Greetings from Sandwich Bay

I've swapped the north downs of Surrey for the flatlands of east Kent for a week, booking myself into - no, not rehab - but Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory. And guess what...it's clean, it's modern, I've got my own lockable room and it's got wi-fi!! Just like being in London...

And what a friendly, lively place it is. The only dampener was a two hour thunderstorm that drove most of us to embark on a marathon tea drinking session mid-afternoon.

I took things at a leisurely pace, paying my respects to the Lizard Orchis (which were largely over), Bedstraw Broomrapes (even more over) and Marsh Helleborines (just a few coming out). An evening Barn Owl was the birding highlight and I had several micro moth ticks. A most satisfactory first day.

My only problem is that Blogger doesn't seem to want to upload images, so you'll have to imagine the picture of the Lizard Orchid that I had lined up.

Comments

Josh Jenkins Shaw said…
Hi Steve, I reccomend going to 'The Haven' and netting around the Alders, you should have a good chance of catching Staphmopoda pedella, one of my favourite micros and classed as 'Local'. Its a little cracker.

Josh
12 June 2011 at 12:52
Mark G. Telfer said…
Hi Steve, I have only been beetling once at Sandwich and it happens to have been 12 years ago today (12th June 1999). We parked at Chequers Inn, Deal, a couple of km south of the obs and found 4 of a big black click-beetle in the rough of the golf course which turned out to be the RDB1 Melanotus punctolineatus. I had a lot of other beetle ticks and then ... 'p-rr-rr-rr' ... panic! Got my bins out of the bottom of my rucksack, and got them onto a Bee-eater!!! A great day. Good luck with your week. Mark
12 June 2011 at 17:10
Steve Gale said…
Thanks chaps, with luck a pan-listing boost!
13 June 2011 at 21:33
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