Swimming Water Rail.
I only paid a short visit to Oare yesterday 1st December , starting of in the car park where i bumped into Murray Wright who informed me that the Little Bunting had been reported this morning however in the 20 min or so period i was there it never reappeared , you can't win them all , i then headed off for a stroll along the sea wall towards the hide and Murray and friend headed off to check out the East flood .
Well the Swale was quite with only 5 Dark Bellied Brent Geese and a small flock of approx 20 Grey Plover of any note , looking over the reed bed and surrounding bushes produced several Reed Buntings but alas no Little Bunting , there was approx 10 Greenfinch nearby to , a couple of Meadow Pipits flew over head and then i decided to head back to the East Flood .
Some of the gathered Lapwings.
As usual there were good numbers of waders here , Black Tailed Godwit and Dunlin in large numbers plus a smaller count of Ringed and Grey Plover , Redshank , Snipe and at least 4 Knot were among the roosting waders . There was a scattering of wildfowl with decent numbers of Pintail , Wigeon and Teal.
After another chat with Murray we went our separate ways and as i was getting my last couple of pics i could hear a Water Rail calling and to my delight it swam out of cover right in front of me giving me some great views .
First one i have seen swimming.
Really pleased with this and made my morning , i also saw a close Coot and although not rare it was good to study it at such close quarters.
Coot.
