This is Michael Walter's latest report on the Reserve:
As I write this, the temperature outside is hovering around zero, and near-freezing drizzle is dampening a grey, depressing landscape; all a far cry from the double-figure temperatures we enjoyed sporadically earlier in the month and in late January. Indeed, in mild weather on 24th January I was pleasantly surprised to hear a tree creeper uttering its quick-silver song, at the same time as a great spotted woodpecker hammered out its territorial proclamation on a suitably resonant branch. The woodpecker is reasonably well-known to most of us, not least now that this attractive bird has taken to visiting many garden bird feeders, but tree creepers remain rather enigmatic. While not particularly shy, they are certainly unobtrusive, helped by the wonderfully cryptic, bark-patterned plumage of their backs, rendering them all but invisible as they creep, mouse-like, up the trunk of any tree that has a wealth of fissured bark in which insects may be lurking. Only their movement distinguishes them from the trunk and, at the slightest hint of danger, the birds pause, pressing their bodies against the bark, so concealing their tell-tale pale underparts, and allowing the feather pattern to blend seamlessly with the browns and greys of the lichen-encrusted trees. Nor are they very vocal; song tends to be rather infrequent, of short duration, and not necessarily repeated, so tracking down the birds, even in spring, can be quite frustrating. It is a delightful, if somewhat self-effacing tune – a descending scale of high notes tumbling down to a rather jumbled terminal flourish, as though the bird found it all a bit embarrassing. At any time of the year you may hear its contact call, a very thin, reedy note, similar to the calls of any number of tits, robins and other small woodland birds, and it takes some practice and patient concentration to get to grips with this nondescript sound, though if your aim is to locate tree creepers then the hard slog is well worthwhile, instantly enabling you to confirm its presence, when a visual search might have taken hours. The breeding population in Blean Woods seems to fluctuate fairly violently from year to year, though I suspect this may in part be an artefact caused by varying detectability - in fine springs they sing more, making it easier to determine the number of territories. But, at least there doesn’t appear to be a downward trend, as is the case with so many other woodland birds at present. The great spotted woodpecker, which was drumming when I first heard the tree creeper in song, appears to be a different matter, having been in decline since a rather splendid peak in 2007, but it is still commoner on the reserve than in 1991-2003, and so not currently a cause for concern.
The list of mammals recorded on the reserve is rather short – about 24 species – but rose by one today when I saw a ferret, admittedly in the arms of a young woman who was taking her pet for some fresh air in the wood. The ferret is simply a domesticated version of the native polecat, which occurred in Kent, and probably Blean, in the 19th century, but was subsequently persecuted to extinction throughout its former range, except in Wales. In recent years, with fewer gamekeepers poisoning and trapping them, polecats have begun to stage a bit of a comeback, and are now recorded as far east and south as Essex and Hampshire. It is therefore probable that Blean will be recolonised within fifty years.
One of my regular tasks is to check the konik ponies and sheep that graze the heath. These are essentially wild animals (Michael Foot’s famous description of Norman Tebbit – a semi-house-trained polecat – springs to mind) and I still bear the mark where one of the ponies kicked me in the thigh last year so, if you do walk through the heathland area where they are present, please refrain from going over to the ponies, and do not attempt to pat or feed them.
Below is a beautiful photo of a tree creeper taken by Dave Smith