The Isle of Sheppey Magical Mystery Tour

5th March 2019

The Isle of Sheppey is a very popular place to visit during the winter months especially if you have raptors in mind, with the usual hotspots being Elmley and Harty Marshes, but today the plan was to conduct a recce of the remainder of the island. With no prior knowledge as to what we might encounter we set off to explore the north and east coasts starting at Sheerness and then taking in Minster, Warden Point, Leysdown and culminating in Shellness.

Shellness was the only marshland site and although we did see some Marsh Harriers they were very distant, and the Short-eared Owls appeared suddenly over the sea wall and flew out of sight. There was, however, a flock of several hundred Brent Geese which decided to leave their feeding grounds and fly on to the sea. Sadly there was no sign of the 200 White-fronted Geese that had been reported earlier in the morning.

The remaining locations were all beach sites with many of the usual suspects. There was a handful of Oystercatchers which insisted on hiding behind the brow of the shingle making life a bit difficult, but also obliged with a couple of fly-bys.

The Ringed Plovers were confined to Warden Point and were associating with the Sanderlings.

With this sort of habitat Turnsones were well represented, but were mainly sitting around at roost instead of scurrying round at the water's edge.

But the stars of the show today were the Sanderlings which were present in high numbers at all of the beach sites. As usual, they were fairly confiding allowing a few shots of individuals to be taken.

Unfortunately they were often spooked by dog walkers, but which did facilitate some flight shots.

But the main difference today was that they all seemed to have fed well and somewhat uncharacteristically gathered in large groups for a snooze, allowing some rather rare static shots to be taken. Spot the Dunlin intruder.

Well, a very different approach to our usual visits to Sheppey but very enjoyable, and we now have some other good photographic sites on our Kent list.