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.