Selsey Squacco

 

The location, Broad Rife feeding into Pagham Harbour at the far western end of the North Wall. It is a fifty metre stretch of rife, seemingly nothing special and yet for the second time in just three years it was temporary home to a Squacco Heron for most of August. Perhaps it was the same bird making a return visit or maybe this is what Squacco heaven looks like and we can expect more birds to put in an appearance in the future. Cattle Egrets were a rarity like the Squacco only a few years back, now they are here in big numbers. Who knows what may happen?

I visited three times whilst it was in residence and whilst it did at times show well and some lucky birders did get close up views, for me, it was always distant. Added to that we had a heat haze and heavy air pollution due to the lack of rain, which resulting in the photographs lacking any real detail.

I took a good number of pictures but the only ones I kept were one of it flying in and another of it with a large fish it had caught.

Fortunately I still have pictures from the earlier visit when I was lucky enough to have the bird all to myself for a couple of hours and where it proved to be very confiding, giving much better views.

There have been a few other good birds around Pagham Harbour but most were staying distant. I managed shots of a Sedge Warbler and Spotted Flycatcher but the Redstarts and Pied Flycatchers, amongst others, were staying just outside of quality picture range.

Sedge Warbler

Spotted Flycatcher

Sadly the Squacco has now moved on. Lets hope it returns next year.

Squacco Take 2

It was great to see the Squacco early last week but with a minor twitch going on whilst we were there, I wasn't really happy with the pictures that I ended up with. Role on ten days and with the Squacco still present I thought there might be an opportunity for some improved shots. It was better than I expected, only one person watching when I arrived and then I had the bird to myself for nearly an hour. Better still it was fishing in the rife rather than hunting grasshoppers out in the field.

They look such a soft and gentle bird when resting but when in hunting mode the steely eye and deadly finishing remind you that it is from a family of ruthless predators.

Four or five fish caught whilst I watched and a couple of insects, probably dragonflies, plucked out of the air.

It even had to dive in after one fish. Amazing how it comes up so clean after diving through all that weed and slime.

Lots of Little Egrets feeding in the field but no sign today of the Cattle Egrets. The bonus was the local Kestrel, down in the field picking off the grasshoppers and seemingly unfazed by my presence.

I am happy now, it would have been disappointing to see the bird move on without getting a decent record of its presence.

Squacco Heron

Last Friday a Squacco Heron was reported at Pagham North Wall. Having previously dipped two opportunities to see one along the south coast I was keen to have a look but with no further sightings on the Friday it looked as though it had moved on. In some ways I hoped it had. I had commitments over the weekend and would not be able to get out to see it.

Sure enough, Saturday morning it was refound and reports of sightings appeared for the rest of the day. Would it stay? The 2015 Cuckmere bird had gone within 24 hours of being reported leaving me on a fruitless search at dawn the next morning.

Six o'clock on Sunday evening and I finally made it to the viewing area just by Halsey's Farm. No sign there but I did at least manage to get a few seconds glimpse of it through reeds on the other side of the farm Not a very satisfactory view but it still counted as my first UK Squacco.

Monday morning and we were back at the farm and after a couple of hours wait it flew in and started to feed.

Squacco Heron

It's not an easy bird to photograph in flight. Collins refers to an explosion of white on take off. The eye compensates but the camera has difficulty coping with the contrast.

Squacco Heron

Once on the ground you have the opposite problem. It blends into the background and the camera has difficulty in pulling focus. Solution, take lots of frames and just hope you get a few good ones.

Squacco Heron

Squacco Heron

Squacco Heron

It was only a small twitch but you have to respect other people's right to see the bird. That inevitably means that you are too far away to get the picture that you really want. I was happy though, I had my record shots and the perfect picture could wait until the next time I was in Spain.


I have had something of a quiet summer birding wise. A focus on Orchids and a seeming lack of migrating birds late spring and early summer has left me some thirty to forty birds behind my usual totals for this time of year. Sussex can be really dead through the summer but today you just got the feeling that things were starting to liven up again.

Wood Sandpiper with Common Sandpiper in foreground

Wood Sandpiper

Wood Sandpiper on the Ferry Pool at Pagham and Common Sandpiper, below, in the Ferry Channel.

Common Sandpiper

It will be interesting to see if I can make up the numbers during the autumn migration but I fear that a few will have already gone.

Mallorca - s'Albufera

I have just returned from a weeks birding in Mallorca. It was good but perhaps not quite as good as I expected. We saw around ninety five species and I ended up with fourteen life ticks so it can't all be bad. However, we lost a day to bad weather, travelling around the island was a nightmare, with thousands of racing cyclists clogging up all the roads, and despite generally good lighting conditions the picture opportunities were limited.

So much for the moans, how about the good points. The main one, in a week, I only saw one dog walker, bliss, no disturbance for me and no disturbance for all the ground nesting birds.

We stayed near Puerto Pollenca giving easy access to the Albufereta, the S'Albufera, the Boquer Valley and the mountains in the north of the island. It was also close to our first target bird the Audouin's Gull.

In the 60s this species was down to around 1000 pairs worldwide. Conservation has enabled a recovery in numbers but it is still endangered and one of the worlds rarest gulls. You wouldn't think so standing on Pollenca beach. Wave a bread roll in the air and you have plenty of volunteers to have their picture taken.

They even come in pairs although there wasn't much sharing of food between them.

Still at least it gives them something to do whilst waiting for the next bread roll.

Our first full day was at the Park Natural de s'Albufera. It is a great place but don't go there on a Sunday. The locals use it as a somewhere to go for a walk with the family and it was full of people. Weekdays it is a bit quieter. You see a lot of the birds that you would find in a wetland in the UK but there are also some unusual ones and some like the Black-winged Stilt are just a bit more common than at home.

Black-winged Stilt

The Park also gave me four life ticks in Purple Swamphen, Collared Pratincol and Squacco Heron, although none of them gave me a decent picture, and Zitting Cisticola that gave me no picture at all.

Purple Swamphen

Collared Pratincol

Squacco Heron

Not life ticks but other great birds seen included Osprey, Great Reed Warbler, Night Heron, Red-knobbed Coot, and the very common (over there) Kentish Plover.

Osprey

Great Reed Warbler

Night Heron

Kentish Plover

Red-knobbed Coot

The Red-knobbed Coot is part of a program to reintroduce the bird to the Albufera from mainland Spain, hence the neck band.



On the southern edge of the s'Albufera you will find the Depuradora, a sewage works with an observation platform giving views across the settlement pools. This and the narrow road leading to it were the must visit location for our trip and the next blog will cover this area.