NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Late July will, for me, forever be linked to the old Beddington Sewage Farm. Back in the mid to late 70s, there were a series of settling beds scattered right across the farm, looking just like this: The example above is of one of the larger beds, and many were half, or even a quarter of this size. They all shared the raised banks, wide enough for two birders to walk along side by side, but in late July it was a struggle for even one of us to make headway along them, thanks to the copious amounts of vegetation - back then it was just all green stuff that got in the way, but in later years I realised that it was mainly Hemlock, Goose-grass and Stinging Nettle. The smell, especially on a hot day, was pungent - a mixture of sewage effluent (not as bad as you might think) and rank vegetation. Hemlock, en masse, does have a distinctive, earthy whiff. Some beds were filled with water, and these at this time of year were not what we sought. We would winkle out those beds that were dryi...

Back in the days before PC's, mobile phones and Leicester City being the best team in England, I was studying poetry as part of 'O' level English Literature (today this is referred to as GCSE). One of the handful of poems that still stands out some 41 years later is an ode written by Gerard Manley Hopkins entitled 'Pied Beauty', which was basically the author thanking God for bestowing upon the world pied patterning and colouring in nature. I can even remember the first line: "Glory be to God for dappled things" Not bad memory recall for an ageing atheist... This came back into my mind today whilst birding at Dungeness. It was a fairly quiet day punctuated by the unfussy migration of waders, mainly those headed for the Arctic Circle (or less fancifully, Scotland). The birding PR machine in this corner of Kent will remind us all ad infinitum that this is the time of the spoon-tailed Pomarine Skua - and it is. But to me, far more importantly, it is whe...

Unless you suffer from SAD, the continuing trend for cool, wet and overcast weather is nothing but a mild irritant. Yes, it can get you down, but before you know it we'll be basking in a period of unbroken sunshine, high temperatures and a call from the government for drought conditions to be declared (oh, hold on a minute, that's already happened...) So, where are the positives? Well, it's not a bad time to be out birding. The seawatching has been interesting along the south coast, headlands have been receiving falls of migrants and for the inland patch birder things have been very interesting indeed. Take Beddington Sewage Farm for example. The local birders there have long known that heavy overcast with an easterly component in the wind (preferably ENE) will bring down passing migrants within the birders vision. Because coverage is good (thanks mainly to Johnny Allan and Peter Alfrey), not much gets missed, and over the last seven days the following selective waders ...