Female & Male Black-Winged Stilts.
With the weather not being that great over the weekend i decided to wait til this morning to go for the Black-Winged Stilts that had been seen at Dungeness over the weekend , my pager beeped into life confirming they were still present so of a i set and duly arrived at the RSPB visitor car park just after 10am , there had been no more news since 7.30am and the staff at the centre didn't know if they were still around or not , they didn't even know that they had been seen that morning !!!
Male Black-Winged Stilt.
I headed of to the flooded hay fields behind the Christmas dell hide and the route was alive with birds displaying and in full voice , Common Whitethroat , Sedge Warbler and Cetti's Warbler were the main songsters and i had my best ever views of a Cetti's Warbler which was tail and wing flicking right out in the open , amazing to see and worth the journey on its own.
I also added a Cuckoo to my year list as it flew across one of the fields and briefly landed on a post before carrying on with its journey , i eventually reached the flooded fields and was quickly onto the Black-Winged Stilts which was a very welcome patch and year tick for me , they were a little bit distant and there was a heat haze but great scope views were obtained .
Common Whitethroat.
I watched the Stilts for about half an hour and apart from when i first arrived when they were walking around they remained asleep with the odd preen every now and again , i headed back and managed a couple of pics of Common Whitethroat which seemed to be everywhere , i also had a great but brief view of a Whinchat which would not give itself up to my camera.
Another Common Whitethroat.
Singles of Yellow Wagtail and Swallow were seen flying over head and a look over the ARC pits produced good numbers of Common Tern which were also new for year for me . Other birds of note were a Peregrine Falcon over the back of the Pylons behind the Christmas Dell hide and a singing Black Redstart which i couldn't locate by the power station.
