No two the same

The Priest Hill v Thorncombe Street challenge is already throwing up some interesting 'compare and contrast' dynamics. Take gulls for instance. They are a numerous and regular feature of the skies above the greater Banstead area, almost throughout the year. At nearby Canons Farm, the day total for Herring Gulls hot-winging it between landfill and reservoir runs easily into the high hundreds (aside from the mid-summer months). I suspect that the Priest Hill day total will not reach these heights, but will still be a large component of the avian biomass (I recorded 170 today). Contrast this with Thorncombe Street, where Ed's grand total this morning was one single bird - he says that he doesn't get decent large gull numbers till mid-winter. Maybe my (relative) proximity to the London Reservoir roost sites and the feeding stations at landfill sites is the reason behind this difference. And I may need this gull advantage, as his patch seems to get much larger Woodpigeon and thrush numbers than we do up here.

We don't need to travel that far away from a patch to see big differences to the bird composition. Canons Farm, Epsom Downs, Walton Downs and Priest Hill are all within two-three miles of each other, yet there are species present at each that do not occur at the others. All are dry, high-elevation sites (for Surrey), blessed with open grassland, hedges, copses and big skies, but that is where the similarities end. And it is because of these differences that we go out, optics at the ready, to see just what is about. No two days are the same at one site, so how can they possibly be similar on two patches that are miles apart? Bring it on...


The spectacular image above is of the 'enemy' territory at Thorncombe Street. I assume that Ed took it, and hope that he doesn't mind me using it. Click on this link to read more about this fascinating area and the details behind his days out in the field.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goldfinches and Lavender

Image
We have three medium-sized Lavender bushes in our back garden. Throughout the summer the flowers (which last for several months) are a magnet for insects and give off a most restful aroma. As tempting as it is to cut the dead stems in the autumn, we always leave them, as we know that during the late winter we will get visitors to feed on the seed heads... This video was taken from the kitchen window this morning. We will normally see one or two birds over a few days, but have had up to 14 at once. We never tire of watching them. Lavender is a wonderful plant to have in the garden, with year round natural history benefits. So what are you waiting for? They are readily available at a garden centre close to you right now! There is an historic association with Lavender in this part of northern Surrey and south London. Lavender fields have been harvested for many years, with one particular field close to Woodmansterne being very popular with day trippers. A significant proportion o...
Read more

Welcome back!

Image
In November 2005 I purchased a pair of Swarovski 10x42 EL binoculars from The London Camera Exchange shop in Guildford, for the then princely sum of £899. These bins have served me well, with almost daily use in all types of weather, testing their durability to the maximum - salt water spray, deluges of rain, 38C temperatures, dust, dirt, slight knocks... and apart from the armour coating that had started to bubble and come away from the body, nothing to be alarmed about. Then, in the summer of 2022, I noticed that I had a problem when close focusing - the outer focusing wheel would lose grip and it would take me an age to regain a middle-ground distance of focus - plus, over the next few weeks this outer focusing wheel became loose. I resorted to the use of tape to keep it all in place, but realised that I had to do something about it in the long run. For a while I did consider buying a new pair - after all, they were then 17-years old - but they were still optically superb. It seemed...
Read more

A special day

In birding, timing can mean the difference between an average day in the field and that of a spectacular one. Good timing can be helped by reading the weather conditions correctly, or understanding local conditions but it is more often down to pure luck. In this case, I just got lucky... I had not visited Dungeness since March 2022, quite a gap for me. It was high time that I once more trod the shingle and my timing of a visit was down to several factors, mostly a personal liking for mid-late autumn but also because I needed to be at home until September 20th and could not make the journey south until then. I also chose to stay at the bird observatory for a few days rather than make it a day trip. All this conveniently found me stepping outside the observatory's back door in the breaking dawn of Sunday 22nd September, quickly making my way to the fishing boats, an area I prefer to stand to best appreciate any visible bird migration, an aspect of birding that I find exhilarating.  A...
Read more