Sidlesham Ferry and Church Norton.

Although the main reason for coming here is to see wildfowl and waders, it was a special treat to see Greenfinches on the bird feeders near the pond dipping area.  These used to be so common and such regular visitors to our garden, but now we rarely see them in the garden or indeed anywhere locally.  Hopefully they will make a comeback soon and they will become regular visitors again.
At the Ferry Pool there were Shelduck, Wigeon and others, but the birds that stole the show were Shovellers. The males were looking very smart in fresh plumage and showing off to the females quite a lot.
The combination of the high tide in the morning and the recent rainfall meant that the path was flooded and we could not take our usual walk along the east side of the harbour to the beach, so we took a short walk along the old Selsey tramway towards Sidlesham.  There were quite a lot of Wigeon and some Curlew in the salt marsh and a Buzzard in the scrub area.  Great tits seemed to be in full song here, but not loud enough to wake up a fox comfortably curled up having a snooze on a sunny bank.
At Church Norton the moat around the Norman Castle site was half full of water.  I have never seen it like that before!  The tide was starting to fall quite rapidly as we walked round on to the shingle bar and lots of waders, mostly Dunlin with Redshank, Grey Plover, Oystercatchers and a couple of Bar-Tailed Godwits. There were lots of Turnstones on the old harbour wall, but these moved off towards the beach as the tide fell.  Over on the eastern side we saw several huge flocks of Lapwing turning and wheeling in the distance. A couple of redheads (female/imm. Red-breasted Mergansers) were diving in the harbour mouth. Cormorants were roosting on the shingle bank and some of them were showing the white patches under the wing area that is part of the breeding plumage.
Earlier as we drove round to Church Norton we saw a large (500+) flock of Brent Geese in a field and from the end of the shingle spit where we ate our lunch we heard them fly over and land at the east side of the harbour about half a mile away.  Sadly they had retreated to the field by the time we got round there.