Pairing and Nesting

This week I went to visit my father in Berkshire and took the opportunity to go birding at Little Marlow Gravel Pit with a friend and fellow nature enthusiast. Before this pandemic, we used to get ourselves along there reasonably often but this was only the second time we had managed it since Covid forcefully rampaged its way into all of our lives over a year ago. To our absolute delight, the lake was covered with several hundred swooping Sand Martins, Swallows and a few House Martins. They had arrived!

If House Martins were already inland at a gravel pit in the Home Counties, then perhaps they had also arrived at our chalk cliffs here on the coast in East Kent. Once I had returned home, we sallied forth from the meadows to take a look.

But I can report that the House Martins have not arrived here yet. However, we spent a contented hour watching the Fulmars and Jackdaws that are already nesting in the holes in the rock. We set the birding scope up under this particular fissure which had two Fulmar nests and four Jackdaw nests along its length and watched the birds come and go.

Fulmars are tubenosed seabirds related to Albatrosses and feel like very special birds indeed

The Jackdaws were busy going in and out of their nest holes with mud.

There has been nesting activity going on in the meadows as well:

Chaffinch with nesting material in her beak

I am seeing Yellowhammers now on various cameras around the meadow but have yet to see concrete evidence of nesting. Actually, we have gone a bit over-the-top in this regard and have three cameras positioned along a particular hedge that we thought a pair of Yellowhammer nested in last year, hoping to see some signs.

Yellowhammer in the ant paddock, next to the hedgerow that we have under close observation.

Meanwhile, up on the strip:

Yellowhammer, Linnets and House Sparrows. All red-listed birds being of the utmost conservation concern

We do now have some Starlings that seem to be here to breed – another red listed bird

Tensions have been running high amongst male birds. We saw two Robins locked in mortal combat and these two male Blackbirds were captured on a video having a pitch battle:

Chaffinch were also fighting in the wood:

The Blackthorn is out in its full glory in the meadows:

The Herring Gull is another red listed bird and this pair have become very used to our routine and await our arrival every morning up at the feeding cages. They have different head shapes and are slightly different sizes and characters and I can now easily tell them apart without having to look for the colour ring on the female’s leg.

There is also a pair of delicate Collared Dove that are now regulars up at the feeding site

I thought that this blurry image in the middle of the night is the only photo I have to show you of a Tawny Owl in the meadows in recent weeks…

…but then I noticed this on one of the videos

This Magpie looks self-conscious about the state it has got itself into

Two of the three Crows that have made the meadows their territory

We are also definitely in the territory of this male Sparrowhawk

I am still seeing Redwings on the camera in both in the meadows and here in the wood

I haven’t really forgiven the Grey Squirrels in the wood for the damage they did to so many beautiful Beech trees last summer and I have mixed emotions when I see this photo

We hear a lot about Beavers being ecosystem engineers but Badgers, too, play their part – their digging activity creates opportunities for many other species of both plants and animals. Here is a group of House Sparrows dust bathing in the spoil of the new tunnel coming up into the meadows

I have now finished the week’s course of medicated honey sandwiches to treat this Fox for the mange she probably has on her tail. It is now a question of waiting to see if we can see fur growing back in due course.

Here she is having a bit of an altercation with a Badger

No baby Badgers have been seen yet this year but lots of activity amongst the adults

The moth-eaten Old Gentleman , demonstrating how he has earned his name

And on to another disreputable canine. The dog still goes over the gates that we are keeping resolutely closed to stop her going into the second meadow without us

We have always struggled with blanket weed in the hide pond. Since it was finished a few years ago, only rainwater has ever gone into it. But the problem was that it was initially filled with tap water which contains too many nutrients, beloved of blanket weed. This is a depressing photo – the blanket weed dies back over the winter, but here it is again, starting to grow in the left hand side of the pond which is the side that gets more sun. Soon it will have advanced to cover the entire pond. However, this pond does still heave with life, seemingly unaffected by the weed.

I found one of my favourite bees, a female Tawny Mining Bee. She’s a beauty with her fox-red thorax and marmalade abdomen.

She digs a vertical shaft nest down into the earth, 20-30cm deep with several brood chambers branching off it. She then fills these chambers with a mixture of nectar and pollen and lays a single egg into each. The egg hatches and the larva eats the food that she has provided for it until it pupates for the winter. The new adult bees will emerge next spring.

I think this small volcano in the ground could well be the nest of a Tawny Mining Bee.

However, it has been cold and overcast ever since we found it and so the bee has been inactive.

Yet again back to full winter gear with a cold north-easterly wind and rain

The late arriving news this morning is that, hurray, the sun has come out and, up at the bee tunnel, the bee could just be seen at the entrance:

It was then a question of sitting quietly until she emerged:

I can now confirm that it is indeed a Tawny Mining Bee nest

We can glimpse Walmer Castle from the meadows and this weekend they are flying their flag at half mast. We too have ours at half mast as a mark of respect for the husband of our Queen who so very nearly reached his hundredth birthday.