Rye and Pett

An early morning start, a man on a mission to find the Kentish Plover at Rye Harbour. Martin is getting dangerously close in the year tick tally and I felt obliged to do a "mini twitch". Leaving home the skies were cloudless and augured a good day, unfortunately, as I passed by Polegate, the heavens became the usual solid leaden grey of the past few months.

Never mind, I thought to myself as I set up shop outside Lime Kiln Cottage, hoping to have the bird in the bag and to be able to move on to Dungeness fairly quickly.  Well the bird had disappeared, despite being seen by the warden early in the day. Several hours passed with no result so I took a walk round to the Parkes hide, just the usual suspects about, plenty of Avocets, Dunlin, Ringed Plover and a solitary Bar-tailed Godwit.

As I reached the footpath I decided to give it one last shot  and thanks to Neil, a birder from London who convinced me to move to where the bird had reportedly been sighted, the bird was found. Well, it is an understatement to say the camera was redundant, it was a long way off, a mere speck and difficult to identify even with the scope. I also found myself guilty of ignoring other birds, concentrating only on the plover, as Neil pointed out a group of Ruff just in front of us.

On the way home I called in at Pett Level and scanned the Colonel Body Memorial Lakes, which were almost devoid of birds. By chance I wandered over the shingle and discovered a mini west to east migration. Mainly Brent Geese, Red-throated Divers, Black-throated Divers, Common Scoter and sundry Sandwich Terns.

 

There seemed to be a definite movement of Black-headed Gulls  flying low and purposefully against the easterly breeze.

Finally, a flyby of a different sort of bird - Spitfire KJ-I

 

To cap it all, as I reached home in glorious sunshine I went out into the back garden just as a flock of 20+ Med Gulls wheeled high above me, their calls being the absolute clincher on the ID - another garden tick!