Warm, dry and sunny, light airs - We started early this morning for a survey of the breeding birds at Lade Pits and Kerton Road quarry. Six species of warblers included Sedge and Common Whitethroat feeding fledglings with the highest number of both in the tangle of wet scrub in Mockmill Sewer. It was good to see plenty of Cuckoo action around the willow swamp where also a pair of Green Woodpeckers had fledged young. Wildfowl were few with just Mallard, Egyptian Goose and Mute Swan confirmed, although several pairs of the late-nesting Tufted Duck were present. At Kerton quarry, Lapwing and Oystercatcher had well-grown young on the main island with Redshank and Great Crested Grebe on territory nearby.
We then moved onto the bird reserve where a circuit of Dengemarsh produced all the usual suspects, plus several Cattle Egrets within the cows behind Hookers and four Teal and six Black-tailed Godwits on hayfield 2, where there was also a young Lapwing chick. The pale Common Buzzard was also noted over Boulderwall fields. At Dungeness very few butterflies were on the wing, probably due to the cloud cover, but on the walk back a raptor flushed from the ground at the southern end of the Desert by dog-walkers proved to be a Black Kite. It promptly flew low towards the power station complex and out of sight and was almost certainly the bird seen earlier coming in over the fishing boats by DW and MC.
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