January is starting to work out quite nicely. Those first few weeks are always exciting as you can gain enjoyment from seeing common birds all over again! To get a good year list though you need to see a good mix of rarer birds. If not you just end up with the same list of the same birds, no variety and certainly no chance of getting anywhere near a high number. With no overseas trips planned till Autumn at the earliest I should be able to have a good run at breaking my record or even, whisper it gently, getting 300 species. So, with a day to go birding I decided to focus on keeping up the quality rather than going for quantity on my year list. No lifers on offer but Kent had at least two top birds.
An early start as ever got me to my first stop of Fordwich, near Canterbury. The target bird was a dusky warbler. I've seen one on 4 out of the last 10 years so not regular by any means. They are a small, brown warbler with a bold eye-stripe, often found skulking in the undergrowth. They do have a distinctive "tack" call though to help finding them.
The site was a 10 minute walk along the River Stour to an area where the path forks. The bird has been reported here since before Xmas so it was about time I went for it. The dawn was lovely, with a low mist lying on the water as the birds woke up.
Pretty much straight away I heard the distinctive call of the dusky warbler coming from a small patch of reeds right by the path.
For the next 30 minutes I could hear it calling and occasionally see a small shape flitting about between here and some brambles further along the river. It refused to play ball and show itself. I'm sure if I hung around a bit I would have managed to see it better but I had a full day planned so I waved goodbye and headed back to the car.
My next stop was 30 minutes away at Bockhill Farm Wood which is near St Margarets at Cliffe. The second target was a Hume's warbler, another small bird but this time green not brown. This has also been around around since Xmas time last year.
The car park was at the Dover Patrol memorial overlooking the channel.
A five minute walk got me to the wood, a small copse in the valley behind the cliff.
Another birder was already there studying the right hand edge of the wood. She said the bird had just been calling and she had seen it in the ivy-covered trees. My luck was in, I immediately got onto a small bird flitting about in the upper layer. You could see it was the right bird, a very small green warbler, sharp-beak, a hint of an eye-stripe and the fact it never stayed still! It called only occasionally whilst I was there making it very hard to tie down. It seemed to be doing a mini-circuit of the wood but did like the corner where I first saw it. Finally after almost an hour I managed to get a photo of it.
For barely 20 seconds it was on view in the ivy. I fired the camera at it and was very pleased when I got home to see I had actually got a few images where you could see what it was. The eye-stripe is very prominent as is the white underside contrasting with the green back. With a bit of imagination you might be able to make out the wing bar!!! It then disappeared again so with one more stop planned I left it and headed on along the coast to Dungeness.
I had two potential targets, glossy ibis and black redstart. The ibis had not been reported all day so I made my way to the nuclear power station where the redstarts usually spend their time during Winter. Another birder was already standing on the shingle ridge looking into the compound so we combined our efforts to track them down. A lot of meadow pipits, pied and grey wagtails, two chiffchaffs and a few chaffinches were already feeding happily.
It took us about 10 minutes but finally we pinned down both a male and a female flitting around the buildings.
They were a long way away but you could see the red rump on them.
Off the coast there was a massive flock of cormorants feeding presumably on shoals of small fish. I've seen good numbers of them before but never one numbering into the high hundreds or low thousands.
On the way out I also managed to pick up a trio of cattle egrets feedbag in a sheep field and some barnacle geese on Denge marsh.
With another couple of ticks I ended the day on 120 species. More importantly I had got the two rarest birds I wanted plus a few others that are regular but harder to get like the redstart. With loads of common birds sill to get that is not a bad total and leaves me well placed to push on for a high 200's total.
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