I went down to Kent on Sunday with Colin, as there were a few long staying birds which would be worth seeing. The plan was to visit Oare Marshes and then see what happens.
Oare has had a couple of regular returning American birds-a Bonaparte's Gull seems to spend part of summer there, and a Long Billed Dowitcher winters. We have been for both in the past and failed to see either. The gull departed some time ago, but the Dowitcher has been joined by a Wilson's Phalarope. We haven't seen one in a long time, in fact twenty years ago when one was at Staines (unfortunately the day of Princess Diana's funeral so we had to get in and out of London before everything shut down. I was back home by 8am).
Car parking at Oare was the usual mess so Colin dropped me off on the road side. The Phalarope was rather easy being the nearest bird and doing it's typical spinning madly feeding routine. The Dowitcher was a bit harder as it was some way off on one of the mud banks. Plenty of other waders present-Redshank, Ruff, Black Tailed Godwits, Dunlin, Golden Plover, Snipe, with Oystercatcher, Curlew and Bar Tailed Godwits on the Swale. Lots of Meadow Pipits and Skylarks were flying around and we found a nice Wheatear near the car park.
Walking around the perimeter, Bearded Tits were pinging everywhere, and we heard lots of Cetti's Warblers, found a couple of Stonechats and bumped into Darryl and Tony Hukin coming round the other way. They put us onto our other target, the Black Necked Grebe which was very hard to see in the river channel-the tide was well out and the river was all but invisible. We had to go down to the sluice on a bend and look up the channel to see the grebe a long way off.
Back on the road, the Phalarope was still performing, and the Dowitcher had flown out and was now within camera range, but never really posed well for me.
With nothing much on the pager, we decided to visit Dungeness. This seemed to be a mistake as the Ashford road was closed and the diversion down a very narrow lane was all but grid locked at times, but we eventually got there.
A Temminck's Stint had been reported earlier so we made enquiries when we got to the visitors centre-the lady on duty had been volunteering here since 1955 (!) and told me a bit of what it was like in the early days. She pointed us in the direction of some of those looking at the Stint.
Worryingly one was on the phone saying the Stint had black legs and looked to be very grey on the back. Not what one expects with Temminck's and not really ideal for Little either. Some of them were thinking of Semi-Palmated Sandpiper.
Unfortunately the bird was a long way off and we were looking through glass windows, but it did look interesting. Colin and I headed off to the adjacent hide where we found it again, still a long way off, but it was very flighty and soon headed off west. We then walked over to the western end of the pit, joined a few others and carried on searching. A normal Little Stint was found, as were five Great White Egrets and a Marsh Harrier. We never found the suspect Semi-P and later the pager simply reported two Little Stints.
We went down to the power station and had a quick look at the sea. Lots of Herring, Black Headed and Lesser Black Backed Gulls over the outfall with three Mediterranean Gulls and several Gannets.
A Woodlark had been reported around the old Lighthouse in the morning, and it would have been nice to find a Black Redstart, or a few warblers but the area was pretty quiet so after a few landscape images we packed up and returned home.
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