NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

We used to have four seasons. When I was a lad, September meant chill mornings, the first ground frost, wind and rain. October was all about fallen leaves, bare trees, mud and the smell of garden bonfires - and a lot more wind and rain. November - well, that was proper winter. Now it seems that we have just the one season, a largely benign, mild twelve-monther that has the odd hot day (which will be 30C +), the odd windy day (force 9-10) and the odd wet day (a month's worth in 24 hours) - so a procession of bang ordinary weather interrupted by a few extremes. It can be as warm in December as in June, with more rain in July than in February. It's all over the place. Even though it is November 1st tomorrow I've been walking around in a shirt, could have worn shorts, got sunburnt, swatted away loads of flies and have seen plenty of butterflies and dragonflies. There were few clues to the actual season from the birds, with no 'summer' or 'winter' migrants,...

More fun on the beach with Mick S, Richard S, Dave W and Martin C, all very knowledgable gull-fondlers and exponents in the dark art of larid identification. I stood by and watched the growing throng of gulls coming into the bait of bread, popcorn and fish guts. Star draw was an obvious (even for me) adult Caspian Gull that Richard claimed to be the best adult he had seen at Dungeness. The Canon bridge camera once again proved its worth, but my four companions with their big lenses will have obtained far superior images. This made up for a flat morning - why spoil a sunny and mild morning by seeing anything of note? Images of this bird have been already been posted by Martin at: http://ploddingbirder.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/caspian-gull.html Others will soon appear from the Daves and Richard at: http://www.dungenessbirdobs.org.uk http://birdingthedayaway.blogspot.co.uk/ http://mybirdwatchingdaysout.blogspot.co.uk/ Take a look and learn!

A benign afternoon - mild, sunny and a gentle westerly wind - is not the stuff that is usually the catalyst for the rewriting of Dungeness sea watching records. It began with Owen L reporting that there were 40 Mediterranean Gulls on the sea off of the fishing boats. Dave W then went to take a look to be stunned with ten times as many - some quite far out, others sitting in flocks on the sea. During his period of observation many of them started to drift off into Lade Bay, with Dave himself following in their wake. These events in turn encouraged Martin C and Tony G to sea watch from the boats and myself to take up position between there and the lifeboat. In one and a half hours I recorded 313 Mediterranean Gulls moving west, along with 310 Kittiwakes. Most of these were fairly close, although, thanks to the good light conditions, birds could be picked up further out. They came past in groups, the largest being a loose flock of 46, although my favourite were the 23 that hugged the wate...

Yesterday's appeal for birds to be sent to the impoverished DUNGENESS BIRDERS was a great success. Many thanks to those of you that gave generously to this worthy cause. In particular, we must mention: TONY BROWN (The Cowboy Birder) who generously donated a PALLAS'S WARBLER from Essex. Seeing that this species would have been a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence on his own patch says an awful lot about the kindness of the birders from that much-maligned county. Almost all of those present today were able to watch this BOOM!RARE!CRACKINGSPRITE! Thanks Tony! ASHDOWN FOREST RSPB GROUP who, by holding a coffee morning, raised enough to send a DARTFORD WARBLER to the shingle. Although this bird was only seen by two birders, it gave the day hope before Tony's PALLAS'S arrived. We had been told that a special delivery was on its way from FAIR ISLE, and that SPURN was considering handing over one of its spare BLUETAILS. The BOU have apparently scheduled a meeting for April 201...

Please put down your binoculars for just a couple of minutes. Today we are asking you to spare a thought for a deprived section of our society which is going through hard times. They are in constant envy, born of checking their Twitter feed every few minutes to read what others have had. We are talking about the DUNGENESS BIRDER. These people are forced to roam across shingle and stare into empty bushes for hours on end. The skies above them are quiet. The seas are bereft of life. They have not seen rain and the accompanying falls for weeks. Constant exposure to such conditions is leading to an increase in neurosis, depression and a questioning of their ability in the field. BUT YOU CAN HELP! We are calling on the birding community to dig deep and help the DUNGENESS BIRDER by donating birds to them. It costs little and can turn their sad existences around. For just a YELLOW-BROWED WARBLER you can give them hope that something better just might be around the corner. For the ...

East-south-easterly wind? Check Cloud cover? Check Calm by mid-morning? Check Loads of birds? In all honesty, no... The conditions should have seen an interesting day here, but we had to accept a modest - and I mean modest - arrival of crests and thrushes. Numbers that in any other year would not even raise a hyperactive eyebrow. It is churlish to consider Ring Ouzels, Black Redstarts and Firecrests as not worthy of appreciation, but late October at Dungeness should be better than this. Still we plod on, still I put on a brave face, still I think that I should not be so dismissive of the birding. This is what happens when you try to be positive about a situation that is clearly not positive. Sometimes you need to admit that positivity is severely overrated. Why not admit to the birding being poor? There is no shame in doing so, although, to some people, it seems to be a sin to do so. On the flip side, I stood by the lighthouse garden for an hour this afternoon and awaited a tame F...

Two weeks into my Dungeness stay and it is all getting a little bit desperate. There can be no disguising it, it has been disappointing. No real arrivals, a few brief bursts of visible migration and just a Yellow-browed Warbler to be placed in the 'unusual species' column. A poor return for all of the effort put in. This afternoon I ran out of steam, and for the first time in 14 days put the binoculars down and retreated to the observatory common room with a good book and a bottomless mug of tea. My batteries need recharching and tomorrow morning will hopefully see my mojo reset. I've brought with me a bottle of single malt to open when 'the goody' appears. Sod that, it's being opened this evening! When I stayed here last autumn there was an abundance of late flowering, so much so that I started to make a list of the species still in bloom from Nov 1st - I think I got to 130+ by the time I went home. Alas, this year's show is meagre indeed, so I haven'...