RXwildlife Sightings

Some further photo’s showing the extent of change on the Dungeness shingle beach, this time Dungeness Point in 1946. The most obvious change is the extent of superbly vegetated ridges where the power station is now.

There is also the present-day grid of tracks to the east coast which are the “beach feeding roads”. One of the consequences Read the rest of this entry »

Now into their second month on site the female Long-tailed Duck and Scaup look set to spend the winter on north pit among the legions of diving duck, while the farmland between the pits and the airport is currently attracting several Marsh Harriers plus a ringtail Hen Harrier.

The following post shows the results of not designating land as an SSSI.  This photo shows the Lade, the north eastern part of the Dungeness shingle beach in 1946. This section of the beach is relatively young with a series of beach ridges terminating in the marsh soils to the west of the shingle. The dark line bending round from the top left and cutting south across the shingle is the old railway line, with little development to the west of this feature other than the listening mirrors, which were reached by tracks from the east coast. These structures were a pre-radar attempt to focus the noise of aircraft crossing the channel for its operators, and in those days they have a relatively clear view of the sea with only scattered housing along the coast. the most extensive buildings are the beginnings of the Romney Sands holiday camp.

The shingle shows the characteristic relative absence of vegetation on its northern fringes, a consequence of the gravel consisting of very large stones, more hostile to plant life, and no doubt the origin of the term Greatstone. The ridges are aligned in a north-south direction, with the strips of vegetation aligned also in this direction. The pale lines crossing east-west are footpaths across the shingle.

Flick forward to the current Google Earth aerial

Read the rest of this entry »

Walking the Dungeness shingle in December reveals scenes you don’t normally notice at warmer times of the year. Such walks are relatively guilt-free because the lichens are soft and spongy, and don’t fragment when you walk on them. Something else is different about them at this time of year, or rather their illumination. The sun is at such a low angle that even a relatively flat featureless scene such as the Dungeness landscape is shown in its micro-topographic spendour. The peaks and valleys of mats of Cladonia lichens, like a miniature range of hills, are revealed by the shading produced by the almost horizontal rays of sunshine

Other features Read the rest of this entry »

Ragwort. A much maligned plant because it is poisonous to livestock, and  can be an indicator of bad grazing management, in particular overgrazing, which creates bare ground in which the seed can germinate. There is legislation, enforced by Defra, to control the plant. And yet on shingle beaches this plant behaves differently, and is actually of great value.

Shingle beaches tend not to be grazed these days, with a few exceptions, and the success of ragwort is down to the droughty nature of the soil. The seed can get established in areas that are drought stressed, or perhaps disturbed by rabbits. Walking across a very dry bit of Dungeness the other day I came across this little patch of gold.

It was a highly localised, but dense patch of the plant, growing with viper’s-bugloss Echium vulgare, another disturbance indicator. What was noticeable was that the plants were growing in a very deep shingle hollow - a former piece of coast that almost turned into an Oppen Pit, except that the shingle does not quite reach below the water table.

So why is the plant valuable? Read the rest of this entry »

Sphagnum mosses, or bog mosses, are not species you generally associate with the Romney Marshes, although 3000 years ago there was an extensive raised Sphagnum bog near where the wind turbines are being erected.

This species occurs at one location on Dungeness, the Cladium Pit. It can be recognised by the very rough rather spikey appearance of the “leaves”.

To find this moss I had to fight my way through a wall of tall reed risking flooded wellingtons, Read the rest of this entry »

One of the plants showing up well on the mature shingle ridges at Dungeness at present is sheep’s-bit Jasione montana, with it’s beautiful blue flowers. In Kent this plant is virtually restricted to the shingle beaches and sandy banks in the Dungeness area.

Similar conditions to those of yesterday today resulted in a small but varied arrival of migrants. The highlight was a singing Golden Oriole at the Long Pits for a time during the morning but other significant records included a male Hen Harrier, a Hobby, a Ruff, a Common Sandpiper, 81 Swallows and 16 House Martins, seven Tree Pipits, a Redstart, three Garden Warblers, three Willow Warblers and seven Spotted Flycatchers. A Grey Partridge and 17 Corn Bunting were also seen.

David Walker from DBO website

In yesterday’s cold mist and drizzle, 6 of us did the circular walk around the RSPB reserve at Dungeness. Despite the weather there were plenty of visitors, most of them keeping warm and dry in the information centre. Great Crested Grebes and a male Goldeneye were displaying and a Sparrowhawk dashed past, but there wasn’t a great deal of note until Bob spotted an unfamiliar shape high above Christmas Dell – gull? heron?  No, a Bittern, slowly coming down into the reeds!  We heard later that one had been seen heading that way from the ARC pit across the main road. Soon after, on the path we found the newt shown in Mike Prince’s photo, which we think was a Smooth Newt, Triturus vulgaris – only a couple of inches long, so probably not fully grown.

Old stable shingle on Dungeness that has supported broom scrub Cytisus scoparius for many years, has a deep acidic humus, with a pH of around 4-5 and it is probably the acidity that kills off the broom.  Once the broom has gone it is replaced by a remarkable community of plants, often dominated by lichens that caste the shingle a grey colour. As well as abundant lichens and mosses there are a mix of low growing plants such as wood sage Teucrium scorodonia, one of the hosts, along with broom, of dodder Cuscuta epithymum. I remember learning about this parasitic plant when I did  O-level biology but did not see it until I came to Dungeness. In the photo below it can be seen in the foreground of the picture with its trailing pink stems and flowers wrapped around the pale flowers of wood sage.

Read the rest of this entry »