Spring-like sounds

To the existing chorus is now added the wild squealing of Common Gulls on the back field and wheezing of Greenfinches in the front garden. On the marsh, Skylarks are singing and Little Grebes trilling at the Pools. Shelducks are displaying in urgent flights above the pastures and Goldcrests in Toot Rock pines.

What I took to be fox-shooting between the pools had crowded all the birds out to the sides and the geese into a dense pack over towards 3 Gates: 164 Canadas, 119 Greylags, 10 Whitefronts, 4 Pinkfeet, 1 Bar-headed (HD) and the big white one which I’m told is a farmyard goose (the code for which seems to be ZL). While I was counting these, something kept putting up the waders further over, including c20 Golden Plovers & c50 Dunlin. Later, I had a look at the end field where there were 42 Grey Plovers, a Ruff and a Knot with the Dunlin, but no sign by then of the GPs.

The culprit could have been a Sparrowhawk, for otherwise the Kestrel, Buzzard and Marsh Harrier cruising about were unlikely to spread such alarm. Or it could have been the Peregrine which the other day had been patrolling the cliffs past comfortably installed Fulmars.

There have been more Tufted Ducks at the Pools than usual – this morning there were 51. And a Water Rail screaming but no sound of Cetti’s Warbler. Most of the Wigeon were once more out at sea where, in fairly good conditions I could make out  several Gannets on the horizon but hardly any GC Grebes until I got back to Cliff End, when I could see a raft of c100 further out as I tracked a flock of 30 Red-throated Divers flying west. A deep croak behind me denoted the passing of a Raven.

I missed quite a few common birds so was quite surprised to discover I’d seen 78 species in 2 and a half hours.

Shoddy time at Salehurst

Never mind the birds – I find I spend more and more time on RXbirdwalks trying to imagine what the countryside might have looked like in the past. What would the Rother have looked like in the middle ages when it was still wide and untamed, yet navigable? It’s hard to conjure up such a vision from the present flat green fields, the river now a narrow stream hidden down a deeply scored gully, the sweeping valley vista blocked by ranks of poplars.

Or much more recently when the valley floor was populated with hops – so many, to judge from the ubiquitous oasts, round or square, brick or sandstone.

I had a very good primary education in the 1950s, in a brand-new, light and spacious Modernist school with humane and humorous teachers, from whom I learnt about all kinds of things including hop-farming, in those days in a headlong decline. That’s how I’d heard about shoddy. When, this morning, we were looking for birds in a Salehurst hop-garden I discovered I was the only one who knew what it was – the dregs of minced-up woollen rags laid down with other noisome yet nutritious waste as fertilizer for the hops. You can read a whole page about it here.

In Googling shoddy I also found a nice memoir from Mr L P Haynes of Bodiam Hop Farms which included this:

Hop-growers have found that hops pay for feeding and thousands of tons of crushed refuse from London boroughs have been composted by Kent growers. Many hop-growers have lost money in fattening cattle in order to feed the hops well on the resulting dung. Shoddy waste from Yorkshire mills, turkey feathers from Ireland, guano, slag, potash and phosphates in various forms, meat and bone meal, hair, hare and rabbit flick and skins cut up, fish heads and guts from fishing ports are all useful. These are now dried, ground and delivered in bags as “manure,” but between 1920 and 1939 they were delivered in all their natural condition.

Some recent comments on Trip Advisor used this word, seemingly unaware of its origins, to describe aspects of services at the Hop Farm, Paddock Wood.

Enough of hopping, what about birds? House Sparrows were hopping, chattering too in healthy numbers at every farm and hamlet we passed. Chaffinches were hopping too beneath the hop-poles, up which a GS Woodpecker was shinning, and perching on the wires. No sign of the Yellowhammers that nest here, however. Maybe they’re busy in game-cover.

No noisy geese on the Park Farm lake, but a pair of Mute Swans, 5 Little Grebes, a Coot, a few Moorhens, 32 slightly suspicious Mallards and 2 Gadwall. Across the lane, the rushy field (where previously, in summer, we’d found nesting Reed Buntings, Reed Warblers and Lapwings) were just a couple of Snipe, but overhead 4 Buzzards and a Kestrel were soaring. (A fifth Buzzard had been over the village.)

Phantasmagoric forms in grown-out hedges along sinuous, ancient wood-banks now engulfed in conifer plantations.

In Wellhead Wood, where wildlife-friendly management has seen rides & glades widened, the formerly numerous Blue & Great Tits switched abruptly to Coal Tits and there were a few Goldcrests but no sign of the Crossbills which had been present a few weeks ago.

Many noisy small birds had been lured into the island of gardens, stables and tall hedges around Robertsbridge Abbey by a largesse of peanuts. Most conspicuous were twittering bands of Goldfinches (c40) and Siskins (c50), large groups for a winter in which they seem scarce elsewhere.

Following a jolly lunch in the popular Salehurst Halt, we spent a few minutes at Feathers, sizing up the birdfood, feeders, binoculars etc before crossing the road to the Nature Area where battalions of Blue Tits had been attracted to large-scale deployments of seeds, this in turn attracting a lightning visit from a male Sparrowhawk.

(Trivia Time contd: tawdry – [C16 tawdry lace, shortened and altered from Seynt Audries lace, finery sold at the fair of St Audrey (Etheldrida), 7th-century queen of Northumbria and patron saint of Ely, Cambridgeshire])

Obsessive Behaviour in Beckley Woods

Although I was quite relieved when it finished last summer, I miss the Bird Atlas. I miss the excuse it gives me to hurry off into the dark recesses of the Weald. I miss the maps, I miss the lists, I miss the codes and tallies.

I miss the requirement to empty my mind of everything else, to make way for total concentration, looking and listening for Just Everything. Last week, I even went on an Atlas Tribute Walk around my home tetrad of TQ81W. No hardship, for it’s one of those squares with just about everything from Nuthatches to Fulmars. Farms, woods, gardens, scrub, reeds, canal, a bit of marsh, cliffs, the open sea…

And then, help is at hand for me and the horde of similarly bereaved atlaseers in the guise of the Sussex Winter Bird Survey.

Long Sowden’s Wood, overlooking the valley was coppiced last year to provide habitat for Dormice. they’re widespread in this area but I’m ashamed to say I have never seen one.

My 1km Breeding Bird Survey square in the lovely Tillingham Valley can now be surveyed in winter too! An alibi for a tallies, frosty fingers poised self-importantly over a numbly-clasped notebook. And what’s more, I can add the adjacent square to include a lump of compare & contrast Beckley Woods.

A game-cover strip of maize like this one held c150 Chaffinches plus some Reed Buntings, Blackbirds, song Thrushes and a couple of hundred mixed corvids & Woodpigeons. Next year, they’re going to sow more varied bird food strips.

However, these quiet lanes which to you and me offer respite, refuge and recreation are seen in quite another way by sociopaths seeking some hidden site for their grubby secret dumping. These sacks contained compost as far as I could see! Further along, a roadside ditch was clogged with household junk while the nearby stream was half-dammed with a television. In rural Morocco, the infrastructure is lacking so every stream is polluted with plastic and tins, but here the idiots have no excuse.

So what was the profit from all this bird-gathering? Lots of Blue Tits (29 in one mostly farm & garden square, 32 in the next, entirely woodland), Great (20/14), Robins (22/9), Blackbird (23/9) – you can see the habitat preference in these two. There were loads, as I said of Rooks, Jackdaws & Woodpigeons but also Common Gulls in the pastures of the first square. Other bits & pieces too but no Showing-Well type scarce species or rarities. In the woods, fewer species overall, no Crossbills, hardly any Siskins & Redpolls but 17 Coal and 9 Marsh Tits.

Tired but hazy, Atlas Addicts discuss the day’s adventures over steaming mugs of opium.

Low light on the Level

RXbirdwalk at Beech Farm

Beech Farm is another of those quintessential RXbirdwalks venues: deep, beautiful, varied hinterland, unseen from any main road. In fact, any road at all other than the tracks that serve it. A short distance from the throbbing heart of Battle, it is part of a 2,000 acre estate which in recent years has abandoned its previous role as a cattle and beef farm to concentrate on conservation objectives, particularly the regeneration of semi-natural grasslands.

You can learn more about this from The Grasslands Trust and more locally the Weald Meadows Initiative.

In the course of a short walk from the farm-yard, you can pass through stubble fields, rough grazing, traditional woodland and commercial plantations including that managed by the Forestry Commission in the adjacent Ashes Wood.

A bright, frosty, perfect morning for the walk, though at first we failed to find some of the farmland birds I’d seen on a recce during the week. The Skylarks and Yellowhammers had vanished but later on we came across a flock of 40 Meadow Pipits on rough pasture. There must be flocks like this all over the county, but unrecorded since hidden away in unremarkable fields, keeping a low profile among the tussocks and only visible when flushed (in our case by a Sparrowhawk).

On the late 18thC Yeakell & Gardner map, you can see that Birch Wood was about twice its present size. Its southern half is now three fields, presumably cleared in the 19th century.

Plenty of work has been done on Ashes Wood since I was last there: thinning of plantations, widening of rides and the startling clear-felling of Mill Wood which had for many years been a gloomy, gothick stand of Western Red Cedars where you could hear but rarely see the squeaks of Coal Tits and Goldcrests.

There’s a lot of industrial archeology in the area, with almost every stream valley repeatedly dammed to conserve the water which powered millstones, saws, bellows and hammers. The are also many pits and quarries for ore, clay and sand. The mill pond above has recently been de-silted. Some marshy areas have been dug out, to the detriment of shier species, but the deeper basin is obviously to the liking of diving Tufted Ducks, present in greater numbers (21) than previously. There are more Moorhens too (21 again), maybe profiting from food now put out for a gaggle of very noisy domestic geese. An ornamental element has been introduced with the installation of some Shelduck and Snow Geese. And wallabies…

The bright sunshine showed up numerous small birds passing to and fro though the trees lining this stream, with Blue, Great, Coal, Long-tailed and Marsh Tits, Nuthatches, Chaffinches and Siskins. G S Woodpeckers were active and conspicuous too, drumming, flying overhead and Showing Well on peanuts in an oast-house garden.

Not Showing So Well were the Crossbills and Buzzards I’d found a few days before, but that’s life and we still found 45 species in all.

In search of the Knelle Dam

I’m prospecting some new venues for RXbirdwalks, more in the Rye direction. Alan Martin had previously told me how good the Rother Valley can be in winter so I met him at Blackwall Bridge this morning for a walk upstream.

Frost! Reminding me that in spite of the mildness of the last week, of the Winchelsea daffodils in flower, of the burgeoning birdsong, that it’s still January and that cold weather is possible for another couple of months.

However, the lack of real cold and the lack of rain combined to produce a landscape soggy rather than flooded, with samples rather than storms of wildfowl. But it was still great to be out under the huge sky of yet another wonderful hinterland site, silent, undisturbed, unfrequented (there was just one angler).

As I drove, I had followed radiating streams of Rooks & Jackdaws out from their roosts and at the bridge they crossed paths with flocks of Cormorants and Mute Swans moving inland from (I guess) Castle Water. Or even Dungeness? And Starlings. (From?)

The open valley is abutted by old countryside of small fields, rampant hedges and battered, owl-friendly Oaks and Willows from which came calls and songs of farmland birds, including Red-legged Partridge, Stock Dove, Little Owl and drumming GS Woodpecker. Alongside the river we found a Green Sandpiper, 30 Meadow Pipits, a few Mallard, Teal & Wigeon, 170 Lapwings and a small flock of Common & Black-headed Gulls accompanied by an unexpected GB Gull.

We paused at Potman’s Heath bridge to check for “reliable” Kingfisher which appeared, true to form, & sat in a Willow close to two Little Egrets as a Buzzard flapped over (it was the only raptor we saw). Feeders in the adjacent cottage garden were besieged with Blue Tits, with House Sparrows in the hedge and a Mistle Thrush rattling in the Poplars.

At Maytham Wharf Fm, we met a friendly farmer with whom we swapped bird news and who told us what they were doing to encourage winter birds under the Stewardship Scheme. Just the person, too, to point out the line of the Knelle Dam, an amazing bit of civil engineering from the 14th century, whose purpose was to block the southern course of the Rother, sending it round the north side of the Isle of Oxney where there were important shipyards at Small Hythe and Reading Street (now tiny, isolated hamlets).

We decided to walk as far as New Barn Farmhouse. Suddenly, a flock of ducks appeared overhead, half a dozen Mallard but then, amazingly, 12 Goosanders. They must have been feeding on the river further up, and disappeared downstream into the distance. Goosanders occasionally make their way up the broad river here and sometimes even into the Brede Valley but to see this many is really something else.

Definitely a future walk destination, for its sense of space and silence, for its varied birds (and a lot of Foxes), though I shall not promise Goosanders.

Dearth of Ducks at Doleham

I’ve just come indoors to find feathers scattered across the kitchen floor.

My first reaction was that one of our Bad Cats had pounced upon an early Collared Dove chick but once I’d looked more closely I recalled that I’d brought them in myself. We had found them scattered on the bank of the Brede – time to enliven this RXbirdwalk with a session of Nature Detective! Clearly a duck, but one feather with a big patch of white and some tiny coppery coverts gave the vital clues.

Photo via Google

I often think that Gadwall are under-appreciated. They just look grey, but a closer view reveals the most subtle patterning and then the hidden lustre of the wing feathers can only be seen well in sunlit flight. Or when they’re dead, which this one was, the quills having been bitten off by a Fox.

Photo by Laura Meyers via Google

The plan was to compose a Homage-to-Andy-Goldsworthy featherwork but a) the light was poor for a decent photo and b) the breeze kept flipping them over, so I put them into a bag to take home but then forgot.

However, that was the only Gadwall (or part of one) we saw, for there were even fewer ducks than last week and nothing like the normal winter flocks on this private reserve which we visited courtesy of the Maxfield Nature Conservation Trust. There were just a dozen Teal (though more were piping from a hidden pond), 23 Canada and 3 Greylag Geese. Is this because the mild weather and flooding is leaving the wildfowl too many options? There seemed to be plenty of Reed Buntings, more than usual, perhaps because they too are staying put in the mild weather rather than moving off to a birdfood strip.

Luckily, the site is so varied that one doesn’t depend on ducks for variety. There were woodland species such as Nuthatch, Treecreeper, Green and GS Woodpecker, Jay and Redwing alongside the railway line. Both Song and Mistle Thrushes sang from the treetops, where watchful Crows made sure the 2 Buzzards enjoyed little peace.

It was interesting that a lone Snipe attracted more attention than the spectacular male Marsh Harrier that flushed it out of the rushes. The latter have become such a regular feature of local wetlands that they hardly merit mention. Snipe though too were mainly missing, in spite of the acres of apparently Snipe-friendly habitat. We waded out into the flood to look for these and in the hope of flushing a Jack Snipe or Water Pipit but could find neither. A couple of Green Sandpipers went up whistling and we found 12 Meadow Pipits.

Hundreds of Common Gulls streaming up the valley and feeding on nearby farmland. In the rushes were a a pair of Stonechats while overhead couple of disputing male Kestrels circled and from across the valley came the yelping of a Little Owl. In the end, we saw 49 species.

Friday Highlights from Pett Level

My Birdtrack list for Friday morning comes to 75 species – 78 if you include unidentified diver, hybrid goose and Bar-headed Goose.

The Bird Atlas maps-in-progress I’ve been helping to validate show very few records of hybrid geese, yet they seem to me to be increasingly widespread. There are at least two reasons for this. Firstly, I didn’t realize until I think the last year of the Atlas that there was a button for “hybrid goose”, so I just hadn’t entered records. Others must have been in the same boat. Secondly, the widespread opinion that hybrids and escapes are not “real” birds – “plastic” is the usual term – leads to lack of attention towards them.

But there they are, as real and alive as the racially pure Greylags and Canadas alongside them. I’m trying to recall the occasion I first noticed a Canada x Greylag hybrid  – probably in the late 80s. It was a novelty then, but now most flocks have a few, their individual, distinctive features allowing them to be recognized and therefore the movements of the greater flock tracked. By the next Atlas, in 20 years time, how many will there be? Everywhere? Or nowhere, having been weeded out like Ruddy Ducks?

Photo by Andrew Killick

And while I’m at it – a quick word in praise of exotics: the Bar-headed Goose currently at Pett is very beautiful and, as the species with the current high-altitude record, brings a certain je ne sais quoi to a very flat place.

The second thing that interested me was the wader roost at the east end of the level, near the cafe. The end field there has been a popular high-tide refuge for many years, though I suspect that lower recent numbers can be attributed to the greater attractiveness of habitat at Rye Harbour. (I never see roosts of Ringed Plover at Pett these days). However yesterday, having walked all the way down there and seen nothing, I was about to go back when I realized there was a tight mass of birds huddled on the shingle, looking like a line of bluestones.

Quite hard to count but c30 Grey Plovers, a few Turnstones and then… lots of mingled Knot & Dunlin. As I’ve commented previously, Knot used to be scarce birds here but in recent years a regular flock has been present at Rye H with large numbers coming down to Winchelsea Beach and a few even to Pett. What’s changed? Maybe again it’s that extensive, secure habitat on the Beach Reserve. When a passer-by made them fly a little way, I could see there were at least 150 Knot & c100 Dunlin with a few Sanderling mixed in.

For the last few weeks I’ve been checking the usual places: the Canal, the Dimsdale and the footpath ditch, for Water Pipits, but to no avail. Perhaps it’s because they’re in the Pannel Valley, where I saw 3 flying about squeaking. A description is always required for this scarce and subtle bird but an adequate one is usually hard to provide since they tend to just head off into the distance leaving you with nothing but a squeak and maybe a slim silhouette to remember them by. In the past I’ve just got fed up with the task of compiling a description which I know will be inadequate so have stopped doing it but with Birdtrack you get “Locally scarce species” flagged up in red and then presented with an online form which makes me feel guilty if I don’t fill it in. I do feel however than I’m moving towards the Cancel button.

Wet & Windy

The rain softened the ground beneath our bird-feeder and the wind worked it loose till it collapsed. No sign of any birds anyway.

I’d been concerned about the lack of water in the Brede Valley in view of next Sunday’s RXbirdwalk there, but a quick diversion to Brede Bridge reassured me.

Busy

With people, that is, not birds: the car park parked-up, tripod-toting figures on every horizon and hides inhabited by New Year Birdos who looked long-suffering or mumbled grievances when I brought in the guided walk.

“New Year’s Birding” – a general interest walk at last, a move away from the single-issue Bittern Safaris with their dominant success criterion. A chance to start off the year with the kind of list that only Dungeness can furnish… Well that’s what I thought, except that, apart from the lakes, there didn’t seem to be Much About. A wonderful vast blue dome of sky without a bird to blemish it (oh – no -wait – there’s a…Cormorant.) Scrub without the squeak of a Dunnock.

It started well enough with a small mob of people outside the toilets. Watching birds on the feeders. You have to come to Dungeness to do that? Ah no – some of the birds were Tree Sparrows, now like gold dust over the Sussex border.

So that’s where I took the group straightaway. Quality sparrows. Well, deserted feeders actually, with a bloke in camo gear standing about 4m away fondling a fat camo lens. As we approached he moved to within 2m and the few cowering tits retreated yet further into the willows. This is the kind of behaviour people complain about on blogs. But not me. I have decided that 2012 will remain rant-free. He had as much right to be there as we had. As close as he liked. No lines were drawn in the sand. And one Tree Sparrow did eventually creep briefly into view.

So anyway. A blink-of-an-eye hedge-hopping Sparrowhawk, a blink-of-an-eye low-level Bittern (but I’ve had enough of Bitterns), about three different Marsh Harriers and lots of ducks later we had very interesting prolonged flight-views of Great White Egret allowing everyone to get to grips with the subtle (proportions, wing angle, big neck, long legs) and not-so-subtle (big black feet, big yellow beak) characteristics of this relatively New Bird On The Block. How many years would you have to go back for it to be the main reason everyone was there?

40 species. I was surprised it came to that many. (Of course, lots of fancy stuff was over the road at ARC. Even more crowded.) Nice colours though, with golden/ochre reeds and dark blue water.