Pagham Harbour winter count

It was a beautfiul winter's day today and my dad was down so after a visit to the Bill at dawn HERE we decided to attempt a full count of all the birds in Pagham Harbour. We started off at Ferry Pool and then went over to Pagham Spit as the tide was falling and viewed north up the main channels and then went over to North Wall and walked as far as Halseys. After lunch we then went to Church Norton to view the mudflats there and the coast too. We made it a incredible 11,249 individual birds of 81 species HERE with highlights and high counts including the Black-necked Grebe at Pagham Lagoon still, three juvenile/first-winter White-fronted Geese on Halseys, 1500 Brent Geese, 140 Shelduck, 1050 Wigeon, 100 Pintail, 600 Teal, 850 Golden Plover, 3000 Lapwing, 168 Curlew, 80 Black-tailed Godwit, 500 Knot and 800 Dunlin.

Presumably, as we are now in mid-winter and there's been a recent cold blast, the numbers at the moment are peak winter counts.  

It's been an excellent recent winter period with Hen Harrier, Bean Goose, White-fronted Goose flocks, Long-tailed Duck, Woodcock, Snow Bunting and Black-necked Grebe locally in the last couple of weeks and I've also had White-tailed Eagles, Goosander, Little Gull and more Hen Harriers nearby in the Arun Valley. Furthermore there's been Red-necked and Slavonian Grebes off the Bill and Church Norton which have alluded me, so some top local winter birding set agaisnt the back drop of all these thousands of common wintering birds. Magical. 

I've been using the Pagham Harbour area Ebird hotspot to do all my recording this year and several other birders have too so it's been possible for Ebird to put together a rough and ready electronic annual report for Pagham Harbour HERE with 163 species recorded in 2025. 

Juv/first-winter White-fronted Geese

Black-necked Grebe bullying a Little Grebe

Not many Med Gulls on the Peninsula at the moment - only had a couple today in the harbour

The Ferry Pool Lapwings and waterfowl 

Pintails over the harbour 

Golden Plovers over the harbour . May have been underestimating these- I estimated 850 but ChatGPT says 1150 birds in this photo. 

Knots and Dunlin over the harbour 

Tufted Duck in nice light at Pagham Lagoon

The hybrid duck is still around, best consensus guess on this is a White-cheeked Pintail x Wigeon sp

Red Fox at Church Norton- not a common mammal round here

Yesterday we did a family trip to Arundel. We had about 10 Mandarins on Swanbourne Lake, an immature White-tailed Eagle flew over the wetland centre and there were three White-fronted Geese in with the Greylags circling after they got flushed by the Eagle