NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

I love counting birds. And plants. And moths. Not forgetting butterflies of course. Always have done, ever since my early birding days, a discipline that was eagerly embraced, primarily as a means to gather data, but, increasingly, as means to an end. It is soothing, therapeutic and calming. Numbers themselves are mantras to be uttered - either out loud or in the head - and is very much a way of being in the now. Ommm... Pseuds Corner over, and now onto the meat of this post... how do you count, or more precisely, how do you accurately count? 15 Rooks clearly on view in a field holds no barrier to a precise count being made, but what of a flock of several hundred finches that are feeding in the stubble, or thousands of waders scattered across an estuary -all moving, many rotating in and out of view? There is no doubt that experience does play a part in compiling meaningful, accurate counts in such circumstances. Practice banishes the traps that can be fallen into, such as ‘do...

A post-Christmas birdwatch was enjoyed at Beddington Sewage Farm today, myself already warm with the glow of enough calories on board to fuel the running of Dungeness 'C' reactor and happy with the England cricket teams continued demolition of Australia. On arrival it was obvious that the landfill site was operational, as thousands of gulls were present. After settling down, having had an hour or more scanning and also having walked across to the enclosed lagoons, the time came to estimate those numbers present. My gut reaction was to plump for a total larid mass of, lets say, seven or eight thousand individuals, based on nothing more than educated guesswork. However, when I tried to add a little bit of common sense to the process, it only helped to prove that my initial estimate was woefully short. I was quite happy to claim a fairly positive count of 375 Lesser Black-backed Gulls. So I used this as a starting point - a number not estimated but actually counted out, one gull a...