RSPB Conwy and Rhos Point

RSPB Conwy


20 black-tailed godwit, 12 dunlin, 40 redshank, 40 teal (just gorgeous), 10 mallard, 2 shellduck, 1 little egret, 1 grey heron, 40 black-headed gulls, 10 herring gulls, 3 mute swan, 5 red-breasted mergansers, 4 widgeon, 5 coot, 1 moorhen,

Here is a very distant shot of two of the five red breasted mergansers, Mergus serrator. The one on the right is definitely a male, with the right colour pattern on its side, and a fairly clear dark green crest on the head. You can also just see the dark line running up the back of the white neck. Even at this distance the male's bill looks noticeably thin, one of the main recognition points of all these saw-billed duck species.
Wonderful and colourful saw-billed ducks, these are excellent divers and catchers of fish such as trout and salmon that tend to be coastal during the winter, unlike the rather similar Goosander which is generally restricted to freshwater all year round. Both species are thought to breed on occasions I believe on the river that runs through Tomich.

These particular Red Breasted Mergansers could have come from breeding sites on rivers in Wales, Northern England, Scotland, Iceland or Scandinavia for example. The total UK breeding population is said to be about five thousand. This small flock of five, perhaps a family unit, may have taken up residence here for a short or long period in the winter. Others may arrive to build this particular flock up further, as numbers are said to peak in December - on some waters very large flocks of this bird may develop, as it is quite gregarious in winter.

Here are two females of the many teal, Anas cracca, scattered around the reserve, which seem not to mind the presence of humans so close to hand.

Here are some of the roosting mallards, Anas platyrhynchos, together with one of the oystercatchers, Hematopus ostralegus, and one of the mute swans, Cygnus olor.

Overall this is a really fantastic reserve created from the Conwy tunnel spoil, it really caters for visitors very well.

Rhos Point


2(?) turnstone, 20 curlew, 6 redshank, 10 oystercatchers, 20 black-headed gulls, 18 herring gulls, but no purple sandpipers I'm afraid!

And it was too dark to take pictures.

Whetsted Gravel Pits

9 little grebe, 5 great crested grebe, 160 black headed gulls, 95 coot, 26 gadwall, 6 mallard, 7 tufted duck, 3 drake shoveller, 9 mute swan, 3 great tit, 1 chaffinch, 1 yellow wagtail, 26 jackdaws, 14 canada geese, 2 greylag geese. 16 starling, 2 green woodpecker

Fungus walk in Dene Park

Its been so very dry for so many weeks that the light rain of the past few nights has been entirely insufficient to bring out the fungi, except perhaps for some of the smallest rapid responders. Judging from today's weather, the weather is on the very point of changing!

A small group of interested people met in the morning's intermittent light drizzle at the car-park at 10 a.m. to join the Medway Valley Countryside Partnership organised fungus walk, with quite a few people who had booked not actually turning up. We were introduced to our excellent leader, Patricia Moxey, who had come over from Essex as her daughter lives in Hadlow.

We were first shown some Sainsbury's Mushrooms to illustrate cap structure, and some mushroom spawn to see the mycelium, and we discussed the place of mushrooms in nature and their ecology. Tricia also said that woodland fungi may form up to 70% of a deer's diet in the autumn as it tries to lay down food reserves for the winter. This is a very interesting thought - I had no idea!

We explored risks to fungal habitat and the apparent slow but steady decline in fungi in Europe as a whole, whether due to harvesting or possibly to pollution, perhaps particularly eutrophication by NOx or other substances.

We also talked about dormice and the strong suspicion that grey squirrels, as opportunistic feeders on almost anything, have a particular tendency to predate upon dormice young.

We moved off to see some excellently coloured Fly Agaric, Amanita muscaria, growing as usual by some birch, one of the easiest examples of mycorrhizal relationships to be found. There always used to be a fairly reliable "mushrooming" close by a tall silver birch opposite the canteen in the college every autumn, until the birch caught a disease and was felled. I haven't seen the Amanita there since, perhaps supporting the view that the fungus really does need that continuous supply of sugars in order to fruit, or perhaps survive.

Tricia talked about its hallucinogenic and toxic properties, and later we saw some more orangey caps in the shade - I did wonder whether the development of the reddish colouration is improved by sunlight in some way. In the well coloured specimens in the photograph above, you can also see that the white specks of the older cap in particular have already been largely washed off in the recent rain.

In the moist shade of the woodland canopy, some of the younger participants found a small Mycena, or Fairy's Bonnet, which Tricia suggested might have come up over night in response to the light rain. Unfortunately it was too dark under the trees to get a photograph of this one, or the other specimen which was found towards the end of the walk. Tricia took the second specimen back to try to determine species so that she could submit the record, as Dene Park is under-recorded for most groups. At this point the penny dropped and I realised that I had know Tricia's daughter and her family for many years, since Jackie had been a horticultural student at Hadlow in the mid 1990s, had settled in the village after she had finished her degree, and married a fellow student, Chris. What a small world!

We looked carefully around the beech compartment and then crossed the track into the more mixed woodland, where on a stump we found two clumps of the very common but really quite poisonous Sulphur Tuft fungus, Hypholoma fasciculare,

A little further along there were some Yellow Club-Horns or Yellow Antlers fungus, Calocera viscosa, which is supposed by some to have chemicals within it with significant anti-tumour properties. I ramped up the ISO rating to the max on the camera to make up for the poor light and still get this picture.

At this point Kevyn, the arboriculture lecturer from the College, and my colleague, joined the group. As we moved along the narrow track, I stopped to photograph a blotch leaf miner on the oak leaves, rather silvery and with a lobed margin, that I don't think I have seen before.

Kevyn and I also diverted to examine the Tulley tubes on some of the underplanting. Hopefully some of her students can be engaged at some stage in removing some of these, to benefit the young trees. Surveying the tree stock as a whole could also be a useful exercise!

We had a look at the "copparded" hornbeams on the edge of the woodland, which Tricia thought might be hundreds of years old, perhaps Elizabethan. Close to the Clearhedges Corner as we turned back alongside the road we found (I think) an old neglected coppice, which had a couple of standard stems growing up from it.

The standard stems were being well attacked by an Artists' Fungus, a Ganoderma, possibly adspersum, but perhaps applanatum, a spore examination might be required to be sure.

We discussed the immense value of tree rot fungi in ecology and biodiversity, as well as the role of gut fungi in some xylogenic (wood eating) beetles, then deviating on to talking about dormice hibernating close to ground level, in stumps or even under leaves and other aspects of woodland ecology.
Another absolutely great morning - but more was to come!

After teaching for the afternoon I went back to Dene Park as dusk fell to give Monty his walk, and have a further look for fungi. It was raining well by that stage, and actually, according to an amateur Tonbridge Weather Station we had had about 12 - 15 mm by the end of the day, a tidy amount. I wandered into the birches just further along from the Beech compartment, and found the very common Birch Polypore fungus, Piptoporus betulinus on the side of a dead Silver Birch, Betula pendula, trunk.

Fairly close to this I came across a flat-topped and fairly sharp-margined polypore on an unidentified dead tree trunk.

The pores were relatively large, even somewhat elongated along the axis of the bracket. I think this might have been the Blushing Bracket, Daedaleopsis confragosa.

Back out onto the track I walked along nearly to the junction close to the lodge roadway, and turned right into the dark path that runs parallel to, and just before the main circular path.

About 50 metres along the path I came upon a single white fungus growing out of the side of an oak tree trunk. The stem came out horizontally, turned up through 90 degrees until it was vertical, then joined the cap eccentrically. The rim was clearly inrolled, and there were the just possible remains of a veil stuck around the rim. The gills were at least partly decurrent, and could have been regarded as crowded.

It was almost certainly a Pleurotus, or related genus, and I think most likely to be the Veiled Oyster Fungus, Pleurotus dryinus, which has been recorded in squares such as TQ 63, 64 and 65 before. I think here we are in TQ63 - but I should check of course. The specimen looked pretty good for this species when compared to the images that can be seen on Google.

By now it was getting too dark to see much, although I repeatedly heard a tawny owl calling, and disturbed several woodpigeons which I could hear exploding away above the pitter-patter of raindrops.

I have to say it was really lovely in the soft misty rain and the darkening woods. Two fantastic trips in a great day!

The Thames Foreshore and Green Sandpipers!

13 dunlin, 270 lapwing, 1 grey heron, 40 redshank, 14 black-tailed godwits (still can't see any bar-tailed), 1 curlew, 5 little egrets, 3 grey heron, 2 curlew sandpiper?? 1 kingfisher, 4 blackbirds, 23 cormorants, 1 grey plover, 7 great crested grebes, 8 little grebes, 23 black-headed gulls, 20+ herring gulls, 13 lesser black-backed gulls, 6 pochard, 5 mallard, 60 coot, 14 collared dove, 7 woodpigeon, 25+ starling, 4 magpies.
We had a long walk on the Thames foreshore on the far side of Cliffe Pools today, and certainly stretched our legs. Monty was excellent today, its so great when he more or less keeps to the track we are walking along, rather than wandering away too far, and comes back straight away when called. When I settle down with the telescope he will usually come and sit with me, or even lie down close by, fairly shortly after I stop, and wait patiently for me to get going again. This makes things so easy, and its so delightful that we "work" so well together!

We had a quick look at the Conoco Pool, and picked up the duck for the day, about 5 Pochard, Aythya ferina, new for me on this site, together with a couple of pairs of Mallard, Anas platyrhynchos. We moved on fairly quickly, reaching my favourite vantage point looking at the waders on the far side of the Flamingo Pool, and in particular at the wonderful Black Tailed Godwits. A couple of these were a bit frisky today, but rather confused about who was who, apparently swopping roles, each in turn aggressively trying to be the male! I was able to see the black tails and the striped wings in all the individuals I had good views of, so no Bar Tailed Godwits noted as yet. I also got a grey plover here, with its distinctive black patches under the wings very clearly seen.

Once we got to the seawall overlooking the Thames Estuary, the industrial view became even clearer with the power station on the Essex side looming up in the mist in the distance.

In the picture below, a little further downstream, you can see a small container dock on the far side. The green buoy in both pictures marks the far side of the navigable channel, and as this is fairly close, the ships obviously have to pass close up on the Kent side of the River, as I had already suspected from previous visits to Cliffe Pools when I saw their superstructures gliding past apparently very close indeed! No ships seen going by today, perhaps because it was very definitely low tide.

Beside this industrial hive of activity, sheep were calmly grazing, quite oblivious to the views of man's activities around them - the North Kent grazing marshes are traditionally famous for the very high quality of the lamb! The Isle of "Sheppey" itself is actually named for its sheep! The overall feeling was one of isolation, with hardly anyone else seen and very little noise from the works around. The wind was blowing strongly, increasing the feeling of being out "on the edge" of civilisation.

The industry includes a lot of gravel or ballast extraction, with huge heaps of spoil scattered across the landscape, giant oil terminals and refinery operations, and of course, the shipping:

Other grazers seen on the marsh today included two very large black bulls, the first of which was, rather unusually, actually sitting down.

and these rather traditional looking horses, perhaps belonging to travellers

As we got further along into the loneliness of the marsh I picked up two small dunlin or sandpiper-like waders with very white rumps and clearly defined black tail bars wandering along the bottom of the right hand bank in this drainage ditch - with this tail pattern showing so obviously, these birds could only have been Green Sandpipers, a reasonably rare bird, but seen regularly along the North Kent coast. What an absolutely great sight, even if I only recognised its significance in retrospect! This may be one of the rarest bird I have seen since a Baird's sandpiper vagrant from the Americas glimpsed from a very long way off on a school bird watching trip to Cley Marshes in Norfolk when I was 17 or so. If the white rumps didn't make them such a simple bird to identify, I would have thought I was mistaken, but because I saw this one feature so clearly I am as certain as I can be that the identification was good.

and then we got to some large shallow pools, where the shallows at this far end were covered in hundreds of lapwings, together with some 20 Redshank and about 12 Dunlin (its several years since I last saw Dunlin, they are really cheeky and brave little waders) with 1 rather odd looking grey heron, which I think I had seen yesterday on one of the main Cliffe pools themselves. It just sits oddly, rather too "horizontal" in its overall body, both today and yesterday, but I can't see what else it could be.

Walking fairly briskly, I put up a kingfisher from below me on the bank and then as I turned the corner of the track to head back to the car park, I got fairly close to this couple of great crested grebes, the one on the right being rather "warmer" retaining a fair bit of its summer plumage,

I caught this black-headed gull in flight, but not a very sharp photo I'm afraid

On the chalky track on the way back, I saw some chicory in flower, really late in the year. Its blue flowers are quite disconcerting!

The light was really going now, and to finish off, here is Monty on the last section of track, looking ahead into the setting sun!

Cliffe pools

1 young(?) male kestrel, 70 avocets, 12 black(?)-tailed godwit, 40 redshank, 30 little grebe, 20 great crested grebe, 2 overflying cormorant (1 young), 50 lapwing, 30 starling, 40 herring gull, 5 lesser black-backed gull, 20 black-headed gulls, 130 coot, 1 grey heron, 7 little egret.

The Cliffe Pools RSPB reserve is becoming a favourite walk of mine, quite far out of my area, but so exciting to visit as there is always the likelihood of new birds to be seen, its a good long circular walk, interesting at all stages, and the reserve welcomes considerate dog owners and well-behaved dogs! Monty seems to find it very satisfying as well. I don't say things are perfect, Monty sometimes wanders off a bit, but things go well most of the time.

A late visit to Whetsted Gravel Pits

The bird list for the gravel pits for the day included 2 snipe, 23 gadwall, 4 tufted duck, 4 great crested grebe, 4 little grebe, 1 little egret, 1 grey heron, 140+ black-headed gulls, 1 herring gull, 70+ coot, 30+ jackdaws, 1+ moorhen, 7 swans inc. 3 immature, 1 (heard) green woodpecker,

After I attended a Kent Playing Fields meeting on behalf of the Parish, I got down to the Gravel Pits at about 4:30 in the afternoon, with the light already fading. as I crossed the first causeway, to my intense surprise I put up two Common Snipe, which no-one seems to have recorded on the Kent Ornithological website this autumn yet. This follows the single I put up on Ham Marshes last Sunday!

I did manage to get some photos but they were very poor really - I must try the tripod! Anyway here is a Great Crested Grebe, Podiceps cristatus , one of a pair quite close to the scoping point I generally use. One of the difficulties was I set the camera poorly, with exposure priority, and any advantage I might have got from a high ISO number was lost due to tiny aperture and an over-long exposure time! The bird itself is great, still retaining a slight crest and also some of the warm colouration from the summer, which now seems some time ago!

These pictures are slightly better, now that I got the exposure programme right! Also I was resting the camera on a support to reduce camera shake, and I think I could reduce the ISO number if I tried to use a support or tripod more often. Reducing the ISO number should then reduce the "noise" on the images.

This is also a slightly better shot of a Mute Swan, Cygnus olor, when again I got the wider aperture and therefore a faster exposure time!

East Peckham path and Hazel Wood

Today I went back to the West Peckham path and Hazel Wood to see if I could get the same success with hoverflies as I had had yesterday morning. I am now reasonably sure that, particularly at this time of year when the sun is so low, it is more productive to get out during the late morning rather than leave it until the later afternoon, as the shadows get so long later in the day.

Of course today I had to wait until I'd finished teaching, and having unsuccessfully checked The Swan at East Peckham on the off-chance that Peter might be there looking for a walking companion, I set off down the path with Monty at just after 3 p.m. I was happy that we were on our own and I would be able to concentrate on some insect ID and compare this afternoon's results with yesterday morning's haul.

My first impression was that the sunny patches of ivy flowers on the path were very much quieter than yesterday morning, with many fewer wasps, flies and bees than yesterday. As I got further down the path there was actually one patch in the sunshine which was "buzzing" with activity, but it was only the one, while every sunny patch of ivy yesterday morning had been as good as that single patch today. So there wasn't much to photograph, but I did come across some spiders, of which this one had to be photographed from beneath.

I think that this is another individual of the same species, this time visible from the side. I still couldn't see the pattern on the dorsum though!

I also found a whitefly, of which there are several British species to be found. The only one I really knew about is the Cabbage Whitefly, but others include the Norway Maple, Ivy, Honeysuckle, Viburnum and Ash Whiteflies.

The only other insect photographed on the path was this spectaularly ugly Tachinid fly

and at the end of the path all the Jacobs Sheep came over to the gate, presumably to see if I had any food for them!

After our encounter with the Jacobs sheet we got out into the open field and turned left towards the reservoir, alongside the edge of the wood, The verge was really quite bright with Bristly Oxtongue flowers on the remaining live plants, and we finally found a hoverfly. This turned out to be a species I hadn't identified before, although I may have seen it, Eupeodes luniger, the so-called lunar hoverfly. It took me hours to be reasonably sure I'd got it right, after several false starts, so I felt quite chuffed when I finally felt I could put this one to bed!

I then saw several different individuals, including one in Hazel Wood itself, all apparently E. luniger!
Here are several voucher pictures of the first individual to shows the ID characteristics: In the first picture you can see the underside of the abdomen and the dark bands on the sternites are definitely central and don't extend anywhere near to the margins. This puts it into the subgenus Eupeodes.