Visit by North West Surrey RSPB Local Group.

Weekend Walk at Cliffe Pools Saturday 29th January 2022

I bumped into this group a couple of weeks ago and they promised me a copy of their report.

Lapwing.

The Long Walk to Lunch

Saturday the 29th January saw eleven members gather at RSPB Cliffe Pools for a chance to explore this fine reserve. We set off on what I had suggested as a two part walk with the first part, around the eastern side of the reserve, to take about two, maybe two and a half hours and therefore no need to take lunch. In the event, I had forgotten just how big the reserve is and this first part took about four hours with a few 'amusing' remarks from our Group Leader such as, 'should I have taken a torch for this'?

We started off overlooking Radar Pool with good numbers of pochard, tufted duck, wigeon and (a theme for Cliffe) a good few little grebe. We also knew that a rare North American vagrant called a ring-necked duck had been reported and I soon latched on to what I thought was the bird in question and we spent a few minutes studying the bird. At this point, I scanned further round and picked up two more potential suspects and began to doubt my original ID. Female pochard share many facial characteristics and ultimately, couldn't be sure so this one goes down as possibly/maybe/probably not!

Moving further round, we encountered many lapwing and whilst I didn't count them, a couple of thousand wouldn't be an unreasonable guess. Other wildfowl included scaup, pintail, shoveler (good numbers of those), mallard, gadwall, teal and shelduck. We were a bit short on waders at this point but a dozen or so snipe on one island in Black Barn Pools was a welcome sight along with a lone avocet. The long walk was also a windy one which made keeping telescopes steady a bit of a challenge but also kept the small birds down. We did ultimately encounter stonechat, meadow pipit and skylark among others. Two cormorant lying down in a sheep field probably rates as the oddest sighting of the day.

Having lost four members at lunch (bit careless but it really was a long and windy road), the remainder set out on part two, a look at Alpha Pool which involved (oh dear) a long walk through a farm, across a working sand extraction pit and quite a way alongside a high concrete wall. If that doesn't sound too attractive, the walk nonetheless did take us past Alpha pool, and then to the Thames where some exposed mud gave us curlew, black tailed godwit, knot and a small, wheeling flock of dunlin.

In all, we saw 54 species, added a good few steps towards (OK in excess of) that 10000 a day target and enjoyed a blustery but beautiful day in North Kent.

Neil Bew