Productive weekend birding. I know, shocking.

Last Monday the Girl emailed me at work with a list of birds she'd like to add to her life list by the end of the year. To reach a nice round number or something, she said she wanted another seven new species by the end of the year and that she'd like to make a start on this before the following Monday, when she starts her Masters degree. Sounded like we were in for a decent weekend's birding. The birds on her "do want" list were all good, possible things (and all cute enough to tempt her to travel a bit), but none were likely to turn up locally by the weekend - things like cattle egret, wryneck, phaleropes, shrikes, etc. We would have to - shock - twitch something.

  

After some consideration we opted to go to Dungeness, aiming mainly for the cattle egret and hoping for some self-found goodness. As if that was going to happen. Arriving to a heavy fog we decided that scoping out over fields for a distant egret wasn't possible, nor was much else, so we headed to the patch. Hopes that the fog might have bought in some migrants along the way were soon dashed and we didn't encounter a single bird until we found two black redstarts on the power station and a few wheatears nearby. We also picked up two heavily armed policemen, tracking us along the ridge, just inside the perimiter fence. This has never happened before, despite having spent hours peering at the reactors through bins, scopes and camera lenses...

The patch itself was barely visible in the fog, which kept rolling back and forth from the shore. We had a decent number of common and sandwich terns, with three black terns coming and going but not a lot else. As we sat watching the fog eventually moved out to sea, but there was nothing else to be had, so we left. The policemen had by this time left their van and come to meet us halfway back - they were very friendly as it turned out, and gave advice on the nearest decent cup of tea. Unfortunately, this advice was shite, as was the tea.

The fog almost gone, we went egretting. The cattle egret was (apparently uncharacteristically) a doddle. It showing well, if distantly, from the entrance track just past Boulderwall Farm and was pretty much the first bird we saw. This was a lifer for the Girl, on her list, and only the second I've seen in the UK.

On the reserve itself, like the at the point, it was pretty quiet in terms of smaller migrants but as the day progressed reasonable numbers of hirundines and yellow wagtails were moving overhead. The marshes were quiet too, but at Dengemarsh we had a raven calling nearby and after a few minutes the great white egret flopped almost predictably into view. A smart adult little gull fed among the terns for a short while before moving off. Just beyond that on Hookers we had a bittern, the day's fifth heron species, and a stoat carrying off a dead rabbit.

 

 

I like little gulls. I really like them. Have lots of pictures.

We left in the afternoon to spend the evening wedding planning. We did the same for much of today, and it was all very exciting until, while we were at the Girl's parent's house discussing Important Stuff And Things, I checked twitter. A red-backed shrike at Tilbury Fort. Bumlips.

Another bird on the Girl's Do Want list, and, funnily enough, on mine too. As we all know, you should always go and see shrikes - always - and luckily we were able to squeeze it in between wedding planning and sorting stuff out for the Girl's first day back at school.

We found the bird feeding from the rails by the gates to the fort, exactly where Mr Wanstead had said it would be when I phoned him in a state of barely contained excitement. Birding in Tilbury is very much a tick-and-run affair, possibly quite literally if you value your optics/wallet/life, so we couldn't and didn't stay for as long as I'd have liked to for such a good bird.  After we found flushed it it moved to the grass between the moats and fed there allowing typically showy shrikey views. An excellent finish to an excellent weekend.

Even though the brown shrike at Staines a couple of winters ago was originally IDd as a red-backed, and so I can reasonably assume that they are a similar size, this bird felt really small by comparison. Maybe it was me, the conditions, or strange memories of the brown shrike, but it did.

Also, while I like Blogger's new interface, I don't like how it handles pictures. I can't get it as neat as it was before. Bum.