The "Deal with It" group hosted an evening of climate change talks last night, with presentations on changes in the past and predictions for the future, and another by the warden of Blean Woods on the impact on nature, in particular butterflies and birds.Among many scary predictions were the impact of coastlines around east Kent if the all the ice on Greenland melts......... sea levels would rise by seven metres.
My more immediate concern about rise sea levels related to the fact that I was trying to walk around the cliffs at St Margaret's Bay to count kittiwakes. It was low tide and I would have had plenty of time, but I was defeated by the sheer size of chalk boulders to be climbed along the way. "The better part of valour is discretion" so I turned back, checking out the flowering wallflowers and three singing rock pipits on the way. OK, I bottled it.
From the top of the cliff a flotilla of 184 kittiwakes could be seen, presumably many of them non-breeding juveniles that turn up near the nest-sites some time after the adults have become established.
Three swallows flew north, two ravens flew south, and a lesser whitethroat was heard and then seen in the garden of the lighthouse.Also along the clifftop it was good to see the flowers coming along, although it's difficult to recall their names after the long barren winter.
"Gor-blimey, this ring's tight - have I put on weight?""Well, now you come to mention it......"
The bird was ringed on 06/02/2010 at Pitsea Landfill Site in Essex by the North Thames Gull Group. This is the first sighting of this bird since ringing. You will be able to view information at: http://www.ntgg.org.uk/map/GN87172
5 comments:
That's an excellent shot of the two kittiwakes on the ledge, but it gives me vertigo,
Rob
You're right, Rob.
I'm getting too old for that balancing act.
Steve ,
Glad you didn't risk life and limb over the boulders , or we'd miss those Kittiwake shots .
Been scratching my head re. the flowers , put me out of my misery .
That's not the way it works, Fred. I ask the questions, you give the answers.......
I reckon that the yellow one is Annual Wall Rocket (strangely early for an annual, but the leaves are wrong for the perenniel.
The collection of tiny flowers includes Red Deadnettle on the left, common storks-bill(?) and an undentified white flower cosily wrapped by hairy leaves.
LOL on the last shot! Great photos. I'm glad you like hanging over cliffs to take these photos...I think I'd get really dizzy looking through the camera while doing it.
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