I have frequently visited Shellness, on the Isle of Sheppey, both to watch birds, including scarce migrants at the right times of the year,but also to photograph birds as good numbers of shorebirds frequently come close enough to get some nice shots. Today I paid another visit, this time with photographer Michael Wong who had contacted me to ask if I could help him find good bird photography location in Southeast England. With a fair weather forecast I could think of no better place to get away from it all and get some good bird photography opportunities than Shellness, particularly as we could expect a flypast of hundreds of Oystercatchers giving us a chance to get some interesting flight shots.

We were successful in this as well as enjoying a nice morning in a wild location, photographing a number of different species as well as seeing a wide variety of birds including Mediterranean Gull, a couple of late Brent Geese, returning Barn Swallows and my first Sandwich Terns of the year. 

Driving down the rutted dirt track we arrived at Shellness earlier than we thought we needed to be but were actually right on the moment with just a few minutes to get ready before the Oystercatchers began to fly past. At this time of the year the numbers are lower than in late summer, autumn and winter but with around 4-500 birds it was still an impressive sight.

This flight of Oystercatchers, from their feeding areas on the muflats to their high tide roost on a shingle/shell ridge is very predictable and one of the most enjoyable examples of bird behaviour to watch. You can see the sort of thing we saw in this video I made at Shellness in autumn.

Of course although the numbers of Oystercatchers are the most numerous birds here, there are plenty of other birds too. Today these included Common Ringed Plover, Ruddy Turnstone, Eurasian Curlew, Dunlin and Grey Plover.

We walked to the end of the shingle ridge and found a nice place to sit, looking inland across the salt marsh. Although there was a breeze it was fairly warm and was a pleasant place to observe Common Redshank and a pair of Oystercatchers courting each other and feeding near by.

Enjoying a bit of sunshine from here I was able to spot a couple of Swallows, two Mediterranean Gulls circling high and calling, a female Marsh Harrier, a couple of Little Egrets and a pair of late departing Brent Geese.

Trying to get good flight photos was fun but we also wanted to try and get some good shots of birds on the ground, particularly Common Ringed Plovers which we had failed to capture in flight. Walking back to where we had started the tide had come all the way in with small groups of Common Ringed Plover and Ruddy Turnstones loafing around on the beach. Very slowly, bit by bit, we got closer to them and sat down next to some groynes, waiting for some of them to come close. Patience was rewarded eventually with some nice close encounters with these birds although some heat shimmer coming off of the beach made it tricky to get the very best images.

I have posted more photos of this Common Ringed Plover here – Ringed Plover photo gallery.

I have a soft spot for Turnstones and although I have a huge number of photos of these cheeky birds I found it hard not to take a few more, especially when they came so close.

A harsh calling alerted me to the presence of Sandwich Terns, which I quickly spotted although photos will have to wait for another day. On our way back we made a quick stop on some grazing marsh where we were able to get some record shots of some smart Mediterranean Gulls, foraging for worms.

All in all it was a very pleasant day of relaxing in a lovely place, mostly without other people disturbing us, and some great observations of some nice birds. Now there are a lot of good photos to process, not to mention a lot of bad ones to delete!