Late Visits
30th June 2008, Monday
It was a bit of a rush to finish all my Late Visits for the Breeding Atlas. I’ve been wading through chest-deep nettles one morning and beans the next, got soaked with dew, scratched, stung and sunburnt, menaced by dogs, befriended by cats and shadowed by suspicious crows.
There were surprises right to the end: a Little Owl flying across the front lawn of Buckswood School for instance, (never seen one in that area before) and 5 Yellowhammers suddenly singing around Brook Lodge Farm, Brede instead of the usual 1, as well as a female gathering nesting material.
The previous morning, I had, at last, at last found a pair of Spotted Flycatchers near Guestling Church, over a deep wooded pit where 3 Tufted Ducks swam in a situation more suited to Mandarins. I’ve been visiting that area for years and never seen Tufted Ducks there before. In the vicinity were also Kestrel, Sparrowhawk and Hobby… and another Yellowhammer.
And a couple of days before that, I’d bumped into an unexpected pair of RL Partridges while on my BBS at Hundredhouse Bridge, and checked out the pond where Reed Warblers sing every year in spite of the fact that only Typha grows there – not a stem of Phragmites.
I’ve found Coal Tits all over the place, whereas I used to think they were a bit scarce, and Marsh Tits with young even at sites where I’ve never seen them before. Noisy Nuthatch families are very easy to track down, compared with their silence during early-May birdrace days, but I’ve found it quite hard to locate young Treecreepers.
The weather definitely makes a difference. One dull morning, I struggled to find much at all in the banks of gorse on Firehills but in bright sunshine 24 hours later, the steep, scrubby slopes above Fairlight Hall were loud with thrush song, and so many other birds singing it was hard to keep up. (Actually, it had been hard to keep up the previous day too, once I got into the sparrow-thick streets of Fairlight Cove). Mostly, the weather has been beautiful and it has been a pleasure to spend the first few hours of the morning threading through wonderfully varied wealden countryside.
No - I didn’t find anything amazing-and-not-even-on-the-British-List. Or even a Golden Oriole. It was mostly Wrens and Woodpigeons, and the triumphs were tiny ones (Yes!! Bullfinch!!).
