Last night’s weather had been particularly vigorous, lashings of rain and strong winds, even in the centre of Chichester. There was standing water everywhere and the road leading to St Mary’s church
was flooded, yet again!
It was still raining hard as we set out towards the church along the path beside Rymans splashing through the puddles. Surprisingly the songbirds didn’t seem to mind and were sounding like a dawn chorus although it became light well over an hour earlier. I managed to positively identify a Blackbird, a Robin and a Great Tit; in addition there were several more that were not so clear. Why the rain had prompted so much activity is a mystery, this was the loudest birdsong I’d heard this year.
The fields and edges of the harbour were flooded making it difficult to make good progress, you either sank in the water or slid around on the sticky mud. It can’t have done the crops much good
either, many areas of the fields around had standing water on them. Evidence of the storm was scattered around everywhere, especially along the strand line where all the litter picking by the Wildfowlers over the weekend had been undone. The storm had coincided with a high tide during the night, leaving a tender that had got loose high and dry at the top of the seawall.
With the tide right out there was not much to see close by, or even hear, just a few curlews and the odd Redshank making their eerie calls. At least that was the case for most of the time. Just as we were leaving a huge flight of Brent Geese came in from the west, headed south down the channel and landed in large groups. They seemed to have come from Bosham but might have come from further way, maybe Prinstead perhaps.