Trip to Dungeness & surrounding area.

 We decide it's about time we pay our first visit of the new year to Dungeness for a day's birding.

On arrival at first light, it's straight up to the beach to be greeted with the sight of thousand's

of Cormorants flying past, what a spectacle.

A walk up to the patch and it's alive with Gulls and we find a first-year Little Gull for a nice tick. Loads of Red-throated Diver along with Guillemont and Razorbill plus a few Gannets for more year ticks.

After a couple of hours looking out to sea it's back to the car but on the way, we have another tick as we spot a pair of Black Redstart on the wall of the power station. A Raven is ticked when spotted on a pylon.

A quick run down to the visitor bird feeders gets us 2 Greenfinch. A search now for the Whooper Swans that have been reported in a nearby field. 

The first sighting of Swans only gets us Bewicks, 34 of them but although nice we need to find the Whooper for a year tick, and that we do after a short search when 5 of them are found with some more Bewick's and Mute Swans.  

While in the area we pop round to Scotney GP and get an easy tick as we see some Barnacle Geese. 

Now we set off to find the Hume's Leaf Warbler, it's reported as being seen at St Margaret's at Cliffe. Told to park at the monument then walk down to the Brookhill farm wood to look for the Warbler. The walk is not too long and we find a birder already looking and he has had a sighting of the bird and we hear it many times before Jimmy spots it flicking about high in the ivory, to give lots of quick views of the bird, this is the third one seen and a really nice little bird to watch. Never managed any photo as it never came right out in the open for long enough to focus on it. Unfourtunly we head off to tick the White Stork seen at Worth Marsh over the last week or so for an easy tick but somebody forgot to tell the Stork and after spending over an hour looking at an empty field we give up and head off home after a brilliant day out.