Subbuteo is my hobby

The football was tedious, so at half-time we drove back to Sandwich Bay  (having visited, plant-spotting, in the morning). We've spent many evenings in the new hide on the scrape, watching ....... but I digress from the main story.......

Driving home at about 9.30 in the twilight, a shape was seen on a post alongside the road. Not an owl this time, but a hobby (Falco subbuteo, but you knew that). It stayed there while cars drove by within a few feet of it, and allowed me to photograph it, only flying off when a cyclist went past.

Curiously, the Ashford Birder saw and photographed a similarly-subdued one today, presuming that it had been hit by a car. Given the windy and cold weather, I'd suggest that they could just be hungry and exhausted.

 

Anyway, back to the scrape. We've been watching the development of broods of lapwings and oystercatchers, and well as a supporting cast of mallards, coots, little grebes etc.
The oystercatchers always astound me by greeting an approaching parent loudly well in advance of its arrival - good sight or maybe good hearing.

The lapwing family seems to have reduced from four to two, unsurprisingly given the unhelpful behaviour or the parents. For some reason the chicks are persuaded to swim from the island to the bank during the day (for better cover or more food I don't know) and then called back to the island at night, a swim of about 50 yards while avoiding the attentions of aggressive coots. The sight of the parents repeatedly divebombing a dumb-looking pheasant, while a fox approached the chicks from behind, was ridiculous.

In these evening vigils, owls have often been seen, and recently a light-coloured barn owl has patrolled meadows surrounding the scrape, and sat on a fence post to survey the world.

On the subject of chicks, the high winds blew two herring gull chicks off a roof in Deal and I was delegated to defy gravity to put them back up, out of the way of cats. The parents, of course, did not recognise this civic duty and provided a further hazard. The chicks still had their egg-tooth.

And at Rye Harbour, noise and smell announced that the black-headed gull colony is in full production again.

Lush for orchids

 

Please don't get the wrong impression - this photograph was not taken on the Bank Holiday weekend, but on one of the seemingly few fine days of late spring.

It's an unassuming lane called Lynsore Bottom in the sparsely populated middle of east Kent, and as drive down it you can see not only plenty of twayblades but also lady orchids and fly orchids on the verge.

Now I expect to find lady orchids and fly orchids, if at all, on bare banks in the dappled shade of woodland, but this year's wet spring has produced a good showing of both in open downland.

There's a dozen fly orchid spikes at Park Gate Down, where the monkey orchids look healthy, replacing the early purples and twayblades that are going over.

Lady orchids are flourishing in the open grassland of Denge Wood, adding to the beauty of this place with its nightingales and butterflies.

And no description of east Kent's orchids would be complete without a few photos of smiley-face late spider orchids, also doing well in the lushness of the downland sward.

A quick trip to Sussex

 A quick trip to Sussex included a visit to the Rides of Friston Forest, which consists of an astonishing swathe of salad burnet and horseshoe vetch, and consequently a good population of Adonis Blues (which I didn't photograph in deference to my hosts).

Moving up the A22 to Park Corner, I was fortunate to see a few small pearl-bordered fritillaries whizzing across the brackened heath when the sun appeared.

A lovely butterfly, about the size of a small white, which I soon realised returns to a favoured sprig of bugle after its dash around the heath. Consequently if you hang about, it will return. Much easier than the usual ungainly attempts to follow on foot.

At home, for the record, a count of 43 small blues was made at Campbells Garage, and a further 7 in the new colony by Walmer Castle car park.

Campbells is about to be turned into a building site, with various clauses in the planning consent to protect the Local Wildlife Site land adjacent to it, so I'll be watching them!

Reading the planning application, the ecology report concerned itself with great crested newts (although there's no water nearby) but ignored insects and plants completely, despite the existence of the small blue colony, breeding Sussex emerald and bright wave moths, and a good variety of flora. Neither is there a reference to the site's inclusion in the White Cliffs Countryside Project's management plan (on behalf of the site owner, DDC!)

Is this not checked by the council's ecologist?

Pics of Pic-noir in Picardy

A short trip down to the Somme this weekend, to find the sun and any birds that might be around. We took the Cantello bible and called in at some of his suggested sites down the coast from Calais. Wissant marsh was the best, with fine views of pools, marsh, dunes and reedbeds.
Nightingales and warblers kept up a constant song in the scrubbery.

And a muskrat swam by, a pest in these parts, although they were cleared from Britain in the 1930s. 

Then down to Crecy forest in Picardy, where the target species was black woodpecker, or pic-noir as they say en France. The beech stands are huge, but interesting habitats are easily found, where areas have been cut down.

This ride was particularly rich in birds, which flew between the shelter of the large trees and the food in the low scrub across the path. I was pleased with my first ever willow tits, showing clearly brighter cheeks than the familiar marsh tits, and was trying to id a possible melodious warbler when a strange sound came from the trees ahead.

Was it a raptor or a woodpecker? It sounded a bit like a greatspot and a bit like a sparrowhawk, but louder than either of them. A different sound was then heard - a plaintive (but still loud) falling note. A large black bird flew across and we were in hot pursuit, and were lucky enough to see a female black woodpecker about 100 yards away across a clearing. Then she was gone, but what a memorable sight.

 

 

We enjoyed the setting sun on the coast at Le Crotoy, as at home the coast points the wrong way and we don't see the sun go down. It's much more civilised this way round. All you need is the sun and a sundowner.

The night was spent at the pleasant little town of Rue, just inland, and this allowed an earlyish visit to Sailly Bray and the forest (again). Not early enough though, as the target species had presumably sung themselves to breakfast and were now mostly invisible. The peace and quiet of the wetlands and the forest was a pleasure in itself, though, with nobody about and especially no irritating dog-walkers who would have invaded such a wood in Britain in droves.

Then on to the Marquenterre reserve. Not a subtle place but constantly interesting with well-designed hides and walks, and well-behaved punters. I'm quite getting to like the French.

 'Ave you seen that "nighttime daytime" bloke?

 Seven lovely black-necked grebes were on the lakes, in their stunning breeding plumage.

A surprise was a pair of black-winged stilts, trading insults with the perennially aggressive avocets.

The heronery was its usual noisy place of burps, whines and clattering, with spoonbills, white storks, little and cattle egrets and grey herons, some with fledgling chicks.

 

It was a lovely trip, made even better by

• LD Lines charging £25 weekend return
• a friendly B&B at Rue, the Villa du Marquenterre
• and sunshine!

Closer to home

 Closer to home has many attractions, despite the constant threat of showers.

Ticking off the natural enjoyments of the weekend, I can include:

• backyard ticks of goldfinch and black redstart (!) both twittering in their inimitable way, surrounded by concrete and roofs, well out of sight of any trees. Presumably the blackstart is the same as recorded by Gerald nearby on the same day;

•  loafing around the cliffs, a glaucous gull.... the one that has matured by the fishing boats of Dungeness, obviously;

• floating past the rifle range, an immature male eider;

• 23 dunlin, 13 ringed plovers and three turnstones roosting on the shingle, en route to the north with various stages of breeding plumage;

•  a small copper butterfly;

 

•  over 100 green-winged orchids on the golf course but not in the paddock; and

• a tiny flower of spring vetch..... a first for me;

 

• the wonderful sight of a short-eared owl flying over the long grass of the Sandwich Bay estate, and in the evening, flushing it from the side of the road, and it landing beside the road. It stayed looking at us as dusk faded to night - a big ball of fluff resembling a long-haired cat more than a bird, but its camouflage among the tussocks was marvellous;

• a family of five fox-cubs gambolling in the middle of the road towards midnight, all big paws and big ears; and last but not least

• good company.

Feet on the Ledge

Flamborough Head on the East Yorkshire coast sticks out into the North Sea and makes you feel like you're in the middle of the ocean when the wind blows. This makes it very good for birds.

As an added benefit, a cold current washes down from the north and collides with warmer water coming up from the south, providing a small concentrated area of food which the birds feast upon, a constant stream of them moving across the point..... auks in their 30-50s, gannets in groups of a dozen of so, and gulls and kittiwakes moving on their own.

At any time there were hundreds of birds swimming or flying offshore.

I looked around the edge of an outcrop and got a shock - a small group of guillemots were nesting within close view, and a few of the early settlers had an egg. They look like Easter eggs, all turquoise and brown.

Kittiwakes nearby had colonised an overhang, on the cliffs which are chalk, Jim, but not as we know it - it's much harder than the White Cliffs down south, so much so that local houses were built of chalk rocks.
Guillemots occupy the slightly flatter parts, while razorbills seem to prefer impossibly narrow ledges. Keep those feet on the ledge!
And down below, grey seals patrol and occasionally rise up to take a swimming auk.



A couple of miles along the north coast of Flamborough Head is the RSPB reserve of Bempton Cliffs, nesting ground for thousands of sea birds at this time of the year and one of the most magnificent birding experiences in England.

According to Poysers' Bird Observatories of Britain and Ireland, the most recent counts of birds here include:

• Gannet 2,552 nests
• Kittiwake 85,095 pairs
• Guillemot 46,685 birds
• Razorbill 8,539 birds
• Puffin 2,615 pairs

That's a lot of birds, especially when many of them leave the cliffs as one of the Peregrine falcons cruises by.

I reckon we saw only about 30 puffins, but having watched one fly in towards the cliff and immediately disappear into a hole that's not surprising. Another one was glimpsed peeping out.

The gannets were far more obvious, gliding and stalling in the strong wind, before dropping onto one of the colonies.There's an egg there, just visible under the parent's feet.

And no report of Bempton is complete without mention of the colony of tree sparrows nesting noisily around the visitor centre.

It's a wonderful area - if you haven't been, please go (in spring, because the nests and cliffs will soon be empty).