Six miles offshore from Deal lie the notorious Goodwin Sands, a ten mile long chain of sandbanks which is only exposed at low tide and which completely disappears beneath the waters at high tide.

But over the centuries the Goodwin Sands have earned themselves the name of the ‘Great Ship Swallower’ having caused over two thousand shipwrecks. Often the ship would run aground but any sailor that climbed out onto the sandbank would then be drowned as the tide came in.

These days Dover Sea Safari runs occasional trips in their rib out to the Goodwins but they can only go at really low tides when the weather is calm. We went on one of these trips this week.

The rib is kept in Dover harbour’s swanky new marina:

After leaving Dover harbour, we travelled north hugging the coast as far as St Margarets before turning out to sea. There are always ominous signs of recent rock falls in front of the beautiful white cliffs:

This slot was carved into the chalk by chains that were used to salvage the cargo from the Preussen which was shipwrecked in 1910 in Crab Bay:

The Preussen was the World’s only five-masted ship with each mast carrying six square sails, and she could travel very fast indeed when in full sail. But her speed proved to be her undoing:

Any image of a hundred grand pianos being hauled up the cliffs on chains has unfortunately not been preserved for prosperity, but it must have been a very bizarre sight indeed.

At St Margarets Bay, the sun was shining on the group of white houses down on the shore. Noel Coward and subsequently Ian Fleming lived here after the Second World War.

Once we arrived at the Goodwin Sands, we were decanted four at a time into a smaller boat and pulled ashore by one of the crew:

We then had forty-five minutes to wander the sands before we needed to return to the boat:

There was a surreal, otherworldly feel to the place. The tides have carved the sand into intricate designs:

Our time there was very limited but it felt like we should sit and try to absorb the strange atmosphere of the place.

We were very aware that we were walking on hallowed ground and it was impossible to forget how many lives have been lost there.

For forty-five minutes we were temporarily intruding somewhere that humans shouldn’t be…

A strange new world where we didn’t belong.

The East Goodwin Lightvessel could be seen to the north of us, warning shipping of the danger:

There were no shells and no worm casts on the sands, just a couple of washed up cuttlefish and this single dead sand eel:

Grey seals haul out here at low tide. We had disturbed one little group into the water as we arrived even though we hadn’t got close. The sight of any human at all there is so unusual:

But they were back in place again by the time we left:

On the horizon to the north there was a very long line of grey seals:

Towards the end of our time on the sandbank, the weather changed rapidly – the wind picked up and a fog bank rolled in. There was an urgency in the air to get the ten off us off the Goodwins and back onto the boat:

Once we were all safely aboard, the rib turned for home and soon out ran the fog, arriving back in Dover in the evening sunshine. It is not often that weather and tide conditions come into line and allow these trips to run and we were fortunate to have got the opportunity to spend some time in such a special place.

The weather has been mostly sunny and calm recently and I have been in my happy place – pottering around the meadows photographing invertebrates and then trying to identify and learn about them. I have been doing this so much this week that I only include a small selection here.

In last week’s post I included this photo. This is a mating pair of Empis tessellata dance flies, also called dagger flies. The male gives the female a nuptial gift of a dead fly (a St Marks fly in this case) and mates with her as she eats it:

This week I saw the same thing happening but on a much smaller scale. These flies are also Empis sp but are very tiny at only about 3mm long:

A scorpion fly is another species where the male will give the female a nuptial gift to keep him safe from her as he then mates with her:

Small blue butterflies have emerged out into the meadows:

Last autumn I planted several plugs of horseshoe vetch onto the new chalk banks and they are flourishing there with little competition from other plants for now:

We saw a small blue butterfly nectaring up on the horseshoe vetch:

It is the time of year when the meadows are filled with the yellow of buttercups:

Buttercups provide a lot of pollen and this seems to be particularly appreciated by small beetles:

A hawthorn shield bug, quite a sizeable and magnificent animal at 14mm long excluding its antennae:

And a hatching out of tiny little spiderlings:

Although I am very much still discovering new species of invertebrates in the meadows, it is rare to see a new mammal species after being here for ten years. But this week a stoat was on the cameras for the first time ever:

There has been an increase in the rabbit population these last couple of years and this is probably what has interested the stoat:

Also partial to rabbit, of course, are the foxes:

The sense of smell of a badger is so developed that it can detect where there are baby rabbits underground and can then dig down through the soil to get at them. Here is our female badger with this year’s triplets:

In the wood, the green woodpeckers are still very active in and around the hole in the old cherry tree:

The camera trained onto the tree is picking up incidental wildlife that passes along the track behind:

Jays are frequent and enthusiastic bathers in the ponds:

This flamboyant hoverfly, Helophilus pendulus, likes to hang out around ponds as he awaits a female:

The regenerating section of the wood is now filled with bugle:

My last photo for today is from this afternoon’s stroll round the meadows – two newly emerged broad-bodied chasers were circling the hide pond….dragonfly season has begun!

Last weekend we made the most of some lovely bank holiday weather to get ourselves out and about. On Sunday morning we set out early to visit the Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory scrape to see how the black-headed gull colony was getting on. We are not very familiar with black-headed gulls yet, but I already love how they use body postures and wing positioning to communicate with each other.

The shingle ridges would probably be where the gulls would choose to lay their eggs but these are still underwater after the wet spring, so they were making the best of things and nesting in the grass of the islands:

The birds are at the egg laying stage and there was much ongoing mating:

The colony was busy and loud, but not so cacophonous that we couldn’t hear the wonderful call of a cuckoo floating across the water. Other species were quietly going about their business nearby:

We will return to the scrape before too long and hope to see some spotty gull chicks.

On bank holiday Saturday we went to a plant fair at Saltwood Castle, near Hythe. The late MP Alan Clark was a controversial figure but he inherited this medieval castle from his father and his widow still lives there today, opening the castle grounds for a few days each year to support local charities:

I have to also include a photo of this cake stall because the cake we had from here was really nice:

Always on the look out for wildlife, we heard a rustling in the undergrowth and I suppose shouldn’t have been surprised when a peacock emerged. We were, after all, at a castle:

Eight tortoises were contained in a cage for the day. Ordinarily they live amongst the castle grounds:

Alan Clark’s collection of heritage cars was on display in the garages:

On leaving Saltwood Castle and heading for home, we took the wrong road and pulled into a driveway to turn around. We then noticed that it was the entrance of a house that was just about to open under the National Garden Scheme and so we spontaneously drove in. We had unexpectedly arrived at Sandling Park, and that morning was the first time that the gardens were opening to the public since the outbreak of covid. We were the first to arrive.

We talked to one of the family who live here and between them they manage the expansive gardens with the help of just one gardener. We learned that ravens nest in a large conifer up by the house every year and that she has already seen two hoopoes on her lawn this spring. The garden is also very rich in hedgehogs which is wonderful to hear – we don’t get them at all in the meadows or in the wood.

We might not have been meaning to visit Sandling Park but it was an uplifting spring garden and well worth the visit. Another helping of tea and cake was involved, of course.

This week I spent some quality time with a centipede. Unlike all the centipedes that I have ever seen before, this one moved in a very leisurely fashion so I had plenty of time to get some photographs and to have a proper look at how it moved all those 71 pairs of legs without tripping over. It was mesmerising.

In September I will have been writing this blog for ten years and I believe that this is the first time that it has ever included mention of a centipede.

The hawthorn is in full flower in the meadows and providing pollen and nectar for all sorts of interesting invertebrates:

There is one particular reptile sampling square under which large numbers of slow worms gather to warm up:

Viviparous lizards are the other reptiles that live in the meadows:

Every summer a few pairs of starlings arrive to breed. There are seven birds here and so there might be four pairs this year:

A tawny owl is on this new perch every night:

This is very pleasing because the perch is in a part of the meadows that we have been tentatively developing into a different type of habitat over the last two or three years. Selected bushes of bramble and blackthorn have been left to grow up in this area but we are keeping the grasses mowed around them to maintain control. We thought that whitethroats and other small birds might like to nest in the thorny clumps, but the repeated visits by this tawny recently suggest that they are also providing shelter for small mammals and the area is now developing its own personality, distinct from the rest of the meadows:

A kestrel has been hunting here as well:

I am pleased to report that there are three baby badgers this year – triplets! They have started to come out with their mother to be shown the ropes:

A fox on the hay pile:

For two nights this week we had Vigilant, a Border Force vessel, anchored alongside the meadows. The Goodwin Sands offshore from the meadows, are exposed only at low tide and can be seen behind Vigilant here. The black blobs on the sand are grey seals:

We sometimes get a bizarre optical illusion where ships seem to be flying through the skies. This was particularly extreme one day this week, although we only had our phones with us so the photo isn’t great:

We hear that swifts are now arriving in the country, although we haven’t seen any as yet. Now, with maybe not a moment to spare, we are finally prepared for them. The builders have today returned to fit the swift boxes into the tower of our new garage:

Inside the tower the boxes are now up:

The backs of the boxes can come off and there is then a perspex screen. This could also come away for the bird ringers to ring any chicks, should there ever be any:

A birds eye view out from the box and across the meadows:

Last year swifts nested in a box that is attached to the house, and we now have a camera in there ready to leap into action:

So, everything is ready. All we need now are some swifts….

Dave’s father was an RAF aircraft engineer working on Spitfires, Hunters and the amazing Sunderland flying boats amongst others over the course of his long military career.

Dave spent his boyhood living on or close to RAF air bases around Great Britain as well as spending three tropical years in Singapore. All this has nurtured a lifelong interest in aircraft and so, for his birthday last weekend, we visited the Shuttleworth Collection near Biggleswade in Bedfordshire. The collection is home to over fifty vintage planes, most of which can and do still fly today. Sadly there is no Sunderland in the collection and not one of those iconic white planes remains airworthy today. However, a Blériot XI, the World’s oldest still-flying plane, is in the Shuttleworth Collection:

On 25th July 1909, Blériot made history by flying across the English Channel and crash landing onto the Dover cliffs, not far from the meadows where our house was due to be built just a few months later. The plane that made this World famous crossing was a Blériot XI, but that plane never flew again. Another Blériot XI of around the same age, however, is housed at the Shuttleworth Collection and still regularly flies.

We wandered slowly round the hangers, admiring the planes and reading the information boards.

Another aeroplane that caught my eye is this Lysander below, painted all black in the colours of a WWII clandestine Special Duties aircraft. These planes were able to land and take off from very short, improvised airstrips and were used to place agents into and recover them from occupied France during the war. These night flights always took place within a week either side of the full moon since the plane only carried a map and a compass and moonlight was essential for navigation.

This First World War information poster shows the surprising variety of airships that were in service at the beginning of that war:

The Shuttleworth Estate has a ten acre Swiss Garden with a romantic Swiss cottage:

The ceiling under the thatch is beautifully decorated with pine cones:

The garden also has a very atmospheric grotto:

The wisteria arches in the grotto were just coming out into flower:

We stayed in a hotel near Leamington Spa that I had stayed in ten years previously when one of our sons was graduating from Warwick University. I remembered that it had a fabulous garden back then and was pleased to find that, even though the building complex was much expanded, its gardens still remain very lovely today:

The birthday weekend continued the next day with a visit to the National Garden Railway exhibition near Kenilworth, Warwickshire – this is another of Dave’s hobbies:

I stayed at the exhibition with Dave for a couple of hours before taking myself off to a nearby Warwickshire Wildlife Trust reserve, Brandon Marsh.

It was cold and gently raining and consequently I saw little of note there, but I did have a nice walk surrounded by nature and visited all of the eight hides that are currently open on this big reserve:

I was pleased to see three common terns newly arrived back to the country and sitting on their tern raft. There were also many Canadian geese on the reserve – I think this one must have been on eggs but she didn’t move while I watched her and so I couldn’t say for sure:

The interesting geological wall at the reserve demonstrated the varying geology across Warwickshire. Geology is another of Dave’s interests, but he was still engaged elsewhere with his model trains.

Having spent the weekend pursuing a few of Dave’s many hobbies, we returned to Kent to see how the wildlife was getting on here. The headlines are that two baby badgers have been seen poking their heads out of their burrow:

We have only had this one glimpse of them so far. I suspect that they are coming above ground every night now, but not where we have a camera set up.

Last week I said how pleased I was that the egg-laying mallards are able to seek rest and sanctuary in the meadows, so it was a shame to see that the dog had alarmed them this week:

I wasn’t delighted to see this next photo either. With that tail, there is no denying that this is a very large rat swimming in the pond:

A male sparrowhawk continues to be seen a lot around the meadows:

And it was good to see the buzzard back again this week, being bothered as ever by magpies:

Slow worms warming up under a sampling square:

I look after one of our grandsons one day each week and, even though he is only eighteen months old, his zest to learn all about the world around him is enormous. This week he and I spent a couple of hours pottering around his sunny garden looking for invertebrates that I could tell him about. Here are a few of the more interesting things that we saw:

Other invertebrates that have been seen in the sunny meadows this week:

Expanding this photo, the black-tipped rostrum can seen – their mouthparts have been modified into this long beak used for sucking fluids from plants:

Behind their second pair of legs, you can see the teardrop-shaped stink gland. When threatened by predators, the bug releases a foul-smelling cocktail of chemicals onto the shiny area surrounding the gland which acts as a deterrent:

St Marks flies have been flying around the hedgerows with their hind legs characteristically dangling this week. There are mating pairs everywhere:

I have also seen a common dance fly, Empis tessellata, a predator of the St Marks flies:

A male of these dance flies will catch a St Marks fly and then offer it up as a present to a female so that he can mate with her while she eats it:

The tulips at Walmer Castle are starting to go over now. Here they are last week with the backdrop of the beautifully trained fruit trees and the magnificent cloud hedge:

But here they are this week, many flowers having now finished and been deheaded. I’m sorry to see them go:

All these bulbs are soon to be dug up so that the vegetables, currently hardening off in the cold frames, can go in. Fresh tulip bulbs will then be planted in the autumn as the cycle begins once more

It has been a wet and cold old April – apparently the UK as a whole experienced 55% more rainfall than an average April. For us, here on the East Kent coast, it has also been windy and cold for much of the month. On our trip to the Midlands last weekend, we found that spring was noticeably further along there than it is at home, which wasn’t what we had expected. But it feels like all that is behind us now as we forge full steam ahead into summer. May is here, the buttercups are coming out in the meadows, the invertebrates are appearing and summer-visiting birds are beginning to arrive and breed. I have begun to apprehensively scan the skies for swifts – they should be arriving any day now and it is an anxious wait.

We have set up a camera in the wood, looking at an old cherry tree that has been a favourite nesting site for woodpeckers in recent years. Collecting the card from it this week, I immediately noticed that the ground below the tree was covered in wood chippings:

It looked like further excavation work had been going on in a low hole in the tree that was first dug out last year and I was filled with anticipation to see what would be on the SD card. Although great spotted and green woodpeckers had both been inspecting this hole over the last couple of weeks, it turns out that it is the green woodpeckers that have now claimed it for themselves:

As the birds peck away at the wood within the cavity, all the wood chippings need to be brought out in their beaks:

There were lots of photos of this laborious process on the SD card. Whenever I could see the moustache of the bird, it was always the female that was doing the work, but I often couldn’t tell and can’t say for sure that the male wasn’t involved.

Woodpeckers are unusual amongst birds in that they have four toes, numbers 2 and 3 of which point forwards and numbers 1 and 4 point backwards. This is no doubt to help them on trees, although treecreepers and nuthatches, who also spend much of their time on tree trunks, have the more normal configuration of three toes forward and only one backwards.

Great spotted woodpeckers are still peering into the hole but I think that they have lost their chance:

I have read that green woodpeckers drill two holes, one that is used for egg-laying whilst the other is for sleeping. I hope that this low hole is where the baby woodpeckers are going to be but we shall have to see how things progress. There are multiple old woodpecker holes in this tree that could be reused and so both of their holes could easily be on this same tree

Nesting is going on all over the wood. In the foreground of this next photo, a blackbird has a beak of nesting material whilst a song thrush is collecting sticks behind her:

We quickly looked in some of the bird boxes, all of which had nests under construction. This nest has badger fur as its soft lining:

The trail camera looking at the woodpecker tree is also capturing other animals as they make their way along the woodland track behind the tree:

A hare is not a typical woodland animal but one has been spending some time here all the same. They are mainly nocturnal and I think this one is sheltering amongst the safety of the trees during the day:

A massive buzzard visits a woodland pond:

The primroses and bluebells in the wood are gradually giving way to bugle, wild strawberry and speedwell, all very popular with a wide variety of invertebrates. When the sun shines, the glades and rides are now alive with mining bees, their predators and many other insects – but I’m finding most are difficult to photograph and identify. But there is no mistaking this ashy mining bee, Andrena cineraria:

Having just completed a Field Studies Council online course on Discovering Bees, I am now trying to identify some different types of bees when I’m out and about. East Kent is a hotspot for rare bees and it is good to keep one’s eyes open at all times. I am also attempting to make more of an effort with hoverflies this year, and there were several of these slim and elegant Sphaerophoria scripta males in the wood:

Across in the meadows, the male mallard has returned with his mate and so I presume that egg laying is on-going. They are visiting both ponds:

There has been another sighting of a jackdaw in the meadows. We see them so rarely here:

About fifteen years ago we visited Costa Rica and were delighted to see Resplendent Quetzals – astounding looking birds that live off the wild avocado trees that grow in the Costa Rican cloud forest:

When I saw this next photo, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing but my mind immediately leapt to the Resplendent Quetzal:

But it was merely yet another photo of a magpie in the meadows, with its tail casting a long shadow on the pole.

Magpies like to stick close to all the predators that hunt in the meadows, and here one is keeping an eye on a sparrowhawk:

Magpies also hang around the buzzard that has been hunting from the hay pile through the winter. We haven’t seen the buzzard in the meadows recently but a male blackbird has been using the hay pile as a high perch from which to fill the meadows with his beautiful singing:

No baby badger has yet appeared on the trail cameras yet, but it has been so cold. It surely won’t be long now.

For the last couple of years I have been volunteering at nearby Walmer Castle and I love their kitchen garden in April:

I also want to include this photo of a pair of sweet robins that I took on a trip up to Buckinghamshire this week:

We had the THV Galatea anchored so close to the house on two nights this week that I could hear her generators through the night. She works for Trinity House, responsible for lighthouses and marine navigation aids around the coasts of England and Wales. We often see her here when she is maintaining the lightships that guard the infamously dangerous Goodwin Sands just offshore from the meadows:

She is such an odd shape with a very tall bow and nothing at the back:

The Galatea at dawn as she prepares to go off for her day’s work to to keep the seas safe for shipping:

On Monday evening there was drama when an air ambulance landed on the shingle immediately below the house:

Apparently there were more normal ambulances there as well. I do not know what was going on but, whatever it was, someone was in dire straits indeed. I hope it worked out well for them.

Where has April gone? We long for spring all through the dark days of winter and then it speeds by in a flash. May is perhaps my favourite month of all and, in an attempt to slow it down, I am planning to get out as much as possible to notice and appreciate it.

Britain’s lovely native hazel dormice are in big trouble with their population having fallen by 70% since 2000. They are seriously endangered and we want to do what we can to help by managing our wood with dormice in mind. Together with a neighbour, our woods have also been part of the National Dormouse Monitoring Programme for the last two years.

As part of this national programme, there are fifty dormouse nest boxes placed in a grid formation through the woods which are monitored every month from April to November. This week we carried out the first tour of the year around the thirty boxes that are in our wood.

It was a sunny spring morning and the temperature was 14 degrees as we started out. Even though they are no longer hibernating, dormice have the ability to go into torpor. This is a hibernation-like state where their body temperature and metabolism are lowered to conserve energy at times when the weather is bad or cold or if there is not much food about. Although they can go into torpor frequently in the springtime, it is something that I had never seen before.

But on this tour we found four dormice and they were all torpid:

It is always difficult to get a photo of an active dormouse and I often come away from a monitoring tour just with photos of them through the plastic of their weighing bags. But, although it is important to process these torpid dormice swiftly and get them safely back onto the tree before they wake up, we did take the opportunity to snap a few quick photos of them. Oh my goodness they are so sweet:

This next photo shows the distinctive sole of a dormouse foot with its triangular pads:

As well as the three boxes containing dormice, fourteen boxes had complete bird nests in them. These are most probably all blue tit nests since the hole into the box is so small, but it was interesting to see the variation between them. Wrens can also get into the boxes but their nests are not the same – they fill the box with nesting material.

The leisurely tour round the thirty boxes took us two and a half hours, including a stop for a cup of peppermint tea and cake midway. It was really lovely to spend quiet time in the wood and we noticed some other interesting things as we went along:

The trail cameras in the wood have provided these photos this week:

Across in the meadows it is normal for us to be visited by a pair of mallards in the spring who come to the ponds for rest and recreation whilst the energy-demanding egg-laying process is ongoing. But the only mallard sighting this year has been this single male who called by one afternoon this week:

It is a rare sight to see jackdaws in the meadows:

I am looking forward to butterfly season. So far I have just seen the ones that hibernate as adults:

It has been a very blustery week here, which is frustrating for those of us that want to be out invertebrate-spotting. However, whatever the wind is up to, it is now mid April and the days are getting inexorably longer. I always know summer is on its way when I start seeing badgers out and about before it gets completely dark:

I have seen further evidence this week that the female badger is feeding cubs underground and I am impatient to see them – surely it can’t be long now.

Now that it is April, we realised time was fast running out to prepare for the return of our swifts. Apparently swifts have already been spotted coming in off the sea and we want to be completely ready should ours arrive back from their hazardous 14,000 mile round trip down to tropical Africa and back. I do so hope that they will.

We started our swift journey in 2019 when Dave made a semi detached swift box following a design on the Bristol Swifts website. We hung the box high under the eaves looking north and played loud swift calls near the box throughout the summers of 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 and, although lots of swifts were repeatedly brought in by the calls, we didn’t see any of the birds enter the box.

By then, two additional single swift boxes had gone up because there were problems with house sparrows nesting. We wanted to ensure that there was always accommodation available for the swifts should they finally decide to nest here.

Just before the swifts left in 2022, I saw one go into the right hand side of the box and stay in there for about five minutes. After all those years of trying, I actually sunk to my knees at the sight. Then, when the birds returned in early May 2023, they went straight back to that box and we presumed that they bred over the next few weeks. Certainly we saw them quietly going in and out throughout the summer until they left in late July.

We fervently hope that they will be returning this year as well, but wanted to get a camera into the box so that we can understand a bit more of what is going on:

When the roof was prised off the box, it was really interesting to see what was inside:

The camera that is going in will send its images wirelessly to the silver receiver, but it needs a hard-wired power supply. When the builders were sorting the WiFi out in our house and garage recently, we asked them to also take a power line out to the swift box for the camera. They were very tolerant of all the wildlife-related requests we put to them during their time with us, although were perhaps slightly bemused at times.

On checking the Bristol Swifts website again, Dave noticed that they had adapted the swift box plans to make a roosting space for bats at the back of the box. This involved attaching wooden batons to hold the box slightly away from the wall and glueing some thin wooden strips for the bats to grip onto:

The box is now back up in position under the eaves and our fingers are crossed as we anxiously await the return of our nesting pair.

However, this was not the only swift preparation work to be completed before the birds arrive. Our new garage has a wildlife tower which currently cannot accommodate any wildlife – it is waiting for better weather so that the builders can safely go onto the roof and make two holes in its north face:

The Kent bat box is a design originally created by the Kent Bat Group which is particularly suited for common and soprano pipistrelles with two vertical crevices for them to go up into by day. It is self cleaning, with any droppings simply falling out downwards and, by briefly shining a torch upwards into the box, we will be able to see if any bats are roosting in there.

We have just taken delivery of two Schwegler swift boxes to go into the tower once the builders have made the holes. They are designed to be incorporated within buildings with an access tunnel through to the outside:

There is a hatch in the roof of the the garage to get access to the inside of the tower and the swift boxes:

Meanwhile, in the meadows the bee-flies are out:

Hairy-footed flower bees, Anthophora plumipes, though, can retract theirs. This nearly all-black female visits a pot of shrimps-on-the-barbie pulmonaria that I have by the back door.

I have never seen a male hairy-footed flower bee and they are the ones with the hairy feet which got the species its name. I hope to see one soon.

We are not seeing many butterflies on the wing yet. This peacock was warming up on a reptile sampling square:

When I zoom in, I see that its eyes have black spots:

Under another reptile sampling square, quite a collection of slow worms is also warming up:

A female wood pigeon is treated to a fine display by her suitor:

We have a very lovely cherry tree in the garden from which we have never had a single cherry, even though some years it is loaded with fruit – such is its popularity with the wildlife:

At the moment I just have to glance in the direction of the tree for several woodpigeon to explode out of it. They are eating the buds and flowers:

Any cherries that do grow are quickly hoovered up by the starlings, jays and wasps, amongst other things.

The buzzard looking disdainfully at its magpie escort:

One late afternoon I went to find Dave who was editing the meadows – ie pulling prickly things out from where they are not wanted. I spotted him but then realised that I was not the only one watching…

This is a very handsome fellow. However, I am continuing to treat a couple of tatty foxes for mange by sprinkling arsen sulphate onto honey sandwiches each evening. I am eagerly awaited:

There must be a lot of badger setts in the heavily overgrown cliff alongside us. But a few entrances come out directly into the meadows and we have a camera on one of these:

But this is exciting – it may be a blurry photo but you can see that this badger is surely feeding cubs:

The cubs should be coming above ground before too long. I wonder how many there will be?

This morel, Morchella esculenta, was found in the meadows for the first time:

It’s quite a large thing – here is my welly for scale:

We spread a wildflower seed mix in this area back in 2015 which must have included cowslip seed. Every year more cowslips appear and we really look forward to seeing them all:

Over in the wood, a most unexpected new mammal species has been spotted:

The farm alongside the wood is being managed for wildlife and there are currently some cattle grazing on their fields. This pair dodged under the electric wire and made for the woods. I think they were quickly rounded up and returned, although our woodland neighbours’ gate was damaged in the process.

The cut flower bed is a sight to behold. Not just because of the lovely tulips themselves, but because it represents a significant victory in the battle with the rats who, the year before, had dug up and eaten all the tulip bulbs that I had planted:

Tulips do look very beautiful as cut flowers but I think they are best of all when growing in a garden setting. These tulips in our daughters garden in the North Downs are absolutely stunning, especially when set off with the burgundy leaves of the shrub:

I would love to have some of those tulips in my own garden.

On a clear day, France can be seen from the meadows:

On such days, if we turn the birding scope towards France, we can see things in more detail – even the shell craters from World War Two Allied bombing around Mont D’Hubert, just west of Calais, become visible:

We visited this area in 2017 and were stopped in our tracks at the sobering sight of all these craters but I don’t think we properly understood them at the time.

It is the site of the Lindemann Battery, which had the most fearsome guns of all along Hitler’s Atlantic Wall during the Second World War.

Built in 1942, the battery had three enormous guns, each protected by separate reinforced structures with walls up to four metres thick. During the two years they were operational, these three guns sent 2,200 shells across The Channel to explode in South East England.

But, on 4th September 1944, a lucky shell from a British railway gun destroyed one of the three guns. Then, on 21st September 1944, the area was bombed by around 500 Allied bombers which dealt with another of them. The last gun was put out of action when Canadian soldiers stormed the battery on 26th September 1944. Allied forces had landed back onto French soil on D-Day, 6th June 1944, but it had then taken them a long time to fight their way out of Normandy and reach the battery. This June it will be the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

Our house stood on the cliffs overlooking France throughout both World Wars and was within easy reach of the heavy guns of the Lindemann Battery. We think that the house was evacuated and standing empty during the Second World War, but there was a slit trench in the orchard to defend the beach should that ever have become necessary. It is so strange to try to imagine that now, just as the pear trees are coming out into blossom there:

A few years ago we provided a home for about a hundred slow worms, transferred from a nearby site that was being developed. An ecologist with a special interest in amphibians and reptiles oversaw the translocation of the slow worms and has been visiting the meadows ever since to check on their wellbeing. Sadly this will be the last year that he comes – his visits have become part of the rhythm of the year here and we have enjoyed our interesting talks about the reptiles and amphibians of Kent.

I don’t know if our resident corvids thought it would be funny to decapitate a slow worm for his visit and leave it on the ground for him to step over, but this is what they did:

One of these shifty characters could very well be the culprit:

Or it could just as easily have been one of the crows:

Although reptiles are the reason for his visit, he always stops at the ponds to check on our amphibians as well. We have been seeing that the female smooth newts in the ponds are full of eggs:

They will each be laying 300-400 eggs singly onto vegetation and wrapping a leaf around each egg. This week the ecologist showed us some of the eggs that had been laid in the pond. The top of a water forget-me-not leaf has been folded over:

If we temporarily extract the plant from the water, a single white newt egg can be seen in the fold:

Once we got our eye in, we could see lots of these folded-over leaves in the pond and this made us very happy.

Also extremely pleasing is the fact that we now have a buzzard regularly hunting in the meadows which is a good indication that we have a healthy ecosystem going on here:

It is very normal for the buzzard to have a magpie assistant nearby :

One day this week we were out doing some jobs and popped into the bird hide overlooking the scrape at Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory. The scrape has been extended in recent years, and there is now a noisy black-headed gull nesting colony there. I am not terribly familiar with black-headed gulls and was surprised to see that, as well as a white eye ring, the birds in their summer plumage also have an inner red eye ring. It might even be that their eyelids are red:

I had never noticed this before.

This bird has yet to get its summer plumage and doesn’t have that red eye ring:

There was also some interesting behaviour going on – some birds were flattening themselves down onto the water as they interacted with the other birds:

Whilst we were there, we saw this pair of coots mating:

The male’s subsequent dismount forwards involved pitching the female face first into the water although he didn’t seem to notice:

In the wood we have strapped a trail camera to the end of a long hazel pole and are slowly moving it around the various raptor boxes to see what’s going on. In this tawny owl box, the squirrels are definitely setting up home:

However, what is this bird doing top right:

A lookout is posted…..

…and the dove quickly takes a look into the box to see if there is any possibility of nesting in there:

Unfortunately I think the squirrels are probably well and truly ensconced by now and the stock doves will have to try elsewhere.

Last May John and John, the bird ringers, looked in all the raptor boxes to see if any owls were nesting. Sadly they were not but they did find a clutch of baby great tits in one of them. Here, a great tit is again showing interest in a tawny box:

There is a permanent camera set up at another tawny box. I’m sorry to say that squirrels are in this one too:

Although a tawny had a look in this week just to check:

There is also a camera looking at a hole in a cherry tree that green woodpeckers used last year. Squirrels have been carrying leaves past this hole as they build their nest in another hole further up the tree:

Green Woodpeckers haven’t been seen at this hole this year, but great spotted woodpeckers have looked in several times:

And, of course, great tits too:

I am in the middle of a Field Studies Council online course on Discovering Bees. It is not so much about bee identification but more about their biology and ecology. Two weeks in and I am learning a lot – this should form a good basis to help me with bee ID this summer.

As a result, I have my eyes peeled for bees to photograph and identify at the moment, so there might be more bees than usual appearing in this blog for a while..

There is very little surface water in East Kent. Not only is it one of the driest parts of the country, but also any rain that we do get soaks down into the porous chalk rather than running off the land as rivers. Since there are so few water courses, we like to celebrate the ones that we do have and, on Good Friday, we decided to go on a quest to chase the Elham Nailbourne up to its source.

The Nailbourne bubbles up as a spring at St Ethelburga’s Well at Lyminge in the North Downs and then runs north down the Elham Valley for several miles until it joins the Little Stour just before Littlebourne. It’s a very intriguing river because the middle section of the river between Elham and Bishopsbourne is ephemeral and only flows above ground about once every seven years.

We started our Easter quest at the very end of the Nailbourne’s journey where it joins the Little Stour near Littlebourne. The water meadows here were doing a good job of holding some of the surplus water after a winter of rain:

It all gets a bit complicated where the Nailbourne and the Little Stour meet. The Nailbourne arrives from the south and joins the Little Stour very close to its source:

There is no access to the point where the two rivers actually converge, but we walked up river to see both of them as they make their final approach. The Nailbourne was very boisterous after the wet winter we have had:

But the Little Stour, which only arises a short distance from this bridge, was serenely drifting along and was very clear and appealing:

We really liked the Little Stour and walked a bit further to investigate its source:

It seems that I was not alone in feeling the specialness of the spring – close by are the ruins of the medieval Well Chapel:

Once we felt that we understood what was going on at the end of the Nailbourne, we got back in the car and started chasing it back to its source.

We saw a lot of oast houses on our Easter quest, all now no longer drying hops but converted into residential properties. This one was in Littlebourne:

Our first stop as we travelled up the Nailbourne was at Patrixbourne. A road crossed the river at a ford here but it has had to be closed because of the high water level:

Our attention was temporarily diverted by Patrixbourne’s ancient Church:

The carving around the entrance door was amazing:

We tried to go inside the church to see some special stained glass there but a Good Friday service was going on and so we will return another time. Our next stop was at Bridge where the Nailbourne was merrily cantering through the village:

We should have then gone to Bishopsbourne but we were getting tired and decided to miss that stop – we had visited there in January 2021 when the Nailbourne was also running. It seems that these days the Nailbourne might run more often than once every seven years.

Upstream of Bishopsbourne, we were now travelling along the section of the river that is usually a grassy ditch. At Barham:

Once we got to Elham, we were again in a section where the water is always above ground. However there was noticeably less flow here:

We then arrived at our final destination – the source of the Nailbourne at Lyminge. St Ethelburga’s well-house was built over the spring in 1898:

The spring supplied the village with its water until a mains supply arrived in 1905:

The young river trickles its way out of St Ethelburga’s Well at Lyminge and begins its journey down to meet the Little Stour at Littlebourne:

We really enjoyed our mini-expedition on Good Friday and now have a much better understanding of how the Nailbourne works. We would like to return in the summer and see how different things are then.

One day this week the buzzard was hunting in the first meadow, quite close to the house. I took this photo with my camera….

…and then we set up the birding scope with a phone attached to it to get some better photos of the magnificent bird:

It has also been hunting from the haypile:

A tawny owl heads off towards the moon:

The blackthorn is out in wonderful blossom in the hedgerows:

It is really uplifting in the Easter sunshine:

Like small, white explosions:

The cowslips are also out:

A new group of foxes has arrived over the winter and they are really bold:

The pale vixen on the right is very tame indeed and comes right up to me. She looks alright from the front but unfortunately she doesn’t look so good from the rear:

Over in the wood, the young Easter bunny is still living down the burrow:

A tawny owl takes a drink:

Two pond skaters feast on a drowned bumble bee:

And I was surprised to see how many squirrels are currently living in the tawny owl box:

Easter has been early this year but, even so, we have been treated with lovely weather and what a difference that makes. Of course I’ve eaten far too much chocolate and I’m regretting that now. It’s definitely time to get back on track as we continue to appreciate this lovely spring.

Although February in the ponds is all about frogs, now that it is March it is the turn of the smooth newts to take centre stage. The female newts are full of eggs:

The males are decked out in their breeding finery and are very attentive to the females in the hope that they will be chosen to fertilise the eggs.

The males do look pretty fantastic at this time of year:

Back in 2020 we fished a couple of the males out of the pond to have a better look at them:

They look too exotic to be in an East Kent pond.

This week we went down to the pond one evening to see what the newts were getting up to. They were noticeably less wary in the dark and this female was cruising around close to the water surface:

Although newts can absorb oxygen through their skin, the amount of oxygen they get from this is usually insufficient and they do need to surface from time to time for a gulp of air. Depending on their activity levels and the water quality and temperature, newts can stay underwater anywhere from five minutes to several hours.

The pond has several green corrugated squares at the margins giving protection to frogs against herons. At this time of year these squares are completely submerged and create an arena for us to see whats going on:

A few male frogs were still patiently waiting in the pond at night in case there are any late-arriving females that they can claim as their own:

There is a lot that I don’t understand about the anatomy of snails. This is a great pond snail, floating upside-down on the water surface. I can see its mouth at the front but was surprised to also see a siphon on its side sucking air in:

It seems that great pond snails do breath air into their single lung, although if they can’t reach the surface such as when the pond is frozen, they can flood their lung with water and it will function as a gill.

The blackthorn is out in flower in the meadows, with the enticing promise of a crop of sloes later in the year to make sloe gin:

We are looking forward to seeing what happens this spring with the three new chalk butterfly banks that were created last autumn out of diggings from our buildings works:

A March rainbow over the allotment this afternoon:

Slow worms are congregating in ever increasing numbers under the sampling squares:

With all this recent rain, at least the ground is soft for the spring mining bees to dig out their tunnels. The first tawny mining bee seen this year:

A pair of rosemary beetles on some lavender in the garden. I hadn’t realised that they had flanged leg segments:

The gingham skirt of a sparrowhawk:

The buzzard has been back:

A crow with an unpleasant bit of carrion:

And this is an unusual visitor to the meadows, a red-legged partridge:

The primroses are out in the wood and are being visited by bee-flies:

You can see the fly’s halter here. Flies only have a single pair of wings – their ancestral hind wings have been modified into these club-shaped halteres. These oscillate in flight like a gyroscope, giving information to the fly about its position in space:

This group of small but beautiful beetles caught my eye:

In 2022 we had a camera on a fox den in the wood and got some wonderful photos:

I have kept a trail camera on this burrow ever since in case the foxes return, but at the moment a sweet young rabbit is living down the hole:

But is it actually safe down the burrow for this little Easter bunny?

Every night badgers investigate down the hole:

And foxes are also very interested:

There was a photo of a different young rabbit standing at this hole last April and, a minute later, a buzzard had flown down onto it:

A rabbit faces all sorts of hazards every day and it is not good for my anxiety levels to get too invested in the safety of this one. On a more relaxing note, blackbirds have been collecting leaves for their nests at the entrance of the hole:

My nephew has lived for a few years now in Boulder, Colorado and he took this photo there of a different type of blackbird – a red-winged blackbird:

There is nothing like a sunny March day after a long, dark winter to ignite my gardening enthusiasm. I have been out there weeding the beds, sorting out my pots and digging up the sea of alexanders coming up in the meadows, until my body screams at me to stop. I love this time of year, full of so much promise. Surely this is the year that I won’t take my eye of the ball and the garden will stay looking fabulous all summer? Well probably not, but I will definitely try to make it happen and so much does depend on the weather…

We are part of a group who are interested in encouraging wildlife on their land and, this week, a group of us visited a wood that is owned by some fellow members. We were accompanied by three representatives from the Forestry Commission who spoke to us about tree health and woodland management, as well as what grants and support are available to plant and maintain a wood.

Our paths hadn’t crossed with the Forestry Commission before and we found them very helpful and interesting. We now hope to arrange a visit to our own wood by the East Kent Forestry Commission officer to discuss how we might better manage it.

The wood that we visited this week was very lovely, even at this time of year. I was very envious of the mature trees that they have there:

Although I envied the mature trees and orchids in the wood, I would not want the fallow deer population that they have. We don’t have any deer in our wood and I hadn’t realised that they eat the fresh hazel shoots that regrow after coppicing, meaning that regeneration is badly affected. This has to be bad news for dormice.

About fifteen years ago we drove one of our sons to Ghent in Belgium for a rowing competition. Although we didn’t get much of a chance to explore back then, we did notice that it was a beautiful medieval city and thought we would like to return one day for a proper look around. It has taken us a while but this week we got ourselves onto a ferry to Dunkirk and drove to Ghent to stay for a few days:

There was plenty to see and do in Ghent to keep us happily occupied for the couple of days we were there. Particularly memorable was this large room in the STAM museum filled with a birds eye view of the city:

We spent ages walking over the map and minutely inspecting it. The way the railway line expands out at one point was pretty incredible, I thought:

Once we were back in Kent I went through the trail cameras to see what had been going on whilst we were away:

I want to finish today with La Plaine au Bois memorial that we visited on the way back from our Belgium trip this week. In May 1940 the British Army had been forced to retreat and were being evacuated out of France at Dunkirk. Some British units were tasked with delaying the German forces as long as they could to give more time for the 330,000 British troops to get onto ships and safely home. These units had been told to fight to the last bullet.

A group of about a hundred men mainly from the Warwickshire Regiment had been holding back the Germans at Wormhoudt, a village a few miles from Dunkirk. Eventually they ran out of ammunition, surrendered, and became the captives of an elite German SS Division, II Battalion of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, who had been Adolf Hitler’s bodyguards earlier in the war. The Germans herded them into a small barn and then threw grenades in. The barn was also machine-gunned and anyone still alive after that was commanded to come out to be shot. Eighty-nine of the British prisoners of war were killed but six somehow managed to survive and were taken to hospital by the regular German soldiers.

Although it was known which German Battalion carried out this massacre, the men involved were never identified and no one stood trial after the war for this appalling crime.

I left La Plaine au Bois feeling shaken and very emotional and my thoughts have been returning to it ever since. Apart from their own terror and agony, these men were sons and brothers, husbands and fathers and every single one would have been loved and mourned back home. It is certainly a very fitting memorial to just one of the many atrocities that happened in the war and it feels very important that these things should never be forgotten.