RXwildlife Sightings

In the fading greylight, and nearly falling off the edge of RXworld, we went for a brief walk on Glyne Gap beach to look for Purple Sandpipers.

Years ago, you could see them quite easily at Rock-a-Nore and, with more exertion, on Lee Ness Ledge beneath Fire Hills, but it’s a long time since I saw them in either of those places. They have declined at Glyne Gap, are scarce along the rest of the Sussex coast and don’t, I think, occur in Kent till you get to Thanet (I just checked the KOS site & found there are 5 at Hythe right now). So this, along with Tree Sparrow is becoming a speciality species for our area.

If you park at Ravenside Retail Nightmare, go through the tunnel to the (sadly closed) Cafe on the Beach and turn left then follow the Turnstones along to the rocks, the Purple Sandpipers are quite easy to see - there were two today. They are really quite characterful, if not unduly purple!

Good numbers of waders can still be found feeding and roosting along the shore, 62 Grey Plover and 49 Turnstone being the most notable today. In the fields at the northern end of Castle Water, 5 White-fronted Geese were amongst the grazing Canada’s. Also 6 Smew (2 drakes) could be found out from the hide. A Short-eared Owl and Marsh Harrier were seen  late afternoon along Narrow Pit yesterday.