Highlights were: Red Throated Diver, Great Northern Diver, Twite, Avocet, Peregrine, Merlin, Spotted Redshank, Kittiwake, Water Rail, Marsh harrier, Red-Breasted Goose, Kingfisher, Greenshank and Bullfinch.
On parking up in our usuall place we noticed there was a pair of red-breasted mergansers close in, we enjoyed nice views of them fishing:
Male:
Female doing a woodpecker impression (or should that be waterpecker?):
Other Merganser shots:
As usual there were lots of reed buntings about:
Male:
Female: 
got some nice shots of the plentiful little egrets aswel:
There were lots of very flighty black-tailed godwits but found one that was a little more friendly:
A guy (sorry didn't catch your name but thankyou!!) mentioned to us that he had found a twite in with a small flock of linnit. Twite would be a new bird for all of us so went looking for it. Took a while, but we had a small 'finchy thing' flying away from us that had a funny call (I didn't know twite call,until today, but this sounded different), and later on the same bird flew past calling again and I picked it up once it had landed on the top of a bush. It gave fantastic views in the scope. Our first TWITE (life list 229).
For lunch we sat on the sea wall and did some sea watching. This turned out to be very successful seeing goldeneye, slavonian grebe, eider, a distant great northern diver (life list 230) moving west, and a red-throated diver on the sea at first moving west then it took flight in the same direction.
Photos from the seawatch:
Red-throated diver records:
grebe comparison, showing 2 GCGrebes on the right and a Slavonian on the left:
One of the many brent geese:
After lunch we saw a spotted redshank and a guy callled Martin poinited out a water rail. Not long after this he found a kittiwake on fishtail(I think) lagoon on the water amongst black-headed gulls which was very surprising. When watching this a peregrine flew over. Also from this spot a female merlin could be seen on the salt marsh.
Spotted Redshank:
When walking round to try and find the red-breasted goose we stumbled upon an avocet feeding which was another great surprise:
We found the goose and enjoyed good but distant views:
when watching it a marsh harrier flew over, my first seen in the keyhaven area but second in the last few days.
We got lost walking back the road way but it did mean we saw GSWoodpecker, Sparrowhawk and Great tit to add to our tally for the day.
After getting lost we arrived at barton golf course a little late (after 5pm) and it was poor weather with several people saying they hadn't been showing well and needless to say we didn't see them. Did get some consolation with a buzzard bringing the total species seen to 83!!
Really was a great day and leaves me with 116 spp for the year so far.
Keeeeeep birding,
Dan
3 comments:
R T Diver, Brent Geese and Slav Grebe all whilst your having your lunch, they're all lifers for me!
Im jelous!
Keep up the good work!
Billy
Brent and the Slav are relatively easy there in the winter months but was only my second R T Diver and my first on in hants, as it was self-found aswel I was very excited.
Cheers Bily,
Dan
Hi,
I think i met you once with Simon Ingram last year at Lakeside trying to see Jack Snipes, its taken me this long to find out who you were...
cool site! with some quality photos!! check mine out:
the3birdersdiary.blogspot.com. if you've got msn heres my addy ginge_meister@hotmail.co.uk, look forward from hearing from you.
Ashley
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