Park Wood & Seaton

                                                           

Great Tit.

Woodland watching has to be said is not my favourite aspect of birding , mainly down to dog walkers and dogs bounding up to you with big teeth growling at you , this has happened a few times over the years , plus the woodland i used to bird was over run by gypsies and all the problems that brought put me off a little bit , anyhow i was tipped of about Park Wood near Challock and thought i would check it out, its only a small woodland and within minutes of entering i could hear a distant Marsh Tit calling and then was greeted with a fly over Green Woodpecker , ten minutes in and i had really good views of 2 Coal Tits  which was my first year tick of the day.

I soon added Great s Woodpecker and several Chaffinch onto my days total , then i connected with one of my main target birds , i noticed this smallish bird fly into the top of a tree then it turned around flashing its stripy back ! yes , Lesser Spotted Woodpecker sadly i tried to get closer but it didn't hang around for very long , never mind i did get good views , i moved on and heard a distant Tawny Owl calling , abit further around and i encountered a roving tit flock that held several Long t Tits , Great and Blue Tits plus 2 Marsh Tits and 1 Goldcrest which were both year ticks bringing my total to 4 year ticks on this site , its a wonderful woodland and it took me approx 1 hour 45 mins to do the full walk around , no dogs or walkers too !!! Oh the picture of the Great Tit ( above ) was the only pic from Park Wood .

Little Egret.

                                 
I called into Seaton which is near Grove Ferry in the hope of catching up with any lingering Goosanders that seem to be evading me this winter , on arrival the first birds i saw were 1 male and 2 female Goosanders , wow how lucky was that , i checked through the rest of the wildfowl and noted 1 female Goldeneye and 50+ Wigeon which were inter mingled with the more regular ducks on this site , there was a Little Egret standing on the trail and i tried to get a photo , well i did get a photo but i couldn't get close enough to be any good but here it is anyway  (see above) . Other than that all i really added at this site was five Common Buzzards passing over together , i could only manage to get four in a photo at anyone time .

Four Common Buzzards .