Two turtle doves...

You just get the slightest feeling that birding may be picking up. It may just be me wanting it to be so, but I am feeling more like putting up with the heat and getting out there. Wader passage is starting - just - and there are a few other nice birds to catch up with. With a cooler day forecast I set out early as ever, this time for Kent. My main stop was to be Oare Marshes in North Kent. This is a lovely smallish reserve, basically a marsh with a circular path next to the Swale estuary. It has tidal movements, less of water, more of waders coming into it at high tide. I've been here quite a few times before so I knew where to go and to park.
There were two birds I wanted to see. One, a Bonapartes gull, has been visiting here in the Summer for the last 5 years. It is a waif and stray from America so it totally lost and is now living here! The other birds were a family of 4 black-winged stilts. This is particularly exciting as it is one of the few broods to fully fledge in the country.

When I arrived the tide was rising and the central marsh was starting to fill with waders being forced off the mud. Most of them are black-tailed godwits, the brown waders in this photo. My target though was the stilts which were initially at the back of the marsh. A short walk and I got round to where 2 other birders were already onto them. They are another of those birds which does what it says on the tin. They have black-wings and they have really long legs, just like stilts! This is one of the adult birds. The two juveniles were parked on a more distant island!.

Both the adults were in the area though.

The limited space forced the birds of all sorts a bit too close together and squabbles would break out.

After an hour or so they moved to the front of the marsh and basically went to sleep amongst the other sleeping birds including a good number of avocets.

My other target, the Bonepartes gull, was out on the estuary feeding on the mud. I have already seen one in May, so you wonder if that one may even be the same bird as this one? Anyway, it took me about 10 minutes but eventually I found it amongst the slightly larger black-headed gulls.

The problem is that from behind it looks very like a "normal" gull! It's only when it turns sideways that you see the distinctive black, not brown, hood and more delicate bill. I watched it for about 30 minutes. It never came close but traversed the estuary looking for tasty morsels.

These shots show you a couple of the key ID features. The size, slightly smaller than the black-headed gulls, the white eye ring and the black slightly down-curved bill. It never flew but did flap a couple of times and you could see the black tips to its primary feathers.

Finally at Oare I stopped at some cottages near the reserve entrance. One of the locals had put me onto it as a good location for turtle doves. Boy, he wasn't wrong. There must have 5 or 6 purring away in the bushes. They used to be the iconic sound of Summer in the UK but now their numbers are dramatically down, due to habitat loss here and awful slaughter by the guns in the Mediterranean on migration.

Mostly they were calling out of sight but occasionally popped up onto the wires. They were also still displaying and two flew quite close to me, chasing each other round and round.

After Oare I did go down the coast to Dungeness. It was pretty quiet, though the patch had lots of gulls feeding just offshore.

I did pick up another year tick in the form of black redstart but it was very flighty. Still, a good day out, some lovely birds showing well. Lets see if things really do start picking up now through July.