A plethora of habitats

A tour of east Kent took in a variety of habitats today.......
Sandstone cliffs provide Sand Martins with their nest sites - just starting to dig this year's burrows.
Of course, they could have used last year's holes, but the local residents have taken them over in the Martins' absence.
Woodland : Wood Sorrell is in flower, as the canopy starts to close over for the summer.
Woodland ponds : 'water weed' of all types is starting to grow now. In this small pond a large raft of Water-violet will soon be in flower.
Heathland and bog : Sundews are spreading amoeba-like. How do they grow before catching their first bugs?
Right, that's got that lot out of the way, so I can spend the rest of the year on my favourite habitat.....
Chalk downland: the emerging plants are late this year and will not be encouraged by persisting north-easterly winds.
The first Cowslips are starting to show, but there are plenty of Dog Violets (a good year, I think).

I found just one Pansy, nestling close to a violet.

And finally, one bird a long way from its normal habitat: a cockatiel, in the Copper Beech at the top of Upper Street. If you've lost it, you've got a long climb.

Clowes crossbills

Somewhere up there, somewhere in this large wood........ there are crossbills. Dylan kindly passed on the info, but there are plenty of trees to check out.
Aha! I spy two - a male and a female - distant but indubitably crossbills.
My camera is can't cope with small birds at great distances, no matter how good the light, but at least it was good to see these irritatingly elusive birds. Please refer to another Steve's site to see what I failed to catch.
They stayed for a few minutes, until some loud dogwalkers spooked them....and when they flew they were joined by 10 others that had presumably been feeding just below, with the top male standing sentinel.
Clowes Wood is mixed deciduous and coniferous, giving a rich variety of habitats that were being well exploited in the sunshine today - beauty was everywhere I turned.

Norway Maple buds exploding while you look at them, being picked over by hordes of wood ants.

Plenty of peacocks, and a few commas and small whites

A good range of catkins - is this grey poplar, perhaps?

A few butcher's broom plants were found, with some tiny flowers

Bee-fly

A lovely morning, with time to spare to enjoy it.

A Day in the Life of......

Up and out before dawn (quite a rare occurrence) to listen to the dawn chorus - first up were blackbirds, song thrushes and a pheasant, followed by great and blue tits, chaffinches, great spotted woodpecker and finally the migrants.... chiffchaff, blackcap and a calling (not singing) willow warbler.

Dew lay heavy on salad burnet.
In the woods, a carpet of wild garlic next to, but not overlapping, wood anemones.

On the way to work a cursory check of the little owl stump - uninhabited for the winter - found one on its usual perch - another brood on the way?

And after work, a fourth vigil in Folkestone to try to see the Alpine swift return to its chosen roosting site was finally successful.

It turned up at 6pm, and treated the waiting throng to an aerial display for a quarter of an hour before flying up to the eaves of a tall building, clinging onto the wall for the night.

An antidote to LBJs

During a holiday weekend otherwise spent looking for little brown jobs (it keeps the shoes clean) we paid a visit to the Rare Species Conservation Centre near Sandwich. I'd passed the place many times, and thought we should go, to see what it has to offer.
One thing it offers is colour, with a Victoria Crowned Pigeon and a Bali Starling in the first enclosure. There may have been pairs, but singletons were all we saw.
And you can't get much more colourful than flamingos, although I feared for the future of a Madagascar Teal that shared the pool, which might start glowing pink if it eats the same food as the leggy ones.
The 'Centre' is on a small site of less than two acres, but there's plenty to see, including two smooth-coated otters which gave the impression that it was nearly feeding time.
With such limited space there is, of course, the usual disturbing displacement behaviour, like big cats pacing their cage, but as most of the animals have been rescued in some way of another, one hopes that their lives are better than could have been.
The pair of gibbons swung energetically around their cage, but looked dismal when they rested, and the singing dogs (yes, really) were marooned on their rocks by the mud.

Anyway, back to the Victoria Crowned Pigeon, which spent much of its time booming on its lek (to mix species metaphors). It's a close relative of the Dodo, is trusting, slow, has great feathers and is good to eat. And consequently is endangered.

Play loud!

Kingsdown Lifeboat

Kingsdown had its own lifeboat station between 1866, when it was established by private funds, until 1927 when it was closed. These were the great days of Victorian sailing ships, and when they (and their dependence on the shelter of the Downs) faded, the need for a separate station lapsed.
Now the station is a private house perched precariously on the brow of the shingle, and the only boats nearby are neatly parked behind the line of beach huts. South of the Zetland Arms the fishermen's boats that once earned the village's meagre wealth number only two, but the evocative smell of tar still lingers.The lifeboat gave Kingsdown it's greatest hero, Jarvist Arnold, who was skipper until 1889. In December 1872, he and his crew (average age 55) put to sea in a south-easterly storm towards a sinking ship, the Sorrento, and saved the lives of the 31 crew and of 14 lifeboatmen from Walmer who had become stranded on the ship. With remarkable bravery and seamanship he maneuvered the Kingsdown lifeboat, the Sabrina, alongside the Sorrento and gradually took every man off, and then passed some from his fearfully overladed boat onto the Walmer lifeboat.
Having achived this feat, he then had to navigate along the coast in the storm to Broadstairs, because the south-easterly prevented landing on the beach at Kingsdown. Jarvist Arnold is commemorated by this lovely smiling portrait in the village hall, and by having a road named after him. It does us good to remember the harsh realities of life, not so long ago.
My thanks to Marcia, related to Jarvist Arnold, for the inspiration, to the Kingsdown Guidebook for the information and to Ann for the photos.

Bird migration is continuing despite the cool and showery weather - today's new arrivals included a house martin and a willow warbler (both earlier than usual) and two singing blackcaps.
A cuckoo was reported yesterday from Dungeness, but I think that was an April Fool joke.

Birders excitedly pointing

It's a great sight, when you roll up at a place to try to see some birds, and a bunch of birders are there excitedly pointing at something. I rolled up at Bockhill early this morning, intending a stroll along the cliffs, and a gaggle of the Bockhill birders were indeed excitedly pointing at a clump of grass.
Jack had added yet another great find to his long list, and eventually a Fan-tailed Warbler/ Zitting Cisticola (don't ask) showed itself before flying high and far away.
Imagine for a moment that the bird above is a Zitting Cisticola (it isn't - it's a Meadow Pipit, but an illustration of some kind is called for). The Bockhillers probably got excellent photos, as the bird was more obliging before I got there, but I've no complaints.
A walk along the cliffs to Langdon Hole failed to find the Zitter (unsurprisingly) or indeed a Ring Ouzel that had been seen there (ditto), but three female Black Redstarts showed, and I was able to check on the nesting Kittiwakes. I reckon that there were about 50 birds at the Langdon end and 60 nearer St Margarets, with a small colony of about 15 nests in between. This is probably up on the last couple of years, albeit way down on a decade or so.
There are, however, plenty of predators in the wings........

Raptor in the sky - watcher of all

Opening the curtains on a fine day, I saw a sparrowhawk drifting over the trees towards the sea - this formed the prologue to a day of raptors.
The weather encouraged me to walk the circuit for the first time this year, on paths around the Kingsdown golf course; along the cliffs at first then striking inland to farmland tracks that lead back home. I hoped to see and hear migrants, but the wind reduced these to a minimum, but the skies were far from empty.
Resting at Hope Point, listening to a singing corn bunting and anticipating the arrival of a swallow or two, I saw four buzzards together, two of which moved off out to sea, while two circled the wood, then passed off inland. They were later seen returning to the same area, and some have been reported before, so perhaps they will breed here.
The clifftop resting place was convenient for watching fulmars, and could be rewarding for someone that can control the white balance of his camera.
Another sparrowhawk was seen along the clifftop, scattering the local jackdaws and pigeons, and then quartered the fields looking, presumably, for a grounded skylark, pipit or bunting. Just inland, where I was hoping for a yellowhammer, a peregrine flew north with the wind.
The walk back across the farmland was uneventful until a long-winged bird shot low across the path - dashing to get a better view, I was able to confirm it was a red kite, my first in Kingsdown. Nearby, a tawny owl hooted.
The Kingsdown village book mentions a Wych Elm at Otty Bottom, and I was able to find it from its lovely flowers - then it was back home to rejoin battle with the garden (with one eye on the skies).
But the day's remaining interest was lower down, as first a small tortoiseshell then a couple of cavorting commas revelled in the sunshine.