South Swale LNR

This morning I thought I would go a bit further west with a walk nearly up to Castle Coote. First stop was on the 'rise' just past the Sportsman where within two minutes I had close views of a male marsh harrier followed by a buzzard being mobbed by a crow. Parking up by the pub I then took the path down to the beach huts finding the usual 30+ flock of linnets and further on near the start of the wall 4 wheatears and 2 whinchats.

Further on 3 yellow wagtails flew west along the beach, then an egret flew east, a bit early as the tide was still high!  Out over the cut fields I was surprised to see a merlin zooming about and further on I did another count of the corvids, mainly crows, 240 in the fields! Quite a few dunlin (28) were flying west along the edge of the beach with another 24 feeding on the water's edge with a few ringed plovers. I took a few photos before they flew off when dog walkers came along, 3 grey plovers also flew by at this time.

The compartment behind C.Coote still had 38 cows in it, I thought they were gone, it would appear they are a semi-permanent fixture. The reedbed and grass strip seemed devoid of birds and only a couple of butterflies were noted.

I made my way back to the plots at Seasalter where I found c.6 whitethroats, 2 willow warblers, 2-4 reed warblers and 1 blue tit and 2 dunnocks.  A check on the beach roost produced a count of 330 ringed plovers, 48 dunlin, 2 lesser blk backs with two juvs., a few herring and blk hd gulls. One herring gull  looked slightly different, much bigger and was sporting a orange/red ring No. L8FT apparently originating from the Thames Ringing Group.