The Little Drummer Bird..?

References have been made within these pages of the ongoing habitat works in the recent era to improve and extend the wet pasture on Radipole. A brief summary of said works would mention scrub clearance, mechanical reed and rush removal, felling of corvid perches and a new grazing regime to keep the sward at a beneficial height.

In the past 6-months shallow pools, foot drains and scrapes have been added and flexi-pipe dug in to allow accurate control of water levels. One of the desired outcomes of these changes, (and therefore a measure of its success) was to re-establish snipe in Weymouth as a breeding bird.

Top. Anne in 2009 with one of the many trees felled to create the new meadow below. The pool below was excavated to remove the root plate of this tree and a host of others and well illustrates the habitat change from dry, scrubby, predator perch strewn reedbed to a large wet meadow bisected by shallow pools, scrapes and foot drains... just the sort of thing breeding snipe might like..?

With all this in mind it was with great interest that we recieved the news that a visiting birder heard, what he was best able to describe, as the sound of a ruler ‘twanged’ and drawn over a desk. Not being adverse to the occasional 'regression session' I promptly gave my ruler a quick  twang and  found it to be surprisingly diverting after all these years.

Resisting the urge to go the whole hog and transform my Bic biro into a paper pellet shooter, I summoned Nick T and relayed the story before again twanging the ruler. Without pause he said “drumming snipe”, and so I played the sound on the bird identifier and we concluded that ‘drumming’ was not entirely dissimilar to a twanged ruler…

If this was indeed drumming snipe it will have been the first (known) on Radipole and the first in Weymouth since 1986, (last confirmed breeding success was on Lodmoor was 1982) so if you are on the reserves then have a listen out because you may be privy to a very special wildlife event.

The actual sound of drumming is emitted by air moving through and vibrating their tail feathers while diving in display flight. Please let us know should you get lucky, but in the meantime we are going to be doing the odd extra stint of monitoring at either end of the day in the hope that we can confirm drumming and, in doing so, further vindicate for the hours of toil spent transforming the top end.

If you wish to learn, (or re-familiarise yourself with) the sound of drumming then click the following link - or alternatively get out your ruler and regress!

www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/s/snipe/index.aspx