A twitch in kent

Right, Time is in my hands, I’m fresh in from casting my first ever vote so time to put some words down, Building up to bank holiday weekends can always be quite a struggle, for some reason the people of Andover feel it necessary to spend inordinate amounts of money on camera gear they can’t use, nevertheless Team Andover 439 (sponsored by monster) cracked on with things and finished pretty smug on Saturday evening. Throughout Sunday a spot of birding was being planned, trying to figure out the best place to head. Cornwall was decided at first, unfortunately the black-headed wagtail did one, so Kent was arranged. Crystal Palace managed to survive the drop, and rescued themselves from next season as the prospect of League one football was somewhat rather shit, so a few beers and a roast dinner later, I felt pretty good and headed off to bed. At the dangerous time of 3:30 my alarm was ringing in my ear and I hopped out of bed, once dressed, fed and watered I waited outside for Ash and Dan. I will skip the dive as it was uneventful, or I was asleep, one of the two.

First stop Walderslade, Chatham for Iberian Chiffchaff, a bird that had been present for a few days and one that had some pretty decent credentials, Fortunately the bird was seen straight away and we never really lost sight of it the whole time we were on site, It sang a mixture of song, although primarily something very different to anything I have heard before.





Next we dropped in for hoopoe, which had not been seen the previous day. For the first few minutes there was no sign until the heavens opened and the bird flew behind us, only seen by me at this point. We searched around for a while but couldn’t relocate the bird. This was until Dan looked back into the sheep field, there it was, the single most bizarre looking UK tick for me so far. Then it fucked off, at this point we had to go look for it, we had plenty of time left in the day as it was still only 11am! We managed to relocate the bird a long way down the field and as it did a fly by I managed to grab a quick record shot.



Purple heron, Apart from the fact all of us went to sleep for an hour and woke up to purple herons in flight this was an uneventful stop, although this didn’t just happen once but twice, we woke for a second time to purple herons in flight and I managed a quick record shot.



We then headed over to Dunge for a seawatch where I picked out a dark phase Arctic Skua passing through, Just after this Josh Jenkins Shaw joined us. We also had 2-3 Arctic Tern, Black Tern, another 1 possibly 2 Arctic Skua, 3 Little Tern. Once again, a 3 Tick day, If I keep this up I will get that 300th bird by the end of 2010