Christmas at Castle Water and Pett Pools

This week the weather has started to turn milder and the ice starting to thaw from Tuesday. Thursday -  Christmas eve Frank's afternoon walk to avoid the mud and the rubbish from the Country Park was to the hide at Castle Water from the view point. Very little except the usual ducks at the viewpoint, but the Commorant roost was starting to fill up.

In the surrounding fields there must have been a couple of thousand Lapwings, several hundred Curlew and a Mixed Gull colony of 500.

and 100 Coote were on the bank

From the hide 30 - 40 Mute Swans, another 100 Coote, Mallard, Wigeon, Teal, Gadwall no sign of Pintail or the Smew. After 30 minutes headed back to see the Gulls, Lapwings, etc take flight due to a couple of walkers entering the fields - an impressive sight. Back at the view point no sign of the Bitterns, but a Barn Owl put in a good show quartering over the reed beds.

Christmas morning a biting northerly wind, but I managed an hour down at Pett Pools, the usual ducks, a couple of Redshanks, nothing on the sea, a possible Tundra Bean Goose, but probably a dirty necked Greylag in the distance, a Marsh Harrier with a cream head came over and flushed another from the bushes - 2 quartering together and then the cream headed landed in a tree on the far side of the middle pool.

Terrential rain on Boxing Day but on the 28th got out for a walk from Pett Pools to Rye and back with Frank, of note 2 Red Throated Diver on the sea at the end of the wall, plenty of Turnstone, Dunlin, Grey Plover and Oystercatcher on the beach, at the Long Pit usual ducks, good views of a Great Spotted Woodpecker and Kestrel, by the barns a female Sparrow Hawk sat on the wires and near Oyster Creek a Common Buzzard was high over.