September Serenity

The whole of Harty resembles a golden dust bowl at the moment with its mixture of yellow stubble, bare soil and little semblance of moisture anywhere. The above photo shows the reserve "Scrape" in the field that we call The Flood. Despite deepening and extending it last year and an alleged wettest summer for a 100 years, this is how it currently looks. It'll clearly take some degree of rain to re-fill it again this autumn.
But what a splendid month September is, as a stand alone month in the year it can have a real beauty and serenity with it's calm and sunny early mornings and evenings. If it were a drug it would be valium because you tend to go home much calmer than when you arrived, such is the peacefulness that it bathes you with.
I stood for a while by the Delph Fleet alongside the seawall early yesterday morning and watched as the sun began to increase in strength and cause wisps of vapour to swirl across the surface of the water. It was soon followed by the awakening insect life, the Water Boatmen, the flies, and a dragonfly that must of been in the path of the sun's rays, it all gradually came to life. In that overpowering warm silence I could hear two Water Rails calling, perhaps to each other, with those peculiar squealing sounds that they make deep inside the reed beds, because one rarely sees these birds. And then came the constant asdic-like "pinging" of a family party of Bearded Tits and I definitely saw these splendid and tropical looking birds as they worked their ways along the flower heads of the phragmites. A Reed Warbler began scolding me as it appeared from the depths of the reed bed to suddenly spot me, it quickly disappeared again - has it been here all summer or was it just passing through, one thing's for sure, even a warm and balmy September won't keep it here much longer. I doubt it realises how lucky it is to have a natural migratory instinct that means it never experiences the cold and the dankness of winter in England.
And lastly as I stood there, a small party of Coots made there way across the Fleet, these birds, always one of the commonest of  the reserve's water birds, have crashed in numbers this last year, although we don't really know why. They first disappeared, completely, in last winter's drought, and although water levels were very low, it's never seen the complete disappearance of the birds before. A few pairs began to drift back in the Spring but we only ended up with around ten pairs breeding this year, against an average of thirty pairs most years, and even then 50% of them lost their eggs to crows, so its been a real loss of an iconic water bird.  

So there you have it, twenty minutes stood along the Fleet in the increasing warmth of a September morning, big skies and long distances spread out in front of me which ever way I looked, and the overwhelming sense of calmness and quiet - magical.
I walked back into the grazing marsh, stepping over and around the countless ant-hills as I went and disturbed two hares that I hadn't spotted in my wistfullness. They sped off at some speed into the distance and I stood and watched them do what hares often do, discreetly circling back in the cover of the longer grass, almost to where they started from, but my continuing presence caused them to carry on past. Its good to see these on the reserve at the moment, it gives them protection and at the moment, food. With the arable fields bare of vegetation after the harvest cultivations, I guess the grasses of the reserve supply some food source, but you can bet your life that once the first tasty green shoots of emerging winter corn start to appear, they'll soon be gone again.

Wildfowling and Laplands

Last Saturday, 1st September, I arrived on the seawall of the reserve just as a rather splendid dawn was breaking over Shellness Hamlet, as you can see above. Darkness was turning to half-light, Curlews were calling out on the mudflats, a few Swallows zipped by into the gloom, excitedly leaving England behind and all was September calm.
I arrived that early in order to monitor the first morning of the new wildfowling season, which in the reserve's case, takes place on and over the saltings in front of the reserve. The first few mornings can often see up to twenty odd Kent Wildfowling and Conservation Association (KWCA) members strung out along the saltings and  tucked down in the muddy, tidal gullies that dissect the saltings. Some may be regular members simply anxious to be out and about again, some may be new members completely new to the sport. At first on Saturday I thought that none had turned up as I scanned the saltings in the half light for the tell-tale heads sticking above the level of the vegetation, but eventually I spotted just three guys. That's one of the lowest first-morning turn outs that I've seen but I guess some may of done their homework and realising that both water and wildfowl on the reserve were in very short supply, had not bothered, or gone somewhere else.
From what I've seen and heard since, somewhere else could of been in front of the Oare nature reserve, just across the Swale. Here apparently, there were around twelve KWCA members shooting successfully in the morning, with others returning in the evening, and several Greylag Geese and some duck were witnessed being shot there by birdwatchers during the morning session.

Now, here's where I struggle with what side of the line that my feet should be placed in respect of wildfowling. Regular readers of my blog will know that in recent times I have shown some degree of support for the wildfowlers and what, in the overall picture of things, that they achieve for conservation. I believe that the ever-increasing portfolio of shooting areas under their ownership/management helps enormously in preserving vital habitat that others cannot themselves afford to buy, and that generally, their shooting has a minimal affect on wildfowl stocks. Unfortunately however, I think that in respect of Oare they're both getting it wrong and missing an opportunity to prove their conservation crudentials.
At Oare the wildfowlers are allowed to stand and shoot from the base of the seawall which brings them into extremely close contact with the rest of the visiting public using the footpath on top of the seawall, at the same time highlighting at very close range, the killing of wildfowl to many who are opposed to it. Talking to a daily birdwatcher at Oare after the weekend, who fortunately does not have the extreme views regarding wildfowling that many birdwatchers have, it appears that people such as a twice-daily group of lady dog walkers have already been forced to re-schedule their walks there because both they and their dogs get traumatised by shotguns being discharged close by. That really shouldn't be happening.
I'm not familiar with most of their shooting sites but imagine that Oare must be one of the worst for bringing the wildfowlers and the public into such close contact and given that they have been extending their portfolio by buying land in Cambs., Essex and Sussex I do wonder if they could be more relaxed in respect of Oare. An Association that purports to, and actually does, do a lot for the conservation of wildfowl stocks, does little to prove that fact to its detractors when its members stand within yards of a nature reserve and attempt to kill the wildfowl that the reserve is trying to attract and protect.

I was talking about the problem to a chum the other day, who has been a lifelong wildfowler and who ironically spends a lot of time at Oare photographing the birds and other wildlife. But while he can understand  and sympathise with the views of the public there he like most of the wildfowlers, still uses the argument that the wildfowlers were there first, long before it was a nature reserve. Fair enough and the Kent Trust would of been aware of that fact when they started up the reserve but I still feel that by continuing to take such a rigid stance at a site where it is possibly unique for both the KWCA and the public to be so closely intergrated, that the KWCA are missing a golden opportunity to raise their profile as conservationists. I doubt, despite having an ever expanding shooting portfolio, that they would everone give up the shooting rights there, but just reducing the amount of shooting available there would help enormously. Its all food for thought.
P.S. Since posting this blog I have been advised that allegedly, on returning to their cars in the reserve car park Saturday morning, a few of the wildfowlers found that their cars had been vandalised. If this is true, it is hardly going to encourage any kind of softening of their attitude towards their shooting there to be made, some people do have rather blinkered views  on how to go about things.

On an entirely different subject, I noticed this morning that the two RSPB fields below Muswell Manor at Leysdown, have now been cut for hay and that work is going on in a third field alongside. With much spilt wild seed laying in those fields now, lets hope that we get a repeat there again this winter, of the record flocks of Lapland Buntings that we had last winter.

A New Year begins

All the fields of gold are gone now, the wheat has been stored away, the haystacks built and the fields cultivated and re-sown with rape and wheat for next year - one farming year has ended and a new one begins.
Its always a bit sad to see the once colourful fields of green and then yellow, whether it be rape or wheat, suddenly reduced to the colourless sight represented in the picture above as they sit dry and dusty awaiting the first of the autumn rains. The frantic pace of arable farming in recent weeks to get the harvest in, now comes to an end and the machinery is cleaned and serviced and stored away until next year.

Another cycle that begins tomorrow is the start of the main shooting season. The 1st September sees the start of both wildfowl and partridge shooting for the winter, with pheasant shooting following along from the 1st October. With the harvest now finished, farms that are active in game shooting will now be concentrating on making sure that habitat and conditions are as ideal as possible for the coming shoot days. Many will have released both pheasant and partridge poults some weeks ago, but some only received and released their's in the last week or so. As a result the start of the partridge shooting is a staggered business, the first being on Chetney this coming Monday but most of those on Sheppey not till the end of September.
Tomorrow, as is my annual custom, I shall be on the seawall of the reserve at dawn to check out the expected "first day" turn out of the Kent Wildfowlers, several who will no doubt of been out on the saltings well before it got light. Hoping to shoot their first duck or goose of the season, I feel the majority will be disappointed this year for some time to come, the wildfowl just aren't there at the moment and with the reserve becoming increasingly dryer, it looks set to stay that way well into the winter. As I have reported in recent postings, the reserve is now as dry as it was after the winter drought and reports in the papers today officially confirming that we have had the wettest summer for a hundred years seem almost farcical where Sheppey is concerned. Getting back to the wildfowlers, its going to be disappointing to lose the early morning solitude along the seawall for the next six months but I guess its all part of sharing the countryside with those with other interests, despite what some might think, none of us have an exclusive right to it.

On the bird front, well as I report each year around this time, The Swale NNR is very quiet bird-wise, the only brief flurry of interest over the last couple of days has been down at Shellness. There a strong, almost gale-force NNW wind at times has seen a moderate movement of seabirds such as skuas, gannets and terns.  A few Whinchats and Wheatears have passed through the main reserve but they and a few Green Sandpipers and a Greenshank, have pretty much been the sum of any recent migrant movement. It gets a tad boring and predictable but is no where near as sad as the thought of the shortening days and cold, wet weather to come, oh to be a swallow!

Harty Matters

The first sight I encountered this morning on arriving at the reserve was this Small Tortoiseshell butterfly basking in the sun. There was also a pristine Small Copper butterfly close by but it declined to be photographed. While walking round the reserve on Monday afternoon doing the monthly WEBS count, I counted twelve Tortoiseshells, so things are hopefully looking up this year for this now scarce butterfly.

Coming through the small farm spinney that gives us access to the reserve this morning, a sure sign of early autumn was sight of these newly put out pheasant poults. The small syndicate that shoot that area have only put out a couple of dozen birds and so are obviously not intent on very large bags, they seem to concentrate more on Wood Pigeons. Unfortunately the privately owned farmhouse alongside the spinney has several free-ranging cats that have spent the summer wandering the area carrying out what the RSPB call non-effective wildlife slaying. I wonder if they reduce the two dozen poults by several birds, if the syndicate will take the same stance as the RSPB, or look to even the score one time, you will never know!

 In the meantime the pheasants have several weeks before their shooting season begins, but not so the wildfowl, walking round a very dry reserve this morning I was shocked to realise that the wildfowling season starts in just 10 days time. Mind you, apart from their prescence, the wildfowlers are hardly going to have any effect on the reserve for a few months yet, water levels are pretty much back to how they were in the winter drought and wildfowl remain a rare thing. This fact was confirmed on Monday afternoon as we carried out the WEBS survey on the reserve - between three of us we counted one duck, a Teal at Shellness Point. Not much there to be shared between the numerous wildfowlers that will turn out at dawn on the 1st September but it'll be good to have a chat with some of them and swap countryside opinions with people whos'e experience amounts to far more than simply watching Countryfile.
On the subject of country matter as well, I was thinking about the dearth of sheep these days on the Isle of Sheep as it once was, and got to thinking about "dagging." As the year progresses, sheep build up balls of hard dung around their rear end that we used to know as "tag" or "dag nuts". If not removed these "dag nuts" quite often attracted fly maggots and so farmers would round up the sheep, pen them, and then using the same small shears that they used to shear with, would trim off all these "dag nuts" - hence "dagging." Not the best of jobs on a hot day but I presume it still goes on.

The rush to get bales of hay and straw off the fields while everything's still dust dry carries on at some pace and this morning I was watching a stack of wheat straw being created. Its interesting that while barley and even rape straw and of course hay, have good re-sale values, wheat straw hasn't. There is no food goodness in it for livestock and so unless someone can be found that say uses it for house insulation or perhaps livestock bedding, its pretty much a nuicance by-product to farmers. These days as well, they bale it in the much larger, triple-size bales which do not stack anywhere as tightly and safely as the old fashioned small bales that could be stacked easily in the brick-work style.

And finally, the Local Drainage Board have been out over the last few weeks with their machinery cutting and tidying many of Harty's overgrown ditches, as they do every year at this time. Perhaps not everybody's happy with such tidying up but it is necessary and the reeds will be a foot high again in a couple of weeks. It also brings in many Green Sandpipers, attracted by the ability to get along the exposed muddy ditch edges for food.

Perfect weather

I know I posted a similar picture on my last posting but I couldn't resist it again, it is has a tranquil feel and so typifies the time of year. Not only that Blogger has improved its picture format and by double clicking on the photo you can see it it in full size, almost as though you're actually there. Let's hope Blogger retains this format.

Even at 6.30 this morning the temperature was in the low 20's and climbing, and how fantastic it was to be able to walk round in just shorts and a T shirt at that time of day. With the temperature set to reach the low 30's today, well, how much better can life get, I love it but sadly it won't last.
Predictably however, one or two local bloggers, indeed those who've spent half the summer moaning about it being cold and wet, are now complaining about it being too hot and sunny - I wonder if the words ideal and perfect, actually exist in their odd lives.

Walking round this last few days it has been heartening to see the return of one or two species that have been struggling lately. Small flocks of Greenfinches have been evident over the last few days and this morning one flock numbered around 60 birds, hopefully its a sign that the dreaded disease that has killed them by many thousands in recent summers hasn't struck too badly this year. Likewise, whilst only being seen regularly in 2-3's, Small Tortoiseshell are being seen again, which is hopefully an encouraging sign. There were also a couple of Painted Ladies about as well this morning. Green Sandpipers still continue to get up from every patch of mud and shallow water and Little Egrets enjoy the easy fishing in the shallow water that is now very much the norm again.

All in all it was a perfect morning and a real joy to be out in such lovely weather, free of any hint of cold.

Idling Along

After being spoiled by several cloudless days recently, it was much cloudier and duller this morning on the reserve but remained very humid and warm, and so that still suited me, anything is better than rain and cold. However, rain is forecast tonight and so there is much activity on the neighbouring farmland to get in the last of the wheat crop and the bales of straw that go with it.
The first sight that I had this morning as I looked across The Swale from the seawall were 17 Common Seals  basking on the exposed top part of Horse Sands in the middle of the channel. Judging by their smaller size and gingery colouring, three of the seals were presumably this years pups. Over the next hour the tide gently rose and slipped gradually across the top of the sandbank and the seals, like small ships slipping anchor, lifted off the sand with it and began to drift into the open channel. There, after at first floating on their backs like humans sometimes do, a yacht came by and one by one their heads slipped beneath the surface and they  were gone, just the ripples marking where they'd been.

A comment that is being shared between some of the local bloggers at the moment is one of how quiet it is bird-wise at the moment and how hopefully the impending autumn will bring about a rush of passage birds and things will all be rosy again. It does seem with some of these bloggers that unless they can go out and find loads of birds of many varieties every visit, that they have little else to write about, they must surely see other events unfolding as they walk round, why not write about them. It might even make the odd repetitive and boring blog, more interesting.
This morning as I walked round, pretty much simply dawdling along and idling the time away, with no particular target species or counts in mind, its surprising what you see and hear and how such wildlife kaleidoscopes can mark your year and yet some fail to write it all down and share it. As I wandered round this morning at the speed of an arthritic tortoise and musing on how well the Spice Girls looked last night, butterflies rose regularly from the vegetation, Gatekeepers, Meadow Browns, Small Skippers, a pristine, new-hatch Common Blue and heart-warmingly giving a ray of hope, the odd Small Tortoiseshell. Its the time of year when you find the odd Mole, trapped on the surface because it can't dig back into the rock-hard ground, either that or Ratty has gone off and left him.
The rock-hard ground then leads your train of thought to realise that yes, despite the wet summer, the ground is bone dry, the rills have dried up, ditches are low again, and are we heading into another dry winter, it could easily happen. Two Whimbrel circle the reserve at some distance, "whinnying" non-stop as they go and once again your thought train goes into over-drive. They remind you that its nearly autumn and autumn means nearly winter and winter means warm fires and sloe-gin, and only the heat of the sun breaking through the clouds drags you back from such depressing thoughts - winter, oh no, don't do winter! Glancing up and onto the farmland, the last cuts of wheat are taking place and where there stood rape a few weeks ago, it has now been cut, its straw stacked and the soil lightly harrowed ready to receive the seed for next year's wheat crop shortly. As the wheat straw is baled and collected that to will immediately be re-sown with rape seed and so the cycle quickly goes on.
A Buzzard watches me approaching from his perch atop a hawthorn bush, not sure if its me or the two dogs he should be watching, and eventually drifts lazily across the stubble fields, or grattens as we used to call them. Some bales have been left dotted round the field edges to serve as butts for the game and pigeon shooters although there's no sign so far of any game-bird poults being released in the area, perhaps the game shooting will be much restricted this year. I hope not as the shooting needs the habitat and vice-versa and if one goes, both go and we couldn't afford to lose the habitat.
In the ditches the Yellow Water Irises that lit the place up with their bright yellow flowers in the Spring, are now bent over with the weight of large, green seed pods, all ready to ripen and burst their seeds into the water below. And still barely a Marsh Frog has been heard croaking this summer, a really worrying sign and something that takes much away from the atmosphere of the place.

So all of this and much, much more, is seen, heard or thought about in an average day as one idles along and yet so few write about it in their quest to record the same birds most days.

Swale Barges

 The annual Swale Sailing Barge Match took place this morning from Harty Ferry. Here are few photoes taken from the reserve seawall as they began lining up for the start at 8.30. There were 11 barges in total and dozens of smaller boats of various sizes and type. (double click on the first photo to bring them up a bit better)