Country walk: Emsworth Channel
This is a favourite sea-wall stroll along the Sussex-hampshire border along the foot-path next to Emsworth Channel. There may be parking roadside halfway down the road to Throney Island Army Camp near the sewage works at SU756049 but you could park in Emsworth and find the footpaths leading down to the sea-wall – when Covid restrictions allow of course. These footpaths from the town are seen on my map.
Once upon the sea-wall you have a bird’s-eye view of what is happening on both sides. To the west are the mud-flats and tidal channels. To the east are the reed-beds and meadows of Little Deep. At low water the med-flats in Emsworth Channel are crawling with hungry birds hunting for snails, worms, and sea-weed.
Fowley Rithe is aptly named and used tob e a place where gunners waited in Victorian days for anything that fed on the mudflats.
Today there are brent geese, shelduck, oyster-catchers, curlew, redshanks and dunlin, all picking the best goodies out of this rich feast exposed at low tide. As the tide covers the mudflats all the birds except gulls fly over the other side of the wall onto Great Deep meadows. There they digest their crops and preen and sleep, and chatter toe ach other as they wait for the tide to go down again.
On your left as you walk south you will pass a large reed bed with willow trees. This is the Little Deep. You may see teal sitting on the water and dibbling in the pools or little egrets sitting in the trees.
Occasionally a bittern has been known to hide in these reeds. It looks like a brown low-flying heron. In the spring the bittern booms like a lovelorn bull, but by then it will have left for East Anglia or the Somerset Levels where it breeds.
Another rare bird you are more likely to see is the bearded tit also known as the reedling. This has spread from East Anglia and now breeds here. It swings like an acrobat on the plumes of reed flowers.
Little Deep’s waters which is where the rare snail (the subject of this week’s Nature Trail) has been found may have those deep-water diving duck, tufted and pochard. Coot, moorhen and water rail live in this dense jungle too. It is also possible to see one of the RSPB’S flagship species, the marsh harrier.
Moving south to the army checkpoint you come to Great Deep which has a tidal sluice to flush it out on every high tide and this drains into Thorney channel to the east. Sit quietly on the sea-wall and you may see some little grebes which fish in the pool. Farther east along the edges of Great Deep you will see flocks of birds of up to twenty species huddled asleep when the tide is high.
As the tide drops, they will fly our over your head back to the mudflats. I have in the past seen two hundred redshank, fifty oyster catchers, also lapwing, curlew, cormorants, a couple hundred dunlin in a single flock, wigeon, teal, and shelduck among the other spectacular birds flying over your head as you sip your cocoa.
This short walk out and back covers about two miles. With current Covid restrictions you may have to wait till next autumn because in March all these birds will fly back to Iceland, Russia, the Baltic, and beyond.