L’Étagère c'est moi (or pseud's corner)

When invited into someone's home, it's important to check out their bookshelves, as what they read is a good reflection of who they are. The 'coffee table' book syndrome, where an impressive book is left lying about, ostentatiously, can be ignored.....you need to find the real books behind the owner.
Mrs K has hers neatly aligned on the bookshelves, but they give a good insight into her tastes.....mine, meanwhile (if not piled up half-read beside the bed) are more higgledy-piggledy.
If music is on show, this is also useful to place a person. Most of my LPs date form the annus mirabilis of 1973.
A correspondent recommended that I find another book by WH Hudson, called Adventures with Birds. I managed to find it (at Oxfam) and it's a great little pot boiler. There are chapters on Nightingales, Marsh Warblers and furze-wrens (Dartford warblers), and a number on his favourite place, Wells-next-the-Sea.
He also endured the usual difficulty in tracking the furze-wrens down, and writes that the best time to see them is at 'about five o'clock in the morning, when they are most excitable and vocal'.
The rest of the time, 'they vanish and refuse to come out'.

He calls it one of our 'minor songsters' which has 'a curious little jiggy song'. I expect the late great Percy Edwards could have given a good impression, who made a career in birdsong and apparently could imitate 600 species - a celebratory programme is here.

St David's Day

Traditionally, if daffodils are blooming in my garden on St David's Day, it's an early spring. This year, they are budded tighter than the French defence, reflecting the cold time that we've had. A few are flowering in more sheltered spots, though, like the ones above.
Sweet Violets are flowering in the garden and in the verges, showing the first signs of colour for the year.
The most noticable change in bird life on the walk was the arrival of Yellowhammers, with five singing at different points. There was also a very light-coloured one, presumably a juvenile?
A handful of Skylarks were singing over the fields (which being liberally coated with pig-slurry did not seem tempting as nesting sites) and Dunnocks led the chorus in the hedgerows. A lovely Firecrest was in the trees by Hope Bays.

We took a ride down to Folkestone to try to see more Mediterranean Gulls, but there were only a dozen on the sea and two obligingly standing on lampposts.
Kehaar, the gull in Watership Down, seems to have been modelled on Med Gulls, although they have no black on the ends of their wings, and their cry is more of a 'ow!'.

February garden list

Just for the record, my poor list of birds seen (but not heard) in the garden in February.
Warren achieved an excellent 40+.

• 28 Green Woodpecker
• 27 Skylark
• 26 Kestrel
• 25 Mistle Thrush
• 24 Blackcap
• 23 Starling (flyover)
• 22 Throstle
• 21 Coal Tit
• 20 Grey Heron
• 19 Great Tit
• 18 Collared Dove
• 17 Herring Gull
• 16 Greenfinch (yay)
• 15 Lesser Black-Backed Gull
• 14 Black-Headed Gull
• 13 Jay
• 12 Chaffinch
• 11 Jackdaw
• 10 Robin
• 9. Carrion Crow
• 8. Blue Tit
• 7. Long-Tailed Tit
• 6. Great Spotted Woodpecker
• 5. Blackbird
• 4. Dunnock
• 3. Magpie
• 2. Wood Pigeon
• 1. Sparrowhawk

Pegwell Bay

Jeremy Paxman, in his series on Victorian art, highlighted William Dyce's Pegwell Bay painted in 1858. It illustrated the recent awareness that the earth and its nature is far older than previously thought, by showing fossil-hunters, the cliffs which were formed during history rather than at the start of it, and a comet in the skies.
On Dyce's cliffs (seen across the bay from the nature reserve) a weekly meeting is held of the High Command of East Kent birding, convened to determine whether or not various sightings should be accepted or struck from the records. Few are accepted, unless accompanied by DNA analysis. As it may be imagined, the meetings are held with great seriousness.
The night was clear, with Venus in conjunction with the moon, followed by a glorious afternoon.
Dr Ray (rtd) managed to catch up with a Great Grey Shrike in Pannel Valley, nicely following up a sighting of a Dartford Warbler and a flushed Short-eared Owl.

Old fossils

A different day saw some of us scrabbling on the beach and over rocks at Folkestone's Copt point. The geology of the area provides easy pickings as the sea and rain wash out the soft blue-grey Gault clay, between the harder Lower Greensand (below it) and the chalk above.
I was inspired in the seach by reading the relevant chapter in a book found in a second-hand bookshop: Some Aspects of the Natural History of the Folkestone District - a little gem. It describes the coast here as being 'a cross-section through much of the Cretaceous system'.
The Gault clay was laid down in the Albian (or Selbornian) stage of the Cretaceous period, about 100m years ago, when the seas and rivers were warm and slow, creating a murky sedimentation. The old continent of Pangea had by now split into sub-continents, but the current pattern was still far from completed, and the Yukutan catastrophe was some tens of millions of years ahead, so the dinosaurs were still in charge.
Our finds were of smaller animals of course - ammonites being the most easily recognisable.
The area is an SSSI, so excavation is not allowed, but it's not necessary as finds were laying on the sand where the clay had been washed away. It is very squidgy, especially where streams passed through it, and the cliffs ran like lava flows in places - a good description of the site is here.

At the water's edge, the usual flock of Mediterranean Gulls stood, calling noisily. This is usually the best place in Britain for this species in winter - I counted only about 20 though, so maybe they have started back to the breeding grounds.
As an antiodote to the grey fossils, clay, sea and sky, here's a reminder of spring:

Coltsfoot

Winter Aconite, with an early bee.

Doing what we do best

There are not many pubs where you can sit enjoying a pint, watching Hen Harriers hunting around you. One such is the Ferry House Inn at Harty, overlooking the Swale, which has a prospect that stretches across salt marshes, inter-tidal mud and the river.
Having dipped on three rare birds we were disheartened and repaired to the pub, to sit in the late winter sunshine and watch the birds in comfort. Another customer, seeing the binoculars, asked what we were looking for, so we told him that we'd given up and were doing what we do best. And very tasty it was too.
The day had started very well, with early sunshine (which was to last until dusk), an immediate sighting of a ring-tail Hen Harrier and a close view of a Marsh Harrier flying up from a reed bed, close enough to admire her talons. And there were birds everywhere in the sky....Golden Plovers, Lapwings, ducks, geese and more raptors.
There were Pheasants and Red-Legged Partridges, and plenty of Hares - we even watched a stoat.Yes, there were Merlin and Peregrine, sitting immobile on a distant posts. But wherever we went, we had 'just missed a Rough-Leggged Buzzard/Bittern/etc' and the Hooded Crow was nowhere to be seen.
But our intended path to a possible viewpoint was barred by high water-levels. So we went to the pub.
The sunshine, rest and a pint had the desired effect, so we tried for the Hoodie again, and (with a little help) we eventually found it. This (or a similar) bird has been seen in this area every year since the winter of 2003/4.
So, that's probably the last 'winter' birding, as from now on we can pretend it's spring!

Ash to ashes

A walk in Kingsdown Wood revealed that the old Witches' Tree has fallen this winter. It was the subject of may tales among the local children (or, more probably, among their doting parents) but now it is no more. Ash to ashes, as they say.
It has been ailing for decades, not helped by fires lit against its trunk, but it will now rot gently into the loam, to provide life for new generations.