Nature Trails by Richard Williamson November 24, 2005

Of all British wetlands it is 22nd best site, and looks after about 52,000 waterfowl in the winter months. Pagham Harbour is much smaller with about 18,000 birds.

The Arun Valley has risen five places over the previous year to 55th, with an average of 21,000 birds during the winter months. Over in Hampshire, Langstone Harbour is second best on the south coast, with Southampton Water a little better than Pagham, and the Beaulieu Estuary, with 1,000 fewer birds a little behind Pagham.

The report is a compilation of what hundreds of counters have seen on specified days. I suppose about a dozen counters look after Chichester harbour on the monthly counts. My batch is Thorney Deeps. Chichester Harbour is organised by Anne dePotier, who works for the Harbour Conservancy, while Pagham counts are run by the warden working with the WSCC Countryside Management Unit. All the information from all over the UK is fed into this report, published jointly by the British Trust for Ornithology, the Wildfowl and Wetlands' Trust, the RSPB and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee.

Top of the UK sites is, as always, The Wash with an average of 308,000 birds, closely followed by the Ribble Estuary, then Morecambe Bay, Humber, Thames, Solway and Dee Estuaries.

Full column in West Sussex Gazette, November 24