28th March 2012 - Dungeness

Today was Dungeday again and I have returned very freckly with a hint of sunburn.  But mainly freckly.  Dungeness carried on being weirdly warm and I was actually able to remove 3 of my 6 layers as the day progressed.  We met up with Jono and The Hairy Birders at just before 7 (although they had gotten there a bit earlier) to do a bit of seawatching.  It was quite productive as lots of different birds were off on their travels and Stuart finally got to see a Red-throated Diver.  I was very excited about seeing a Porpoise, it added to my mammal list for the day of lots of bunny rabbits.  A spot of a Chiffchaff was great as it confirmed our earlier sighting on The Rye, but I'm going to count the one today as my first for the year.  We wandered over to the RSPB reserve to see what we could spot there and immediately got devoured by midges.  It was horrific.  However, we got a very decent list, including two of my favourites, Ringed Plover and Marsh Harrier.  A new lifer was seen high up in the sky, two Raven with their diamond shaped tails and at the same time our second Cetti's of the week (and life) made an appearance!  The day was rounded off with another lifer over at the ARC pit, a Water Pipit.



Cormorants doing nesty things.

	Dungeness Beach	Dungeness RSPB
1	Meadow Pipit	Tree Sparrow
2	Great Crested Grebe	Reed Bunting
3	Red-throated Diver	Shoveler
4	Brent Goose	Magpie
5	Cormorant	Green Woodpecker
6	Pintail	Cormorant
7	Oystercatcher	Tufted Duck
8	Curlew	Black-headed Gull
9	Common Scoter	Lesser Black-backed Gull
10	Gannet	Shelduck
11	Mediterranean Gull	Gadwall
12	Teal	Long-tailed Duck
13	House Sparrow	Coot
14	Starling	Goldeneye
15	Linnet	Common Gull
16	Sand Martin	Oystercatcher
17	Tufted Duck	Pied Wagtail
18	Reed Bunting	Meadow Pipit
19	Chaffinch	Teal
20	Chiffchaff	Ringed Plover
21	Sparrowhawk	Wigeon
22	Carrion Crow	Lapwing
23	Black-headed Gull	Ruff
24	Magpie	Greylag Goose
25	White Wagtail	Chaffinch
26	Stonechat	Marsh Harrier
27		Canada Goose
28		Mallard
29		Buzzard
30		Little Grebe
31		Great Crested Grebe
32		Goldfinch
33		Pochard
34		Moorhen
35		Chiffchaff
36		Mute Swan
37		Raven – NEW FOR LIFE LIST!
38		Cetti’s Warbler
39		Linnet
40		Redshank
41		Little Egret
42		Water Pipit – NEW FOR LIFE LIST

My year list for 2012 comes to 119.