Dungeness

Last Wednesday, I joined Nicole and Andrew for a trip to Dungeness in East Kent.

Our first stop was at the RSPB reserve and as we drove down the access road we spotted a party of Whimbrel, feeding by the roadside. Only 50m from the visitors centre we located one of the day’s target birds, a Lesser Whitethroat singing in a bush. Moving on there were plenty of Sedge and Cetti’s warblers singing from the bushes and we did get to see a Sedge Warbler perched in the open as it sang.

By contrast, the water levels on the pits were very high so there was little space for wading birds, although we did see a Knot and a few Oystercatchers along with some Little Egrets.

On the return walk to the car, we also recorded the first Common Swift of the year along with some Swallows. As we drove back up the access road, we again saw a party of wading birds feeding by the roadside. We stopped anticipating they would be the Whimbrel, but instead found they were a party of Black-tailed Godwits and a single Curlew.

Our next stop was at the power station in the hope of finding a Black Redstart, which live in and around the power station buildings.

We weren’t lucky finding a Black Redstart, but we did find a Wheatear in the scrubby vegetation.

We also found the carcass of a Dogfish and a fish egg case on the back of the beach, they must have been dropped, either by a human or a bird to be this far from the sea.

After lunch, we made our way to the ARC pits, another set of lakes created by gravel extraction. Here the water level were also very high and so we only added a couple of waterfowl species to our list.

Our final stop was at the back of Denge Marsh, where we were treated to a brief booming call of a male Bittern and a distant view of a group of Yellow Wagtails.

We also had a very strange encounter with a Pied wagtail, but you will have to read next Thursday’s post for the details. In all, it was an excellent day with 57 species seen or heard by me including 10 species recorded for the first time this year. Thanks to Nicole and Andrew for arranging the trip.