Kent Trip Day 2 - Dungeness RSPB and Rye Harbour NR

On my previous visit to Kent in February I had intended to go to Dungeness RSPB which is in the south-east corner of the county about an hour away from my son's house in Chatham.  However, there was so much to do in the North Kent area that I didn't find the time to go, so it was always going to be a key target site for this trip and today was the day that I planned on spending a whole day there.  I'd been told by several people that it's a weird and wonderful place, and they weren't wrong with its gravel landscape and heathland vegetation.  It's ideal for many types of scrubland bird, not to mention the exhausted migrants landing here from flying over the channel.

My first good bird at Dungeness was one I was looking to year tick for #my200birdyear list. Even though it's distant this is the unmistakable sight of an Egyptian Goose. There were at least three adult birds and one chick present and, as this introduced bird is now a self-supporting UK breeding species in the wild, it counts for listing purposes.  There were also two Little Gulls on the islands and although I didn't get a really good look at them, I'm still counting those too!

After this initial delight I didn't see much else at Dungeness today.  Yes, there was a distant Great White Egret and a couple of equally distant Marsh Harriers, but none of the promised Hobbies or Dartford Warblers. The blazing heat had probably cause a lot of the birds to hunker down and wait for the cooler hours to come out and start feeding. So the rest ofd the birds mainly consisted of a few Curlews and Cormorants, some Common Gulls and a few Tufted Ducks and Mallards and some Common Terns - not really much to write home about. However, whilst I was in the superb 'new' Visitor Centre some very helpful local people gave me a few pointers about places to go and the name of Rye Harbour came up more than once.

 

 Rye Harbour (that's the name of the town which is next to but separate from Rye) is on the south coast of East Sussex and only a short distance westwards along the coast from Dungeness RSPB.  After a day of limited photography opportunities at Dungeness, it was nice to finally have something to shoot at here. It began with Avocets, some already having young followed quickly by Golden Plover, Ringed Plover and Dunlin.  And then there was a Cuckoo and another Egyptian Goose.

There were some Common Terns nesting very close to one of the hides and a Redshank feeding.

It's a little gem of a place that I'd never even heard of with a variety of habitats particularly for waders but also for Common, Sandwich and Little Terns (there will shortly be a breeding Little Tern colony here) and Cuckoo. It's a place that needs at least half a day and better still a full day to visit over the tide, so I hardly did it justice in the few hours I was here this afternoon.

Finally, to finish it off, this Herring Gull was loafing on the grassy slope in front of my car.

P.S. Of course as often happens, on the following day some action took place at Dungeness RSPB when a Hoopoe and a Bee-eater appeared. Grrr!