A Day at Dungeness

 

Today the plan was to go east and at 0700 we departed under cloudless skies for Dungeness. As always we made a quick detour, this time to Pevensey Bay to view the site of the recently reported Red Breasted Flycatcher. Of course we had no illusions that we would see the bird but as we parked next to the bushes a Robin flew up and we both nearly had a heart seizure. Continuing east in ever increasing traffic the next stop was Scotney Pits, huge numbers of Greylags were grazing on the banks but it was the usual flock of Barnacle Geese that held our interest. As I had previously recorded, in the flock were seven hybrids. On the sightings board at the visitor centre at Dunge they had them as Bar Headed x Barnacle crosses. I believe them to be Emperor x Barnacle crosses, confirmed from photographs on my January 3 2012 Blog by two independent sources in Sweden and Germany.

We were tempted to stay and examine the Greylags in detail for something exotic but instead we pushed on to Dungeness and promised ourselves that we would return later.

Arriving at the ARC side we parked up and were treated to a flyby of two Marsh Harriers - the only ones we saw all day. The view from the screen was pretty depressing as the water levels are very high and just a few wildfowl were present, very little real estate being available for waders. Giving up here we motored down to the beach, parking by the power station. A walk across the shingle to the outfall was rewarded by masses of gulls but sadly no Little Gull. A quick visit to the Obs site and we were off back to Boulderwall Farm for a glimpse of the Tree Sparrows, a lightning call to the visitor centre to confirm nothing exotic was about and back to ARC. From the hide we had great views of Water Rail, Kingfisher, Glossy Ibis  and Great White Egret and a full supporting cast of the usual suspects.

 

 

The supporting cast

 

 Finally we decided to return to Scotney Pits to scan the Greylags, we made it half way along the road to Camber and we had to turn back as the road ahead had been closed. As we did the U-turn we noticed on the road, two dead birds. What followed really put a damper on my day. I investigated the two bundles of feathers and found them to be female/juvenile Merlins and they had not long been dead as both were warm. I am a fairly hard bitten old b****r but this was not a pleasant sight.

As for the Greylags - we didn't bother.