A few days ago I made an afternoon, followed by a morning, visit to Oare Marshes, near Faversham, Kent with Shuki Raviv from Israel.In mid July Oare is usually a good place to see a variety of the first migrating waders in breeding plumage as they head south from their breeding grounds and we were not disappointed with large numbers of Black-tailed Godwits displaying a wide variety of plumages for us to study at close range. I had read reports of Spotted Redshank recently seen at Oare and after observing many other species we found a single Spotted Redshank in almost complete breeding plumage – excellent. Other waders seen were large numbers of Pied Avocet, 10 Dunlin, 1 Golden Plover, 1 Bar-tailed Godwit, 3 Whimbrel, 20-30 Eurasian Curlew, large numbers of Common Redshank, 1 Common Sandpiper, 8 Green Sandpipers, 40+ Northern Lapwing and several Ruff in partial breeding plumage.

Oare is also an excellent place to see Water Rail and I was very happy to be able to show Shuki several of these birds with their fluffy, little black chicks as they skulked around in the reeds at the edges of the water. Finding the birds that make the reeds their home was a little tricky due to windy weather but over the course of our time at Oare we got several good views of Bearded Reedling, Reed Warbler, Sedge Warbler and a Cetti’s Warbler as well as several Reed Buntings.

Living in Thailand I do not get much opportunity to study Gulls, a really tough group of birds to know well, so I was interested to try and spot the Bonaparte’s Gull that had been reported over several weeks at this location. This bird has made Oare its home over the last 3 years and I have seen it several times over the course of this time and it was satisfying to eventually spot it among the Black-headed Gulls on the mud along the Swale. Lesser Black-backed, Great Black-backed and Herring Gulls were also present.

Having seen lots of water birds we also spent a little time looking for passerines in some nearby scrubland. Whitethroat, Linnet, Goldfinch, Dunnock, Blackbird and Robin were all expected but Lesser Whitethroat was a little bit of a surprise. Great Spotted Woodpecker and Green Woodpecker were also nice birds to add to our list before we headed off to South Wales.