Kent Ornithological Society 
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A new species for Kent - Geoffrey Burton
Seemingly trivial decisions sometimes have unexpected consequences. Spring on the county’s north coast can be a quiet time and, by late May, very quiet. A few of these quiet days at Swalecliffe and I was ready for a change. In this case a very modest one as I visited the Tankerton slopes just a mile or so to the west. It was no surprise that the sea was devoid of birds and no migrants could be found on the slopes or in the castle grounds. After little more than an hour at about 7 a.m., I was ready to move on. However, as I walked across the buttercup and daisy strewn slope, I flushed a couple of Linnets and a third bird with them that seemed slightly bigger, longer winged and an overall sandy colour. Fortunately, it landed on the roof of one of the beach huts and my ‘scope was soon trained upon Kent’s first Trumpeter Finch! I quickly noted its overall sandy plumage, a very heavy pinky-red bill that was dark towards the tip, the long projection of the blackish primaries with a shortish tail and short fleshy-red legs and then began the task of alerting the slumbering masses of Kent birders. The bird fed on the grassy slopes and in the weedy areas between the beach huts. It would regularly perch on the roofs of these huts and even on top of the large houses behind the slopes.
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A new species for Kent - J Mills
On Sunday 7th November 2004 I received a phone call from my friend Dave Dowell advising me of a grey shrike he'd seen in his area, "would I like to come over and have a look".
I met up with him an hour or so later and we set off. He said that the bird had been reported to him by a friend of his who farmed in the area and was on his land. We parked up on the farmland and set off towards the river Stour.
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A new species for Britain - David Walker
It was with very little expectation of the events that I strolled to the seawatch hide on the morning of Monday May 5th 2003. After 45 minutes all I had seen was an Arctic Skua so in desperation I had begun looking at a large gathering of gulls feeding along the surf line. After a few minutes I noticed an unfamiliar gull flying towards me, initially about 300 yards away. It had an upper wing pattern somewhat similar to that of several first-summer Mediterranean Gulls Larus melanocephalus present in the area but this was clearly something very different, much bigger, and as it flew by I was convinced that it had a red base to the bill. I almost instantly recognised the bird as an Audouin’s Gull and exclaimed to the one person nearby that he should “get on this bird”. In stunned silence we watched the bird as it circled around the hide and then above the power station before it flew east towards the fishing boats and out of sight.
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A new species for Britain - Carol and Tim Inskipp
At Dungeness on 15th October 1983 the wind was exceptionally strong, increasing from SW force 6-7 at 07h00 to WSW 10 at 12h00 and S 10-11 at 18h00. There was complete cloud cover throughout the day. There were few birds visible anywhere that day so, in the early afternoon, I went to attempt a seawatch from the relative shelter of the fishing boats on the east side of the point. It was very cold and virtually no birds were moving in the excessively windy conditions.