Trip reports

Dungeness

Sunday, 15 November 2009

Just about everything conspired to stop our trip to Dungeness. The previous days were very wet and windy and the forecast for the day looked poor. A closure on the M25 and a diversion on the partly flooded A roads meant that we arrived much later than planned. On arrival the two cars that made the journey were blessed with bright sunshine and the three showers were short and only came while we were in a hide. There were tree sparrows at the reserve entrance with goldfinch, blue and great tit. A flock of red-legged partridges were by the track side. On the main lakes we saw pintail, gadwall, mallard, teal, wigeon, pochard, shoveler, tufted duck and great crested grebe. There were also grey heron, cormorant, great black-backed gull and black-headed gull. The only wader here was a solitary dunlin. Two ravens were identified by the 'cronk cronk' call as they flew towards the power station. We moved on to the Christmas Dell hide where a bittern was standing in the reeds and soon after we saw a second bird flying towards the ARC side. We followed a tip off for the great white egret, passing through the gate into the field where a very tame sheep joined the party, it even nuzzled us for more attention. A reed bunting, stonechat and pied wagtail was also seen here. At the hide we saw little grebe, marsh harrier, snipe, ruddy duck, mute swan, flocks of lapwing and greylag goose. A kestrel and a sparrowhawk were seen hunting. We decided to move to the ARC side. We stopped close to the RSPB entrance and managed to spot the two glossy ibis. On the ARC pool we had excellent views of a water rail. We also added little egret, peregrine, shelduck, lesser black-backed gull, golden eye and barrows golden eye to our days list. This left no time to visit the shore, but our sightings made for a memorable day