RSPB Pulborough Brooks

This blog does not normally do restaurant reviews, but I do recommend the bacon and onion suet pudding at the RSPB Pulborough Brooks cafe.  With a large helping of that to warm us on our way we took a tour of the reserve.  Generally rather quiet, but with good numbers of Teal, Wigeon, Lapwing together with a few Shoveller, Pintail and Schelduck and, of course lots of Canada Geese.  The female Peregrine was in her vantage point in the Willow tree.  

Fallow Deer at Pulborough Brooks

As usual there were a lot of Fallow deer.  These are the rather uniformly grey-brown animals that are typical of descendants of the Parham herd.  In the background of this photo you can see the back of one animal which is the more typical sandy brown of wild fallow deer.  I have noticed a few like this in the Arun Valley recently and it suggests some interbreeding with deer from further afield.  

Notice the red  berries in the background.  These are actually rose hips. It is a very abundant year for nuts and berries of all sorts.  We had our first sighting today of a substantial flock of Fieldfares, a sure sign that winter is just around the corner.  They are going to find plenty to feast on this winter.

We ended the afternoon by walking through Wiggonholt Common to get a view of the Brooks from the western end.  Lots more wildfowl here and two marsh harriers.  One sat perched on a tree on the far side while the other cruised back and forth in front of us over the marsh as the light faded.  A couple of crows mobbed it in a desultory sort of way, and it seemed to take no notice but twice it put up great flocks of teal, wigeon and lapwing: a great kefuffle of flapping, quacking and whistling.

Pulborough Brooks RSPB Reserve

The main attraction of a visit to the RSPB reserve at Pulborough Brooks at this time of year is usually to see the flocks of wildfowl, but the outstanding feature today was a very good view of five bullfinches feeding on the buds of hawthorn and blackthorn.  There were three males with their stunning pink breasts and black and white head markings and two somewhat less glamorous females.  The usual view of a bullfinch is a white rump disappearing over a hedge or skulking in the top of a tree, so this was a rare treat.  Another bird that gave a long, uninterrupted audience at close range was a goldcrest, almost within the close-focus distance of my binoculars, moving around in the hedge and also posing between the spars of a five-bar gate.