January - Hawfinches, hearing loss and game strips

It was the 18th-century French philosopher Voltaire who said that you must "cultivate your own garden" - in other words, if you conduct your life in a nurturing and productive way, and be able to ignore how others are looking after theirs, then you will be playing your part in trying to make the world a happier and more fulfilling place. I am increasingly trying to follow this ethos in the way that I conduct my natural history study. If I can try and act responsibly in the light of climate change then, even though my small efforts will make not a halfpenny of difference on their own, if everybody else followed suit then my actions would be part of a greater good - so, the car increasingly stays at home; I walk as much as I can; local birding is the number one choice; importance is attached to the sharing of my results as a way to encourage others to do likewise. I could do so much more to 'cultivate my garden' - we are a three car family; I still eat meat and dairy; I do not check the provenance of the things I buy - I could go on. My lack of flying has been driven by my fear of it, so flying downtime is no chore and not really a 'green' choice of mine. I am fortunate that I still, after 50+ years of birding, get a thrill out of what others would consider mundane and this makes walking from home to go on a 10, 15 or 20 mile birding yomp very easy indeed. 'Less is more' is so true for the local birder as even though the area of study and species diversity may be smaller, the rewards when they do come along - and they will - are all the greater. This month I have found that to be the case. If we all adopted this 'stay local' ethos - birder, holidaymaker, rambler, runner, dog-walker, etc, etc - then the chances are that the communal whole would be more vocal, powerful and insistent in ensuring that our neighbourhoods - our 'gardens' - complied to a sensible and sustainable living model. Sermon over.

There is no hiding the fact that our bird numbers are terribly low this winter, at least in my part of the country. This January I have birded more regularly, more locally and for longer periods than in previous years and have become used to walking the footpaths that bisect farm, down and wood with visual and aural ornithological silence as regular company. Winter thrushes just haven't arrived in normal numbers, woodland tit flocks seem to be a thing of the past, finch and bunting congregations are rarities and even the expected staple diet of gulls, pigeons and corvids have been largely missing (the gulls owing to a combination of nearby landfill sites closing and/or switching to incinerators plus a fall in breeding numbers and productivity). Admittedly, there have been moments when numbers of birds have appeared - the Hawfinches along the North Downs ridge; a riotous mixed-species gathering at a group of set-aside strips - but these events have been reserved to brief (very brief) flashes of excitement buried among hours of what I could call disappointment. It is a shame that so many of us recording our wildlife can be blinded to this lack of birds because arrivals such as the vagrant Yellow Warbler sugar-coats the whole narrative making it all so palatable and acceptable. After all, who wouldn't swap flocks of wintering passerines for a gaudy Yankee vagrant? Well as it happens, I wouldn't.

So, I started the year with just one thing in mind, and that was to bird as often as I could within the uberpatch (see map via the tab above). That doesn't mean that I don't plan to wander off piste at all, or cover each and every mile by foot, just that when I can stay local and not drive, I will. I did set a few targets, a number of species that I think I may attain for birds, plants, moths, butterflies and dragonflies over the year, but these are just for a bit of fun, not the reason behind what I am doing. I am a keeper of lists and not a chaser of them. Enough waffle, what did I see this month?

Hawfinches were the headline. Following on from the abnormally high numbers last autumn a good wintering population were to be found along my section of the North Downs. The centre of the 2017-18 irruption was again a hot spot, with 150 present on 2nd at Ashurst Roughs (just after first light, perched up in bare Ash trees and dropping down to feed in Yew) with a further 20 on Mickleham Downs and a single in Mickleham Village. A couple of searches on Ranmore Common unearthed a group of these finches in the Dorking Wood area (30 on 19th and 21 on 20th). As mentioned earlier, bird numbers were very poor. I spent quite a bit of my time walking the footpaths across farmland which was largely dispiriting, but there were moments of success, particularly when coming across stubble, set-aside or game cover/feeding sites - unfortunately most of the farmland was pasture/grassland which appears to be largely devoid of birds. The stubble on Canons Farm was a good source of success, with counts of Skylark (180 on 11th, 50 on 14th, 40 on 16th and 29th), Linnet (110 on 14th, 95 on 16th and 160 on 25th) and Yellowhammer (a roving flock of up to 28 throughout the month). A by-product of the feeding of game birds is the presence of wild birds taking advantage of the spilt grain and crop cover, amply illustrated by a gathering of 180 Stock Dove, 2,600 Woodpigeon, 1,500 Jackdaw, 240 Chaffinch and 60 Linnet at sweetcorn cover and grain bins near Wotton, along with 130 attendant Pheasant. When I came across this gathering after a day of birding disappointment I felt as if I had won an ornithological lottery. Not on the same scale were the 18 Skylark, 60 Redwing, 8 Fieldfare and 100 Stock Dove at a similar set up at Buckland, but welcome all the same. Other 'notable' farmland sightings were 95 Skylark on Epsom Downs (10th), 32 Lapwing and 75 Skylark on Rushett Farm (17th) plus Barn Owls at both Holmethorpe and Canons Farm (the latter location also producing Little Owl). I did not visit the patch's 'jewel in the crown' Beddington Farmlands so the monthly highlights and totals did not reach the heights that they could have. Pick of the bunch for the month of January were: Little Egret (several locations), Goosander (a drake on the River Mole, Leatherhead), Red Kite, Red-legged Partridge, Lapwing, Common Snipe, Woodcock, Great Black-backed Gull, Barn Owl, Little Owl, Kingfisher, Stonechat, Marsh Tit, Raven, Redpoll, Hawfinch and Yellowhammer. Back in my early birding days I would have laughed at such a modest highlights list, having been feasting on a diet of rarity. How times change.

The weather was a mix of 'named' low depressions sweeping the UK with attendant strong winds; short bouts of heavy rain; long periods of still, murky weather; a day of light snow; few frosts; and little in the way of sunshine. None of this was severe enough to shake up the north Surrey birding experience - at least not where I was pointing my optics!

With so much walking being undertaken came my reliance on the trusty OS map to identify the footpaths that would take me across those parts of the Uberpatch that I was mostly unfamiliar with. This was a joyous exercise, trying to discover new hot spots, unearth fields that could boast game cover or set-aside strips, small hidden waterbodies and to come across views that were simply sublime. What I wasn't expecting was the run down state of our footpath network. These rights of way are to be cherished and protected, our key to be able to wander across the landscape that, if taken away, would be a great loss. The area I walk is mostly just outside of Greater London, so is on the edge of a populace that numbers several million  - yet I rarely met anybody else walking them. This does go some way to explain why they are in such a sorry state, with collapsed stiles and signs, encroachment of vegetation hindering travel, landowner attempts at closure and on many of them a mean-spirited allowance for how wide they are and a hemming-in (by high hedge or fence) that is not just claustrophobic but also denies the walker of seeing the land. It can make you feel as if you are an intruder that is being hurried along. Despite this, my want to walk - nay obsession with doing so - was undimmed. Put it down to the feel of the open road/path; you could suggest it is one way of postponing physical decay (I am now of state pension age); or even blame it on the pull of the low carbon birding movement: whatever the reasons behind it I can highly recommend it as a way of connecting with the areas within which you get your natural history fix. And yes, I will admit to a perverse pride in having walked over 350km this month (or 218 miles in old money).

The spectre of my declining hearing raised its head (ears?) again when I was standing with a birder (Ben) watching the Hawfinches at Dorking Wood. Over the course of twenty minutes he was picking them up calling when I could hear nothing. They would then appear above us, several seconds after he had called them, and at this point I could finally hear them. So, Hawfinch now joins a growing list of species that I cannot hear unless they are close - Common Swift, Tree Pipit and Redwing are the others that spring readily to mind. I am wondering whether or not crests are also fading away from my aural range as I am just not picking them up so far this year. I was asked if I can still hear 'reeling' Grasshopper Warblers, but it has been so long since I heard one I don't know if that time gap is because they just haven't been where I have been, or they have been singing merrily away with me standing nearby, oblivious to their 'out-of-range' song. I could invest in a hearing aid but seeing as my need for one would be purely down to allow me to be able to pick up distant high-frequency bird noise seems unnecessary. You can still obtain a hearing-aid through the NHS but I am happy not to drain that organisation of valuable funds just so I can pick up a calling Hawfinch four seconds earlier than I can now.

As far as other orders go, quite a few plants were readily identified, including Rustyback, Stinking Hellebore, Spurge-laurel, Box and Butcher's Broom - plus a whole host of exotic naturalised species. As for moths, a blank night at the garden MV was my sole effort at trapping, although both Winter Moth and The Chestnut were found at rest in a lit stairwell at Banstead railway station.

I'll end this month's round-up with a quote from Alastair Humphries from his book 'Local'. "It does not matter where you go. It matters only that you go." I liked that...

Uberpatch totals so far (followed by annual target): Birds 82/140; Plants 95/700; Moths 2/400; Butterflies 0/38; Odonata 0/18; distance walked 352.8/1600km