer Fruit Tortrix, Adoxophyes orana from 16th August - lifer and according to Sterling et al, a very local species 

Jacob's photo competition entry- Dalmation Pelican at Arundel 

iGoTerra produces this useful map of the countries I've visited. Still 1585 bird species away from my target of 5000 (half of the world's birds) so need to up my game as well over the hill now and the hour glass is running out. iGoTerra profile HERE. Off to Thailand in early 2026 to get on with this.