WHAT A START

what a start to the week with text from craig saying a cattle erget at grove,finishing work could not come soon enough within mintues of arriving i added cattle erget to my valley list making it 202 but not a lifer as i have seen three in kent already for once i had not brought my camera so it was phoned scoped

not my best but in the bag,today was a different story with a RBA message saying a slavonian grebe on main lake so i headed to marsh hide and add spotted red shank for the year

couple greylags flew past and i headed back to the car and headed to stoddy meeting brendan in the car park,heading up to the lake and put my scope up bingo straight on it my first summer plumage slav in the valley what a start to the week still a few more days till the weekend what will be next.......

CATCH UP TIME

catch up time after a woeful time with the camera of late,and getting a new car i finally sorted myself out,took a few shots over my mums to sort the camera out i looks like i ironed the issues out,archie was a great take subject if he kept still long enough

and a redpoll shot

well back to birding, this weekend was really was going be a good half day on saturday and sunday,it was going to plan meeting everyone on the ramp as norm and wandering around until we got to harrisons where i was watching the wheatear and everyone moved on,so i walked up to middle drove and checked on the ponies to cut a long story short i was there rest of the morning and catch up with everyone at the end of the session only photo taken was a reed bunting

sunday
meeting martyn at the crack of dawn to minus 1 and a heavy frost and mist was not a good start everything was in fine voice sedges singing

white throats scathing away,couple of nightingales calling,very quiet morning only adding cuckoo to the valley list with two males calling of and on,back to the ramp for a raptor watch was very slow with a dark phase buzzard drifting over,then things pick up with five hobbies four more buzzards and martyn finding a swift,then a little egert flushed a whimbrel 122no for me this year

while sitting outside at home i picked out a red kite nice garden tick

went back down stoddy with jackie for a walk seeing little owl normal spot

BLACK REDSTART

as there has been a few about and getting zero birding time this week,i dug into my 500+ photos from last year taken on dover beach and pulled out a few more of this very tame juv bird

CAMERA NIGHTMARE CONT.......

my camera nightmares carry on for some strange reason i cannot get my exposure right on my camera, it me not the camera so turn my luck on digi videoing instead,i did take a few shots with the camera still not happy with the results,with a bit of sun it might do the trick overwise it be back to basics

COMMON CRANE

common crane at marsh hide today so it was a quick dash for it as before heading of to my mums,a bit far out but a crane a crane