Trip reports

Oare Marsh

Sunday, 28 October 2007

Today we had planned to visit the south coast at Thorney Island. However, the weather forecast had deteriorated progressively over the previous days and the morning dawned wet and miserable. The trip was abandoned, but 4 of us decided that a trip to the North Kent coast was likely to give us a better chance of staying dry and the hides at Oare Marshes was the final clincher. It was grey, but dry on arrival, so we started on the embankment scanning the exposed mud flats. There were a number of waders, redshank, curlew, ringed plover, grey plover, and dunlin. We progressed to the sea watching hide where we saw a number of brent geese fly over. On the mud a small party of avocet were gathered at the water's edge. Further out on the sandbanks a little egret stalked the shallow water as a small party of widgeon swam by. There were a large number of shelduck feeding on the sand. In front of the hide two pied wagtails were foraging noisily. There were plenty of bearded reedling 'pinging' noises as we continued around the reserve, however the stiff breeze kept them out of sight. Here we saw our first snipe of the day. Two marsh harriers were in flight on the far side of the lake. Adjacent to the fields were meadow pipits and we had good views of a stonechat. A solitary fieldfare called and flew out of sight and two grey herons flew into the reeds. From the flood hide we saw that the high tide roost was beginning to assemble. There were a large number of black tailed godwit, with a greenshank and a couple of golden plover nearby. Other species on show were little grebe, cormorant, lapwing, ringed plover, ruff, greater black backed gull, herring gull, redshank, shoveler, shelduck, coot, morehen, dunlin, grey heron, widgeon, teal, mallard and gadwall. It was not until we left the hide and returned to the car park via the road that we see the pintail and the little stint. It was now lunch time and as we returned to the car the weather caught up with us. The rain set in, so we made the decision to return home, grateful for the morning's bird watching.