Just a nice morning at Oare marsh & Dungeness.

We set off at 5am heading to Dunge once more, we know there is not a lot about in the way of year ticks maybe a Whinchat that we never saw last week &5 had been reported down by the old tank down the path by the military fence.
On the way we decide to pop into Oare marsh for a quick look, that quick look turns out to be about 4 hours.
The place is alive with birds out on the scrape, the pick being 5 Little Stint & some Ringed Plover, many Avocet,the odd Ruff, Curlew Sandpiper,hundreds of Godwits, Plenty of Gulls but we never got the Bonaparte's this time.
A quick look with the scope over the over side gets me a couple of Turtle Doves sitting in a dead tree, not needed as we have seen at least 6 this year but always nice to see them.
Brian then gets onto a bird that we can't seem to identify, we are really struggling with the heat haze & it is a fair distance off.
We have the books out & we think we are looking at either a Baird's or maybe a White-rumped Sandpiper, it has a Sandpiper look with a long body but as I said the haze is not helping us.
We now have a large group of birders all helping to identify it but no body can ID it, a fellow calls a local from the other side of the scrape who he felt sure would know what it is, the answer turns out to be no at least while we are here, by now a very large group had gathered, no one had the answer so we give up & head to Dunge in the hope that something would turn up on the pager with the answer.
As it happens nothing comes out, so maybe it turned out not to be what we thought.
With time marching on we head down the path to the old army tank looking all the way for a Whinchat to add to the year list, we see many Whitethroat also one Lesser whitethroat & Stonechat  but the target bird stays hidden to us.
A quick drive down to the visitor centre gets us nothing & on looking at the days sightings board it tells us that 3 Whinchat had been seen where we had just been , so with time running out we head back for one more look, no luck so will have to wait to tick a Whinchat maybe next week.
So no ticks but as usual a very nice morning in the sunshine with the boys.

The two Turtle Doves from a distance.

A Little grebe just passing bye.

The ponies making it a pleasant place to be.