First Frost

I left home just as it was starting to get light this morning and thought it was a bit chilly but was really surprised on getting to the reserve to find that it was coated in a hard white frost with a rising mist. As a result I didn't see an awful lot as I wandered across the marsh, along the seawall and then back across the marsh. A couple of Marsh Harriers appeared out of the mist and around 50 Mallard passed by overhead. A Water Rail squealed from the Delph reed beds as I stood watching a small party of Bearded Tits working along the seed heads and they were joined soon after by another group of Reed Buntings. Making my way along one of the boundary hedgerows I had a total of 1 Blackbird, 1 Wren, 3 Chaffinch, and 3 Robin - not exactly the expected invasion of migrants predicted.
A fox walked out of one the reed beds quite close to me and I don't know who was the most surprised, the fox or Midge, but she pursued it for a short way before realising that her short legs were never going to catch it and so quickly gave up. One thing that did surprise me was catching sight of a medium-sized black bird at the top of a large hawthorn bush, pecking at the berries, when I looked at it through the binoculars it turned out to be a Moorhen!

This is the scene from the top of Capel Hill on the Harty Road as I drove out, with the mist just beginning to spread across the marshes.


This one was taken from the top of the sea wall looking across the reserve and showing how at field level it was difficult to see much around you, only upwards.


But its always atmospheric being out so early in such conditions and eventually at 07.15 a huge red sun came up above Seasalter and quickly began burning the mist away. This second view along the sea wall at 07.45 shows how quickly it had made a difference, although on the shady side to the right you can still see the white of the frost.


Getting to the end of the sea wall, this shot of the Delph fleet shows the extent to which it is drying out now. Quite a grim sight.

What Rain

The euphoria surrounding the event of decent rainfall on the reserve Sunday morning was very short-lived. Today is the second day of strong and drying winds, which coupled with warm sunshine have sucked every last drop of moisture back off the reserve and we're back to how we were.

I walked across part of the reserve this morning, seeing very little and being pushed backwards at times by the strength of the wind and decided to complete a circular walk by continuing on round part of the neighbouring farmland. So I took the footpath track that we know as "the gravel road" and headed up it towards Harty church. At the top you can make out the white of the sign-post. (All the photos are best viewed by double clicking on each one and enlarging it)


At the top it's nice to turn round and take in the view across the farmland, the reserve, and out towards the buildings of Shellness Hamlet in the distance.


Here at the top of the track you have the choice of two directions.


I briefly turned left and you can see that alongside Harty Church the derelict old school-house has now been replaced by a newly built bungalow, in which the mother of the four farming brothers will live.


I then re-traced my steps and took the right-hand option, heading down the track with high hedges either side and past The old Forge cottage towards Elliots farmyard on the corner of the Harty Road. It was relatively wind-free going through there and I hoped that I might be able to both hear and see a few migrant thrushes or finches because the hedges were full of berries and the game cover alongside was full of seed. The result surprisingly, was pretty much bugger all, a few Blue Tits and a possible Goldcrest and that was it, has Sheppey been declared a bird-free zone?


Having gone through Elliots farm yard, where there was a sizeable flock of House Sparrows, I then turned right at the Harty Road and begun making my way down the footpath track known to us as "the concrete road". By following the track along the line of bushes winding its way left in the photo you not only get superb views across the Harty farmland but you also end up at Leysdown, its really worth walking. Me, I turned into the small thicket on the right and followed the track through it to get back onto the reserve. This thicket is where I normally see my first Goldcrest of the autumn but again that was not to be today but I did manage a Little Owl, which was calling within yards of me although I never did see it.


It was then just a matter of following the reserve track down to the barn and my car.

We've had rain!

This is only a brief posting, to firstly apologise to the few people who have commented recently on my blog and secondly to celebrate the fact that we have finally had proper rain.
For some reason, I'm both unable to post comments on other people's blogs but also not even post relies on my own blog, I haven't a clue why.

Earlier this morning we had 3-4 hours of good and steady rain and so I was a tad later visiting the reserve today and then only for a short walk. The first thing that I saw on parking at the reserve barn was a large flock of c. 150 Golden Plover and 80 Lapwing further out in the middle of one of the grazing fields. The rain had obviously fooled them into thinking that they would find the soggy conditions that they need in order to probe the soil for invertebrates. Having found that this was not indeed the case, they departed shortly after for the tidal mudflats over the seawall. Mind you, if nothing else, the rainfall has soaked the roots of the grass and should hopefully see it stirred into re-growth and green-ness, something the cattle will enjoy.

The photo below is perhaps a tad childish but celebrates the first minor puddles that I have seen on the reserve track, probably since the early Spring!- almost a miracle.


Mind you, the only difference to the "S Bend Ditch" is the fact that the colour of the dry mud has darkened. This is how its looks for the whole of its several hundred yard length and it will need an awful lot of rain before it once again becomes the favourite site for wildfowl on the reserve.


That said, we do still have a few ditches on the reserve that retain some water, here is one of them!


Lastly, walking across one rain-soaked meadow, I came across this young Edible Frog hopping through the grass, no doubt happy at feeling wet again. He's only about a third of his adult size, double click on the photo and enlarge him.

Roosting at Shellness

With the wind gusting fron the WNW early this morning I thought I'd have a run down to Shellness Point and perhaps catch a Gannet going by. Because Midge and I don't favour seawatching as a birdwatching past-time, (too much standing around doing nothing), I rarely see them unless they come further into the Swale. An hour or so later, when I arrived at Shellness the wind had moved round to more of a westerly direction which pretty much reduced any chance of oceanic stuff, for at least the time that I was there anyway.
What was also noticeable was the weather, when I was down seven days ago to watch the filming of a scene from Great Expectations, it was swelteringly hot and sunny - today in near gale-force and chilly gusts of wind, I was sheltered behing the blockhouse in a coat - gawd, I know I shouldn't wish my life away, but roll on next March!
But if nothing else it was the height of the tide and so there was at least the daily roost out on the beach at the Point to look through. The photo below shows part of the Oystercatcher flock, which I eventually estimated at around 1,700 birds. (Double click on it and enlarge it and have a look through it)


Surprisingly, there weren't that many other waders, just 8 Turnstones and a Barwit. The rest of the roost was made up of 46 Lesser-Black-Backed Gulls, 20 Herring Gulls and 2 Sandwich Terns.
On the sea alongside the beach were 18 Brent Geese, all adults, and despite numerous scans out to sea, that was pretty much it. So, not being one born with much patience for hopping on the spot for long periods of time, I begun to make my way back along the beach. There I had a couple of Wheatears pass by, hunting insects in the vegetation and I was also surprised to see that some of the Vipers Bugloss was still in flower, nice to see a bit of summer hanging on.

Driving back along the Shellness track a female Sparrowhawk overtook me as it sped along the seawall and in and out of the chalets before eventually alighting on a fence post some way in front of me. I stopped the car and had a look at it through the binoculars and was surprised to see a Pied Wagtail sitting two posts further on. This resulted in a short staring match between the two, which I thought was quite brave of the wagtail given how fierce the eyes of the Sparrowhawk can look. Eventually the wagtail lost its nerve and flew off and to my surprise, after one quick pass at it the Sparrowhawk disappeared off in the opposite direction. Perhaps the wagtail had won the war of nerves after all, he's probably out there still, bragging too his mates.

On a different note and for those of you that use the Harty Road Raptor Viewing Mound regularly, a change has taken place close by, immediately to the north of the Mound a large area of the grazing marsh has now been ploughed up. Its a real shame to lose such valuable habitat but its all to do with economics. As I understand it the grazing marsh and its value to wildlife was subsidised by agreements set up with Natural England but with NE having its budgets cut they in turn have had to cut back on the amount of subsidies that they were able to offer each landowner this year. Put simply it means that the farmer there can make more money from growing arable crops next year on the unsubsidised acreage.

Summer is Gone!

Today finally saw the end of several days of hot and cloudless, blue-skyed, sunny days of above average temperatures. Days that saw fantastic and photogenic sun-rises and sunsets, the wearing of shorts and T shirts, long bike rides during the hot afternoons and later, unexpected BBQ's.
Yesterday Minster beach was still full with people sunbathing and swimming and simply enjoying being unfettered and outdoors - today under grey skies and a chilly breeze, there was just a few dog walkers in coats! What a difference just a day and the ending of a season can make, that must surely be it now - just six months to come of gales, rain, mud, frost, snow, and everything that makes stepping outdoors uncomfortable and hard to bear.

And yet, out there somewhere, are those few people that last week found it impossible to enjoy such a short-lived period of unexpected bliss because it made finding birds difficult - I can't understand their failure to relax for just one week anymore than they can probably understand my failure to put birds before everything else in life. Roll on the Spring!

"the warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
the bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,
and the year
on the earth her deathbed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
is lying"..............Percy Bysshe Shelley

Mellow Dawns

The unseasonal hot, cloudless and sunny weather this week has been fantastic and none more than the sunrises and sunsets, they have been spectacular. Most mornings this week I have been on the reserve around dawn to enjoy that pre-dawn chill that rapidly changes to post-dawn heat. The photo below was the sun rising this morning over Seasalter and being reflected in The Swale. Surprisingly as well this morning, there was very little mist, just a few whisps along the ebbing Swale.


Withe the sunrise comes that warm glow and blanket silence that always seems especially noticeable in autumn. Double click on the photo below and enlarge it and enjoy the peaceful and mellow scene at Harty Ferry in The Swale at 07.30 this morning.
I began my walk on the reserve by walking along the top of the seawall, with The Swale to my left and the reed beds of the Delph fleet to my right. And having mentioned the blanket silence above, that was the case apart from the constant "barking" calls of around 400 Brent Geese feeding on the mudflats on the Seasalter side of The Swale, they appear to have come back in early good numbers this year. A few Bearded Tits and Reed Buntings called from the tops of the reed beds and one or two few Wrens busily made their way through the reed stems as they will now for the winter to come. A couple of Green Sandpipers and a Heron got up from the increasing muddy fringes of the Delph fleet and that was pretty much it bird-wise. Oh, all that is, except for a Green Woodpecker that got up in front of me as I turned onto the grazing for my return journey. Its odd to think of these birds as regular birds of the marsh here, rather than just woodlands, but the large numbers of ant-hills spread across the marsh provide them with an easy supply of both ants and their young, which they quite like.
Making my across the marsh I marvelled at what the herd of cattle are still finding to eat from the parched and yellow fields, but they still look in really good condition so must be doing OK. It'll only be a few weeks now till the calves are taken away from their mothers for weaning which is saddening for a few days as you hear the mothers calling for their young, but its all part of the farming year.


On the subject of the farming year, this is the scene across much of Harty at the moment, huge fields tilled and re-sown with winter corn and sitting there dust dry now as they wait for rain to germinate the seed.


Its not all bad though because around many of the fields are the regular cover strips of maize and various seeding crops, created especially for the game shooting interests and to provide food for numerous wild birds. Currently coming into seed is a type of millet that finches and buntings feed on all winter, as well as the Red-Legs of course. Enlarge the picture to get a better idea of what it looks like, its the whispy stuff right alongside the taller maize, with some sow-thistle seed heads amongst it. What great wild bird feeding areas for the winter.


To prove the point of how it benefits the smaller birds I took a selection home for my canaries, who eagerly pounced on it and fed from it.



One last comment on this current hot and seemingly mid-summer weather is how confusing it gets early evening when, instead of carrying on until 9-10 o'clock, the light suddenly goes and it starts getting dark at 6.30.

What's Going On

The seawall in front of The Swale NNR is an important part of the reserve because of its ungrazed sides with long and thick vegetation. It always has something to offer wildlife be it breeding birds or moths , butterflies, lizards and small mammals.
At this time of the year it is particually important because it gives shelter to the countless over-wintering eggs and pupae of moths and butterflies, next year's generation in other words. The rarer Ground Lackey moth caterpillars normally favour this area to pupate as well.


It is also home to thousands of various spider types, as this photo taken in the mist this week shows.


Fantastic you might say, everything a nature reserve should be - fantastic that is, until a tractor mower from the Environment Agency turned up yesterday and reduced the vegetation to the state it is below. All that loss of insect life, and for what purpose? Does anybody have any idea why the EA finds it necessary to go out to a remote nature reserve and spend the public's money causing such environmental vandalism in the name of seawall management?