Dungeness

Just a quick entry about today's trip to Dungeness.   After a few grey dull days, it was great to be out in some warm autumn sunshine.   Dungeness, as always, did not disappoint.   We concentrated on the RSPB reserve in the morning, where we saw many ducks including, tufted, mallard, teal, pochard, wigeon and pintail.   A water rail showed fleetingly and was confused with moorhen by a couple of other birders in the hide - until we put them straight!

Cormorants and greylag geese, great crested and little grebe, herring gull, great black-backed gull and black-headed gull shared one of the larger islands, and lapwings took over most of the smaller islands, with several dunlin and golden plover.   Beyond the Scott hide a small group were looking for a Pallas' warbler which had been seen in the last few days.   We caught up with blue and great tit, robin, dunnock, wren and chaffinch.

At Denge Marsh hide a kingfisher flew past as we arrived, for our lunch.   We watched little egret, great white egret more lapings and gulls, and a glossy ibis on the pool.   A marsh harrier was hunting over the reeds and crows squabbled over tenancy of the smaller islands.   A few dunlin were feeding in a large flock of lapwing, taking protection from the larger birds.

We walked back to the car park, giving the Pallas' warbler one last chance to see us, unfortunately the bird had other ideas, but a short-eared owl gave us great views both from the track and also flew past us as we drove off to the Hanson hide at the ARC pit reserve.   Here we added smew and goldeneye to our day's list.   Along the road we scanned for a long-tailed duck which had been reported.    I spotted a small diving duck at the back of the pool by the reeds, and when we had the telescope on it, confirmed the long-tailed.

On the way back we took a circuitous route via Lydd to see if any swans were on the fields, but we were disappointed on this occasion.