It seems that a few people have taken up my challenge of counting the black-tailed godwits who are enjoying the soggy conditions and plentiful worms on the brooks. In the last couple of days, our previous count for the winter of 400 has been surpassed with estimated reaching the 500 mark. This mass of bickering birds is great fun to watch and includes a number of colour-ringed birds.
If you follow our blog, you'll know that these coloured rings on the legs of the godwits are contributing to a monitoring scheme. As well as submitting our sightings, we get to hear back about 'our' birds - where they have been and what they've been up to! One of our visitors 'O+WL' (which I think in the language of godwits means orange ring on the left leg and one white and one lime ring on the right) has visited us at Pulborough for the last 5 winters, also visiting Pagham, Langstone and Chichester Harbours, and the Netherlands.
You can find out more about the ringing scheme at: http://www.uea.ac.uk/~b026515/schemes.html
Also on the increase are the water levels. The river has not over-topped the banks as of yet but some sections of the nature trail are rather wet so I'd suggest wellies if you're coming for a walk around.
Come along at the weekend for our winterwatch walks where we'll be heading out in search of some of the wildlife - based on sightings over the past few days, in addition to the black-tailed godwits, we'll be watching lots of ducks, perhaps spotting a few sneaky snipe, and searching for lesser redpoll, bullfinches, treecreepers and goldcrests. If we're incredibly lucky we could spot a peregrine causing chaos as it hunts for afternoon tea or even catch sight of a little owl - one was reported near Little Hanger hide yesterday. The walks start at 1.30 pm on both days.