A Diver At Dover And An Owl At Oare.

With a day of sunshine promised I decided I needed to make the most of it so inspired by the local sightings and pictures on flickr etc through the week it was Dover docks for my first port of call ( excuse the pun).Having paid for two hours parking the Great Northern Diver that had been about all week was my first target especially as this would be a life tick. I crossed the swing bridge and walked to the life boat station where I knew it had been,  here I found a close in Guillemot, good views were had but the life boat roared in to action and the Guillemot dived surfacing a fair distance away. Making my way back to the swing bridge a smiling engineer informed me that it was now out of action for the day and a long walk around the inner harbour was required to get back,  as Victor Meldrew would say..I don't believe it!!. Anyway I was soon back and disappointed that my car park ticket had been eaten into.  Setting off on to the pier I bumped into Mark Chidwick and Adam Faiers,  here we spotted a Black Throated Diver and a few more Guillemots .We soon reached the end of the pier with no sign of the Great Northern however Mark eventually located it across the other side of the basin.  Another route march was required if I wanted  a photo  so with time ticking away on my ticket it was best foot forward all the way.  Phil Parker joined us,  we were soon the other side enjoying reasonable views of the bird,  it must look magnificent in summer plumage. Back to the car with minutes to spare my next stop was Oare . Arriving just after midday I met Steve Ashton who put me on to the Great White Egret.  It stood grand in the sunshine allowing a few shots. This was my third life tick of the day.  Phil Parker arrived and joined the camera action.  There has been a Short Eared Owl hunting most days for a while now so I hoped to catch up with it,  Steve said it had a tussle with a Male Hen Harrier earlier,  shame I missed it.  We stayed in the sunshine where there was plenty to see and fire the camera at including two Kingfishers, Knot, Lapwing, Avocet, Barwits, Goldfinches, Snipe,etc.  As the sun started to drop Phil went and found Twite along the sea front and Steve and I were joined by Andy Hills.  We kept ourselves amused trying to capture flight shots of Knot and Lapwing.  Just as we thought the Owl was a no show,  Andy picked it up flying across the east flood. It gave distant views as it quartered the marshes, sadly  a little to far for the camera  but well worth the wait capping off an eventful day.