Lade - mild, cloudy, S3 - We started at the local patch this morning and just made it around the site for the monthly WeBS count before the rain set in. The highlights were: 185 Shovelers, 23 Great Crested Grebes and the first two Goldeneyes of autumn. Kerton quarry was very quiet apart from 12 more Great Crested Grebes and two Shelducks. This afternoon I joined Chris P for the sunset harrier count on Walland. En-route several hundred Fieldfares were along the lane near Hawthorn Corner, while only four Marsh Harriers came to roost at the reed-bed site; also noted 20 Corn Buntings and a Barn Owl with another one at Midley on the way home.
Saturday - cold and sunny - Our morning Ted walk around farmland out towards St Mary-in-the-Marsh was notable for (after a tip off from Chris) flight views of a White Stork which had been around since Friday, after initially doing a tour of the Dungeness peninsula. It had been attracted to ploughing operations on a recently cut turf field, having spent the previous night roosting atop a nearby farm building. Not long after I moved down here over 20 years ago I remember seeing two White Storks that Chris had found out on the Marsh, along with Ray Turley, and it was something of a big deal being then a rare visitor from the near continent. Now of course, since the reintroduction programme at the Knepp Estate in Sussex, these charismatic birds regularly drift our way, sometimes in large flocks. So, something of result then for a species that not only first bred as recently as 2020 at Knepp, but historically has never been a native breeding bird in England!
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