We have been staying at Elmley Nature Reserve on the Isle of Sheppey, just off the north coast of Kent, twice a year for a while. One trip is in the winter to see the owls and the marsh harrier roost and the other in May when the baby animals are around. On each visit we see different things and come away full of joy at what a wild and wonderful place we have just an hour’s drive away from home.

We arrived there in the sunshine of this week to stay in the Saltbox, our favourite large and comfortable shepherd hut with far-reaching views out over the marsh:

May is a time of billowing cow parsley and fresh new leaves on the oaks:

Probably the most memorable thing about this visit was the three cuckoos that were flying between the trees on the raised land around the farmhouse. Two of them were males and spent much of the time perched and calling from a large willow just behind our hut.

Unfortunately I didn’t manage to get a better photo of them, but these silhouettes below show their long, pointy wings as they flew around in the gathering dusk:

We discovered a couple of interesting things about cuckoos that we hadn’t known before. The first thing is that they are often still calling as they fly, and the second and rather surprising thing is that they continued calling right through the night. This was close to where we were sleeping and, although it didn’t disturb me, it gave Dave a bad night and had indeed sent him a little bit cuckoo by the morning.

Cuckoos famously parasitise other birds by laying an egg in their nests. The cuckoo egg will then be the first to hatch and the young bird will push all the other eggs out of the nest. One of their favoured hosts is the reed warbler and we certainly heard a lot of these birds amongst the vegetation of the marsh.

Cuckoos also specialise in eating hairy caterpillars which are avoided by other birds because the hairs irritate their gut. We did see many hairy caterpillars on the reserve, such as lots of lackey moth caterpillars on the oaks, with their smoky-blue stripes and face, and vast numbers of brown-tail moth caterpillars on hawthorns down on the marsh. The female cuckoo should have plenty to eat as she waits for a reed warbler to leave its nest unattended for a moment so that she can sneak in unnoticed.

Another memorable sight this time was of a goldfinch sitting on her nest incubating her eggs:

However, I am sad to report that things all went horribly wrong for this nest. By the next morning it had been raided:

A third memorable thing was hearing two booming bitterns from different areas of the reserve. Sounding a bit like someone blowing across the top of a bottle, this is a loud and amazing sound to be emanating from out of the marsh.

The reserve is managed for breeding redshank and lapwing in particular although, if conditions are right for them, they are also right for much else. We certainly saw plenty of both of these two species but it seemed that we were too early for their chicks. Next year we should perhaps go later in May.

We were also too early for dragonflies, but surely not by much. This four-spotted chaser had just emerged as an adult and couldn’t yet fly:

Moorhen eggs, however, had already hatched. Some of the young were being kept around the shepherd huts to give them some protection from predators:

There are no badgers on Sheppey, and foxes, stoats and hedgehogs are controlled on the reserve. But one predator in particular would still be a problem for the chicks – the marsh harrier:

In May last year we saw a marsh harrier making off with a chick:

Marsh harriers are also very keen to catch leverets if they can. There are so many hares at Elmley and we got a good look at one of the adults enjoying the sunshine:

Not only do they have really long hind legs….

…their front legs are also surprisingly lengthy:

Like the moorhen chicks, some of the leverets are parked by their mothers amongst the shepherd huts, offering some sanctuary from the harriers. Back in May 2023 there was a particularly tame one:

Some other birds that we spotted this time at Elmley:

It is always lovely to see yellow wagtails at Elmley:

The female on the right below is so much paler than the male on the left, now in his breeding plumage

In winter everyone gets terribly excited about the owls at Elmley, me included. A lot of this is because of the thirty or so short-eared owls that roost in a field by the car park and are often easily viewable.

At the end of the winter, most of these short-eared owls leave, travelling north to Scandanavia, Russia and Iceland to breed. However, last year at least two pairs of short-eared owls stayed put and bred on the reserve, successfully fledging several young. This May there are once more short-eared owls remaining at Elmley and the hope is that they will again be breeding. We saw one of these owls out hunting as we went on a dusk tour with a nature guide:

Little owls are on the reserve all year. If you are on a nature tour, you are usually taken off the path to see the little owl nest box at the back of the old school house:

Little owls are nesting in this box and the next morning we saw one of the adults sunbathing amongst the ruins:

Barn owls are also resident at Elmley and there are apparently several pairs nesting there this year. Unfortunately we didn’t see a barn owl this time but I include a photo of one from a previous trip:

Long-eared owls also still remain on the reserve this spring, roosting in the day by the car park. However, they are very difficult to spot, especially when the trees have leaves. We did see one back in January though:

The best way to see them at this time of year is to wait for them to emerge at dusk. But, although we sat on a bench by the car park with the nature guide for a while, we weren’t lucky enough to spot one this time.

So once again we had a wonderful nature experience at Elmley. We were only there for 24 hours but saw so much.

We plan to return for a winter visit in January. Those noisy old cuckoos will be long gone by then and Dave will be hoping for a better night’s sleep.