RXwildlife Sightings

Today in Hastings the weather was misty and cold, I didn’t expect to see many birds during my walk. But I was pleasantly surprised. At the viewpoint at the cliff top at Ecclesbourne Glen I watched a Raven. It chased the crows from their perches on the cliff face and chased them round the sky. Then they all swirled round in the air together until the Raven went for a rest. It then returned and repeated the process. At one time there was a fulmar, raven and several crows and a few herring gulls in the sky at one time. The raven chased a herring gull and was surprisingly agile in the air for such a big bird. It looked about twice the size of the crows and the views were very close - spectacular.
Richard Price by e-mail

A bittern and a drake garganey were seen from the ARC site viewing screen first thing this morning. Also at ARC were two Slavonian grebes, four goosanders, two little ringed plovers, a spotted redshank and a willow warbler. Two wheatears were seen near Scott hide, another Slavonian grebe was seen between Makepeace and Scott hides and four black-tailed godwits flew past the Visitor Centre. Bearded tits were showing well at Hooker’s pits and a sedge warbler was heard in this area.

Bittern, merlin, sand martin, swallow and raven were of note yesterday.

We are working with cameraman Ken Lawson to produce widescreen HD video on a variety of nature reserve subjects. He has only just started, but has made this seven minute film available …

Highglights this morning were two Common Tern roosting amongst 200 Sandwich Terns at Ternery Pool, 9 Avocet and a Little Ringed Plover were on Harbour Farm pools.

It may come as a surprise to non-herpetologists to hear that grass snakes can be nocturnal hunters. Today at 21.40 I came across a male snake in one of the newt ponds on Lydd Ranges.  Given that ponds warm up and retain their heat longer into the night than the surrounding air, and that their amphibian prey are particularly active at night it is not surprising really.  Tonight the air temperature was seven degrees centigrade when I found the snake, and it still had the energy to dart off across the pond.  That’s the trouble with night-time surveying.  Torches are so bright you lose the opportunity to study animals behaving naturally.

The purpose of the visit was to monitor numbers of great crested newts in the ponds on the military ranges.  I counted a pleasing 115 animals, my highest count on the site since 2002.  Numbers have been increasing since the largest pond was cleared of encroaching reeds three years ago.