Christmas has come and gone and things here are quiet. The photo below from a trip into nearby Deal captures one of the dull, grey, leaden days that we seem to have been having so many of recently.

It is asking too much of my camera equipment to take decent photos out to sea but hopefully it is possible to make out the line of Cormorants flying in formation just above the water. We have watched from the meadows and seen thousands of these birds go by like this over the last couple of weeks. But Cormorants often hunt together in large groups, diving down and chasing the fish underwater and so perhaps they are the same birds we are seeing time and time again.

Earlier in the month we found a large gathering of earth-coloured larvae under a reptile sampling square. We didn’t know what they were, but early December seemed a very odd time for them to be around:

We have now learnt that these are Leatherjackets – the larval stage of the Crane Fly, of which I see there are 327 species in the UK. It is difficult to find information about Leatherjackets that doesn’t approach the subject from a pest control angle since they can be a nuisance for pristine lawns – but there are certainly none of those here and we welcome Leatherjackets with open arms since they are food for many birds, especially Starlings.

They were back under the same square this morning, squirming around:

There has been a large amount of rain falling from the sky in recent months and the ponds are looking admirably full of water.

The ground is so wet and soft that the worms have been making complete merry:

Millions of worm casts cover the meadows and a lot of them have holes at the top. Does this mean that the worm extends itself out at night?

We went out with torches last night but couldn’t see any. Perhaps it needs to be raining, or maybe they are extremely sensitive to ground vibrations and knew that we are coming long before we got there. I realise that I don’t know very much about Earthworms and the way they live their lives and will try to find out more.

When out with torches on our failed worm-watching excursion, we had a look in the hide pond, which seems devoid of life during the day at this time of the year. But in the safety of the darkness, there were lots of Water Boatmen swimming about and we counted seven Smooth Newts. How lovely.

In a few days time, 85m of mixed native hedgerow is going to be planted in the second meadow. The route that it is going to take has been decided upon and the grass has been cut along this line:

It isn’t just worms that love the soft ground – it’s great for metal detectorists too. It seemed a good idea to run the detector along the track of the new hedge before work commenced:

A couple of metal buttons and the usual assortment of rusted iron and bits off tractors were dug up, but this was the first time this winter that we have been out detecting and it is really rather enjoyable.

Another result of all the rain is an amazing display of the weird, contorted White Saddle fungus this year, with hundreds of fruiting bodies coming up in both tree copses in the meadows:

I got two natural history text books for Christmas. This first one is going to be very useful:

Over 25 million moth records from Butterfly Conservation’s National Moth Recording Scheme have been used to produce this book which has distribution maps for nearly 900 moth species. I am hoping that I am going to spend more time and effort on moths in 2020 and this book is certainly going to help.

The second book I am a bit scared of. There are around 2,500 species of Ichneumonids in Britain – almost 10% of the British insect species, which is pretty astounding. These parasitic wasps are fascinating but it is difficult to identify them properly because there is such a shortage of information that is accessible to a non-specialist.

I asked for this expensive book for Christmas because I would love to know more about the life cycles of these animals. However, rather than having lots of photos of the different parasitic wasps so that I could flick through to identify any wasp that I had found, it seems that it is not as simple as that. The book is, in fact, a biological key and will require a lot of work on my part to start using it.

It is really quite daunting with lots of technical words but it is surely not entirely beyond me – I just need to put the time in to get to grips with it.

Today we went to the wood to do some more coppicing. At the moment there are reliably Buzzards to be seen in one of the fields attached to the larger wooded area. In fact, today there were four of them there:

 

It is fantastic that the area is rich enough to support four of these magnificent animals. I suspect we are back to worms again and this is what they are doing spending so much time standing around in a wet field – worm hunting.

Worms are definitely what this Tawny is looking for on the woodland floor:

We saw the Owl doing this a lot last winter but this is the first time for a while. I am so pleased that it is back again this winter – I had been watching out with eager anticipation on the cameras.

As I walked around the wood collecting in the trail cameras, I put up a Woodcock – another bird that relies on Earthworms.

Of course Earthworms are also extremely important to Badgers, making up 80% of their diet.

It is only now, in preparing this post, that the importance of the humble Earthworm in sustaining all these different types of animals through the bleak midwinter days has hit me for the first time.

We are progressing slowly with the coppicing in the wood:

Today we were battling with a few stools, the canopies of which had been knitted together with Old Man’s Beard, making it all so very much more difficult:

Luckily we had a Kelly Kettle with us to make a hot cup of tea and have sit down with some Christmas cake:

As we sat, we were watching the very popular feeders with lots and lots of birds coming in – no wonder the seed disappears so quickly.

A male Pheasant was poking around underneath:

Then a male Sparrowhawk came in and took one of the birds under our very noses, causing alarm calling all around. That was a shock.

There was also a Kestrel flying above the regeneration area of the wood.

This is a new species for the wood bird list and is especially exciting to see since we already have a Kestrel nest box up and a second one waiting to go up. So, really great to actually confirm that Kestrels are in the area.

The last wood photo for today is this one of the Jelly Ear fungus on Elder. There is a lot of this fungus around this year as well:

Moving back now to the meadows. We have three cameras monitoring the goings-ons up on the strip.

We have been putting food down on the strip and have placed cages so that all the seed is not quickly hoovered up, leaving none for the farmland birds we are wanting to support:

Two different cameras caught this squabble between Crows. Here is the first:

And here is the second:

The female Pheasant has been very amusing:

She has squeezed herself so many times between the cages:

And she has a very long neck:

It is now over a week since the winter solstice and we have definitely noticed the days getting longer. Two more short days of 2019 and then we are starting a fresh new wildlife year and watching out for the first signs of spring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This year with challenging summer temperatures and minimal precipitation, followed by seemingly months of wind and rain, has brought with it a wonderful mix of natural history delights and dramas in the meadows.

It is always difficult to condense a whole year of events into just one post but here is my best attempt to do that.

Predatory Flies

Can I really be starting with predatory Flies? We only really became aware them for the first time this year and I am now rather obsessed.

In early May, the hedgerows are always alive with St Mark’s Flies, distinctively flying with their legs dangling.

Taking advantage of this bonanza, this year we noticed male Dance Flies, Empis tessellata, who caught them and held the cadavers across their bodies to await a female:

When a female arrived, they offered the dead fly to her as a gift and mated with her as she ate it. Amazing stuff:

We also saw Kite-Tailed Robberflies carrying Hoverfly prey:

But the grand finale of our predatory-Fly year was a brief sighting of this Hornet Robberfly (Asilus crabroniformis) in August – enormous at nearly 3cm long and with a loud, low buzz. It was a horribly magnificent thing.

Birds

We added four more bird species to the Meadows List this year, bringing it up to 75.

In March, an Alexandrine Parakeet was around for a couple of weeks. There are four different species of feral Parrot populations in the UK – Ring-necked Parakeet I had heard of, but there are also Alexandrine and Monk Parakeets, and Blue-Crowned Conures.

In October, a Ring Ouzel was here for two days on migration. It was a juvenile and so its white bib was not pronounced, but the white edging of its feathers distinguishes it from a Blackbird.

The other two new species were a Goshawk, flying over, and Siskin although I don’t have photographic evidence for these two new entrants onto the list.

In April, the RSPB delivered three large sacks of Turtle Dove supplementary food:

and a strip of the second meadow was rotavated to be like an agricultural field edge:

We started a second year of putting seed down to encourage Turtle Doves to come to feed and breed. In the event we again didn’t see a Turtle Dove, but this year we did see Yellowhammer.

In fact, one was caught and ringed:

Then, thrillingly, in August two juvenile Yellowhammer appeared at the strip:

Other declining farmland birds were also welcomed as regular visitors:

 

Swifts are another species in trouble. We made a Swift box and one of our sons rigged up some electronics so that we could play loud Swift calls from the box through the summer to alert the birds to this potential new residence.

Although we didn’t have any Swifts nesting this year, we did manage to attract many groups of them to come up to have a look at the box. We hope that some of the juveniles,  needing their own new nest site, will remember this box when they return to the UK next year.

Annoyingly, though, the only time we saw a Swift actually stop and have a proper investigation, it was looking into the nearby House Martin box rather than the box we had lovingly made specifically for it.

A pair of House Sparrows nested in this House Martin box throughout the summer and successfully raised several broods:

Needless to say, we didn’t see an actual House Martin anywhere near the box.

But House Martins were not completely absent from the year’s events. In October, 37 House Martins were caught, ringed and safely released to continue their migration. It is especially exciting to ring House Martins since little is yet known of their migration routes.

I was surprised to see the size of their Flat Flies –  parasitic hitchhikers that these birds carry all the way to Africa and back. They are normally tucked down amongst the feathers but they have emerged because the bird has stopped moving whilst in the net.

The bathing technique of Green Woodpeckers provided much entertainment during the year, the bird often looking a more like a shipwrecked mariner staggering out from the ocean.

In July, speckled juvenile Green Woodpeckers started to be seen:

These juvenile Woodpeckers looked set to follow in their parents’ footsteps with regard to bathing technique:

It was a bit of a shock to find the remains of a Kestrel, presumably having fallen victim to a Sparrowhawk. I was so surprised to learn that they take Kestrels:

But in happier Kestrel news, one was ringed in the meadows this year:

This young female has continued to visit the new shallow tray-ponds, three of which we added to the meadows this year and which have proved hugely popular. They did need topping up practically every day over the summer though.

Magpies seem to be flourishing in the meadows:

but to my mind they have a questionable lifestyle:

But it is good to see that even Magpies sometimes meet their match:

May is a wondrous month and it is a time for a lot of nesting activity.

There are a few more photos that I wanted to include before I finish the bird section:

Mammals

Twin baby Badgers were born in February. Very often Badger mating happens immediately after young are born and this photo below was taken on 4th February. One of the younger female Badgers wanted to be involved as well:

We knew that it was twins that had been born because we saw two babies being moved on three separate occasions over the following weeks, getting larger each time:

Then, on 16th April, they appeared above ground properly for the first time

These delightful young animals spent the summer playing rough and tumble with each other and tormenting their mother, all the while being taught how to be Badgers.

Unfortunately in September one of the twins got killed on the road below the meadows. This was one of this year’s low points.

Winter is a time of dispersal for Foxes and, upsettingly, every year our trail cameras photograph Foxes with mange passing through. However, this poor animal stayed for a while:

I pulled out all the stops to try to help it. There is a medicine, Arsen Sulphur, that can be sprinkled onto honey sandwiches and will cure mange over time but my problem was trying to get the sandwiches into this particular Fox.  Ultimately I was unsuccessful, although I expended a lot of time and emotional energy worrying about it and seeking advice from wildlife organisations. Our resident Foxes ate all the sandwiches, the hierarchical nature of their society not letting this outsider to get a look in. However, this will have protected our home Foxes from catching mange themselves which is one positive thing that I take comfort from.

Here are some lovely Fox photos from around the meadow this year:

Reptiles and Amphibians

We agreed to provide a new home for Slow Worms that Dover County Council required to be safely relocated from land that was being developed nearby. Log refuges were dug into the second meadow and the newly arrived Slow Worms were released into these.

The relocation process went slowly on over the whole summer and, in the end, the project was signed off with a total of 104 Slow Worms having arrived. Their progress here will now be monitored for three years by a Reptile ecologist to ensure that they are thriving.

This is a most unusual sight for the meadows – a Toad:

That is only the second Toad that we have ever seen here although there is a healthy population nearby in Walmer Castle grounds and so, with time, we could have them breeding in our ponds. We do have a lot of Frogs, though. Or rather we did have a lot of Frogs, before a Heron arrived in February and ate literally hundreds of them and also newts as well:

Late February and early March is when Frogs gather together to mate and lay their spawn and so they were easy pickings for the Heron who is a very patient and adept hunter. After a while, there was not a single remaining Frog to be seen. A year earlier, in February 2018, we had been amazed by the large concentration of Frogs that there was in the pond:

Some Frog spawn did get laid though and so hopefully the Frog population can regenerate fairly quickly again, if we can resolve the Heron issue.

Towards the end of the year, the bird started returning regularly to the pond again but this time we were prepared with a plan to properly deter it:

We have formed a grid of string across the pond which we hope will restrict the Heron to hunting in only one sector. So far this seems to be completely successful and has actually stopped it from visiting entirely at the moment. We suspect that we will need to increase the number of strings in the grid during the temptation of Frog Spawning time, but for now we are tentatively calling this a victory.

Dragonflies

As well as all our regular species, we saw two new species of Dragonflies here this year. Neither are rare but it is always exciting when new species arrive:

The Red Veined Darter below is a rare species for Britain and may well have come across from the continent. The blue lower eye is something to look out for to recognise these Darters:

I got a new lens for my camera in July and that really helped my Dragonfly photography which was, quite frankly, previously pretty bad.

 

Butterflies and Moths

2019 was a Painted Lady year and we certainly saw a lot of them here:

They also laid eggs on our Thistles that grew into caterpillars

These caterpillars turned into Butterflies that will now have migrated south because no stage of the Painted Lady lifecycle can survive a British winter.

We also had a good year for our Small Blue colony:

I spotted several Small Blue caterpillars in Kidney Vetch flowers in July.  In October, I planted out many more Kidney Vetch plants that I had grown on from gathered seed to ensure that we will have sufficient plants next year to support the colony.

Some other lovely photos of Butterflies and Moths from this year:

 

2019 has been another really good year of discovery for us as we continue to learn about all aspects of the wildlife of the meadows. There are several projects lined up already for 2020, one of which is to plant 85m of new hedgerow in January and we are really looking forward to what the New Year brings.

Happy Christmas and a fantastic New Year to all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On 3rd January we completed on the purchase of a 6.5 acre wood over towards Canterbury. The purchase had taken months to complete but this date, coming as it did right at the very start of the year, seemed a very fitting beginning and has allowed us to spend a complete calendar year observing the wood as it rolls through the seasons. It’s a beautiful wood, two sides of which overlook farmland. A third of the wood is a regenerating area where mixed native species have been replanted within the last 20 years. The remaining two thirds are mature woodland with a central core of Silver Birch surrounded by many varied tree species.

The Birds in the Wood:

Soon after taking over in the wood, we put up Owl and other raptor boxes along with some smaller bird boxes:

However, perhaps we were too late because the big boxes have remained empty, but we now have got hopes for next year. All of the six smaller boxes, though, were occupied successfully by Blue and Great tits and we have recently put another six up as well.

We know that we have got Tawny Owls in the wood because, in the spring before the ground got too hard, we saw them hunting for worms.

 

In the heat of the summer, a Tawny also regularly came to drink and bathe in the shallow pond that we dug:

We also know that we have got Buzzard – they are often heard and seen overhead.  In fact, there is a Buzzard nest in a Silver Birch at the heart of the wood and this had fresh Rabbit bones under it when we viewed the wood last year. However, it was not used this year – a pair will have several nests and don’t occupy the same nest in successive years:

In the long summer drought, a Buzzard was also coming down to use the shallow pond:

 

Other birds have been ringed here during this first year:

The female Woodpecker that was ringed went on to nest in one of the Cherry Trees at the edge of the wood. We put a trail camera on the nest:

Here is one of the juveniles with its red cap looking out of the hole:

A pair of Bullfinch also started coming to one of the ponds every day in the spring:

Then, at the end of July, we are delighted to see three juveniles starting to come as well:

Woodcock overwintered on the floor of the wood and every time we explored in January and February we would put a few up:

There used to be a large shoot here until recently and we have seen some species that they would have been aiming at:

Other birds seen that I got excited about were Lesser Redpolls:

And a Pied Flycatcher on its autumn migration through the area:

At the end of our first year, we have 32 bird species on the Wood List.

The Mammals in the Wood:

Although other parts of the larger wood have reported seeing Deer, we have not seen any in our wood. We have, however, seen Badgers, Foxes, Rabbits, Grey Squirrels, Stoats and Weasels as well as Rats, Wood Mice, Voles and Shrews:

We put a Mustelid box with a trail camera inside into deep vegetation to see if we could get a Stoat or Weasel to come in and have their picture taken. This hasn’t happened so far but all sorts of other animals have popped by:

The Plants in the Wood:

In the September before we bought the wood, we were very fortunate that an expert Botanist came round it with us and recorded 73 plant species that she could see evidence of at that time. Of these, 14 were indicators of ancient woodland and 8 were labelled ‘worthy’ plants (a few fell into both categories). Some of them have fantastic names such as the Ploughman’s Spikenard (Inula conyzae), whose roots are spicily aromatic and were used as a poor-man’s aftershave by country folk in simpler times.

It has been so interesting watching how the wood became clothed in different plants as the weeks rolled by.

In March and April it was all about Primroses and Violets:

In May, a dauntingly luxuriant growth of Nettle came up in an area that we suspect may have been used for feeding game birds in the past:

In another part of the wood, Lady Ferns, Male Ferns and Broad Buckler Ferns flourished amongst the Silver Birch:

In July, the understorey was dominated by Enchanter’s Nightshade (Circaea lutetiana) with its delicate flower spikes floating above the foliage:

Two other memorable plants were Moschatel (Townhall Clock) in March:

and a patch of Twayblades – a type of Orchid –  in April:

The Insects of the Wood:

We have been identifying lots of woodland-specialist insects throughout the year. But the insect highlights were seeing White Admiral and Silver Washed Fritillary Butterflies in July – both are exciting woodland species.

We saw a total of 12 Butterfly species over the course of the year.

Woodland Management and Future Plans:

In October we went on a coppicing course in the Malvern Hills and we have now started coppicing the Hazel in our own wood on an eight year rotation. We hope that this is something that we are going to be able to manage on our own, but my goodness it is very hard work:

In November, an expert on Dormice from the Kent Mammal Group visited the wood to advise on how best to manage it for Dormice. The Hazel coppicing rotation is important for them but we are also going to plant more native Honeysuckle – Dormice use Honeysuckle in all sorts of ways.

She also talked to us about the best ways of finding out whether we already have Dormice in the wood – they are nocturnal and mostly live up in the tree canopy when not hibernating and so they can be tricky to spot. She recommended footprint tunnels and we will put lots of these up next spring.

Towards the end of the year we had the most fantastic news. The farm that surrounds the wood changed hands and the new owner intends to take it out of agriculture and manage it for wildlife.

The plan is to plant lots of new hedgerows and thousands of trees. This should also have a really positive impact on the biodiversity of the wood and it is going to be so interesting to see how this project progresses over the coming years.

After all the scary politics dominating the headlines for the last few days, I have really enjoyed escaping and immersing myself in the wood to write this review. I will also do a Review of the Year for the meadows before the end of the year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Archaeologist has come to visit the meadows

In 55BC, Julius Caesar sailed over to Britain with a fleet of 80 ships. He arrived off Dover but didn’t like being overlooked by hostile tribesmen on the cliffs and so came around the corner towards Deal. However, the Britons tracked him by riding their chariots along the cliffs, including through our meadows which paints a captivating image in my mind. Where he finally decided to land has not been established to the satisfaction of all and there is an argument for saying that it was in the wet meadow alongside Walmer Castle, which may have been more of an inlet back then.

The Britons put up a fight to try to stop the Romans landing but were eventually defeated and forced inland. Caesar would have set up some sort of camp nearby to protect his shipping because he didn’t intend to stay long and would have been trapped here if his ships had been damaged.

He returned again the next year, 54BC, this time with 800 ships, landing along the shoreline a bit to the north of here and stayed for a couple of months. Nearly 100 years later, in 43AD, the Romans led by Claudius landed for a third time and stayed for four centuries.

But it is that very first landing in 55BC that potentially has significance for these meadows. If it was indeed near here, then there may be evidence to be found.

We haven’t done any metal detecting this winter yet because we really should be coppicing in the wood if we have spare time like that. However, from now on, we will be  on the look out for lead Roman slingshot which is quite distinctive:

 

The Archaeologist who visited us last week hopes to return next year to do some geophysical work to look for ditches or other evidence of the potential 55BC Roman encampment.

There was a big collection of these larvae under one of the reptile sampling squares a few days ago. Pretty amazing that this would be happening in December, surely? And what on earth are they?

They were completely earth-coloured. They also don’t seem to have legs and so I am thinking that they are probably more at the fly end of things rather than the butterfly or moth end. However, more than that, I really don’t know, although I would love to. If they were butterfly or moth caterpillars, there are books to refer to or people I could ask but information is much less available for flies and other insects. I suppose I could have taken a couple of the larvae away to try to hatch them out in a tank but my chance of success has to be small with so little understanding of what they are and what they need.

I will keep these photos handy should I ever chance upon an entomologist.

There was also this Smooth Newt under one of the Reptile sampling squares:

 

All of our native Amphibians don’t actually hibernate through the winter but tuck themselves away somewhere frost-free and come out to forage when it is mild. This Smooth Newt is nocturnal and will be out and about looking for Earthworms, Slugs and other insects on the winter nights that are not too cold.

We continue to put peanuts on this stoney pinnacle at dusk:

I suppose what I am really hoping for is to see a Badger getting itself up there, but that is a long way from happening. However, the Foxes indulge me every night:

In recent days there has been only one sighting of the Heron:

Again, it seemed very discombobulated by the anti-Heron string that we have set up around the pond. But we frequently have to repair these strings because they are chewed. We knew it was the Foxes doing this but only now do we have the evidence to convict:

There is now a small-mesh and a large-mesh cage up on the strip to preserve some of the seed for small farmland birds:

However, it appears that the large mesh is mostly not safe from Crows:

 

Unfortunately there was dew on the lens but the ringed Kestrel has also been up to see what all the fuss is about:

 

There have been many days recently that can by summed up by this trail camera photo, where the sky is darker than the sea:

 

The weather has not been suitable for bird ringing, but we have been busy making a ‘lobster pot’ bird catcher to the bird ringer’s design:

The idea is to put seed down on the ground to get the birds used to the idea of that and then putting this cage down over the seed and hoping that they will go in but not be able to work out how to get out. Obviously the cage will be closely observed while it is down and any bird that is caught like this can be ringed and released.

Also, from the meadows:

Over in the wood, there is a darker Pheasant that I don’t understand:

Is this a juvenile male? Actually, I realise that there is much about Pheasants that I don’t understand. I presumed that we were going to see smaller, juvenile Pheasants over the summer but I don’t think we did. I will ask the bird ringer what’s going when I next see him.

Also in the wood:

The bird ringer may not have been able to ring in the meadows recently but I finish today with some fantastic photos he took from a hide on a nearby reserve on the River Stour and has allowed me to include here:

What a fantastic bird, although we could never hope to see a Kingfisher in either the meadows or the wood.