Wednesday 1 January 2014

Great White Expectations

What seemed like a bad move to visit Dungeness on yesterdays weather forecast turned into a great morning for myself and Mo.

The rain and wind was horrendous as we sat in the Hanson hide over looking the arc pits, and a slight break in the weather we ventured out onto the causeway where we saw an amazing FIVE Great White Egrets with three on the new diggings and two on the arc.














This had probably doubled my UK tally in less than five minutes and was an awesome site to see these monster birds just roaming around in full view.

Three red head Smew and a fine drake Goosander were also battling against the monsoon conditions.

Mo is always up for a seawatch even on the Thames in a force nine westerly, so a monster southerly smashing the dunge peninsular was right up his street.  This seemed to pay off as there must of been thousands of gulls of all shapes and sizes feeding on what looked like crustaceans being smashed up by the high tide and strong winds.




Awesome !!


We managed to find two 1w Caspians in the melee, but none ventured close to the camera, unlike the fifty or so Kittiwakes that were absolutely awesome coming within feet of us feeding in the wake.  A really enjoyable encounter and was great fun with the camera though the strong wind was not helping.





















A quick stop off at walland marsh for herd of 37 Bewick's ended a great mornings birding.

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