Malcolm, Roger and I set off
for Pagham Harbour in West Sussex hoping to see an Elegant Tern that has been
identified as being a bird trapped and ringed in France, with DNA confirming
its identity as a male Elegant Tern.
The journey down wasn’t too
clever around Oxford and a journey that should have taken just over three hours
was in fact over four hours and we arrived just after 10:00 and then had a thirty-minute
walk to get to the bird.
Ken had gone earlier and had
called to say he had seen it but that it was a bit elusive as it kept
disappearing into the grass on the tern island.
When we arrived Ken, Phil and Andy were still there and had seen the
bird well when it came down into one of the channels to bathe. The last they had seen of it was flying high
and they thought it might have gone out to sea, which has been one of its
behaviours since arriving on Saturday.
We hadn’t been there many minutes
when Andy said I’ve got it and after some quick directions I got on the bird
but both Malcolm and Roger missed it. It
reappeared almost straight away when Roger saw it but Malcolm missed again. After a few more minutes it took to flight
when Malcolm got views of it. We spent a
good two hours on site with the bird, although it wasn’t always on view and was
always distant and it made two short sorties out to sea but soon returned.
Although it was quite distant
it was easy to pick out amongst the Sandwich Terns as it yellowish-orange bill
was always obvious and the crest was more extensive. The whole bird was never visible at any one
time and most views, whilst on the ground, involved the head when the rather
long slightly decurved yellowish-orange bill was always obvious. The crest was also noticeable looking long
and drooping down the back of the head.
The upperparts where bluish-grey and not dissimilar to Sandwich Tern and
the underparts were white. In flight, it
was about the same size as Sandwich Tern but looked more elegant, with what
appeared to be slightly longer wings.
There were also plenty of
Mediterranean Gulls on the island with at least thirty-four being present, whilst
a single Little Tern was observed fishing in one of the channels and four
Common Terns were observed bathing.
There were a small number of Oystercatcher and Redshank and two Curlew
were observed on the mud. I picked up a
Peregrine resting on a raised area of land just to the right of a group of
Cormorants.
When we were almost back at
the car park two Avocets flew over and there were seventy-five Black-tailed
Godwits resting on a small pool on the other side of the main road. We had seen a single Blackcap as we walked
out earlier and on our return, we saw at least four Reed Warblers and heard Cetti’s
Warbler, Chiffchaff, Blackcap and Whitethroat.
We started our journey back
home stopping on a couple of occasions for a break and saw a Buzzard and three
Ravens at one of the stops but again the journey, this time around the M25 and
then up the M1, was still well over four hours.
The satnav had redirected us based on traffic information, which is why
we were on the M25 and not the A34. The
only advantage was as we passed Heathrow we saw two 787 Dreamliners taking off
and I saw a Ring-necked Parakeet fly over just afterwards.
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