NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

My short stay at Charmouth is over, and once more I was able to sneak out and get quite a bit of birding under the belt - even 'shopping' excursions to Lyme Regis had 'smash-and-grab' raids carried out on Purple Sandpipers and Dippers. A minimum of four Purple Sandpipers frequented the rocks at the end of the Cobb, and a walk along the river at the edge of town produced a Dipper. It was my good fortune to meet up with Charmouth-based birder and blogger Richard Phillips (you can read all about his finds here).  He kindly gave me a tour of a part of his impressive patch, an area where the river meets the beach, fringed by copse and reeds. It screams out rarity! We spent a most pleasant hour casually birding whilst chatting, the sun warm enough to encourage a good few butterflies onto the wing. Charmouth is blessed with clifftop paths that take you into stunning scenery like this: This is the cliff slump due east of the town. Standing up here I coul...

I'm spending a few days down in Charmouth, on the Dorset coast. It's a small, but busy town, the beach not ideal for birding, although local eyes have pulled the odd goody out of the ornithological hat in recent months (Glossy Ibis, Yellow-browed Warbler). The coastal path running east of here runs above an enormous cliff slump, then tops out on Stonebarrow Hill, a mosaic of meadows, scrub and hedgerows. It looks stunning and I can well imagine that frequent observation would be re-payed. In a few weeks time the lower slopes will be full of orchids. I went up there this morning, after overnight rain, and it was leaping - 60+ Chiffchaff, 12 Blackcap, 2 Willow Warbler and a Tree Pipit, most of the warblers in song that made for a wonderful aural treat. If I lived in Charmouth, this would be my patch. You cannot get any more tucked-up in Lyme Bay, and Portland Bill shows-off nearby sticking way out to sea, but this unspoilt bit of coast, all the way to West Bay, has bags of birdin...

Part 5: September 1975  After my trip to Scotland, I returned to Beddington as an all-conquering hero – at least in my own little world, that is. My birding confidence had been given an almighty boost and I felt as if I had somehow proven my worth as a bird watcher by having travelled some distance to do so, and in the process had lost my ornithological virginity. This was the first time that I was conscious of the fact that it mattered to me how I appeared to other bird watchers, as until then my time spent in the field had been about the seeing of birds, with no added agenda. A short family break, on a farm near Penshurst in Kent, was my next opportunity to bird watch away from north-Surrey. It was notable for my first Kingfisher, the initial sighting being a matter of delayed gratification, as my Father and brothers had already seen one as they fished in a nearby river, at the same time that I was wandering the adjacent lanes and fields, binoculars at the ready. When the mo...

Part 4: June – August 1975  Even though it was fast approaching the time to sit my ‘O’-levels, I had little idea as to what I was going to do moving forward, and had just assumed that I would stay on at school and study for ‘A’-levels. A meeting with the careers officer had not been overly productive, although my admission that English and Art were my most enjoyable and profitable lessons had him recommending to me journalism as a possible career choice. What I really wanted to say to him was that all I wanted to do was go bird watching. During a similar discussion at home, my Father revealed that when we moved from our family home at Tring (back in 1970), he had sold our house to a professional ornithologist named Jim Flegg. If I was serious about pursuing a career that revolved around birds, why not write to him for advice? Within a matter of hours, a letter of introduction, and a stamped-addressed envelope, had been sent, and a prompt reply was gratefully received. It contained...

Yes I know that the image above is not quite in focus - that you are having to peer between branches of a bush - and look through a strand of barbed-wire fence - but at least you can share in my joy of this morning's male Ring Ouzel at Priest Hill. It even drew a crowd of admirers, as four birders made the trip once twitter 'twatted'. The bird stayed in Bunting Field for up to an hour, but was very wary and flighty, so I largely let it be. As some form of compensation for the poor pic, have a male Kestrel from this morning...

Priest Hill forms part of the dip slope of the North Downs as it makes its chalky way down to meet the clay of the Thames Basin. It used to be a place of agriculture, with cereal crops and dairy cows gracing the high, open ground. In the 1950s the land was transformed into an enormous area of playing fields, with schools from London being bussed out to use the amenities, but by the 1980s it mostly fell out of use, and nature started to reclaim it. Four years ago Surrey County Council sold a portion of the land off for development and gifted 33 hectares of it to the Surrey Wildlife Trust. In all honesty, there is little to immediately suggest that this area is worthy of reserve status, although it does hold breeding Skylarks and Meadow Pipits, and has a good colony of Brown Hairsteak. It is largely botanically impoverished. However, management has already helped to encourage nearby wildlife to colonise. Large areas of tarmac and rubble have been cleared where tennis courts and chan...

Priest Hill used to be a dumping ground for all sorts of debris, including heaps of soil, garden waste and hardcore. It was unsightly, but after a while the seeds and bulbs that were within sprang forth. There is a Flowering Currant onsite that I believe to be the same one that I 'ticked' over 15 years ago. Today I came across this: I believe that it's Mediterranean Spurge (Euphorbia characias), and, if I might be so bold, of the ssp veneta. There will, no doubt, be somebody out there ready to correct me if I'm wrong. Nearby in Ewell, close to Bourne Hall, the Creeping Comfrey (below) and Abraham-Isaac-Jacob (next two images) are at their best. Even though a nagging easterly wind is present today, the butterflies have come out in numbers, particularly Brimstones. Also recorded were Comma (first image), Small Tortoiseshell (next) and Red Admiral. The birds haven't been neglected - two Red Kites flew through Priest Hill (one north and the othe...