Wildlife Reports

2021
 

1 December 2021
A juvenile Long-tailed Duck visited Shoreham Harbour.

18 November 2021

A Sparrowhawk hunted over West Beach (Hasler Estate) and Widewater and was seen chasing Starlings off roof tops and feeding on Goldfinches and Sparrows.

 on World of Widewater  facebook

10 November 2021

A chirm of Goldfinches visited the fringes of Widewater to feed on the seeds of Teasel and Burdock.

 1 June 2021

17 May 2021

10 January 2021
A Dartford Warbler was spotted on a cold and frosty Shoreham Beach.

2020
 

19 October 2020
A Common Sandpiper (a bird) visited Widewater.

12 July 2020
Another Common Seal was spotted on Kingston Beach

16 June 2020
I visited Lady Bee Marina, Shoreham Harbour, where a easily spotted shoals of juvenile Grey Mullet, Sand Smelt and Bass in the shallows. The Grey Mullet shoals consisted of several hundred fish.

11 June 2020

Sea Kale and Tree Mallow had virtually finished and the eastern Shoreham Beach was now covered with great swathes of flowering Red Valerian and Silver Ragwort on the landward side of the wooden boardwalk. Viper's Bugloss was the most impressive especially near Shoreham Fort. Starry Clover had already gone to seed.

8 June 2020

30 May 2020

28 May 2020

26 May 2020
A small pod of dolphins were seen out of Shoreham in the early evening.

15 May 2020

In the shimmering haze, vast swathes of Sea Kale were flowering on the shingle above the high tide mark on the eastern part of Shoreham Beach. In the zone nearer the shore Red Valerian was blooming amongst the leaves of Silver Ragwort. Tree Mallow was impressive as any previous year. I also noted frequent Oxford Ragwort, a few flowers of Kidney Vetch, and clumps of Thrift and Sea Campion.

9 May 2020
The pair of Mute Swans on Widewater had just one furry grey cygnet with them.

The beach flowers were beginning to bloom in the sunshine, the first swathes of Red Valerian near the Church of the Good Shepherd, and Sea Kale, Hoary Cress, Thrift, Sea Campion, Mouse-eared Hawkweed, Cat's Ear, Bird's-foot Trefoil, Ivy-leaved Toadflax, Scarlet Pimpernel, on the Widewater flood plain. Five small blue-green beetles Psilothrix viridicoerulea were spotted on the flower heads. A Green-veined White Butterfly visited.

 25 March 2020

Alert children's eyes spotted this very small flint fossil amongst the billions of other pebbles on Shoreham Beach (by Beach Green). It is a bivalve mollusc from the Cretaceous period and the Natural History Museum suggested it could be the bivalve Limatula with representatives still extant today.

A male Pheasant was a surprise visitor to a garden on Shoreham Beach at the far eastern end near Shoreham Fort.

6 March 2020
After gales and rain throughout February the line of seaweed on  the strandline on the shingle beach was mainly the Egg Wrack, Ascophyllus nodosum, sometimes called Knotted Wrack. Air filled flotation bladders are arranged in lines along the main stipe in this brown seaweed.

17 February 2020
There was a brief interlude between the gales and inclement weather: only enough time to observe the strandline on the shingle beach was pushed two metres further landward than normal, before the ridge of wave-battered pebbles. There was the usual brown seaweeds and marine life debris including hundreds of cuttlebones. Spurge was in flower above the high tide mark in the access from Ferry Road to the seashore.

29 January 2020

Adur Coastal & Intertidal 2019

Lancing Beach 2003