NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

The 'starter's orders' have been issued and we are OFF! The birth of 2019 has seen a flurry of activity across the country, from the swivel-eyed day listers to the sedate birder who, after a lie-in and leisurely breakfast, ambled out into the field to casually look through binoculars to see what was on offer. I was up and out pre first light and visited the River Hogsmill at Ewell (more of a stream), walking along the meandering banks between Bourne Hall and Ewell Court. It was, as ever, rewarding, with singles of Little Egret, Water Rail, Kingfisher, Red Kite and two Grey Wagtails. I was back home by 10.30hrs as the girls and I had decided to have a New Year Day walk along the beach at East Preston in West Sussex. It was remarkably mild. I did take my optics along, but there seemed to be little on show. 2019 eh? And now there are 364 days left. Is it too early to do a 'round-up of the year'?...

Over the past couple of weeks, the Little Egrets frequenting the River Hogsmill (and surrounds) at Ewell Village have been very approachable. There are certainly two - and maybe three - present, and are most reliably found in the watery channels close to the Mill, and also the stretch of river beyond the tunnel, at the start of the Hogsmill Open Space reserve. They are pretty skittish when feeding in the water, but if you come across one perched in a tree (as I did this morning) then your luck could be in. So far this month there has been a Water Rail, 4+ Kingfisher, 2 Common Snipe, a Firecrest and 4 Waxwing in this small area. Well worth a look.

Bourne Hall, Ewell - it's an area that I don't know particularly well, save for a twitch at the turn of the millennium (Ring-necked Duck) and feeding the ducks with my daughter's when they were tiny tots (feeding the ducks with bread, not my daughters...) It's an area with a lot of birding potential. The River Hogsmill meanders through close by and there are plenty of ponds, streams, culverts and waterside vegetation for the wildlife to utilise. Kingfisher, Grey Wagtail and Little Egret are regular, plus historical records of Cetti's Warbler, Water Rail and Jack Snipe exist. Fortunately at least one local birder is a regular visitor to the area, and he will no doubt be rewarded in time with something special - I don't know if it was he who found the Ring-necked Duck, but that is the kind of bird that all patch-watchers wish for - rare and 'out of the blue'. The pond on which it turned up hardly entices much beyond Mallards and the odd Tufted Duck, so t...

A couple of weeks ago I visited the River Hogsmill at Bourne Hall, Ewell. I posted an image of a flowering Winter Heliotrope which prompted the following comment from pan-list professional, Seth Gibson: "I trust you saw the Ramularia purpurascens all over the Winter Heliotrope then?" Er... pardon? Ram what? I had to Google it. Apparently it's an anamorphic fungus. Does that make it a mushroom, or some sort of shady version of one, like a rust or that white powdery stuff that appears in the superior fungi guides. They don't all look like Fly Agaric, do they... Anyhow, I was back at Ewell briefly this morning, so I thought I'd better take a closer look at the Heliotropes (of which there was so much more in flower). And many leaves had obvious browny-mauve splodges on them, with paler centres. A bit of internet detective work suggests that I had, indeed, captured Ramularia purpurascens. There   are literally thousands of species out there, in our gardens,...