Christine's walking & birds blog

Pagham Harbour - Kentish Plover

The path along the bank to the beach made a great walk in the windy sunshine, and the combination of bluebells and flowering gorse was intoxicating.

Meanwhile, I digi-scoped with the P995 - with my usual degree of success. Returning from the beach I stood on the Church Norton spit in an increasingly cool wind and caught sight of a delicate pale plover running along in a channel. Alarm bells rang; but try as I might I couldn't relocate it.

Then I spotted a plover standing far out on the mudflats. Was it the same bird? Was it my first-ever Kentish plover?

Now and then it would disappear into a channel, then reappear and stand on the mud.

I used up the memory of the 995 digi-scoping the plover, and when I finally stood back from the telescope I realised how cold I had become. I also noticed a little group of birders nearby, seemingly intent on the bird; but none of them looked at us or said anything. Did this mean that it wasn't a Kentish plover and I was getting excited about nothing? Or did it mean it was one and that it was known about and so not a big deal?

The walk back along the bank soon warmed me up. At home I uploaded the photos and compared them with Kentish plover pictures on the birding sites. The following morning I checked Sussex's website, but no-one had reported a Kentish plover; so I sent my picture to ask for confirmation. A Scarcer Species form was sent to me, and the upshot was that I appeared as the finder; but with the addition of "et al". This bothers me. Who were the "et al"? I never claimed to be the finder; and if other birders who were sure of their identification saw it, their names should be there, not mine. But if that's the case, why didn't they report it? Questions, questions, problems, problems.

Nevertheless, a fabulous day!