We have three medium-sized Lavender bushes in our back garden. Throughout the summer the flowers (which last for several months) are a magnet for insects and give off a most restful aroma. As tempting as it is to cut the dead stems in the autumn, we always leave them, as we know that during the late winter we will get visitors to feed on the seed heads... This video was taken from the kitchen window this morning. We will normally see one or two birds over a few days, but have had up to 14 at once. We never tire of watching them. Lavender is a wonderful plant to have in the garden, with year round natural history benefits. So what are you waiting for? They are readily available at a garden centre close to you right now! There is an historic association with Lavender in this part of northern Surrey and south London. Lavender fields have been harvested for many years, with one particular field close to Woodmansterne being very popular with day trippers. A significant proportion o...
In birding, timing can mean the difference between an average day in the field and that of a spectacular one. Good timing can be helped by reading the weather conditions correctly, or understanding local conditions but it is more often down to pure luck. In this case, I just got lucky... I had not visited Dungeness since March 2022, quite a gap for me. It was high time that I once more trod the shingle and my timing of a visit was down to several factors, mostly a personal liking for mid-late autumn but also because I needed to be at home until September 20th and could not make the journey south until then. I also chose to stay at the bird observatory for a few days rather than make it a day trip. All this conveniently found me stepping outside the observatory's back door in the breaking dawn of Sunday 22nd September, quickly making my way to the fishing boats, an area I prefer to stand to best appreciate any visible bird migration, an aspect of birding that I find exhilarating. A...
My plans were thrown into disarray on September 30th - I had hoped to stay on at Dungeness Bird Observatory well into mid-October, but a staff member fell ill with a nasty bout of Covid, so I thought it best to return home. As much as it was disappointing to miss out on more 'shingle time' it at least gave me the chance to do a bit of Uber-patch vis-migging, something that I am quite partial to. So, Colley Hill beckoned on October 3rd which happily coincided with a flock of seven Ring Ouzels that were inadvertently flushed from scarp-top scrub, with one female/imm staying behind to allow close, if partially hidden, observation. The nearby farm fields at Mogador were full of brassica, enticing at least 110 Skylark to linger within the crop. I returned to Colley Hill the following day ( 4th ) which was blessed with a mad 30-minute spell which saw two Great White Egret fly north, a Woodlark alight on the open sward before heading west and a single Hawfinch fly right past my head -...
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