5 Year ticks at Dunge plus a great Merlin at Elmley.

Once again we head off early to Dungeness for the third week running, driving down towards the lighthouse it is completely different from last week with no birds apart from Gulls seen, after the influx that we saw last it's not looking to good for us as we knew before we set out that the weather was not in our favour for birds passing through up on the beach.
So we park up ready to head up to the hide on the beach when a couple of Peregrine are spotted landing on one of the pylons, on the swell it is alive with Gulls & Terns but not much else passing by.
A fair bit of time spent scanning with the scopes gets us a total of three Arctic Skua over the next hour for tick number one & the Gannets start to pour through also a few Kittiwakes, 3 Common Scoter & we then pick out 3 Black Tern needed for a tick so things looking up. Every now & then we see Porpoise & Seal popping up.
Then Brian picks up a Honey Buzzard for another tick, we have been joined by a fellow birder & he gets us onto a Balearic Shearwater so good on him that makes it 4 ticks inside a couple of hours.
A scan over by the power station gets us a Wheatear & a Black Redstart, Yellow wagtail start to show & Jimmy scans a Spotted Flycatcher sitting on the power station fence, so what looked like being a slow day turns out not to bad at all.
A drive to Arc pit gets us some more Black Tern & we then pick out the White-winged black Tern to give myself & Jimmy tick number 5 for the day.
Off now for a quick drive to Gallaways where we see a male & female Redstart more Yellow wags & a good number of Whinchat seen.
Off home now but we just had to call into Elmley, what a let down as we drive down there is not a drop of water anywhere to be seen, so no birds, with all the rain of late where has it all gone to.
Half way down the track a Marsh Harrier shows low over the road & the fourth Peregrine of the day flies over but we think we have wasted our time coming here when we spot a Merlin perched on a gate post, the cameras come out & the bird is in no hurry to fly off, so for a good 10 minutes we get pretty close for some good photos before it takes flight.
So once again we get lucky the Merlin not needed for a tick but we have never been this close for so long to a Merlin. So it turns out to be a really great day again.

Brian's photo of the White-wing Tern

Whinchat at Gallaways

again

The Merlin