Gary Howard's birds and wildlife

Mike Buckland and I headed down to the south coast with the weather forecast to be stormy, windy and wet at times. Luckily it barely rained and the wind increased steadily but was never unbearable. There were few people about but plenty of birds and we started at Hythe at 08.00 in gloomy conditions looking for the Purple Sandpipers.

martello tower and firing range at Hythe.

In the early light we found a single Purple Sandpiper feeding on the shingle beach with Turnstone. We got some ok pictures before heading off to search the rock-groynes where we eventually found another 7 that were typically confiding.

 Purple Sandpipers

As we drove through Hythe we found a couple of Med Gull's feeding on playing fields.

We decided to meander across Romney marsh to get to Dunge and spent about an hour checking out the ditches, dykes, hedgerows and fields. We had about 200 Fieldfare, a Buzzard and several Tree Sparrows but it was really rather quiet and hard-work.

Our next stop was Dungeness and we went straight to the gull roosts on the point to search for the long-staying Glaucous Gull and Caspian Gull. Despite a good search we failed to find the glauc but Mike soon tracked down the 1st winter Caspian and we got plenty of pictures though probably because of the strong wind it just didn't want to stand up.

Caspian Gull - 1st winter

Greater Black-back  - adult

Caspian Gull - 1st winter

A sea-watch produced lots of Guillemot, small numbers of Razorbills, Red-throated Diver, Kittiwake, Gannet and a single Little Gull.

rather them than me, I'm rubbish on boats, makes me sick just looking!

local boat returning with the catch and dragging plenty of birds in close

gannet in amongst the fishing boat followers

Kittiwake - 1st winter

Kittiwake - 1st winter

It was now early afternoon and we headed inland. The ranges were closed so we checked out Denge Marsh where Mike glimpsed the       Great White Egret and we were both appalled to see areas have been fenced in apparently to exclude predators but boy does it look ugly and spoil the look of the marsh.

Lapwing on Denge marsh

 We turned our attention to the ARC pits next and saw Smew - a drake and 4 "redheads", a Long-tailed Duck and a Kingfisher.

Onto the reserve we bumped into Dave Walker and Gill Hollamby and spent the remainder of the daylight with them checking out the gulls as they came into roost. It was after 4.45 when we called it a day.