** Rye Reserve. **

Yesterday (15th June)I took am annual trip to Rye reserve to look for one of my top 5 birds and after about 45 minutes I saw 3 of them, the bird species in question is the LITTLE TERN. It is a cracking little bird. The other bird which are nesting in good numbers are Common Terns

and Black Headed Gulls,

but before I got to the hide I saw my first WHEATEAR of the year, it was a female. Later on I was watching the birds when the warden came in, he was doing the rounds putting leaflets in the hides and a B/H/Gulls swooped in and stole another B/H/Gulls chick, not a site I wanted to see, but that's nature. I was glad that he came in, I was then able to tell him what bird I saw a little earlier, this was about 1 hour after I saw the Little Terns, this bird came from the far opposite end, it was feeding as marsh terns do, it was a BLACK TERN. I couldn't believe it, I haven't seen one of these for quite a few years. The warden was pleased that I saw one because then he knew there was a few around, he also said that they recently had a White Winged Black Tern pass through. There was some waders there, Oystercatcher, Ringed Plover, Redshank, 

Avocet, and Lapwing.There was a Great Crested Grebe that spent all of it's time snoozing, the other duck was Tufted Duck, and a couple of Shelduck baby sitting a lot of ducklings, as they do. The other birds I saw was: Coot, Moorhen, Cormorant which I took a couple of pictures of while in flight, but up in the bright sky they came out in what looks like silhouette 

Herring Gull, Common Gull, Carrion Crow, Starling, Wood Pigeon, Pied Wagtail. Picking my "Bird of the Day was going to be easy but seeing the Black Tern made it a little harder, but because I came looking for one particular species, it has to be the ** LITTLE TERN. **