Thanet Birding - Birding main page
Foreness - Margate
Cemetery - Minnis Bay - Minster - North
Foreland - Northdown Park
Pegwell Bay - Ramsgate
Cemetery - Ramsgate Harbour
Ramsgate Harbour is a big harboury thing on Ramsgate seafront. Honest - go check it out if you don't believe me. It is in fact a Royal Harbour, since good King George (don't ask me which one) either landed here or sailed from here at some point. Wellington's finest were also billetted on the cliffs beside the harbour, ready to drive back Old Boney if he tried to pop over for more than his fair share of duty-free. (There's a maritime museum you might care to visit if you're into history).
The harbour is not unlike an onion in two ways; it it is arranged in three concentric shells, and it can also smell pretty bad. First you have the yacht marina, heaving with yachts (of all things). Then the main harbour proper, with its sturdy Georgian piers. Over the past decade the expansion of the immediately adjacent Port Ramsgate has added a third shell, of big ugly rocks dumped in a rough approximation of a wall.
The east pier of the main harbour is open to the public and you can walk right out to the end. Access to the west pier, and the dividing wall that separates the main harbour from the marina, is theoretically restricted, but I've never had any problem and I've not heard of anyone else getting turfed out either.
Primarily a winter site, and only sporadically worth a visit, but all the grebes have been recorded here at some time or other, as have all the divers. The last Great Northern to take up temporary residence was in 1998/99 - I managed to get it on Christmas Day. Shag were regular in winter, at least when I watched the place regularly in my school lunch breaks. I gather they're less frequent now, but you can still find them here. Among the gulls recorded here, Glaucous are irregular but probably annual, and Iceland and Sabine's have also crept onto the list. Mediterranean Gull are also not infrequent, and not just in winter. Other birds recorded here include Grey Phalarope, Kingfisher (!) and Coot (!!).
If all else fails you can try seawatching from the end of the pier, but if the weather's good for seawatching then you're probably better off going to Foreness or North Foreland.
Not a brilliant site, then, but it has turned up good birds from time to time. And how many places do you know where you can watch a Black-necked Grebe at point-blank range with a hot bag of chips in your hands?
If you walk east along the cliffs you come to King George VI Memorial Park, which gets a scattering of migrants in autumn. I've not heard of any exceptional rarities here apart from an attempt at breeding by a pair of Serin some years ago, but being right on the clifftop it's well placed to score at some point. Presumably the usual warblers and flycatchers move through, but the park doesn't seem to be that well covered by local birders.
Thanet Birding - Birding main page
Foreness - Margate
Cemetery - Minnis Bay - Minster - North
Foreland - Northdown Park
Pegwell Bay - Ramsgate
Cemetery - Ramsgate Harbour