New things in old places

A new tick for the Kingsdown rifle range! The first bee orchid I've seen there, to add to the early spiders and pyramidals. It seems to be a good orchid year with bits popping up all over.

On a very different site by the lakes between Chartham and Chilham we saw a host of bee orchids....

 



....and a veritable forest of meadow vetchling, which I've previously only seen as individuals peeking out from long grass on chalk. This habitat of gravel pits doesn't make you think of chalk downland, but perhaps it's rich from dumped soil in the past.

Beside one of the fishing scrapes was a length of fencing, which held half-a-dozen dozing lizards. It wasn't warm despite occasional sun, so their usual skitterishness was constrained - they just lay there and posed.

Back on Walmer beach in the evenings we have seen four painted ladies, lovely butterflies which I like for their undersides ....

....as much as for their spectacular upper wings. No cloudies yet but I'm hoping maybe this weekend?

 



 

The Western Heights hold some excellent chalk habitat with a carpet of common spotted orchids and a good population of small blues, but this year there's an additional sight ..... early gentian Gentianella anglica.

 

OK, it looks just like autumn gentian Gentianella amarella but it's interesting to see it among the lush growth of early summer.

 

And finally, a photo of a "what's that" plant on the Lewes Downs, which I subsequently realised was hairy rock-cress Arabis hirsuta which has an eastern outpost between Kingsdown and St Margarets, but I've not seen it here. More searching required!

Herbaria

 A selection of old writings has come to my attention, providing interesting information about the state of nature in our area in times gone by. 

For example Cowell's A Floral Guide for East Kent, 1839. http://tinyurl.com/mcx63yk which lists a host of information especially from the mysterious and hard-working "Miss H".  One example that I followed up was the burnt tip orchid, now sadly lost from Kent but previously recorded under Kingsdown:

and "near South Foreland Light Ho." The National Trust's purchase of the cliff top there money well spent if it reappears there again!

A fascinating catalogue of herbaria is in the herbaria United part of the BSBI's site, showing innumerable specimens collected from the land in the past couple of centuries. Who would believe that round-headed rampion was to be found on the Freedown between Ringwould and Kingsdown in 1875!

The collection of plants was, I suppose, similar to our obsessive photography but presumably had an impact on the continued survival of the species, especially as the rarer the plant the more likely to be pluck'd untimely from the sward. Nowadays we are more likely to trample or lie on nearby plants, which is bad enough.

Other species of interest in the Herbaria include

•  Nottingham catchfly (undercliff between Kingsdown and St Margarets in 1872 - when the undercliff was not yet underwater, presumably);
• sea pea on the beach at Kingsdown and Walmer, whereas it's now only found at Walmer;
• rock stonecrop, an introduced plant, but obviously introduced before 1925;
• sand catchfly at Deal, now only at Sandwich Bay; and
• stinking hawk's beard, now only just hanging on at Dungeness.
  
  

I've not seen burnt tip orchids in Kent (few have) but we made a foray to the Sussex Downs near Lewes to try to find it. It took some doing, with many hours tramping the wrong part of the reserves, but eventually we caught up with hundreds of them on a south-facing bank.

Part of the enjoyment of the search was walking over the downland which is subtly different to our own. Generally more grazed and springy, but with similar plant species of course. Except that they still have round-headed rampion and burnt tip orchid.

As the sun went down on our second walk, large numbers of newly emerged common blues came to roost on convenient shrubs and grasses, while the occasional pair enjoyed the romance of the occasion.

 

If anyone has any other references to old records of the area, it would be good to see them!

Once more unto the beach, dear friends

A new house, a new patch and a new transect. And just to make it interesting, a new technology ..... a tablet, so we'll see how we get on. And just for the record, I'm using a new version of ACDSee which, while not free like the previous one, is much easier to use.

Anyway, back to the transect.......

I had mapped out a butterfly transect that covered the shingle beach, varied grassland, chalk downland, mature trees and suburban gardens.
As luck would have it, however, on my very first walk I met a local chap who I knew had covered this general area for years, but whom I had never met.
He confirmed that he already does a transect that incorporates part of my planned route, so that I can reduce my treks by about half in the safe knowledge that the other half is in good hands.

Fortunately, the remainder covers a shingle hollow that holds kidney vetch and small blues, and I'll spend a lot of time here this summer I hope. A count of 11 small blues made it into the notebook, which was a pleasing start. Nearby, two male common blues fluttered together, out early on the razzle, presumably.

The rest of the walk included holly blues, a selection of whites and two speckled woods promising a reasonable amount of interest in the coming months. [As a point of interest, 33 small blues, a small copper and a small heath were reported at the Campbells Garage site by the "local chap" on the same day].

On the botanical front, further up the beach were 16 early spider orchids, the "early" part of the name being somewhat of a misnomer this year.

Later in the weekend, a cool breeze but bright sunshine prompted a long-overdue visit to Monkton Nature Reserve, which turned out to be a little gem. Recovered from a council plan to turn a chalk quarry into a landfill site, it is a wonderful natural oasis hemmed in by busy roads. It also has an astronomical observatory and an excellent second-hand bookshop - we immediately became members, and shall return in a couple of weeks when the orchids should be out.

A few man orchids were starting to bloom, but the prize for me was three green hairstreaks that hung around to be photographed. Unfortunately I haven't yet found a software package that removes pesky blades of grass, darn it.

So dear friends, after many changes.... here's to the future!

Great Bustards

A birthday treat was to visit the reintroduced Great Bustards on the military range of Salisbury Plain. Amid great secrecy (blindfolds, Official Secrets Act, chinese burns) we were taken by Land Rover across the firing ranges to a hide on the plain. From there we could see an enclosure with three dots that (on magnification) turned into great bustards.

Looking through the provided Swarovski, the dots became three heaps of feathers - apparently turkeys trying to turn themselves inside out.

The birds were all males, indulging in a lek even without the presence of females. Presumably the bright display can be seen for a long distance across the steppes, and so can attract any potential mates from the area.

One bird (purple 5) was clearly the dominant male, and was the only one to have reached breeding maturity so far. He's a bit of a star, and knows it.

From time to time, other birds flew in (still only males, unfortunately), giving us good views of their white, brown and black wings, looking vaguely like geese. If I had seen one elsewhere, I would not have had a clue what it was.
At each arrival, Purple 5 would approach the newcomer, which would crouch down into a submissive pose. Purple 5 would then strut around for a while, but then the group would calm down and proceed to lek again.

The birds are not pinioned or constrained in any way, and so can fly off and may disappear for weeks at a time. Over 50 have been released, and many have been sighted in various parts of the south-west. When thick snow fell this winter, they all flew south towards the Dorset coast but started to return when the weather improved.

A particular problem seems to be that they are reluctant to see foxes as a threat. This may, of course, be because they see dogs being walked nearby and so do not take fright when a real predator appears.

The project will take time to prove its success, as the birds are brought in as eggs or chicks from Russia and then have to reach maturity. Consequently the establishment of a breeding group will be a few years away. I wish the team the very best of luck, both in breeding success and in raising funds to keep the project going. It should get good publicity by being on the One Show tonight.

Marvellous birds - just look at that moustache! I only later saw that I had cropped the greatbustard.org website name as below:

Maybe this could challenge the hegemony of the legendary fatbirder?

While watching the bustards, a popular pastime was playing spot-the-stone-curlew. At 400 yards or so, that's a challenge, but eventually one was seen "just to the left of the dandelion". Great to see.


Unexpectedly, a pub in Oxford was found to sell Arkells Kingsdown Ale, which tasted not half bad.

South Foreland

It was a pleasant spring morning so we went looking for spring gentians on the St Margarets cliff-top. We didn't find any (they are probably now consigned to the sea after one of the cliff falls) but there was consolation in a sudden arrival of raptors around 11am.
Firstly a red kite was seen being mobbed by the local jackdaws and crows, and this might have been the same bird seen by the Bockhill birders who were probably gazing skywards by the monument in the picture at the time.

Then my sharp-eyed companion saw a spiral of raptors riding a thermal overhead, with more joining to benefit from the lift. We counted three more red kites and eleven common buzzards.

But even this number was small compared to the numbers counted by the Bockhillers across the bay.

The Bockhill website compliments Robert Sonnen of the National Trust on the good work he has done on the clifftops between Dover and Kingsdown, and we would echo the praise as much of the scrub has been cut back and the sward has been improved by the Dexters and Koniks over the winter. We look forward to recording the butterflies on these areas this year.

Then..... refreshments at Mrs Miggins pie shop (aka Mrs Knott's tearoom) where tea and scones are served in bone china crockery, and an air of refinement is all around. And where I have been known to don a pinny to help out in the busy times.
From the top there is a marvellous view, and eye-level views were had of kestrel, sparrowhawk and peregrine, with ravens flying along the cliff-edge.

This brought to mind a most enjoyable book by local birder (ringer and taxidermist) Norman McCanch, who describes the enviable lifestyle of lighthouse-keeping as a birder. Each page is fascinating as the changing seasons bring different species to the safety (or danger) of lighthouses.

And finally an autumnal photo (since we've given up on spring and summer) taken this week at St Margarets.

Snakesheads

Today I started to wake, opened my eyes, sought out the sunlight and stretched my back.
Maybe it's nearly spring - nearly time to to shed my skin and feel good again.
Nearly, because it's only warm out of the relentless chilling starvation wind.

The sequence of renewal has started but it progresses only slowly.  The coltsfoot is first, as usual in the shelter of the cliffs.

A lesser stag beetle is found under a log, comatose but alive and waiting for its time to strut and fret his hour upon the woodland stage.

 

 

 Moscatel raises a tentative bud, and a rare patch of wild daffodils remains furled, unwilling to greet the uncertain sun.

 

In a garden, a lawn of snakeshead fritillaries is dotted with pink, the start of a glory that should already be here.

And an early chiffchaff chimes the birds into life, "as if every note had been the hammering of a tiny nail into winter's coffin".
Edward Thomas wrote this towards the end of In Pursuit of Spring, a work that seems all the more poignant in this slow chilled season.