NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

The last 10 days has seen me become obsessed in scouring the local patches for large, open, weedy fields and scanning them for Stonechats - the reason? - we are experiencing ridiculously high numbers of these charismatic chats at the moment. Prior to this, my highest local day total for a single site was 10. And as will be shortly revealed, that day total has been smashed, several times over. The first inkling that something unusual was happening occurred on 30th September when I was skywatching from the base of the scarp slope just east of Box Hill. I was aware of three, maybe four Stonechats in front of me, but was more interested in the small number of birds passing overhead. Now and again I would take a break from looking up and scan the fence lines close by. And that was when I was confronted by a loose flock of 17 Stonechats, 10 of which I managed to capture in the image above (one of them is hidden on the bottom wire). Now this was unusual! I returned three days later to find th...

I am now 38 days into this current birding lockdown project. As we are almost at the month’s end, it seems like a good time to look at what it has provided - and, for an area that is half suburbia, half open land, I’d say that it has provided quite a lot. My home is on the south-western fringe of Banstead, happily surrounded by downland, horse-paddocks, farm and wood, but with plenty of residential area, particularly to the north. It is also dry, save for a couple of town/village ponds and one short section of a modest river. 74 species have been recorded, with the highlights (loose definition) being Red Kite, Peregrine, Golden Plover, Lapwing, Woodcock, Mediterranean Gull, Barn Owl, Little Owl, Kingfisher, Woodlark, Stonechat, Dartford Warbler (above), Firecrest, Marsh Tit, Raven, Hawfinch, Yellowhammer and Reed Bunting. On reading that list back, that isn't bad for an area just outside of a London Borough, with no appreciable water - a dry hinterland, if you will. The Dartford Wa...

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,...