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...

A return to my first patch, Beddington Sewage Farm, turned out to be a fortuitous move. It was a lazy start to the day, not turning up until 09.00hrs, entering the site via Hackbridge. This meant I was abandoning the 'signing-in' process and sticking to the public footpath and hides. This has its pluses, as wandering across a working site, dodging large machinery and trying to avoid debris and holes in the ground does not make for laid-back birding. The public footpaths are pleasant to work, with a ribbon of easily workable vegetation between the railway line and water bodies, plus three hides that gives pretty good views over the lakes and newly created - or rather, in the making - wet grassland. Highlight was undoubtably a juvenile Goshawk, my attention only being drawn to it by the calls of a couple of Carrion Crows. It was overhead and quite low, the muscle-bound, streaky-breasted raptor making the crows look weak and puny. This is where I made a mistake. I was roughly leve...

Today I renewed my long-standing 'on-off' relationship with Beddington Sewage Farm. I've returned to the farm more often than Frank Sinatra has had comebacks. A change in the policy towards visiting birders prompted this latest re-connection. The key-holders have gone, being replaced by a system where bird group members sign in (and out) at the main office that is situated along Beddington Lane. After undergoing a one-to-one induction talk, I was then issued with hard hat, gloves, goggles and a hi-visibilty vest, and shown the safe pedestrian route through the works and out onto the farmlands. Within 45 minutes I was birding at Beddington once again. It felt like coming home. There has been much change since I visited back in January. The public footpath that runs to the west of the farm has been closed while various works have been completed, which included the installation of three bird hides (below). The good news is that these will be open to the public - with grea...

My old stomping ground - Beddington Sewage Farm (or Beddington Farmlands as it is now referred to) - has undergone a bit of a social media makeover. You can visit the new web site by clicking here.   If you are on Facebook they have created an account and you can visit it by clicking here.   Are you into Twitter? Well, so is Beddington, under the account name 'Beddington Farmlands'. Last but not least you can keep abreast of all the birding, mothing and political highlights (and lowlights) by visiting Peter Alfrey's excellent blog 'Non-stop Birding' ( and you can get there by clicking here). I have banged on about Beddington frequently on this blog, but for those who haven't visited this blog before (or those of short-term memory), this is the place where I cut my ornithological teeth. It has been birded for almost a century and has an almost unbroken ornithological record stretching back to the 1930s - how many places can boast that? The roll-call of Bed...