Tick List

Having spent most of the last couple of weeks since returning from Norway in front of my pc attempting to correlate our groups photos into a DVD slideshow I reckoned I'd earned myself a day out. There were a couple of "lifers" - birds we'd never seen before - on the south coast, a White-spotted Bluethroat at Samphire Hoe Country Park near to Dover and a Kentish Plover at Rye Harbour. In addition to that Black Redstarts were around at Samphire and Dungeness plus the "resident" Glaucous Gull also at Dungeness. So that's the plan and that's the day's tick list.

First stop Samphire Hoe Country Park and first decision, what to play for the car park? - 50p for an hour, £1 two hours and £2 all day - We invested a £1, seventeen minutes later we'd got our first sighting and photos of the White-spotted Bluethroat another sighting and more photos four minutes later. We had another couple of brief sightings of the bird in flight, but Bluethroats are notoriously birds of thickets and each time it landed in disappeared. Still some reasonable shots in the camera we decided to explore the park a bit further. The west beach was the most productive for birds, Stonechat, Rock Pipit, Chiffchaff and another from today's tick list a Black Redstart. The chilly temperatures and threat of further snow flurries ensured we were back at the car just before our ticket expired. Surprisingly in the hour that we'd been away the Bluethroat hadn't been sighted. We'd obviously been quite lucky and those that were now hanging around certainly had our sympathies, but we were heading off to Rye Harbour.

A free car park this time and returning birders telling tales of the Kentish Plover showing well earlier in the day in its "usual spot". I'm afraid though by the time we got to the "usual spot" the tide was flooding in and what was described as a wader scrape looked more like a lake. Other birders had given up, saying the Plover wasn't there, that the tide had driven it off. Nevertheless we got the scope out and had a scan round. Dunlin, Redshank, Oystercatcher, Shelduck & Avocet were the best that were on offer though. Further south though a group of birders were looking intently through their scopes. We joined one of them, he'd seen the Kentish Plover, but moving closer for a better look he'd lost it. Describing where it'd been Mrs L found it for him - good girl!

A warming bowl of soup en-route to Dungeness. There were lots of gulls sitting around on the "beach" by the fishing boats, but however often we scanned through them we couldn't find a Glaucous. Well it'd have been too much to ask for the perfect day and a completed tick list. Another birder then appeared at the far side of a group of gulls to us. He approached far closer than we had and the gulls didn't appreciate his attentions. They stood up and that's when I spotted the Glaucous, got Mrs L onto it quickly, took a few shots while it was still on the ground before it flew off. Excellent the tick list fully ticked. Top left to bottom right, White-spotted Bluethroat, Black Redstart, Kentish Plover & Glaucous Gull.