Redshanks!

With a little overnight rain and still drizzling first thing this morning as I drove to The Point, I had high hopes of there being lots of passerine migrants grounded there. AJG was already there and quickly burst my hopes, as he had been out around the trapping area seeing just a single Common Whitethroat. We sea watched until the visibility deteriorated, seeing just a few Sandwich and Common Terns, Gannets, 3 Common Scoter and 2 Swifts.

As the drizzle worsened I decided to go to Firth Hide where 5 Wood Sandpipers, 2 Common Sandpipers, a Green Sandpiper, 2 Common Snipe, a colour ringed juvenile Black-headed Gull, 6 Yellow Wagtails, 5 Swifts and 100s of Sand Martins.

In the car park I met The Joker and we decided to go to Hanson on the ARC. On opening the flaps we could see one of the islands was covered in waders, we were amazed to see that they were all Redshanks 139 of them, without doubt the biggest single flock of Redshank I have seen. Also new in were 4 Little Stints, 11 Black-tailed Godwits, later being joined by 2 Spotted Redshanks. 4 Garganey were found among the numerous eclipse duck, also 100s more Sand martins and 2 more Swifts.   

25N1 probably a Fairlight bird

 139 Redshanks

Juvenile Ringed Plover Rye

Because of this arrival of waders AJG, CT and myself decided to go to Rye thinking that there may be a lot more there. We did mange to find 4 Curlew Sandpipers, 4 Knot and 5 Bar-tailed Godwits among c100 Dunlin but all were very distant, God forbid a small peep out there.
Driving past Northpoint GP a Hobby flew over the road.
This afternoon a Caspian Tern spent a few minutes in front of the visitor centre, before flying off high towards the power station. Myself The Joker, AJG and JC went to The Patch where 1,000s of Gulls, c 200 Common Terns and an adult Black Tern were feeding but no Caspian Tern.