Quiet weekend

Lade - fine, dry and sunny, light airs - I`ve been plagued by some kind of energy sapping, man-cold over the weekend which has restricted birding to short walks over the local patch and around the garden. A Great White Egret on south lake was the first for a while where the usual morning swarms of hirundines were present along with hundreds of wildfowl and grebes. Yellow Wagtails, two Tree Pipits, a few Swallows and a Swift passed overhead south with several Wheatears and a Whinchat on the Desert.
  Moth trapping has been short on quality but big on quantity; so plenty of Setaceous Hebrew Characters, Shuttle-shaped Darts and Common Wainscots. Little Egret, Common Buzzard, Curlews, Sandwich and Common Terns all flew over the garden today while a steady passage of Willow Warblers and a Lesser Whitethroat moved through the shrubs and fir trees. Numerous Migrant hawkers, Hummingbird Hawk-moths, Red Admirals, Painted Ladies and Holly Blues were noted throughout the weekend.
  It appears to have been a quiet weekend of birds around the Dungeness peninsula with a Wryneck and Red-backed Shrike on the reserve and an Osprey and Pomarine Skua off the point this morning the highlights.

  The new lid is now firmly installed on the cottage, so all we need now is good downpour to test it out!