With continuing cold, cloudy and windy weather the point was as quiet as ever. A call from PT had us heading to the south end of ARC for a little stint. There was also a little gull sleeping on the bank and quite a lot of swifts hawking over the pits.
We went on down to the visitor's centre for a little shopping and a catch up with the gossip. Returning to the Hanson car park we walked along the track to the screen hide looking for Southern Marsh orchids in the willow scrub building up on the right hand side. We found around 50, which was a good number. Popping into the screen hide to see if there were any southern marsh on the pit side DW became aware that a pair of swallows were passing outside the hide and behaving oddly. We moved to the other end of the hide and sat quietly when both swallows flew in through the gap and settled in the corner where there was the beginning of a nest. We informed Chris on the reserve and the hide has been closed to give support for this nesting attempt.
After lunch we went for a drive round looking at flowers, stopping first at the Lifeboat station to look at a plant identified as Dame's Violet but looking a bit odd. Then on to the top end of the long pits for a few dragonflies, 4-spotted Chaser, Blue-tail and Red-eyed as well as a bud on the paeony. we then went round to Galloways, stopping at the fisherman's parking area where the ground was covered in a small, red stonecrop - Mossy Stonecrop, which is known only from East Anglia and last recorded in Kent at Sandwich in 1900.
Driving on down the across the firing ranges we saw very few birds but did find a sizeable length of Burnet Rose. Stopping for a few photographs I found Yellow Vetch in 2 or 3 large clumps in a new tetrad for the Kent Flora Atlas as well as English stonecrop, Thrift and Sea Kale, now at its best.
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