RX New Year’s Day Birdlist. More than 90…
1st January 2005, SaturdayNew Year’s Day dawned calm and clear. Carol, Francesca and Tim Inskipp and I were standing in Guestling Woods. The clacker of a Blackbird sounded reveille and Redwings and one or two Fieldfares emerged from roosts. Much of the main forest seemed rather quiet however although Treecreeper and Nuthatch were eventually recorded. There was not a whisper from any owls.
The breeze began to get up back at St Leonards a watch from a breakfast verandah produced flights of auks and more than twenty Wigeon heading west, these Russian duck seem to come in when the winter is set in. Red-throated Divers, Great Crested Grebes and a few gannets were also seen well offshore and a close party of seven Scoter on the incoming tide.
No sign of Purple sandpiper at the harbour. At Marsh Wood and Marsham sewer Marsh tits called unobtrusively from cover. Pett Level hosted Golden Plover, Curlews and a smattering of waterfowl.
Camber was increasingly windy, but at Scotney more variety was recorded, with Black-necked Grebe, two Avocet, a pair of Scaup and others.
Rain and strong wind had set in at Dungeness. The Burrowes Pits were rather subdued with some of the wintering birds keeping their heads down. Three Bean Geese resting in Kale amongst a herd of Mute Swans. A herd of seven adult Whooper swans and numbers of Pintail were among the star wildfowl sightings.
Dusk revealed a host of wildfowl just inside the Kent border beyond the Woolpack. 150 or more White-fronted Geese and possibly sixty Bean Geese milled in the rainy dusk marsh sky, the pristine white shapes of the short-necked Bewick’s Swans crossing amongst them. Hen harriers sailed towards their roosts in the twilight.
Happy New Year to all.
Reported by: Andrew Grace