NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

It's funny how a day can flip on its head within seconds. I had just completed going through the moth trap (uneventful) and was daydreaming about my proposed uberpatch birding blitz planned for tomorrow when I checked my phone which had just blurted out a WhattsApp alert.  Woodchat Shrike at Beddington!  Now, I am not well known for dropping everything and heading hotfoot to the said rare bird, but a combination of this particular species and one of my old patches was too good to resist, especially since those kind Beddington Farmland Birding Group members had arranged for all-comers to gain entry behind the locked gates. I was on site by 10.00hrs to be greeted at the Mile Road gate by the smiling face of the birds finder, Mark Bravery. He ushered the few gathered birders onto the inner footpath that ran between the North and South Lakes, and onwards for 200m to where the shrike was still present, on a bramble-choked western facing slope, tucked out of the stiff breeze. The bi...

Dungeness June 1981 Dorrian Buffery is away for a week and I’m acting warden. It’s like being back in the summer of 1979 again as I survey my shingle kingdom before me. I might not own it but as far as the birding goes I’m in charge. Sean Clancy remains as assistant warden and together we have a laid-back and enjoyable time. Each morning we swap mist-nets for moth traps, lunchtime field work is replaced by quaffing of beer, but we still see plenty of interest: a summer-plumaged Black-throated Diver sitting off-shore behind the patch, a Hobby arriving in off the sea, a Melodious Warbler that we find and then trap in the station gorse. But the highlight is a Woodchat Shrike which graces the bushes of the Oppen Pits on my final Sunday morning. I arrive at the RSPB reserve to be taken to one side by the RSPB warden Peter Makepeace. He tells me of the shrike’s arrival and kindly gives me permission to go and look for it. There is a catch – he doesn’t want anyone else out there. I am soon...