Pagham Harbour

We started from the Church Lane end and started to walk south down the eastern side and a Peregrine flew over our heads and headed at a leisurely gliding pace over the harbour towards church Norton and disappeared.  There were plenty of large birds: Teal, Wigeon, Brent Geese, Curlew and Shelduck, but nothing there that would make a meal for a Peregrine, so it just carried on over to the other side.
The tide was low, but clearly it had been very high recently, judging by the height of the strand line.  Along this side of the harbour it was striking just how high it had been, but nearer the mouth of the harbour a fine line of debris showed just how high the tide had reached.

We sat on the shingle bank near the harbour entrance to eat our lunch.  The view of the sea is now almost totally obscured by the shingle bar that has spread eastwards across the harbour entrance creating a long channel parallel to the shoreline.  It resembles the mouth of the River Adur at Shoreham with the great shingle spit of Shoreham Beach.  This is a much larger feature than the Pagham spit, but Pagham does demonstrate how quickly these features can appear and, presumably, disappear.

As we sat there we could see three small ducks repeatedly diving.  They were small, brown and a long way off and I could not make out what they were at the distance, but there was something about the shape of the head...  Then suddenly they were joined by a forth landing beside them with a splash.  It was a male Goldeneye, easy to identify with its bold black and white markings.  It immediately started to display, tipping its head back and then stretching its neck out in front.  The females did not shoe much interest, and it eventually gave up and started to dive for food with the rest of them.

For photos of Pagham Harbour see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/112963374@N07/11689415403