We have had some really fine weather here recently and John the bird-ringer has been catching newly-arrived summer visitors in the meadows.

There is also loud chiffchaffing emanating from the hedgerows these days and here is the unassuming bird that is responsible for that:

The blackcap’s song is beautifully melodious. It’s the males that are singing, but here is one of the females that they are trying to impress:

Linnets are partial migrants. Many remain in this country over the winter, forming large flocks on farmland that has some winter food, but a significant number migrate instead to southern France, Spain and Morocco. Either way, lovely linnets have recently arrived back here in the meadows to breed this summer:

John also caught a pair of robins. The first one he ringed was a male but the second, when gently blown upon through a tube, could be seen to have a nearly fully developed brood patch. This indicates that she’s a female and should soon be sitting on eggs. This brood patch has a really good blood supply to keep the eggs warm:

As John was at work with his nets, Dave and I took the dog around the meadows with her ball. We were walking along the northern boundary when I heard a small commotion going on in the hedgerow. I peered in and was flabbergasted to see that it was a water rail, struggling to get itself deeper into the bushes as we passed by.

I did get a good look at it but unfortunately was too stunned to act quickly. I failed to get a photo before the bird worked its way to the bottom of the hedge and out of sight.

Here is a photo of a water rail from Wiki Commons though:

It is thought that around 3,900 pairs of water rails breed in the UK with the numbers boosted in the winter by birds coming from colder parts of Europe. But they are very secretive wetland birds, usually hiding themselves amongst reeds and are difficult to properly count.

I presume that the water rail in our hedgerow this week must be en route back to its breeding grounds in Continental Europe. They are strongly nocturnal when they migrate, so would probably have stayed in the hedge all day and emerged when it got dark to fly across The Channel. I positioned a couple of trial cameras in case it came out onto the grass in front of the hedge before it flew off.

Unfortunately the bird left the hedge that evening without emerging in front of my cameras. I had never in a million years thought that we would have a water rail on the meadows bird list, but there it now is, nestling in at number 103.

An alexander is a tall, thuggish plant, forming dense stands that outcompete native flora and is a real problem here on the East Kent coast.

For the first few years after taking on the meadows, we were naive and insufficiently vigilant, letting alexanders grow and set seed in the meadows in a most foolhardy manner. This photo taken out the front of Walmer Castle this week demonstrates what can happen when you let down your guard in this way:

A thick hedge of the hated plant lines much of the coastal footpath between Walmer and Kingsdown at this time of year:

By the time we woke up to the threat and took it seriously, we already had thousands of alexander plants growing in the meadows. So many, in fact, that it is impossible to dig them all up in one go.

The same cannot be said for the ones that flower deep within the spiky hedgerows though:

The unwanted alexander successfully extricated from the back of the hedgerow:

Our approach for several years now has been to dig up any alexander that starts to flower and, since January, I have been regularly patrolling with my spade. I have removed hundreds of them and, now in mid April, the plants that remain will not be flowering this year. I will continue to be vigilant for a few weeks more, but can tell you now that no alexander will set seed in the meadows for another year. The war is far from over, however, and battle will recommence next January.

It’s wonderful to have the invertebrates out and about again and how I have missed them. This week I have been trying to photograph some flying insects as they feed from flowers.

A bee-fly is a sweet little thing so long as you don’t look too closely into its parasitic lifestyle. It has a rigid proboscis which cannot be retracted:

Green alkanet has flower tubes and that are shorter than the length of a bee-fly’s rigid proboscis, so the fly has to hover away from the flower as it drinks the nectar:

A primrose, however, has a flower tube that is longer than the bee-fly proboscis:

Although this photo below from 2023 is unfortunately not in focus, it shows a bee-fly that has just fed on a primrose and its pale trombone tongue is still extended from the proboscis:

There are lots of cowslips in the meadows at the moment and this is another example of a very long flower tube needing specialised mouthparts to access the nectar. I have only ever seen bumble bees feeding from these, although I suspect that moths also do under the cover of darkness.

Unlike the bee-flies, a bumblebee can curl its proboscis away when not in use but in the photo below the bee is approaching a cowslip with it unfurled and ready for action:

The red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius), however, has a tongue that is less than a third of the length of the garden bumblebee, at about 6mm. This shorter length means they prefer shallower flowers and I have been seeing them a lot on dandelions this week. They can also bite holes into the sides of the deeper flowers to reach the nectar though.

I am a great hairy-footed flower bee enthusiast and now have six pots of Pulmonaria by the front door in the hope of luring these lovely bees into the garden so that I can admire them.

It is wonderful to have bees flying all around once more, but it can be so very frustrating trying to photograph them in action.

The reptiles are also up and out now:

Unfortunately its not just us that has spotted them and here is a slow worm in a magpie’s beak:

As we have been looking under the reptile sampling squares we’ve found a variety of small mammals, although they are fast and photography is again difficult. A nice bank vole here though:

I have run the moth trap several times both in the meadows and in the wood and have been getting some interesting moths, many of which I have never seen before. So far this year I have already added a pleasing nineteen new species to the meadows moth list and nine for the wood.

For their safety, I release the caught moths from the trap the next evening after the birds have roosted. When I went to let them fly one evening, I found that love had blossomed in the trap:

My rough calculation suggested that the tawny owl eggs in a box in the wood might be hatching over the Easter weekend, but so far I have not noticed a change in behaviour that suggests that this has happened. Several small mammals are being delivered to the box overnight but perhaps still only by the one bird:

These two photos below were taken on the same night, one at 10.30pm in the evening and the other at 5am the next morning. I would think that an owl wouldn’t need to take two baths a night at this time of year, and that this must be two different birds, one of which will be the female away from her eggs or young:

I have been seeing a nice variety of small birds visiting this pond recently including bullfinch, siskin and redpoll. Obviously not while this bird was there though:

A different pond has been visited by a buzzard this week:

There is a lot going on at this time of year and I have had to leave out many interesting photos to avoid this post becoming far too long and unwieldy. I do want to include these last two photos, though, where the good old trail cameras have managed to capture animals flying through the air:

I find myself more than usually busy with nature at this lovely time of year. I hope that you too have been able to get out and about to experience and enjoy the wonderful spring as she is gradually arriving.,