Stormy waters and Bewick`s Swan details

Dungeness - 0930hrs - mild, cloudy, rain sw 5 - Last night at around 3 a.m. I was woken by the sound of gale force winds screaming up-Channel and buffeting the peninsular hereabouts. Our old cottage creaks and rattles in a gale, but having stood firm for over 200 years has witnessed one or two good blows in its time - then just before dawn the rain followed and the wind eased off.
We headed down to the point to check the sea where a steady flow of gulls and Gannets were moving down-Channel, some close to shore. In the Patch hide DW had already found a 1st winter Caspian Gull on the foreshore amongst several hundred Herring, Black-backs, Black-headed and Common Gulls, but there were fewer gulls over the boil than of late. Even though the worst of the storm was over several ships were making heavy weather of the rough seas in the Channel.

                               Wiron 5, Plymouth based trawler, `going green`

NB: Colour ringed Bewick`s Swan
Thanks to John Kirk for an interesting e-mail received today regarding a Bewick`s Swan sporting a green colour ring with the letters AFJ, one of the group currently on Walland Marsh. John managed to read the ring when the swan emerged into the open at the Swamp Farm Crossing gateway last Saturday and information has already been received back from WWT (that was quick!). This individual was ringed near Littleport, Cambridgeshire, in January 2011 and has also been reported in northern Germany. John also strongly suspects it was on Walland last winter.