White Hill Reserve and Fackenden Down

Too cold and breezy for butterflies today, but some nice flowers!

It has been a particularly good year for Cowslips at White Hill - because of the dry conditions or the earlier mild winter perhaps?

Little Ringed Plover Oare Marshes

Today turned out warm and briefly calm for a while in the afternoon when I arrived at Oare Marshes. It was lovely to see a few of the usual birds on the East Flood, and a kind couple kindly pointed out a Peregrine Falcon on top of one of the electricity pylons inland of the West Flood hide.

Shortly after that I picked out a Little Ringed Plover, Charadrius dubius, (Scopoli, 1786), on the little mud spit on this side of the East Flood, from its yellow eye-ring, and then its noticeably black bill. I rather missed the pattern of white above the eye narrowing to the rear, but continuing and widening centrally over the front of the black forehead, but was reminded of this by the wonderful BTO video ID guide. This was my first ever definite sighting of this species, so it was very exciting indeed! It really did seem to have superficially pretty much the same black and white head pattern as a Ringed Plover. It bounced or "bobbed" up and down a little, and did seem a bit more slender and fragile generally. Some photos did seem to suggest a thinner beak than the commoner Ringed Plover.

There are about 1200 - 1400 breeding pairs in the UK, and the first known breeding was apparently in 1938, and it has been greatly encouraged by various gravel pit constructions over the latter half of the 20th Century. It is a summer visitor, over-wintering in West and possibly also Central Africa. The UK breeding population is about 1% of the European population, and the birds that come to the UK and western Europe are of the subspecies curonicus. In the photo below the dark eye-stripe clearly dips well down behind the eye, almost into a point.

The birds rely on fairly bare ground, only partly vegetated, so require newly disturbed habitat on a fairly regular basis. Predator control by placing cages over the nests seems to have something of a positive effect, together with habitat management, improving productivity and gradually increasing numbers. From the breadth of the breast band in the photo below I would guess that this bird is a male.

A fly got into the background of the photo below.

Salix viminalis hybrid?

Went back to the probable Salix viminalis (L.) x ? hybrid by the gate along by the newly planted birch) today and took a photo of some retrieved leaves. These may not be entirely characteristic as the tree has been pollarded in the recent past, so the shoots are perhaps a bit sucker-like.

My best guess is that it is a hybrid with Salix caprea (L.), known as Salix x sericans Tausch ex A. Kerner or Salix x laurina in the older version of the Kent flora. However it could be the hybrid with S. cinerea

This is a cklose up of the leaves, two upper sides and one lower (the topmost leaf). There appears to be fairly strong reticulate venation patterns (this is what seems to me to be giving a "Goat Willow" look to the upperside of the leaf, and what we hope is a fairly tomentellous underside.

Here is a slightly enlarged view, again showing the "Goat-Willow" appearance of the leaf. The insect damage could perhaps be early Capsid Bug.

Other clues are a largely yellow-green sometimes glossy (lustrous) twig, a slightly recurved, somewhat undulate margin to the leaf, no obvious striae. I could see no stipules at all - possibly they are not noticeable at this time of year?  I am not sure how much before the leaves that the catkins appeared, I need to double-check next year. , The female catkins are of close to 5 cm in length, and are quite numerous clustered towards the ends of the twigs

Osier

I did a small "Wonderful Willows" walk at Leybourne this morning. There are various cultivars of Salix viminalis ‘Black Hollander’, ‘Black Osier’, ‘Brown Merrin’, ‘English Rod’, ‘Green Gotz’, ‘Reader’s Red’, ‘Whipcord’ are known. However generally the twigs are yellowish-green, often on top of a grey green branch. Quite a few of the apparent Osiers at Leybourne like this, but at least one has reddish twigs on a brown branch (path by lake to North of West Scrub.

Cliffe Pools

About 30 Redshank, half a dozen Ringed Plover, two or three Black-Tailed Godwits starting to show brick-red chests, a dozen Golden Plover developing summer plumage, being beaten up by some of the dozen or so Lapwing, one female Goldeneye, three or so Shelduck, a few Mallard, a few Shoveller, 50 or more Coot, half a dozen Teal, several hundred Black-headed Gulls, three or more Mediterranean Gulls, two plus Common Gulls, Larus canus, possibly a few Herring Gulls, a couple of Cormorants.

New Zealand trip - Peel Forest Park

This looks like the Button Fern, Tarawera in Maori, Pellaea rotundifolia, close to the ground in the Forest Park, along the walk to the Acland Falls. This doesn't sound much like the rocky bush or open habitat referred to in Julian Fitter's book.

The calm before the storm at Leybourne

Not a bad afternoon before the rain started in. The water was rough on the lake, with coots, black-headed gulls and a few cormorants, scattered across the water. No longer any sign of surface ice.

There were plenty of gulls around and then I saw a Sparrowhawk circling over Snodland flapping quickly, then soaring, in quite tight circles, the first I have seen since the one at Milton Creek.

I walked between the Round Pond and the Key Conservation Area, but there was little there, apart from overflying gulls and noisy magpies. On one of the bramble piles there was a (just) possible redstart - but it was probably really a robin! Several blackbirds in among the brambles and long grass.

On the way out at the junction for Nevil Park there were a few Blue Tits, Great Tits, and on the way back there was a singing Songthrush, and then a Greater Spotted Woodpecker, Dendrocopos major, arrived in the large Willow, and searched some of the upper branches. I went along as far as the entrance to the treatment site, and there were a couple of birds I couldn't identify on the wires at the plant. I wondered about Meadow Pipits. There were plenty of hazel catkins on bushes by this drive and along the stream by the Key Conservation Area, together with a few young ashes with some Chalara damage.

I moved further on and there was a small crows of Black-headed Gulls, Chroicocephalus ridibundus, all ducking their heads and apparently preening on the NW end of Larkfield Lake. There were up to a dozen Tufted Duck, Aythya fuligula, on the other side of the lake.

A cormorant went over the aquatic centre at the Ocean as we returned. Going back to the Wardens Office, there was at least one singing Blue Tit in the Bluebell Wood, and several singing Great Tits in the hedges by the offices, quite close together.