Saturday 20 April 2013

Sunshine and Migrants

I was awake at the ridiculous time of 4am this morning and after getting ready I was soon out of the house and driving around the Reculver lanes. The conditions were good with little wind and not much traffic on the road at this time of the morning. I had planned to hopefully hear Nightingales and Grasshopper Warblers singing but despite listening in all the likely areas I failed to hear any, it even seems that the Nightingale from last week may have moved on. I managed to see 1 Little Owl however and also heard 2 Red legged Partridge and 3 Grey Partridge. As the light got better I drove over to the towers where at 6am I met Julian Perry and we walked around the area checking the bushes before walking down to Coldharbour and inland to Chambers Wall where we once again checked all the bushes.

Grey Partridge

 We then walked back along the embankment and behind the oyster farm before returning back to the towers. In beautiful sunshine we noted 6 Skylark, 2 Green Woodpecker, 1 Chiffchaff, 15 Whitethroat, 3 Sparrowhawk, 4 Willow Warbler, 9 Shelduck, 2 Reed Warbler, 12 Turnstone, 6 Oystercatcher, 12 Redshank, 5 Yellow Wagtail, 1 Brent Goose, 2 Little Egret and 6 Sandwich Tern. There were 3 Gadwall, 1 Curlew, 11 Reed Bunting, 8 Sedge Warbler, 6 Tufted Duck, 2 Shoveler, 8 Mallard and on reaching Chambers Wall we were rewarded with 1 male Yellowhammer flying east along the embankment, not an easy bird to get at Reculver, 2 Redstart (138), 1 Firecrest (139) was seen moving through the bushes but unfortunately would not show well enough for a photo, 3 Blackcap, 1 Lesser Whitethroat (140), 2 Jay passed over with one passing just about near enough for me to fire off a few shots, 1 Little Grebe, 1 Gannet east and c70 Sand Martin at the colony on the clifftop.

Jay

We met up with Phil Parker and after a brief chat and noting 2 Small Tortoiseshell we moved on to Shuart where we had an hour raptor watching with some success. We managed to note 1 Peregrine, 4 Common Buzzard, 2 Sparrowhawk, 1 Kestrel and 2 Marsh Harrier. Another birder had heard a Grasshopper Warbler reeling in the Reculver area so If I can get out tomorrow early I shall make a visit to see if it is still present.

3 comments:

  1. Now that is one nice Jay shot Marc, :-)

    Photographic opportunities, plus lots of Migrants species being found, cant be a bad mornings work :-)

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  2. Superb work Marc, the inflight of Jay is in class of its own.

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  3. Nice to see you have some sunshine!!! Love the Jay in flight photo; well done, Marc!

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