Spitend Cottage

For those of you that are interested, here is the close up photograph of Spitend Cottage that I forgot to add to my posting yesterday.

Also regarding yesterday's posting and the mention of how dry it is becoming, I read in the Daily Telegraph today that the Met. Office is hinting that we might be heading towards a drought this summer. Apparently, as we on Sheppey know, so far in April we have only had a third of the rainfall normally expected during April. 

It has certainly caught one or two farmers out. A couple of weeks ago one of the farms alongside the reserve drilled his spring corn into a couple of large fields. When I had a look at it this morning the soil is dust dry and the corn seed is as dry and hard as when it was sown.

Secondly, I complained about how cold it has been, so what is it like today - warm and sunny and due to get warmer - I should have learnt by now!

Cold Comfort Farm

Cold Comfort Farm has seemed quite an appropriate title for the reserve this last few weeks given the cold weather that we have generally been experiencing for some time here on Sheppey. But first mention of the brief spell of almost summery weather that we experienced on Tuesday and Wednesday. The wind finally shifted round to the South and West and combined with long spells of very warm sunshine, it not only meant that I was able to walk round without a coat but that it brought about an incoming rush of migrant birds. As I mentioned in my last posting, the barren spell of Spring migrants that I was experiencing finally broke, since then, I have seen most of my target species, although not in large numbers. Wheatears, Sedge Warblers, Sand Martins, Whitethroat, Common Sandpiper, Yellow Wagtail and Hobby, were all recorded. Coot's nests and some chicks have begun to appear and I even saw a Spoonbill in The Flood one morning.
By Thursday however, the wind had gone back to the regular ENE direction that has plagued us for several weeks now, and with often dull skies, the temperature has fallen away again. Earlier this morning the wind had an almost icy feel to it and I was back to wearing my winter coat and gloves again as I wandered round hunched against the wind and cold. And with those cold and drying winds and any sun that appears, there comes the constant drying out of the wet marsh and the speculation that we are fast heading into a very dry summer. The current weather forecast suggest that we have another week of ENE winds with no rain and you only have to look at the photos below to see how much the water levels have dropped already. Just 5-6 weeks ago the dry area of mud was covered by water and the white water mark on the bush trunk shows how the water has already dropped by almost one and a half feet!  

This drying effect means that much of the grazing marsh has already become rock hard and is starting to crack up and the rather odd photo below shows something that gives me great discomfort as I walk round. It shows the countless cow hoof prints that are created as they walk on the soft ground in early winter before being taken off the reserve. When they become dry and hard as they are now, it has the constant effect of walking on cobbles and given that many of the areas that I walk each day, are affected like this, after a couple of hours of walking, the arthritic bones in my feet begin to ache quite badly and on bad days it is quite an ordeal.

Anyway, moving on from my tales of cold weather and knackered feet, I visited a part of Elmley this week that I haven't been to in almost thirty years - Spitend. Although I have often walked down to the "Brickfields" part of Elmley, for historical and solitude reasons, Spitend and it's daily visitors to the bird hides there has never really appealed to me. I have always been more than happy for the last thirty years with my patch, The Swale NNR,  mainly because of the peace and quiet that I get there. But, my "return journey" to Spitend turned out to be immensely enjoyable. It was nice to see how well the flood areas that I helped to start, back in 1976, have helped to create a beautiful nature reserve but more than that, I was filled with a great deal of melancholia because it still retained that over whelming feeling of flat and isolated marshland that has remained unchanged for centuries. It brought back memories of those pre-RSPB days in the late 1960's/early 1970's when we would roam across Spitend at will, hunting rabbits in the winter and eel-catching in the summer. Such special memories of youth and country pursuits and knowledge of the countryside learnt by actually doing it rather than reading about it.
Nothing portrays how hard it must of been living out there in the late 1800's/early 1900's than Spitend Cottage (Cods House) pictured below.

Thanks to the current owners of Elmley, this is one of just two surviving cottages out of several that used to be scattered around the marshes there and which either tenant farmers or their labourers would live in. Spitend Cottage was/is easily the most isolated of all the cottages that used to be there though. Standing as it does in the middle of Spitend marshes, it had one or two other buildings, probably cattle byres, adjacent to it at one time but that was it, it was miles from any other habitation in most directions. Fresh water probably came from a nearby well, lighting, if any, would of been candles or paraffin lamps, heat would of been from what little could of been found to burn and food, well it too must of been hard to come by. Try and imagine living there in those conditions, with several children, in bitter cold winter winds, rain and snow.

Oh, and one last thing, some misguided pratt or pratts this week, have been releasing the decoy crows from the reserve crow traps. Pest controls are a valuable part of successful reserve management and continued breeding bird success's and most nature reserves now employ them. It's annoying therefore, when soft-hearted people, with little practical experience of how the countryside works, have to interfere in such matters and without doubt, contribute towards the demise of such threatened birds as Lapwings. 

Wheatear Happiness

Well, after my "woe is me" posting of yesterday, things, as people said they would, changed dramatically today, as has the weather. Despite a strongish wind the day has been cloudless and very warm in the strong sunshine and the birds seem to have responded as well.
Below, from the seawall, is the view across The Flood which, although numbers have dropped by some degree, is still holding Mallard, Gadwall, Teal, Wigeon and Shoveler in small numbers. This morning there were also 150 Black-headed Gulls and 70 Avocets and several breeding pairs of Lapwings.

Looking left from the same spot and you can see the Sea Wall Hide and the wide, brown reed beds of the Delph Fleet that runs alongside the wall. I shall be checking along there tomorrow for some Sedge Warblers.

 Today however, I went in the opposite direction and immediately I turned back on to the reserve there was the bird I've been looking for, a Wheatear, two in fact. OK my photo won't win any competitions but at least it records what I saw. I then got better and better because a few paces past the Wheatear and over flew 5 Yellow Wagtails - I felt like doing cartwheels but knew if I did I'd never get up again, so settled for a rather loud "yesssss"..

On the farm land alongside, one of my favourite Spring events is starting to take place, the rape is starting to come into flower, turning all that drab green-ness into golden yellow and provide a much needed food source for hungry bees.

 The first of the cattle and their new calves are also out enjoying the sun after wallowing for a few months in the muck of the stock pens. How joyful that must be for them, despite the fact that decent garss is in short supply at the moment.

And finally, to complete the day's sudden leap into Spring, I found not only my first Coot's nest with eggs but also a brood of Coot chicks - what a day!

Wheatear Blues

Well, despite all my best efforts this last couple of weeks, I still can't find what should be an easy Spring migrant to find, a Wheatear, it's becoming an obsession and getting silly and so I shall give up on that one and move on. Instead, somewhere below, I'll simply post a winter photo taken by my girlfriend of a female Marsh Harrier.
At the moment the reserve seems to be stuck in some kind of winter time-warp with both a lack of summer migrants and breeding birds. Perhaps with the winter being fairly mild it has made everything seem as though it should be more advanced that what it is, it is only early April after all. The grass on the reserve has been slow to begin greening up and re-growing so far and on several of the grazing meadows it remains yellow and as short as a bowling green. This means that grazing for the cattle and their calves, desperate to be outside after being in stock pens during the winter/spring, is still at a real premium and only a few have been put back on the reserve so far.

I have also been wandering round some of the ditches over the last week or so, looking for Coots nests which are normally fairly common by now, but so far have found none. In fact on The Flood the Coots are still to be found in a flock of some eighty odd birds as they would be in the winter, what is going on? The first of this season's Lapwing breeding counts also took place last week and out of a possible 52 pairs of Lapwings present only 13 birds were actually on nests.
Perhaps with very warm and sunny weather due over the next couple of days things will dramatically change and the Swale NNR will start to move into Spring proper, I hope so.
 

Talking of Churches

I was near Harty Church this morning so grabbed a photograph of that wonderful little church. It sits on the high ground of Harty and from it's entrance it looks eastwards down across the flat marsh of The Swale National Nature Reserve all the way to Shellness Hamlet. The view from it's rear is down to the narrow and tidal Swale that seperates Sheppey from the mainland, and pretty much which ever way you look from it, the views are magnificent.
It's a lovely little church on one of my favourite parts of Sheppey but here's the nub, as a family historian it would of been really great if they had left all the grave headstones in place. Obviously nice manicured lawns back and front make the place nice and clean and tidy and very photogenic but when one is researching past family history there's nothing like a well stocked cemetery full of graves and headstones.

Minster Abbey (below) went the same way many years ago but there are old photographs around that show a large cemetery where the trees now are, packed with graves and headstones.

The  cemetery around Elmley church went the same way once the church was demolished, headstones were taken up and presumably lost, it was allowed to grass over and at one time old farm machinery was scattered across it. At Elmley, despite many burials there, some relatives of mine, all that remains is one broken headstone and at Minster and Harty some headstones do still exist, simply stood against boundary fences or walls.

Am I being over-sentimental or romantic, well perhaps but it's the historian in me coming out. To research a particular person in a family and then be able to find that person's untended hundred odd years old grave, clean it up and sit there, does help make that history more real. I can't help thinking of all those families so many years ago, burying a loved one with so much remorse, possibly scraping enough money for a headstone and yet now those graves do not exist, people walk all over them, so much history is lost.

Looking Backwards

There has been little to report from the reserve this last couple of weeks, unlike the Dungeness area, where new spring migrants can be seen on a daily basis, here on Sheppey we're still trying to shrug off winter and spend every day hopeful that at least one Wheatear, etc. might suddenly pop up. The only real talking point, after a several weeks of cold and drying northerly or easterly winds and little rain, is of how dry large parts of the marshes are becoming. Every year we're always amazed at how a habitat so wet or water-logged for months can become bone hard in such a short time, but it does. However, the last few White-fronted Geese finally left for the far north last week and some Lapwings are nesting, so Spring must be close, just wish it would hurry up!

At the same time, I have been busy the last couple of weeks helping my girlfriend type up and complete a joint project that we begun a year ago. With both of us pretty much completing the investigating and writing up of our respective family histories it became clear that one Sheppey family and one person from that family in particular, loosely linked our two families. So we've set about writing a document, coupled with old photographs and stuff, that we will make available to interested family members. It has been an interesting journey and as the person and his family in question lived a good part of their lives on Elmley in the late 1800's/early 1900's, it has also enabled us to discover even more about the history of Elmley that we love so much.

However, as anyone that has researched family history will testify, it is nowhere as easy as TV programmes such as "Who do you think you are" make it look. It involves an awful lot of talking to relatives, visiting libraries and cemeteries, cross-checking minute details, wasting time following false trails and above all, purchasing many old Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates such as the one below, at £9.25 a time, (I have over £600's worth). They are though a very important part of the jigsaw and a way of finding old names, addresses and occupations of people. Note how the one below, from 1842, has simply been signed by the groom and a witness by leaving an X as their mark, because they didn't know how to write their names. (click on it once and it comes up clearer)

I guess when you get into your late 60's as I am, you do tend to find yourself looking backwards more than you do forward. there's much more to look at. I particularly like a quote from the sculptress Barbara Hepworth where she said, "perhaps what one wants to say is formed in childhood, and the rest of ones life is spent trying to say it". I can identify with that, I've never really achieved being able to explain or describe myself, even at this late age. Without doubt, the happiest times of my life were the years 1964 to 1970, and I have spent the rest of my life trying to equal that period of discovery and contentment and failing miserably, until possibly recently.

Wallowing in the mists of melancholia is not everybody's cup of tea but I've always tended to be happier hankering after what I've already experienced, what I can't get my head round is the fact that you have to keep going forward in order to create those memories.

Whitefront mornings

The last three early mornings on the reserve has seen beautiful sunny starts with bright sun quickly warming the temperatures, and with Lapwing courting displays going on everywhere the reserve has had a real Springtime feel about it. Yet with summer migrants still to appear it has been the arrival a few days ago of a large flock of winter birds that has stirred the heart strings.
Walking round the reserve's boundary fence three days ago I could hear a large number of White-fronted Geese calling in the field of winter corn just over the fence. The first day there were around 290 but by yesterday early morning a more accurate count of the large flock brought their number up to 330 Whitefronts and a few hundred Brent Geese.
The photos are improved by clicking on one and they all come up a tad better.

These first two photos shows some of the birds spread out across the wheat field as I began to approach from several hundred yards away.

I was wary of getting too close as the Whitefronts can be easily spooked into flight but these were the closest birds with some Brent Geese further back, you can see how they were watching me.

 Mostly Brent Geese below.

 A little later, after I had walked further round the reserve, the whole mixed flock rose into the air and circled round me before dropping into The Flood for a wash and brush up. The combined calls from the two species was quite spectacular, especially those of the Whitefronts, anybody who spends their life on the marshes will know how wonderful and haunting those wild goose calls are - real magic!