Kent Trip Day 1 - Nightingale Walk at Cliffe Pools RSPB

Today was the start of my long five-day weekend down in Kent, visiting my son in Chatham and also calling in at a few birding sites each day.  To be honest, I was just looking for an excuse to take some photos of Colin the Thursley Cuckoo in south-west Surrey, but if I was going to travel four hours down from the North West to see him, I might as well combine it with some other locations too.

On my previous visit to Kent I had found out that the county is a bit of a hotspot for Nightingales and that there were several walks being organised by the RSPB at various places in May.  The last one was at Cliffe Pools RSPB in North Kent, and was ideal being just 30 minutes or so from where Robert lives in Chatham.  So that set the time and date for my visit - 7pm on Thursday 17th May.

I arrived at Cliffe Pools RSPB at around 5pm with the aim of having a look round before the start of the walk.  The air was full of Swifts and the pools were alive with the sound of Black-headed Gulls.  I found a Whitethroat, a few Ducks and some Common Terns on my walk round, but not much else.

At around 7pm on the car park I met up with the RSPB's David Saunders who was leading the walk  There was an excellent turnout of around 20 people, not including the RSPB staff.  Just before we set of a pair of Mediterranean Gulls flew overhead and a Kestrel was hovering over a nearby field. We walked up and down one particular stretch of causeway between two pools and, after a slow start, eventually had several very good bursts of song.  Seeing the birds was a totally different matter however, and all we really got was a few moving branches.

Later, on the way back to the car park I did manage to get a very brief glimpse of a whole Nightingale - it was a fleeting but unmistakable view as it flew up and out of the bush where I was listening to it sing.  By now I had already decided that it was a little too late in the year to be trying to see these wonderful songsters - in mid to late April or the first week of May, with fewer leaves on the trees, there would be a far better chance of seeing them.  So that would have be a target for next year.