July 31st

We were out early this morning in an attempt to avoid the threatened hot temperatures. We walked along the seawall from Reculver to Coldharbour and the most interesting event of the morning was finding a freshly dead juvenile Sandwich Tern on the beach. I always look at dead birds in the hope of finding that they are ringed and in this case I wasn't disappointed. There were quite a few Sandwich Terns about this morning, both adult and juvenile, so I expected the bird I had found to have been ringed in the Medway where they breed - but it wasn't! It had been ringed somewhere in the Netherlands and had a Vogeltrekstation Arnhem-Holland ring attached to its leg. I have entered the information on the BTO ringing database and await the details of when and where it was ringed.

Dead juvenile Dutch ringed Sandwich Tern

We had an enjoyable walk and saw a good range of species including 250 Starlings, 3 Pied Wagtails, 54 Linnets, 2 Grey Herons, 12 Little Egrets, 24 Common Scoter flying E, 1 Redshank, 21 Sandwich Terns, 1 Dunlin, 3 Mediterranean Gulls, 41 Sanderling, 31 Ringed Plovers, 12 Turnstone, 1 male Stonechat, 4 Yellow Wagtails, 4 Whitetroats, 18 Oystercatchers, 2 Kestrels, 5 Swallows, 4 Common Sandpipers, 5 Gannets flying E, 1 Whimbrel flying W, 8 Goldfinches and 1 Green Sandpiper.