Local Wildlife Sites are areas of land that have been identified as being especially important for wildlife and its habitats, and there are almost five hundred of them in Kent and forty thousand of them across England. They can be both public and private land which supports biodiversity, provides corridors and acts as a buffer to protect nature from surrounding land use.

The number of Local Wildlife Sites so far across England is broken down by area below:

And the percentage of land per area that is part of a Local Wildlife Site is shown here:

On Monday we had the fantastic news that, with much help from Kent Wildlife Trust, the meadows have now been designated a Local Wildlife Site, as an extension to the existing Kingsdown and Walmer Beach Local Wildlife Site. Nothing much will change as a result, but it is a wonderful grande finale for the year.

I have to admit that the allotment ran away with us this summer and got wildly out of control. We are weeding and composting it now, so that we can start afresh next year with renewed good intentions. One day Dave half-weeded one of the raised beds, intending to finish it off the next day. In the morning we noticed large feathers on the soil and, without investigating too closely, supposed that a pigeon had come down to peck around the newly overturned soil and fallen victim to a sparrowhawk.

When Dave returned to finish the weeding, though, he was very surprised to find a large duck-sized bird that was now buried just below the soil, which had then been beautifully smoothed back over. The bird had no head or feet so we are not completely sure what species it is – I think it was probably a duck though:

We had never stumbled upon a fox’s cache before. I read that they do bury excess food and usually take great care to disguise high protein prey such as this bird. Interestingly, when a fox returns to remove the cache, it will often urinate at the site as a kind of bookkeeping exercise so that it will know that it has emptied the cache even though it might still be able to smell the food.

I trained a trail camera onto the cache site and, two nights later, the fox retuned to collect the bird:

Although whether or not the bookkeeping urination occurred has not been recorded for prosperity by the camera.

John the bird ringer has been ringing in both the meadows and the wood recently. Rather extraordinarily, in the last three recent seasons in the meadows he has caught seven firecrests:

One of the firecrests was a retrap (now called a ‘subsequent encounter’). It had previously been ringed in the meadows on 28th November but had now put on a bit of weight and muscle. This is good news because it suggests that the firecrest is overwintering here and is doing very well on it.

He has also recently ringed several long-tailed tits in the meadows:

One of the long-tailed tits was also a subsequent encounter and has an amusing history. It was first ringed as a juvenile in June this year at Sandwich Bay Observatory just to the north of here. It was then recaught four times at the observatory – once in August, twice in September and once in October. You can imagine that perhaps it got a bit fed up with constantly finding itself in the ringers’ net and decided to move south to try its luck elsewhere, only to find itself once more in a net in the meadows. I wonder if we will see it again before too long?

It is unusual to catch a wren in the nets and it was lovely to see this one:

Lots of measurements and observations are made before a bird is ringed and released:

I did not know that you can sex a great tit by looking at the width of the black stripe down its front. This is a male with a wide black stripe and the female would have a much narrower one:

It is now thought that all the blackcaps that are here during the summer will then migrate south for the winter. They are soon replaced with other blackcaps from the more northerly parts of Europe, arriving in the autumn to overwinter in this country. John caught one of these overwintering blackcaps this week:

On a recent sunny day, we toured the meadows to clear old bird nests out of the nest boxes. It is sometimes a bit of a struggle to remember where all the boxes are, but we managed to find eight boxes that had been used this year:

Several of the boxes had been commandeered by snails to hibernate in:

A female gypsy moth had taken up residence in another box. Ignoring the snail, you can see the whole life cycle in the photo below. The hairy caterpillar is top right and the large, smooth brown cocoon is below it. The white flightless adult female is now deceased and lying just above the cocoon and snail. Finally, her brown furry egg mass is to the left of the photo:

Other interesting photos from the meadows this week:

I heard from our woodland neighbour that she had just seen a hawfinch in her wood. John the bird ringer was ringing in our wood the very next day but sadly didn’t see or hear a hawfinch. He did, however, hear crossbills throughout the morning. Eventually twenty-two of them landed in a nearby tree and he got fantastic views. He doesn’t carry a camera but here is a photo of two male crossbills from Wiki Commons:

Occasionally we do hear shooting in the environs of the wood and so perhaps these pheasants are seeking sanctuary amongst the trees where the guns can’t go:

The new pond in the marjoram clearing has been getting a lot of visitors recently. A sparrowhawk here:

And lots of night time woodcock:

Even a tawny owl is regularly bathing there still:

Tomorrow’s winter solstice is the very deepest point of winter and is always eagerly anticipated here. From that point on the days are gradually getting longer and there is an indefinable feeling of change in the air. Like our ancestors for centuries before us, we are planning to mark the day by lighting some candles out in the meadows, celebrating a special day where light starts to win out over the darkness.