06/08/2021

Adult Common Tern past the hide this morning

Near gale force SW wind this morning gave hope of an exciting sea watch, but it was not to be with just a trickle of birds through, though the first Black Terns of the autumn were nice.

05.45-11.30 thanks to AJG, JA, JY, CP and PT for  collating the numbers

Common Scoter: 9E      12W

Fulmar: 2E     3W

Balearic Shearwater: 2E      1W

Shearwater: sp: 2E

Gannet: 17E      389W

Cormorant: 12 around

Dunlin: 2W

Knot: 2W

Whimbrel: 1W

Kittiwake: 5E       16W     

Mediterranean Gull: 2W juveniles

Sandwich Tern: c30 around

Little Tern: 7W   flock of 6 and a singleton

Common Tern: c200W

Black Tern: 12W   (11ads + 1Juvenile)

Great Skua: 1E

Arctic Skua: 1W

Swift: 2 out

Juvenile Common Terns past the fishing boats this afternoon

14.00-15.30

Fulmar: 2W

Gannet: 22W

Cormorant: 14E

Kittiwake: 2W

Sandwich tern: 4W

Common Tern: 14W

Swift: 34 out

Swift moving out to sea at the fishing boats this afternoon

A Glossy Ibis flew over Burrowes late morning per PT 

The ARC was carpeted with Sand Martins today and the 2 Garganey are still present among the 100s of eclipse duck there, though they are very difficult to see without any meaningful shelter especially in todays strong winds, as the back of screen hide has now been completely removed making it virtually useless in anything other than mere zephyr of a breeze. Burrowes is just as bad with Makepiece and Firth hide still closed and only Dennis's hide in use, the viewpoints at Firth and Scott are just window dressing providing absolutely zero shelter, any birds that maybe in front of them flush as soon as you are spotted no matter how stealthily you move onto the viewpoints. The ramp from Dengemarsh Hide was removed a couple of weeks ago but no attempt has been made to replace it yet, I'm sure a temporary repair could have been done, after all it only took a couple of hours for the screen hide to barricaded  at that the start of Covid.

The RSPB has a corporate structure and one assumes a health and safety policy, which I'm sure would state that all hides should be checked at least weekly if not daily, if that is the case what happened during the 18 months the hides were all closed due to the pandemic? I'm sure that the problems with the hides did not all occur in the week prior to the 19th July! In fact with all the hides shut it should have been a very straightforward task to keep them all up to scratch. Dungeness was once a flagship reserve but is now a pale shadow of what it once was, little wonder so few people now visit the reserve.