Monday 13 August 2012

Oare again

For every one wader at Rainham, Oare Marshes has about 250, possibly more. It's a great spot, with a healthy scrape just next to the estuary, a convenient place to come and sit out the high tide. If you time your visits right, you'll get waders flying in (or out) pretty much constantly, and some relatively close feeding action - the single lane road runs right alongside, so you can get pretty good views, and unlike Minsmere, which was utterly dead on Sunday, there will always be something of interest on the pools. Demonstrating this very neatly, the first Wader I saw was a Wood Sandpiper, before I'd even stopped the car. Black-tailed Godwits everywhere, Ringed Plover, and lots of Redshank too - a raucous affair. No biggie though - easily the best wader I've here was a Sharp-tailed Sandpiper about four or five years ago, it has the distinction of being the first bird I ever twitched. I had no idea which one it was of course, but plenty of people (and I mean plenty) were on hand to point my telescope in the right direction. Oh the retrospective embarrassment..... I also tried to twitch a Tufted Puffin here, the though the less said about that the better - a large and chaotic DIP, though I would at least have been able to identify it myself this time. Unless a regular Puffin had been there.....




7 comments:

  1. A great reserve. A little further east and you would have been at my patch, Reculver. Hopefully this place will turn up something good this Autumn. Nice shots.

    ReplyDelete
  2. What Camera/Lens combination do you use?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm fairly privileged to use very good kit, although course I do work very hard to be able to afford it. Full details here: http://www.justbirdphotos.com/about.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. Lovely spot, Oare. Went over last week on my way to visit my parents in Margate. Saw probably the same Wood Sandpiper and a Ruff in the water close by the road. Managed to find a Turtle Dove too. Best bird I've seen here is a White-rumped Sandpiper a couple of years ago. Need to get down there in the coming weeks (or anywhere for that matter) to distract me from my current post-Olympic blues!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Very nice kit, I'm currently looking at investing in a telephoto, either the 500mm or 600mm canon f4, I just can't decide whether I wan't to pay for the extra 100mm or not, logic says I should, but the weight difference says don't lol

    ReplyDelete
  6. As it happens I am selling my 500 f4.... the mk 1 IS lens. Get back to me via my website contact page if interested.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Love the wind-blown feathers on the third shot down, although the bird's expression looks a little squinty and world-weary (probably due to its depressing life as a sand-eating wader).

    ReplyDelete