We left Maidstone this morning at 7:30am in thick fog,which didn`t completely clear until we were almost at Dungeness.The remainder of our visit was in pleasantly bright conditions.

Our first stop was to look at the southern end of the ARC Pit - birds of note - G W Egret 1,Goosander 1(red head),Goldeneye 3,Lapwing 100 and Gadwall 200+.

We then looked at the sea from the fishing boats between 9:30-10:15.Although bird activity was rather quite we did see 40 Red-throated Divers all of which flew west,along with 4 Guillemots,3 Kittiwakes,2 Common Scotor and 1 Oystercatcher.Sitting on the sea was 1 R T Diver and at least 60 Great Crested Grebes.

We had lunch at the northern end of Burrowes Pit,adding to our lists,one more Goldeneye and two more G W Egrets.

Heading back to Maidstone we stopped off  for a while at Scotney,seeing a distant Long-tailed Duck,100s of Wigeon and Pochard and singles of Redshank and Marsh Harrier.From  there we then cut across the marsh and saw the Bewick`s Swan flock which held 39 adult birds,but only 5 young birds.

In all I saw 53 species - Tree Sparrows were seen at the farm feeding station on Walland marsh and on the RSPB reserve,by the track entrance.

Jeff Wynn,Pete Tyler,Bob Bland,Trevor Graves and Trevor Maynard,accompanied me.