Titchfield Haven National Nature Reserve

Work gets ridiculously busy around Easter, so for the last couple of weeks I've only just about managed to find time to chuck a few mealworms at the birds, let alone log on here or sit around marvelling at the wonders of Spring.

But - hallelujah! - as of today, I have a week off work.  The sun was shining, so I did the mealworms early and then headed out to Titchfield Haven, which is on the Hampshire coast near Gosport & Fareham (that's about half way between Southampton and Portsmouth for the uninitiated!).

I've only got interested in the garden wildlife over the last year or so, and I've never been anywhere near a nature reserve or bird sanctuary or anything before, so believe it or not, I was quite nervous about it.  But they were running a thing called "Hide with a Guide" where an experienced birder sits in the hide and tells you the difference between a bird and a tree, so I thought I would take the plunge and give it a go.

The reserve is quite easy to find, and you can even get there by bus - hurrah!  It's right by the coast, but that's a bit immaterial really, because the main birds you can see there are waders and marshy, reedy types (can you tell I'm not really an expert?!!).  It costs £3.75 for a day pass, and the nice lady at the front desk is obviously trained to recognise complete dunderheads like me, because the first thing she did was lend me a pair of binoculars free of charge (bargain!) and tell me where to find the loos.

Anyway, the reserve is in two halves, with the River Meon running down the middle.  The West side is made up of reedbeds and lots of shallow lakes (well, they called them Scrapes, not sure if that's the same thing or not).  The East side is more woodlandy and riversidey, so it's a bit quieter this time of year apparently.

I spent a happy few hours on the West side listening to the gentle cacaphony of about three million black-headed gulls, interspersed with a few Mediterranean gulls.  According to the aforementioned Guide in the Hide, the other birds I saw were Avocets, Oystercatchers (they were great, I like their dungarees!), Common Snipes, Shoveller ducks, Shell ducks, Teals (though to be fair they were a long way away and could have been anything so far as I could see...), Black-Tailed Godwits and of course the old faithful Canada geese and Mallard ducks.  The guide was good, though he did keep saying unhelpful things like "Can you see the snipe just left of the teal?" (well, probably, if I knew what either a snipe or a teal looked like...), and things did get a lot easier when I realised that the Gorse he kept referring to was actually a bush and not a bird.

I really wanted to take photos of all these wonderful new birds, but nobody else was taking photos so I wasn't sure whether it would have been a breach of hide etiquette or something.  To be honest, I was already skating on thin ice, because I interrupted the guide's soliloquy on ospreys (of which there are none in Titchfield Haven) to ask inane questions about the sexual activity of black-headed gulls (of which there was quite a lot, most of it up close and XXX-rated!).  So I thought that if photography was frowned upon, I would probably be pushing my luck, and could end up being beaten to death with a very powerful telescope or garotted with some of those action trousers that everyone else except me was wearing.

But luckily, not all is lost, because before any of the guide stuff happened, I had a spare hour, and the nice lady at the front desk had told me that if I went to the middle hide on the reserve I might be able to see a Lapwing with her chicks (and then kindly confirmed that yes, Lapwings are the funny tufty ones, whilst trying not to laugh at me waving one hand above my head in a funny tufty way).  I got to the Lapwing place at about 1pm, which is clearly when all sensible birders are eating their sandwiches, so I had the hide to myself and could snap away to my heart's content.  And here they are:

Mum:

First chick:

Second chick, examining his foot:

Third chick, showing me his bum:

The Lapwing chicks were just great, I have never seen anything so funny in all my life.  How on earth they balance, I will never know.

For good measure, I managed to snap this fellow too - think he's a Shoveller duck, but someone will put me right if not:

On the walk back, I spotted a couple of dunnocks, blackbirds and blue tits, and then I came across an LBJ perched above the reeds, who had the most amazing song.  It could conceivably have been a Cetti's Warbler, because apparently they are quite common in the Haven, but then again it could have been something else entirely.  Naturally, just as I lined up a great photo, it flew away.

After all that excitement, I had to have a cup of tea and a very large scone in the tea rooms and visit the aforementioned loos (in fact, I went twice, but the second time was to retrieve the borrowed binoculars which I had managed to leave on top of the hand drier).  On the way out of the reserve, you have to go through the shop (naturally...) and I was lured into parting with 50p for a brown paper bag full of duck food.  So, out I went to the harbour and spent a happy 20 minutes feeding the mallards...

... whilst trying not to trip over these sleeping beauties:

Amongst the hungry mallards there were little birds that I don't recognise at all.  They were just quite happily pecking about in the mud.  The photos aren't great, but if anyone is able to identify them for me, I'd be very grateful:

I was just about ready to go home, when this rather fine Black-headed Gull came and sat next to me, and I got a bit hypnotised by him for a while:

Thanks to that Gull, I missed the bus and had to wait an extra 20 minutes, and I am therefore holding him entirely responsible for the fact that I fell asleep before the bus had even pulled out of the stop, and only just woke up in time to get off at the other end, and very probably snored and dribbled on my fellow passengers.  Birds, they have no consideration at all...

But all in all, it was a good day, and if you're down this way, I would recommend a visit to Titchfield Haven - apart from anything else, the scones really are big.  I will definitely go again, hopefully when everyone else is eating their lunch and I can get some photos of the Oystercatchers and Avocets.

Here's the website, if you want information written by someone who actually knows what they're talking about: http://www3.hants.gov.uk/countryside/titchfield.htm

BB