Heatwave

Time and it's attendant weather have moved on considerably since the depression of my last posting and with increased regularity the weather has become sunnier and hotter. This week as I write this the weather is hot with unbroken sunshine and due to remain so for some time yet - we're into a heatwave!
After my last posting I looked back at those of the earlier years, when I believe that they said something meaningful, had content and venom,and was minded to give up all together, because I wasn't really saying anything new or interesting, but we'll see.
April ended with a 20 hr period of heavy and continuous rain and cold N. winds on the 29th/30th that brought about a lot of surface flooding on the reserve. Some nests in the ditches and fleets were submerged and many nests or chicks of Lapwing and Skylark in the flat marsh were either covered in water or the chicks died of cold and wet in the long vegetation. For the Lapwings at least, the breeding season on the Swale NNR has been pretty much a non-event - too few pairs and bad weather affecting those that did breed. The other significant aspect has been the late and reduced return of summer migrants, Reed and Sedge Warbler numbers are well down from previous years -it was a funny old Spring!
As has already been mentioned, since then the weather has improved to a state of hot and sunny but the water levels on the reserve are beginning to drop away quite fast and the ground is very dry and hard, but so far, the grass levels have held up and the cattle and their calves are doing very well. This year, given all the activity in the fields, after two years of hay shortages, it looks as though hay will be plentiful - it may not be much cheaper but it will be plentiful. One of the Harty farmers this year has sown several fields of spring barley, a crop just beginning to re-appear on Sheppey, and it's good news because it means that the fields it's currently growing in were either fallow over the winter or with a catch crop and all benefiting wildlife.
In my garden last winter I cleared, re-dug and manured a new border and this Spring planted it with perennial flowers that attract and feed bees and butterflies. They are all flowering well, as you can see below, but where are the bees and butterflies?, they just haven't appeared this year, a whole border of lavender in my front garden, but not a bee in sight, I am so disappointed and worried.

 

This last few days I have been on the reserve by 05.30 to avoid the heat, little Ellie doesn't like it, and anyway it's so fresh, cool and quiet, quite superb. The evening sunsets have also been quite magnificent, this first one, looking west across the grazing marshes opposite my house, shows the sun just disappearing below the horizon at near 22.00 at night.

and this one, an incredible 22.30 as I went to bed. Just think, in winter we'd of had six hours of darkness by then, oh happy summer days!

 Lastly, as I drove back along the Harty Road on Sunday morning at around 8.00, this young Kestrel was spotted on a fence post beside the road and so I leaned my camera out of the car and took a photograph from just five foot away.

Shit Weather

Well, after the euphoria in my last two postings, due to a seven day spell of almost hot and sunny weather after a wet and cold early Spring, this week has slowly sunk back into that cold and wet Spring. It rained off and on most of yesterday and coming home after most of the day out and about, I had to put the Central Heating back on in order to warm up.
As I write this, early on Saturday morning, it is raining hard, it's gloomy and it's cold. Fortunately, by going out with little Ellie at 06.00, I managed to get a less than enthusiastic walk round a wet reserve before this current rain begun. Long, wet grass and cold conditions do not bode well for ant Lapwing chicks that are getting wet and cold without being able to dry out in warm, sunny weather.

To further add to my depression there is a weather warning currently out for Sunday night and all day Monday here in the South East, for heavy rain and gale-force N winds that could lead to some surface flooding.  It's very difficult to feel any kind of positivity at the moment.

Another Early Morning

I was on the reserve by 06.30 this morning and with blue skies and sunshine beginning to quickly disperse the early mist, it looked quite superb.
This is what it looked like when I turned up.

Quickly the mist burnt off and as it did so, from the reed beds on the reserve, came the "booming" calls of a Bittern, a sound like somebody blowing across the top of a bottle, but amplified.

 Not a breath of wind and total calmness, with the variegated foliage of Milk Thistle in the foreground.

 The Flood Field looked as it should do, with a few white birds in it........

 ........which turned out to be these Avocets.

 The Tower Hide

The Coot's nest from yesterday's blog had increased to nine eggs!

Ellie, looking as lovely as ever,

Early Reserve

A few photographs of the reserve looking quite good early this morning.
How we and the wildfowl would of loved to have seen it look back in mid-winter.

Two views of the "S Bend Ditch" - bone dry at the end of February. Although you can't see it, it curls across the marsh in the shape of an S

 Looking across towards the neighbouring farmland, with the reserve barn part hidden in the bushes in the foreground.

This Coot was doing it's best not to be noticed on it's nest.

And a second Coot's nest nearby. I will monitor it to see if all 8 eggs survive the attention of the local crows.

Here comes the Sun

After an awful week's weather last week where on most days it was grey skies, dampness and difficult to see further than about half a mile through the mist and gloom, the light finally came on. But the weather on Saturday was like coming out from a tunnel, it was sunny all day and reasonably warm, would it last though, boy has it. We have had three days so far of increasingly warm and sunny days, with today being cloudless all day and a temperature peaking at 25 degrees and tomorrow could see us reach 28 degrees. All of a sudden it feels great to be alive, the grass on the grazing marsh looks greener, the flowers of bulbs are bursting open in colour and lambs frolic in the fields - at last a belated Spring has finally arrived!
Not only has Spring arrived but with the wind coming up from the south, the Spring migrants, those birds that travel north from Africa to share summer with us, have also started to arrive, an exaltation of good times ahead. So far I've seen Swallows, Sedge and Reed Warblers, Yellow Wagtails, Wheatear, Whimbrel and Whitethroat, the best mid-April for migrants I've had for a few years.

The reserve couldn't look much better than it did today in the sunshine. Plenty of wet areas, plenty of fresh, green grass for the cattle and their calves that are expected soon, everything looks good.

Away from the reserve the Parish Council Speedwatch team that I'm part of, were out earlier this morning monitoring one of our busy roads. We've endured several minus chill factor mornings doing it since the New Year but today was our first really warm and comfortable sessions. We're very visible but out of 405 vehicles that passed us in one hour, we still recorded for the Police website, 17 speeding motorists. A low total when you consider that at one site we often record 60 speeding motorists in one hour, virtually one a minute! We get some abuse from people, such as "get a life you silly old farts" (we're all retired), but it's difficult to understand why some people expect to be able to speed and potentially cause deaths without being recorded.

Also this afternoon, my bicycle came out of winter storage and I had a pleasant ride along the nearby seafront, where the tide was high and calm. No actual swimmers yet but many in shorts and T shirts enjoying the beach.

It's been a good few days, how could anybody not enjoy experiencing it.

Easter Sunday - closed for business

I'm down at my partner's house in beautiful Surrey this weekend, so a change in scenery, though just as wet, where isn't at the moment!
We were hoping to buy plants and manure,etc. today and get stuff planted in her garden before tomorrow's very wet day that is forecast. Unfortunately garden centers are not allowed to be open on Easter Sunday for some reason that mystifies me and  so we decided to get out in the cold and wet countryside and enjoy that as best as we could.
Below is the River Broadwater, which was in full flood and flowing very fast.

The Broadwater is formed where the River Blackwater to the left and the River Whitewater to the right, converge........

........ as you can see

 In several places it had begun to flood over into the adjacent water meadows.

What did amuse us was the fact that snails alongside the river had climbed the dead vegetation in big numbers to make sure that they escaped the flood waters.

Further back along the River Blackwater, there is a ford which at times like today, becomes impassable for cars and means a lengthy trip round the lanes to rejoin the other side.

Further along one lane we came across a bridge across the River Whitewater with unusually, a county boundary right in the middle of it - Berkshire to the left and Hampshire to the right.

 Looking back into Hampshire.

Finally, one of the river's residents, a Grey Wagtail.

Another Never Ending Winter

Back in March/April 2013 in my blogs, I gave the weather at the time the nick-name of the "Never Ending Winter" - this year seems to be following the same path. The Beast from the East, the Mini Beast from the East and now, continuing cold and wet weather forecast well into April, does not bode well for a decent Spring this year.
Today it is cold and it began raining steadily at 7.00 and is set to do so all day and it's looking pretty miserable outside. It's often the case in this country that if you wish for a type of weather for too long, that when it does eventually arrive it doesn't know when to stop. That appears to be the case at the moment, throughout our long drought we prayed for rain and lots of it and boy are we getting it now. Trouble is, it's a bit too much at the wrong time, as we go into April, it's warmer weather that we need now, to get the grazing meadows growing nicely and to aid the ground nesting birds.
Lapwings nest on the ground and not in a nest as such, they simply make a depression in the soil/short grass and lay their four eggs into that depression. Steady rain such as today's, falling on to fairly water-logged ground, will inevitably, despite the brooding bird, soak and chill the bottom half of the eggs causing them to fail to hatch. This cold, wet weather is not going to do any favours at all to the Lapwings if it continues as is forecast, which is a real shame because nationally, they continue to decline as a breeding species.

LAPWING

Another casualty of this cold weather has been the frog spawn featured in my last blog posting. Lack of warming sun and at least one night when the pond surface briefly froze, has seen around 80% of the spawn fail to hatch any tadpoles. Hopefully the newts in the pond will fair much better as their eggs are laid individually under the water with a weed leaf wrapped around each.

In my garden the House Sparrows have been busy starting to build their nests and so far I have identified four nests under way, two in my hawthorn hedge and two in nest boxes. The Blue and Great Tits are slow to start though, despite inspecting the nest boxes I have put out for them. This is probably due to the cold weather and the current lack of the insect food that the Tits will need to feed their chicks with. Getting the timing of that insect food right is crucial to when the Tits will start breeding.  

It's a frustrating time in the garden as well. During this last winter I reclaimed a largish section of the top end of the garden by digging out some evergreen shrubs that contributed nothing to either wildlife or scenery. I dug and manured that area and have recently been trying to plant all manner of plants that will add both massed colour and more importantly, attract and feed bees and butterflies, etc.. Unfortunately, cold wet clay is not best walked on and planted when the weather is as it is today, it's getting really frustrating watching pots of various plants stacking up on the patio waiting to be planted.

So, as I sit here looking at a cold and wet afternoon outside, the prospects of another Never Ending Winter increase by the day.