Sandwich Bay & Dungeness NNR

                                            18th November 2021   :   Sandwich Bay 

Snow Bunting.

                                                                 

After spending the morning at Langdon Cliffs  we decided to head to Sandwich Bay to have another look at the Snow Buntings near the Golf course by the 10th Tee.

We had really great views of a close in Red Throated Diver & 3+ Razorbills on our way to look for the Snow Buntings plus we also saw a rather tame Brent Goose.

Eventually we located the 3 Snow Buntings on the 10th hole and had superb views of them, however every now and again the golfers would flush them of the course onto the beach.

3 Snow Buntings

On one such occasion we noticed a 4th bird had joined them as they flew low over the beach and out of sight , however this was no Snow Bunting !!!

We managed to locate them below the shingle ridge and to my delight the 4th bird was a Lapland Bunting (♂ winter).

Lapland Bunting & Snow Bunting

Lapland Bunting.

The Lapland Bunting was happily feeding with the Snow Bunting for approx 15 mins before a Skylark flew over them, the Lapland Bunting then proceeded to fly after the Skylark where we could hear the flight call.

Eventually the Lapland Bunting flew onto the golf course towards the 9th hole with 4 Skylarks and dropped down out of sight.

This was a new bird for my Sandwich Bay Bird List (187th) .

20th November 2021  :  Dungeness NNR

♂ Black Redstart

The plan today was a visit to Dungeness , we started of at Galloways only to find the Red flag was flying so we couldn't check the area out, we then headed to Scotney to try and locate yesterdays reported Slavonian Grebe.

Well after alot of scanning we could only find a Black necked Grebe which was great to see, i was surprized on how many Egyptian Geese were there, at least 60+.

On the way back to the car news broke that Dungeness Obs had caught a Red Breasted Flycatcher in the nets and were going to release it at 10.05am !!!!

The time was 9.58am by the time we got back to the car !! will we make it on time to see it ??? well all i shall say is i parked up in the Obs car park at 10.06 am !!

Red Breasted Flycatcher

I have to say i am not a fan of birds in the hand however the guys at Dungeness Bird Observatory are very professional and handle the bird with great care and attention, they only showed it for a very short time indeed and released it in the moat where it stayed happily for the rest of the day.

The Red Breasted Flycatcher spent most of it's time in the Sallows near the road and every now and again you could hear it call.

This was a new bird for my Dungeness Bird List   (250th).

After the excitement of the RBF we had a walk down past the 'Patch' and had superb views of a quite stunning ♂ Black Redstart.