Warm, dry and sunny, E4 - With the car out of action from Monday to Wednesday our Ted walks have been restricted to the arable lands around New Romney, which needless to say has been hard work and unrewarding. However, the highlight on a murky Monday morning was the spectacle of hundreds of Swifts and hirundines (mostly House Martins) swarming over a local turf field feeding on a mass of flying insects emerging from a section sowed with clover; it also attracted a mixed flock of 30 Black-headed and Common Gulls. Green and Great Spotted Woodpeckers are a regular feature in the larger wooded gardens hereabouts and both species had juveniles abroad at two locations. The usual Yellowhammers, Skylarks, Reed Buntings, Common and Lesser Whitethroats, Sedge and Reed Warblers, Buzzards and Kestrels were all noted north of the town, plus plenty of Marsh Frogs in the ditches and several Painted Lady and Red Admiral butterflies on the bare tracks. Yesterday`s additions in the Belgar Farm area included two singing Corn Buntings, a Little Owl and best of all a pair of Oystercatchers with two well-grown juveniles - in a potato crop!
Thankfully, the car is now back on the road so this morning we hurried down to the coast for a circuit of Dungeness where a cooling sea-breeze tempered the heat. It was pretty quiet bird-wise and there was no sign of yesterdays Rosy Starling or this early morning`s Serin around the moat. However, on the midday high tide a few Oystercatchers, Curlews, Bar-tailed Godwits, Ringed Plovers and Sanderlings were logged at Kerton Road quarry, plus two flyover Sandwich Terns, a Mediterranean Gull and where the main point of interest came from several large carp thrashing about in the shallows presumably spawning.
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