NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Birds My birding away from the NDB area was largely confined to two Dungeness breaks - three days in January and a fortnight in May. Both delivered... In my first stay, the Hume's Warbler that was still performing in the flooded trapping area was the rarity highlight, but the back up cast included Glossy Ibis, Great White Egrets, Barn and Short-eared Owl, Hen Harrier, Bewick's Swan and Glaucous Gull. Sheer spectacle was apparent on the sea, where a vast raft of feeding Great Crested Grebes and Guillemots (that numbered in the thousands) could be found. In May the numbers of migrants were disappointing, but rarity was present, with 2 Black-winged Stilts, a Great Reed Warbler, a Bee-eater and a Montagu's Harrier. However, it was the late passage of Pomarine Skuas that were my highlight - even though it is a species that I have seen regularly over the years. A fully-spooned adult is a wonder to behold and there was one particular beast of a bird that flew east (and close) one...

Rare moths With a few scarce migrants being trapped just to the north-east of the peninsula, the MV traps sited at Dungeness might have been expected to also come up with the goods. They largely didn't, except for Barry Banson's which produced a single Striped Hawk-moth and this Dusky Hook-tip - his third - greedy beggar! Stinking Hawk's-beard This hairy pendulous bud might look fairly unimportant, but it belongs to one of the rarest plants in the UK - Stinking Hawk's-beard. At its only wild locality I was lucky enough to be invited along to see it by the owners of the land on which this plant has made home. Their anonymity is preserved to ensure that they do not have a constant flow of botanical twitchers to their door. I spent a lovely half hour in their company being told a bit about the steps that are taken to ensure that the species has a sympathetic habitat in which to survive. Ring rusty I called the gull above as an Iceland before being corrected...