A new report from Michael Walter:
October was milder than average and the first half of November has been extremely balmy, so it is not too surprising that some of the vegetation has been behaving in an unseasonal manner. I have seen rowan with a partial second crop of flowers, and several banks of honeysuckle in full bloom, long after the initial crop had faded and given way to red berries. It has also been rather wet, and the combination of warmth and moisture ought to be conducive to a bumper crop of fungi, but so far the season has been rather disappointing, leading me to wonder if the very dry September has had something to do with this dearth.
You might think that keeping a record of the reserve’s birds wouldn’t involve a drift into philosophical angst, but you’d be wrong! What do you include in a list of reserve birds? A pair of blue tits that nest in the wood are an obvious contender, and surely the redwings that feed on the woodland floor in winter should also be on it. What about the ring ouzel, wryneck or wheatear, which have all been observed on the reserve but are merely passing through on migration? They might still have been seen there if the whole wood had been concreted over, so it is hard to argue that the birds are benefitting from the habitat. Bird movements are, however, of interest and regular monitoring of these seemingly random occurrences may lead to a better understanding of the routes taken by these migrants to their breeding grounds; so, in addition to their leavening the bird list with a sprinkling of exotic interest, I think a reasonable case can be made for continuing to treat them as reserve birds. But what of the birds that fail to even make landfall in the wood; should they be on the list? A sparrowhawk or house martin hunting prey over the reserve is, I would argue, very definitely a reserve bird, a part of the reserve’s ecosystem, but the same cannot be said of the black-headed gulls that overfly the reserve between farmland feeding sites and safe roosts on the Swale estuary. The reserve is completely incidental to their journey, but I still believe an argument can be made for recording them and, having done so religiously for over thirty years, I can now point to some marked changes. Back in the early 1980s this gull was seen fairly regularly in winter, with flocks sometimes numbering in the hundreds, but by the late 1990s the black-headed gull had become quite a scarcity, seldom seen and invariably in groups of ten or less. Taking this logical approach and stretching it to breaking point, on 21st October I saw a flock of 45 brent geese fly over; this is not quite so unlikely as it perhaps sounds, as I do occasionally record these geese, my best sighting being of 180 in 1988 and I have even seen them over our house in Rough Common. My problem on this occasion is that I was not even in the wood at the time, and the birds were flying over Blean village, to the east of the reserve, but they would have been visible to me had I been in the wood and happened to look up at the right moment. Would entering this latest record into the reserve logbook be a bridge too far, not to be crossed with a clear conscience? Quite possibly, and yet..... as with the black-headed gulls, keeping track of the occurrence of brent geese may in due course tell me a little more about changes in their status. Unfortunately, for neither species am I discovering why those changes are coming about: is the black-headed gull declining in Kent, or is it simply a question of their traditional flight paths having shifted to one side of the reserve so that I no longer see them overhead? So long as the list is annotated to say whether each species breeds, overwinters, passes through or merely flies over, I think it is perfectly acceptable to continue including all categories of birds on the reserve list which, I’m pleased to say, stands at 132 species, including those pesky brent geese.