Big Garden Birdwatch

What  a beautiful morning to sit and watch our garden birds! An hour spent birdwatching from 8.15am produced 10 species, the star being a colourful nuthatch which paid a couple of visits to the mixed seed feeder. Not so many species as last year though, no doubt due to the much milder winter this year and availability of natural food elsewhere – two plump wood pigeons were spotted feasting happily on the holly berries in a neighbouring garden. The commonest birds spotted were blue tits closely followed by great tits but our friendly little garden wren decided to remain hidden and the starlings preferred to sit in the sunshine on the tops of faraway trees rather than visit our fat ball feeder as they did yesterday. All data is valuable though and I shall be sending off our results shortly to www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch. Happy birdwatching!

Seabirds again

Yesterday we found a copy of “The Birds of Derbyshire ” by RA Frost in a charity shop in Ore. Having parted with £1, I leafed through the book and was immediately reminded how fortunate we are to live by the sea and have access to so many seabirds.

It hasn’t been a very exciting winter for these [search the website to see how good it was last January], but the usual species were on offer this morning. In fact the count of 15 Great Crested Grebes was the highest for me this winter, but figures of 15 Gannets, 20 auks and just 2 Red Throated Divers were below average.

A check on harbour gulls revealed nothing unusual, many adult Herring Gulls are now in smart breeding plumage. As usual, a few kept an eye on my car, just in case…

Young Herring Gull

Birds and Gardens

Firstly, a reminder that this weekend is when your help is needed in monitoring garden birds by participating in the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch. This only takes an hour of your time and is a great activity for all the family. See the RSPB website for more info.
With gardens still in mind, the Wildlife Trusts and the RHS have launched a Wildlife Gardening competition which aims to expand the UK’s wildlife-friendly garden habitat. More details at www.bigwildlifegarden.org.uk. I have worked with Kent Wildlife Trust for some years now as a volunteer assessor in their Gardening for Wildlife scheme and have found it really heartening to witness the impact even a tiny residential garden can have on the local environment when managed sympathetically for wildlife. The more gardens we can manage this way, the more corridors we can create to link up with other green areas such as woodland and nature reserves. Lots of wildlife gardening ideas can be found on www.wildlifetrusts.org. Good gardening!

New Toy

The Friends of Hastings Country Park NR recently received Lottery Funding for the purchase of a range of study and presentation equipment. Amongst this is a digital  microscope, a small device which plugs into a  computer and stores images on it at the click of a mouse.

Having just taken delivery of this on behalf of the Friends, and never having used one before, I was keen to try this , and have been installing and trying it out today.

So here is my first image, of the end of a piece of Rhytidiadelpus squarrosus, or Springy Turf Moss, which seems to be the main constituent of our front lawn [meadow] at this time of year.

Springy Turf Moss through the microscope

Hastings Biodiversity Quest (78)

Managed to add 36 species to the list today from a small number of urban sites around West St Leonards. Most interesting was rough clover at the old bathing pool site, a queen Bombus jonellus nectaring at Hebe in West Marina Gardens and an angle shades caterpillar on tree-mallow along Caves Road.

Angle shades caterpillar.

The bank behind St Leonards Parish Church is as always this time of year carpeted in Petasites fragrans many in flower bringing some colour and the pungent aroma of boiled sweets to this small sycamore wooded bank. Interestingly a small area of habitat almost entirely dominated by naturalised species.

Offshore there was some seabird activity with small numbers of great crested grebe, red-throated diver, guillemots and razorbills. Also a curlew flew west.

Hastings Biodiversity Quest (42)

A few new species today. After the rain died down some seabird activity was visible close inshore from West St Leonards between 3-4pm.

New species included great crested grebe, common scoter, guillemot and kittiwake. Birds present included 2 gannet, a red-throated diver, great crested grebe, common scoter, 3 kittiwake, 6 guillemot, and 4 razorbill. Most were feeding or flying east.