Stormy Saturday

A stormy Saturday promised bird movements, and while some tougher souls staked out the north Kent coast, we opted for the protection of Deal pier, which has a convenient glass annexe sheltering us from the northerly gale. Meanwhile the high-tide waves thundered onto the shore, scouring the beach or much of the shingle that had been pumped onto it by contractors over the last month or so.

 The lower decks of the pier were unsurprisingly closed, and as we stood there planks were torn away and tossed into the sea by the waves, and the pier shuddered and swayed alarmingly. The yellow wave recorder showed the peak wave heights to be over 2½m.

 

 

We were there, of course, to watch birds passing by, and although the movement was not large there were interesting birds to see and relatively close-to, all flying north into the wind........ flocks of dunlin flew past and occasional knot, eider ducks and scoter, the latter also forming a raft of 40-50 birds that floated past with the current.

 Star for the show was a bonxie, flying slowly past between us and the shore, then circling over our heads and away out to sea.

There have been shocking reports of drowned birds off the coasts after becoming disorientated by the recent fogs and winds. Fishermen have told of flocks dropping into the sea around them, while RSPB Bempton said that large numbers of songbirds were clinging desperately to the cliffs on their first landfall.

And a blue rock thrush sang on the balcony

Ah, the deep blue of the Mediterranean, the warmth of the sun, the crash of the thunder and the lash of the rain...... yes, it was a bit changeable, but we made the most of it.

An early treat by the hotel terrace at Ciutadella (beautiful old town) was an Audouin's Gull, one of a rare breed that seems to be increasing in the western Med. They are specialist fish feeders and reminded us of the delicacy of kittiwakes, despite happily taking bread, cheese and chocolate biscuits.

Generally they would lose out to the more brutish yellow-legged gulls,but as they are unusual in the north it's still a treat to watch them.

The first day (no I'm not going to bore you with a day-to-day diary but the first day was a bit special) we drove a few miles up the coast to Punta Nati, a bleak place of rock and hardy windblown shrubs, of which more later.
On the road we were pleased to see red kites wheeling around, but then were overjoyed to watch red-footed falcons, one with kill, flying over, superb aeronauts of great beauty.

We parked close to the lighthouse, and watched blue rock thrushes and thekla larks, then noticed a large strangely marked bird of prey flying over the fields. Scanning the area of boulders we found more Egyptian vultures, which occasionally mobbed a couple of buzzards while booted eagles and ravens flew slowly back and forth across the landscape. A stunning vista.

Some of the large Menorcan colony of Cory's shearwaters could be seen offshore from the cliffs around the lighthouse, with occasional smaller versions, Balearic shearwaters, with Majorca a shadowy presence on the horizon.

The rest of the holiday was not quite so bird-filled, but a steady stream of sightings were had.......

 This coot was the closest we came to a purple gallinule, reputed to live in the Son Bou marshes which were overgrown at this time of the year, and frequented by nefarious naked figures.

The local supermarket displayed quail and partridge, which were useful ticks.

 

A visit to GOB (an environmental ornithological group in Menorca) coincided with the arrival of a Scops owl with a broken wing, picked up by an alert driver who turned out to be our waiter! We were warmly welcomed by Dominic, who explained some of the principles and problems of Menorcan environmental work.

 

The Algendar gorge provided many butterflies (again, you'll have to wait) but also alpine swifts, booted eagles (above) and Egyptian vultures for comparison (below).  [Note - an expert has told me that they are both booted eagles and who am I to argue? We also saw the dark phase of booteds, just to confuse]

The second hotel we stayed in boasted fewer gulls, but overflying ravens, rock doves, booted eagles, a tawny owl .......

 ....and a blue rock thrush sang on the balcony!

Underwater at Kingsdown

May I pass on a link from our local neighbourhood good guys (Deal with It) about the proposed Dover and Deal Marine Conservation Zone which includes a short film of the wildlife just offshore.

If you can't see the clip, it's here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVS-b2usDvw
The sea is characteristically murky and sandy, but although it's not the Great Barrier Reef there's some interesting stuff down there. To copy the site's text shamelessly .......

"The chalk platform extends across the shore and out to sea, with deep sand-filled gullies between tall ridges of chalk covered in seaweeds, sponges and anemones.
"Large crabs and lobsters find shelter within the chalk in recesses, while baby cuttlefish swim around the outcrops, demonstrating their amazing camouflage.
"Further offshore, the chalk gradually becomes covered in coarse sediments. Here, thousands of sandy tubes made by tiny ross worms form significant reefs which can harbour a wonderful diversity of wildlife and support the whole food web."  

Once in a blue moon

Just once 

In a very blue moon

I watched the second full moon of the month rise out of the sea through the dark clouds.

Will it bring good luck?

Get well soon, if you can.

Orlestone in the shade, and fun in the sun

Not complaining about the hot weather, especially since I live a stone's throw from the beach and the sea's lovely - but it's great to be in reach of shade in a cool forest sometimes.
Orlestone is a good place to be, as it has wide rides that are perfect for butterflies. And peacocks have emerged in profusion, feasting on knapweeds and hemp agrimony.

 A surprise was the large numbers of brimstones too, also on knapweed and ragwort but also (in the shade) on a swathe of betony.

Purple hairstreaks flitted about around the oaks, even descending reasonably low to give the closest views I've had (surprising to some readers perhaps, but there's not many oaks on the east coast and fewer purple hairstreaks). More obliging were white admirals, a fine compensation for the loss of purple emperors here.

 Nettle-leaved bellflowers are having a good year in the hedgerows around Hawkinge, lovely!

Another species doing well is the chalkhill blue, which was showing in relatively low numbers in the last two years, but are thriving this month. This web report on their numbers on the Friston Gallops near Eastbourne is worth a read, conservatively estimating numbers at around 800,000. I hope Lydden is doing as well.

 And finally,

there's a lot of good live music around locally at the moment, in the glorious sunny weather......
from the old (Kingsdown Band, and the Kinks) to the new (Gentlemen of Few), the stars on the rise (O'Hooley and Tidow) and some on the fall (sadly, Chumbawamba).    Dancing to folk music at ceilidhs, and to ska at Folkestone harbour -

 

 great stuff, catch it if you can.

Checking up on Kingsdown

 

By a series of curious events, I'm no longer representative of Kingsdown, having moved a couple of miles up the coast. The name Walmerer doesn't ring true, however, so until I get complaints I'll keep going, making sure that I make occasional covert forays into the parish to check up on the place.
The domain name will, however, be open to sensible offers (I'm thinking Facebook-value here).

The place remains much as I left it, with a good recurrence of butterflies along Otty Bottom. A few chalkhill blues posed on scabious, and a couple of small blues repeated their cousins' emergence in the usual sites.

Less expected was a pristine singleton, far from any apparent kidney vetch.

On top o't'hill the allotment has had a catastrophic year, slugs devouring anything planted or sown in the damp conditions. It's a real haven for wildlife with only the potatoes resisting the pests. The only thing growing up the runner bean stakes was bristly bloody ox-tongue!

Under the refugia lurk the usual suspects..... Norbert the lizard and one of the adult slow worms that have brought up a family of slivers.

The regular reader may recall that the allotment produced a few (rare) round-leaved fluellens. I left them to seed of course, and now my seed bed is a matted mass of the stuff - probaby more here than anywhere else in the country I'd guess.

A botanical trip to the rifle range was disturbed by a bit of excitement.....
a prawn catcher had got stranded by the rising tide and was calling for help.

The first of a series of calls to the coastguard scrambled the smaller lifeboat - calm and in control.

After an assessment of the situation, they edged towards the old walls and plucked Jamie from danger.
The tide rose another 4 feet or so in an hour.

Poppies to Pollies

There's been a mass of poppies this year, possibly because all the rain in the spring washed some of the herbicide away before it could do its work. The harvest looks good at the moment, though, as the sun came out nicely to ripen the corn. Unusually the oil-ssed rape and corn are being cut at the same time, meaning long hours for the contractors.

99.99999% of the poppies seem to be the common variety, but just occasionally a sharp eye might spot something different, generally from an unusual seedpod.


Last year I found a few rough poppies beside a crop near Maydensole and was pleased to see them again this year:

And this year an even sharper eye found prickly poppies on the road to Sandwich Bay......

..... near a line of long-headed poppies which are apparently more frequent than the above-mentioned, but it's still good to find them.

Apparently, prickly poppies have been found in Kingsdown, but where..........?    Nobody knows.

A brown hare has been nibbling around the fields nearby, apparently quite tame as it only makes the effort to lollop off when disturbed, no doubt delighting the longlenses who travel that road.

The little owl standing sentinel at the barn has now gone, after giving pleasure to many passers-by during the spring.

Other good sights in the Sandwich Bay area have been hundreds of southern marsh orchids in a depression between the sea wall and RCB golf course and a good show of marsh helleborines in the usual gully.  Sand catchflies were later but larger than usual, and a nice crop of 32 were seen beside a sandy track.

On an even smaller scale, a few plants of bur medick.

Wild clary was another plant to do well earlier in the year, while over at the point the Deptford pinks look strong, and each plant is accompanied by its count-tag - loads of them.

I look forward to hearing the score from KWT. I would guess there must be about 1,000 plants, while across the flatlands at Foulmead the grass-poly population has grown from about 110 last year to at least 500 now.