22nd April 2017

Headed down to Rodden Hive with Lewis this afternoon to try and finally defeat my number one bogey bird: kentish plover. Parked up at Langton Herring and walked down the track to the fleet seeing my first whitethroat of the year on the way. After scanning for a while, I picked up a large flock of Dunlin, Sanderling and Ringed Plovers. Scanning through it was near-impossible given the distance, heat-haze, and the fact that the flock frequently took the the air. After a while, I noticed a group of Ringed Plovers closer along the opposite shore. On the first scan I picked up the Kentish Plover! It was hard to see through the heat haze, but it clearly had the right pattern on the underparts. I handed the scope to Lewis who couldn't see it, and when I looked again all I could see were Ringed Plovers. I was starting to question if I'd actually seen it when I got it back under the scope. Thankfully it wandered closer to the shore line and once the heat-haze died down, we had good but distant views of the bird, now clearly a male. A few Common Terns was all else of note.

Kentish Plover - Rodden Hive

While we were walking back to the car, we saw the report of a red-rumped swallow at Lodmoor, another bird which has eluded me several times now. There was no further sign when we arrived and there were few hirundines around so we headed straight over to Radipole in the hope of relocating it. However, while at Lodmoor we did notice the swan goose which has been up and down this stretch of coast recently.

escaped swan goose - Lodmoor

There were no hirundines on the main lake at Radipole so we headed to the top of the Buddleia Loop. From here, we could scope large numbers of Swallows and Sand Martins at the north end of the reserve, but no luck with the red-rumped. A single House Martin was a year tick for me and on the walk back we had 2 Cetti's Warbler and a showy Reed Warbler. The usual hooded merg was still on the lake also.

The Radipole hooded merganser