Saturday and Sunday were spent birding Beachy Head with Laurence P. The main highlights were the Melodious Warbler he’d found a few days previous, a Turtle Dove that we flushed from the old trapping area (both of these went un-photographed by me) and a Wood Warbler, only seen by Bob the Ringer. There was a good number of migrants over the two days:
…18 Common Redstart, 1 Black Redstart, c50 Wheatear, 7 Whinchat, 1 Spotted Flycatcher, 1 Pied Flycatcher…
…c50 Willow Warbler, c40 Common Whitethroat, c15 Lesser Whitethroat, 1 Garden Warbler, c6 Reed Warbler…
… c10 Blackcaps, 2 Tree Pipit, c100 Yellow Wagtail, c50 Barn Swallow, 3 Sand Martin, 1 Swift, 1 Merlin, 6 Sparrowhawk, c12 Common Buzzard, Short eared Owl…
Bank holiday monday morning was spent with Rich B down at the White Cliffs/ Langdon Hole area near Dover. The site is above the port there and is as good a headland as any in my mind. Rich mentioned the attraction from the harbour lights and despite it not being totally heaving with migrants a decent total was achieved in our visit. I think were planning to put some more hours in there over autumn.
Whinchat, Black Redstart, Spotted Fly, Tree Pipit, Yellow Wagtail, 2 Wheatear, 2 Garden Warblers, 3 Reed Warblers, 30 Lesser Whitethroats, 15 Whitethroats & 5 Willow Warblers.
Mid morning Rich and I headed to Dungeness where a juvenile Caspian Gull at the fishing boats had been reported by David Walker . A few fellow ‘gull connesuerrs’ have commented on its uglyness and perhaps its from somehwere west of the Polish/German border, but it was a nice bird to watch and tonally very Caspian. There seem to be a few more juv Casps turning up in the south now so roll on September (where were likely to have our first 1cys on the Thames)
I completely forgot to mention the American Black tern, We had a look at that, it was great.
PERDIX BIRDER 