Walderslade, Dungeness & Lenham Heath (Kent): Not our favourite style of birding today! Lovely birds to see, but geographically spread around the county meant more time travelling rather than enjoying the sites and birds themselves. Still it's the bank holiday weekend and we shall endeavour to watch our birds in a more relaxed manner over the following two days.
Started this morning at
Walderslade with great views of the
Iberian Chiffchaff that was also singing regularly. From there, we moved onto
Lenham Heath to look for the
Hoopoe found yesterday. No luck in nearly two hours of searching with other birders, so we decided to travel down to
Dungeness to see the
Purple Herons (2), that turned up earlier this week. We were onto these almost immediately upon arrival and there were a large number of
Swallows feeding over Hookers Pits along with a few
Sand Martins and a number of
Common Swifts. While enjoying distant views of these Herons' news came over the pager that the
Hoopoe had been seen again, so we were on our way again to
Lenham Heath, where we this time enjoyed a view of the bird feeding in a sheep field.
Hoopoe
Iberian Chiffchaff
Iberian Chiffchaff
Iberian Chiffchaff
Iberian Chiffchaff