Chiltern Birder

The badgers have been clearing the soiled bedding out of their sets. The gaps in the hedge where they had brought in the fresh material were easy to see with trails of dry grass, especially where they had gone down a slope. In the garden the tits seem to be slowly discovering the fat bar with several blues and a great tit as well as the robin. I have been watching out for redwings and fieldfares but none have been visible near home.

After a long period without putting feeders out the birds seemed to have abandoned my garden and what food I put out this month was being ignored. Finally today I had a solitarty blue tit and a robin coming to the starling bar (no starlings of course!) Yesterday a trip down to Thame naturally gave the usual crop of red kites and, becoming unusual these days, a kestrel hovering over the road between Thame and Longwick.

I had what must be my most easterly red kite sighting this morning while driving on the M25 between London Colney and South Mimms. It was probably one of this years brood as it looked quite small for a kite. In the garden the fat block is getting pecked but I haven't seen anything feeding on it. The strange weather this year seems to have made garden feeding very late. It is several weeks since I passed the River Chess in Chesham but it looked very stagnant and the local paper has reported that the flow hs stopped. Not entirely suprising with the dry summer and drought warnings being given already.

After several years where other committments have inhibited any sort of serious birding it was nice to be able to take a leasurely stroll around Fishers Green today. The weather was warm and clear again, unseasonably so for October. There were plants in flower, particularly comfrey which was keeping the bumble bee population supplied with late pollen. On the water there was nothing of particular note, canada geese seemed to be in larger numbers than in the past. Most noticable was the absense of sawbills and pochard. Suprising numbers of wigeon present and on the water rather than grazing. The drakes were in eclipse plumage and I am so out of practice at identification that it took a visit to the RSPB web site to confirm the sighting.

The Indian Summer is finally over. Last weekend temeratures were in the 80s and I was picking strawberries. Clear skys did make spotting large birds easier and a personal first for me was to see buzzard in Essex. While I have seen them often enough in Bucks and Herts this was the first time east of the Lea, as I came out of Epping Forest towards the M25 at Waltham Abbey. Driving towards Oxford last night I commented to my passenger that it was about time that I saw another badger. Suprisingly on the way back we actually did see one. At first I thought is was a bag or sack dumped in the middle of the lane but as I slowed down it scuttled into the side.

An early work finish meant that I had a rare chance of a weekday walk locally. So I did my favourite circuit down Broomstick Lane and Bottom Lane then back across the fields. It was suprising to see a late swallow skimming the arable, newly green with late sown something. Coming back in a lovely mild blustery weather the kites were in evidence with three or four individuals seen over a very short distance. One skimmed over a flock of jackdaws at low level but they seemed totally uninterested. A little later a flock of crows looked a little more threatening but didn't mob the bird. One must have been from this year's brood as it was quite small by kite standards. I could judge the size well as it came very close. The only other bird that was obvious was a yellowhammer that vanished into the hedge, one of the closest that I have seen to home.

With several things that I needed to do coming together I ended up taking a lengthy tour of the country over the last week. One thing that struck me was the lack of kestrels along the roads, they used to be so common along main roads and motorways. Starting from Chesham last Sunday we spent the day in the Cotswolds. Steeple Barton Abbey gardens were open and being one of the first to arrive we were lucky to see a green woodpecker making off for a quieter location. The lake was criss crossed by swallows skimming the surface like tiny exocets. The first buzzard of the trip was seen between Chipping Norton and Burford then turning onto the A40 we saw a red kite above Burford School. Much further west and we might see the Chiltern and Welsh populations merging. On Tuesday I had to drive from Burford to Wensleydale. Buzzards used to be something to see in the wilds of Wales but I kept seeing them along the main roads in locations where I would have expected kestrels. I was suprised to see s

I have seen birds from the car which I could not positively identify as swallows for several days but walking to the polling station this evening I had my first positive identification. The field next to the Hen and Chickens is used for horses who provide the perfect environment for the swallows' prey. The wild flowers have come on a lot since Easter. Clover, forget me not, speedwell and buttercups were all very obvious on the verges as well as a single field poppy. Returning home I went into the back garden and saw a kite being mobbed by crows. Nothing unusual around here but it is the first time that I have seem one from the back garden. The front garden and hte street outside the house yes, but never from the back before.

My next door neighbour had left some rubbish bags in the bin in his porch. This morning the bin was upended, the bags opened and rubbish scattered around his lawn. I assumed a fox or dog at first but then found a path practically bulldozed through my front flowerbed. Badger damage to a garden is pretty unmistakable. On the birding front I saw a pair of partridges as I was driving into Latimer from Ley Hill last week. Not much in the garden but today a woodpecker was drumming somewhere across the fields and after digging over a bed prior to planting out some seedlings I turned away for a second to find a blackbird collecting worms from the bed. Normally I would expect a robin to be present when digging like this but this time it was the blackbird.

With the fine weather and a holiday it seemed a good idea to take advantage of the fact that I live in some very beautiful countryside. A walk in the Ley Hill area took me up Broomstick Lane, where escaped cultivated bluebells were mixing with the wild. Then into Cowcroft Wood where a substantial badger set seems to have had somebody digging. (I won't add my thoughts on that as Blogspot has rules about bad language). Although birds were audible there was nothing to be seen and the walk continued out onto Ley Hill Common and along the side of the golf course towards the community wood, now named Crabtree Plantation. One tree had several hollow sections where branches had fallen and a nuthatch was taking advantage of the previous night's rain to plaster mud around one of these. Its mate was on the next branch. A little nearer the road was a recently discarded pair of bright red knickers, I did wonder if the cloudburst had cooled somebody's ardour rather precipitately. In the

Leaving the house yesterday morning I was suprised to see not red kites circling overhead but two buzzards. I do see them occasionally in my part of the chilterns but not with any regularity. Just to retain a semblence of normality however, barely more than a dot in clear sky there was also what was obviously a kite. Its curious how you learn to identify birds, it was definitely too far away to even pick out the forked tail but the whole "feel" of the bird was unmistakable.

As illness had prevented me from taking a holiday last summer, and as I had to use up some leave before the end of the financial year I took a few days down on the South Coast starting with a visit to Dungeness. The most obvious attraction is of course the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway but that is only one aspect of this remarkable ecosystem. From a birding point of vie w there was a lot of interest. Without making any effort I quickly saw black redstarts and wheatears. I didn't have time for serious birding and didn't manage to see the serin that I was told was around. The shingle landscape and the architecture are both fascinating. Look closely at the right hand hut in the photo, the central section is clearly an old railway carriage. The power station dominates of course, show here behind the formeer Trinity House experimental station. The Corporation of Trinity House of Deptford Strond, to give them their full title has a long association with Dungeness with two lighth

With longer days I am now starting to see things while travelling too and from work. A yellowhammer perched on a phone line, primroses out beside the railway with a muntjac feeding, an egret flying up the Chess valley at Latimer and always the red kites. At home the quince trees are in bud while the forsythia will be over soon and the dogwood will need pruning. Visiting my mother's house I saw a long tailed tit in the next street. Unremarkable except in my childhood we saw nothing except sparrows and starlings. My first bird book was the collected set of british birds cards from packets of PG tips.

I had to drive from Essex to South Yorkshire last Sunday and there were a handful of interesting sights from the car. At Cambridge there was a buzzard over the road while I saw two red kites just north of Peterborough. Presumably these were from the population originating from the Rockingham Forest release. In the same area I also saw a lapwing flying across the road which was probably more exciting these days. A sign of spring was a magpie with a beakful of nesting material.

Tradionally the birds should be choosing their mates today. Maybe not strictly accurate but there is a lot of courtship activity at least audible. I hear green woodpeckers almost every morning but haven't heard a great spotted drumming at all. Curious because I see far more great spotteds during the year. The blackbirds are getting agressively territorial, there was quite a spat going on between two cock birds the other morning while a pair of wood pigeons were strutting around each other on a neighbour's chimney.

I came across a newspaper article recently by somebody commenting that in his childhood he only ever saw sparrows and starlings in the garden. My childhood recollections, on the edge of London, are much the same. We may have had the occasional robin and blackbird but I don't remember them. Certainly there was nothing exotic as a wood pigeon and I didn't see a magpie in the area until I was 17. Now in my mother's garden pigeons and magpies are more likely to be seen than sparrows and starlings. Last weekend I saw a blue tit investigating the nest box and in a garden at the end of the street we saw a fieldfare. Quite a change over the last 50 years.