A Little Bird Told Me … East Head Bird Walk

One Saturday in February a small group met at West Wittering for a morning’s Bird Watching around East Head (on foot). Kerry Jackson who recently gave a Sunday morning lecture at the club on “Birds of Chichester Harbour”, had offered to take us bird spotting. We were advised to wrap up with hat, gloves and warm clothing for our expedition, but luckily it was a beautiful sunny day. There were numerous walkers and dogs but…………where had the birds gone today? Perhaps all these people had frightened them away.

We all had binoculars, but also Kerry and two of her keen birdwatching friends had brought three large telescopes which gave us a superb view of the birds some distance away. After spending a while at East Head we retraced our steps and walked to the nearby lagoon where there were many different species to be seen, in flight and feeding.

We saw the following birds, but I am sure there were others:

Grey Plovers (with black armpits!), Redshanks, Brent Geese, Skylarks, Lapwings, Red Breasted Mergansers, Great Crested Grebes, Turnstones, Black Tailed Godwits, Curlews (the largest wading bird), Dunlins, Oyster Catchers, and even a Snipe! Wow. Fortunately we weren’t given a quiz afterwards about what we had seen and their characteristics.

To end the morning, we were treated to a nice cup of tea and homemade cakes from Chris and Tony Dickenson’s camper van – delicious, and chocolate biscuits provided by Kerry.

An excellent introduction to our winter visitors. Thank you so much Kerry for your time and enthusiasm from the CYC novice twitchers.

– by Helen Jupp