Kent Ornithological Society 
November 19th 2023 - KOS Field Trip to Dungeness
Ray O' Reilly, KOS Field Trip Organiser, writes:- "Yesterday, 19th November 2023, we carried out our monthly KOS Field Outing once again to Dungeness and it proved to be a fruitful venue.
14 Western Cattle Egrets were in the paddocks near the Hanson Hide Car Park.
(We should really pause and draw breath at this simple sentence. 14 Western Cattle Egrets in the UK in winter were unheard of a mere few years ago….)
A Marsh Harrier, Common Goldeneye and a European Green Woodpecker were added to our daily list - that would eventually total 65 Species.
We walked the Willow Trail seeing a Great White Egret, Common Kingfisher, Common Chiffchaff and Common Reed Bunting.
The sun shone when we reached Burrows Pit and fantastic views of a Black-throated Diver were enjoyed, with two nearby Great Northern Divers and a Slavonian Grebe as well! This gave us three members of this enigmatic family of birds on the same piece of inland water, this was top drawer Winter birding in November.
A walk around the reserve gave us our second look of the day at a Great Bittern with Common Buzzard, Goldcrest and Common Snipe being added to our daily tally.
Lunch was taken at #dungeness bird observatory and we met and chatted to the warden, David Walker. After lunch we walked around the moat and, as is often the case these days, the wind got up and was blowing hard so we headed to the Fishing Boats for an afternoon seawatch. Northern Gannets were numerous spearing into the sea to catch fish having located then in the heaving waves using their incredible eyesight. How do they do that? Black-legged Kittiwakes, Common Scoter and a total of 19 Little Gulls were feeding along the shoreline giving very close views. Our final effort was a short walk up the shingle beach where we saw many Ruddy Turnstone with a single Sanderling providing our splendid final bird of the day. A wonderful day of winter birding at “Dunge”.
Thanks as usual to DBO andto Bruce Rolls for his image of the Great Norther Diver."
Ray O' Reilly