Cliffe, Kent: Nightingales, cuckoos, marsh harrier, kestrel....

A great trip to the RSPB reserve at Cliffe in Kent today, we heard lots of nightingales and saw and heard three times  a cuckoo (or three separate cuckoos?). We also saw a magnificent, vast marsh harrier, with distinct white stripes on his upper wings,  a wonderful view of a female kestrel, a tern, two nesting Mediterranean gulls and a few oyster catchers. We also heard a Cetti's Warbler, lesser white throat and reed Warbler, saw white throats, a great (white) egret , little egret, swifts, swallows, orange tip butterflies, a red shank,  black headed gulls with lots of chicks and the beatific, curve beaked site of many Avocets in the estuary mud. A delightful trip, I'd like to go back and see the Small Eared Owl, but would have to camp out - in all likelihood - to actually see it.

Below, the graffiti seemed comically ridiculous - implying a bizarre avian vendetta?