Friday, 11 January 2013

Romney Marsh and Dungeness

 
My car spent the day being worked on in Ashford on Wednesday, and as the dealer kindly let me have a courtesy car I decided to spend the day on the Marsh. Unfortunately the weather wasnt kind - in particular it didnt get light until about mid-day. As I had planned to make lots of pics to tell the story of a day at Dunge it was a bit of a disappointment
 
Down at Hawthorn Corner I did find the Bewicks Swan herd in the murk and muck, and managed to count some 81 birds there


A closer view on max magnification, the camera propped on the car for stability, produced these poor but identifiable pictures

Couldn't make out what they were feeding on in this field, must have been good as there was seemingly more appetising rape next door, although suffering from slug damage
 

Round at the Scotney pit the flock of mixed plovers numbered in the hundreds, of which a sizeable proportion were Golden Plover, I do love their call notes
 

But the spectacle was not improved by the miserable weather
 
 
At the RSPB reserve I had the whole place to meself, until I reached the Dengemarsh Hide, luckily the two noisy sods in there left a few moments after I arrived. All the birds there had understandably cleared off out of photo range, but later, from the old No1 hide, I found these 2 Great Egrets and a Little one too
 


 
 
All in all a day which produced some excellent birds, although better weather would have inproved the experience.  I counted 57 species including the Bewicks, some superb Pintail, Red head Smew, Goldeneye, Marsh Harrier, and Goldcrest. Dont know yet if he's blogged his day yesterday, but Phil (Kearsney Birder) did the same yesterday in fine weather and had a good day too 
 

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