A cold damp spring day at Dunge

We travelled down the A20 to Dunge again today and pulled into the reserve on arrival as the gates were open early. We scanned for the Crane without success but did get a year tick with two Sedge Warblers sitting up and calling from the bramble in front of us.

A two hour sea watch gave us three more ticks with first a single Whimbrel, then a distant Arctic Skua and then two Common Tern. A good movement of common Scoters with a few passengers in the form of Teal and Shoveler amongst the flocks but we missed the only Velvet Scoter of the day by a couple of minutes.
Porpoise and Gannets were present along with lots of Sandwich Tern and Great Crested Grebe.
A peregrine sat on the pylons behind us and several Wheatear were noted along the beach.

Back in the car we drove down to Dengemarsh and quickly found the Crane in a distant field but enjoyed decent scope views of the youngster.

The Crane (just above the middle Swan..honest)

On the way home the Jims offered to find me a Little Owl at Wanstead which they did without difficulty so I repaid the gesture by finding them the Common Redstart on Alex. We of course enjoyed the rarest bird of the day with the Mandarin which caused a storm this morning for the Wanstead patch listers.

Little Owl

Common Redstart

Year list now 199
(with 7 ticks today I'm chasing 18 more to equal my best April total of 217)