RSPB Coach Trip to Elmley, Isle of Sheppey, 5th February  2017

I joined the RSPB coach at Bray Wick on a damp and unpromising morning. However, Elmley on a grey, bone-chiller of a dank day is a price well worth paying for the sights it offers. The expanse of unwelcoming marshy land greeted us with an initial sense of emptiness, but slowly revealed its many and wonderful secrets during the next few hours.

The first clue was a Marsh Harrier seen soon after the coach had left the main road on the two-mile run to the centre on the winding, exposed track. We glimpsed grazing Wigeon, Coots in the gullies, and Lapwings resting among the tussocks.  We were greeted by a veritable flock of House Sparrows and Goldfinches at the car park feeders. The oak trees near the visitor centre yielded a Little Owl, but we were soon distracted by the swirling panic of a sizeable flock of Lapwings, Golden Plovers and Starlings. It was hard to spot the little falcon among the swirling mass. We found it again on a fence post a few hundred yards down the track – a lovely Merlin. Marsh Harrier sightings became frequent, with several different individuals quartering the landscape. There were at least three rather lazy Buzzards too, and a couple of active Kestrels. A male Hen Harrier passed close in front of us at the central hide, but was soon lost as a silhouette in the distant landscape.

The pools were a quiet, probably because the Swale Estuary was a mass of inviting mud at low tide. From the screen on the wall we could see a wide variety of waders: Dunlin, Knot, Bar-tailed Godwit, Grey Plover, Oystercatcher etc. What at first looked like a distant line of foam near the tideway turned out to be a line of hundreds of Avocets. The other white forms were Shelduck, but there were Wigeon, Teal and Pintails too.

Curiously we saw very few geese: a family of four Brent Geese was feeding in the marsh, and there was nothing of interest among the handful of Greylags and Brent Geese. The smaller birds were a bit more of a challenge in the dim light: there were a couple of Skylarks in song, and we also found a few Meadow Pipits, a pair of Reed Buntings and a Stonechat

Later, as we returned towards the farm, we watched an area of short-cropped grazing which was covered in feeding birds: among the many Lapwings, Golden Plovers and Starlings were a few Bar-tailed Godwits and a couple of Pheasants, but also a surprisingly large number of Stock Doves. A Hare decided to lope through the middle of this throng, the birds hopping aside rather indignantly as he passed. Suddenly he stopped and fixed his nose to a spot in the ground and remained that way for some time. He appeared to be testing a scent-mark. Some while later and further on I watched a pair of them, the smaller male hopefully trailing a female. Spring was clearly not far away after all.

At the edge of the yard we spent time scanning the landscape towards the road, checking for more raptor activity. Suddenly three Short-eared Owls rose up to challenge one of the harriers. We had superb views.  Shortly afterwards we watched a flock of large waders approach from a great distance to land just a hundred metres from us. A flock of perhaps a hundred Curlews was not a bad finale.

Ray Reedman