NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Red-backed Shrike, Dungeness. This splendid male spent all day long in, and around, the moat. I can just about remember when they regularly bred in the UK. Yes, I know that I don't look old enough... Marsh Frog, Romney Marsh. The ditches and dykes are full of them, and once one starts to 'laugh' it sets them all off. Turtle Dove on Romney Marsh. I cannot think of a better looking (and sounding) dove than this species. 

It was like stepping back forty years. The well vegetated lanes that cross Romney Marsh, close to  Kenardington, were alive with birds. Not just any old birds, but special birds. Six, maybe eight Turtle Doves, singing, displaying, performing beautifully, perching on the branches of dead trees out in the open or half-hidden in the tops of those in leaf. There were also Cuckoos, and Yellowhammers, and a single Nightingale, vying for attention amongst the purring Doves. They were all concentrated along 100m of prime marsh real estate, a reminder that if the habitat is right, the birds will come. And they had. Magical.

I saw a picture on Twitter today of a hunter standing proudly behind his latest haul - about 50 Turtle Doves and a Golden Oriole. I don't know what part of North Africa or the Mediterranean that the picture was taken (and am assuming that it was taken this Spring). Don't assume that this post is now going to take off into a rant against the evils of hunting 'our' birds - I don't agree with the killing of them, but then again I haven't been born into a culture where such practices are part of the way of life. It's also rich that 'we' can preach to so called 'backward' people about their environmental disgraces when we have clear-felled our forests, over-fished our seas, more or less wiped out our farmland birds, poisoned our pollinating insects and are having to re-introduce raptors because we murdered the bloody things in the first place... Seeing those lifeless doves drove small nails into my heart because it becomes less likely that I wi...