Gary Howard's birds and wildlife

From the early '90's onward Mike Cottrell, John Tilbrook, James Hunter and I birded together on virtually a weekly basis and did a ton of twitching together too. In recent years James and I have had kids which has rather changed the dynamics somewhat ! Nowadays we rarely get out together like we did but we made the effort today for a pre-Christmas bash.

Our choice of destination was easy - Dungeness has much to offer on an average winters day but lately it's been regularly the best birding spot in the south east.

We started well with good looks at the 2 Glossy Ibis which seem to have taken up residence on the pools near the entrance of the RSPB reserve. Sunshine broke through occasionally to show off their iridescent plumage.

A few Tree Sparrows were watched around the feeders by the cottage.

Glossy Ibis

After a brief look at the ARC pits and "new diggings" we headed to the point where a couple of Snow Bunting have been present for much of the previous week. They turned out to be very showy and just got closer and closer until it was almost time to switch to macro!

Snow Bunting

As we left the point it started to rain so we drove along the seafront to Greatstone to check out Lade Pits.

Lade held a single Black-necked Grebe and an assortment of common wildfowl but not enough to keep us for long.

Our next port of call was Denge Marsh where we checked out the flood, sheep fields and drove around the pits though live-firing meant the range road to Galloways was closed. James scoped a couple more Black-necked Grebes on the barge pool on the RSPB reserve but otherwise it was rather quiet.

We returned to the RSPB reserve but this time drove to reception, worked our way through crowds of shoppers and cafe visitors (bring back the miserable hut and it's former even more miserable resident!) and walked the circuit.

Just down from Makepeace Hide James found a Palmate Newt on the path.

Eventually we found a couple of Smew - red-heads- from Scott Hide and Christmas Dell. Onto the Marsh Hide and from there we saw the long-staying Great White Egret and 3 Black-necked Grebes.

Palmate Newt

We concluded our visit at the ARC pit from the Hanson Hide with Ray Turley, Dave Walker and Gill Hollamby in attendence.

Kingfisher and 2 Bewick Swans were noted before we called it a day and headed off to the pub.