There was a shocking murder in Canterbury in 1170 when Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, was assassinated in the cathedral. In recognition of this, since medieval times the city’s coat of arms has depicted three choughs taken from the arms of Thomas Becket:

But it is also said that a crow, witnessing the killing, flew down and paddled in Thomas Becket’s blood, getting a red beak and legs as a result and becoming the first ever chough. So Canterbury, and Kent itself, has had a long association with the chough. Indeed, choughs were once common birds on Kent’s cliffs and chalk grasslands but they were driven to extinction by habitat loss and persecution more than two hundred years ago.

Last summer, after four decades of chalk grassland restoration in the Dover area, about ten choughs were released into the wild as part of a captive breeding programme. The plan going forward is to continue to release small family-sized groups of between six to twelve choughs every year for at least five years to establish a breeding population of around fifty birds.

There have been fortifications on the cliffs overlooking Dover since at least the Bronze Age. Dover Castle is now a large and impressive structure, managed by English Heritage, and we visited it this week:

The walls of Dover Castle encompass buildings dating back to wildly differing eras. The lower two-thirds of the structure on the right is a Roman lighthouse. There was a matching one on the cliffs at the other side of the Dover valley although little remains of that one today:

Dave and his father got great views of Dover Castle when they flew over in a helicopter back in 2015. The circular Inner Bailey contains the square Great Tower, originally built by King Henry II in the 12th century:

It was at the top of this Great Tower that I started to contentedly photograph the many jackdaws that were on the roofs of the surrounding Inner Bailey. No doubt they will be nesting in amongst the chimney pots before too long:

Dave then spotted that it was not just jackdaws there, but choughs as well:

We walked along the outer walls of the castle back to the car and passed through Peverell’s Tower, a one-bedroomed property available to rent through English Heritage which has a private roof terrace with very fine views out to sea and over Dover.

Back in the meadows we took a different approach to this year’s Big Garden Birdwatch, which has been held in January every year since 1979. Whereas previously we had watched the birds from one or two set positions for the hour, this year we roamed freely over the meadows with our binoculars in our hands. This did have the advantage that we flushed a woodcock, although it was disappointing to discover that this species wasn’t on the RSPB’s list and wouldn’t be counted by them. In the end we recorded ninety-eight birds, although admittedly forty-six of these were house sparrows. Magpies also claimed more than their fair share of the total with a group of fourteen of them loitering at the end of the second meadow:

This woodcock has put in several recent night-time appearances on the cameras and it’s likely to be the one we flushed during the count:

We didn’t see any bird of prey during the hour’s birdwatching but they have been around:

We had hoped to do a Big Garden Birdwatch in the wood as well, but in the event this didn’t happen and we got on with our list of winter jobs instead. One of the barn owl boxes had fallen forward:

It was quite a wrangle but Dave managed to get it secured back up again – ready now for occupation by nesting squirrels this spring, no doubt.

The tawny owls in the wood are being seen at the box every night although I am trying hard not to get excited. This happened last year as well but they ended up nesting elsewhere:

Every winter more overgrown goat willow stools collapse in the high winds. This is in an area of the wood that we rarely go to, but we might now do some coppicing to create a small clearing around this fallen tree to finish off our work for the winter:

The blushing bracket, Daedaleopsis confragosa, likes the fallen willow wood. It is pale brown when fresh but goes this beautiful red brown colour as it ages:

Being impatient for spring, I wanted to be reassured that it was on its way by seeing some snowdrops. I finish today with the slightly underwhelming snowdrop display at Goodnestone Park which we visited this week thinking it might be a good local place to see some:

The snowdrop season is only just beginning and there is still plenty of time to improve on this as we now step into February.