4 Year ticks at Dungeness & Oare.

Up & out by 5 am & arrive at Dungeness with Brian & Jimmy at 6.30 am, really nice to find the hide on the beach open & only one person inside, there's a fairly strong wind blowing so nice to to get inside & even better to get to sit down & scope the sea for a couple of hours.
We pick out 3 year ticks here when 2 Balearics pass by followed by a couple of Manx Shearwater & some Arctic Skua.
Also seen plenty of Gannet, a few Scoter the odd Fulmar, Black,Common,& Sandwich Tern all help to make it a very pleasant couple of hours.
We decide to head off to Oare to look for a Curlew Sandpiper that would be a  year tick for all of us.As we leave we think we see a Honey Buzzard but had nowhere to pull over to confirm it, but later one comes out on the pager, so we can't add to our year list but it seems likely that it was the bird that we had seen.
The water level is really good today & the east flood is full of birds & the place is really busy with many people enjoying what was now a very warm sunny day.
Our target bird is picked out after only being here a few minutes & we see at least five more Curlew Sandpipers.
Three Little Stint, a Spotted Redshank,many Golden Plover, Black-Tailed Godwit everywhere you looked, Avocet,Redshank,Dunlin,Ruff, Knot,Turnstone, 1 Greenshank, 1 Yellow Wagtail,1 Kingfisher,1 Water Rail,& before we leave over 20 Ringed Plover drop in.Before we leave the Bonaparte's Gull is picked out, with hardly any black left to see on the hood it's a good effort to pick it out with the amount of Gulls on show today.
So a good morning that we hope to round off with a visit to Elmley but on arrival we find it all as dry as a bone with not a single bird to see.
Great to get out & see the year list moving again.

Kestrel at Dunge photo from inside the car

Thank God for Brian's camera