Saturday, Lade - cloudy, warm, showery, E 2 - A tour of the pits first thing revealed 235 Pochard, 48 Great Crested Grebes and 32 Little Grebes amongst c200 Coots and c150 Tufted Ducks, plus 20 Shovelers, 25 Gadwall and four Teal. On north lake 100 Med Gulls and five Little Egrets.
With high tide around 1100hrs I arrived on the bay, opposite the Market car park, just after 1230hrs with plenty of juicy sandpipers close to the shingle, mostly Dunlins in all their differing sizes and plumages along with a good sprinkling of Sanderlings and Ringed Plovers. Over the next 90 minutes I was like a kid in a sweet shop as birds feeding down by the holidaymakers on Greatstone beach came my way in wave after wave to be scrutinised. I estimated there to be c2,000 Dunlins, c500 Sanderlings and a count of 160 Ringed Plovers, one of my highest ever. Scores of Mediterranean Gulls and Sandwich Terns on a sand bar flushed by a dog flew past me towards Dungeness along with five Little and three Black Terns as a flock of seven Greenshanks circled overhead calling frantically before heading inland; I guess with high water levels on the bird reserve there are few places for passage waders to drop onto. Eventually, the big `uns arrived back en-masse from their roost sites; c1,000 Oystercatchers and c400 Curlews, for me a spectacle I never tire of witnessing. Other shorebirds in the throng included five Barwits, three Knots, two Whimbrels, two Turnstones and a Little Stint, plus 10 Common Tern amongst the returning Sandwich Terns and at least nine Grey Seals further out to sea. Lade bay at its very best!
Sunday - Lade - warm, cloudy, W2 - After a heavy thunderstorm around daybreak the weather settled down as the morning progressed with the sun occasionally poking through the clouds. Several small parties of Yellow Wagtails were grounded on the shingle ridges and a Pied Flycatcher was noted by the ponds. On the bay this afternoon I joined DS to scan the beach where the wader numbers were down on yesterday, although there was still plenty to see including many Sandwich Terns and Mediterranean Gulls. We couldn`t find the Little Stint, but agreed that there had been two birds present over the previous five days, an adult and a juvenile; and many thanks to Dave for sending through his superb pics.
A visit to Scotney produced a motley bio-mass of feral geese, eclipse ducks, large gulls. a couple of hundred Lapwings on the front fields and thousands of Starlings heading inland. At Galloways I walked the road to the car park with RW where we eventually located a smart Whinchat amongst 10 each of Wheatear and Stonechat, plus 10 more Wheatears around the security hut, Golden Plovers and Yellow Wagtails overhead. On the bird reserve a Cattle Egret showed briefly and distantly on the Boulderwall fields amongst the stock, a Common Sandpiper was on Burrowes and the Glossy Ibis and a Black-necked Grebe were on the ARC.
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