 |
| Sun rising over the fields this morning, North Kent |
I did my first Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) visit to the patch this morning in perfect conditions, a far cry from last year's gloomy start to the month. In place shortly after 6am, this is what I recorded on the transects within my 1km square:
| Species | Transect sections | Total | |||||||||
| 06:22 - 06:50 | 07:05 - 07:25 | ||||||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | ||
| Pheasant | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Stock Dove | 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||||||
| Woodpigeon | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 6 | 12 | |||||
| Collared Dove | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||||||||
| Ring-necked Parakeet | 2 | 2 | |||||||||
| Cuckoo | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Green Woodpecker | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||||||||
| Great Spotted Woodpecker | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Magpie | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||||||||
| Jay | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||||||||
| Carrion Crow | 1 | 12 | 13 | ||||||||
| Goldcrest | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Blue Tit | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 9 | ||||
| Great Tit | 1 | 3 | 4 | ||||||||
| Skylark | 4 | 1 | 3 | 9 | 3 | 20 | |||||
| Swallow | 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||||||
| Whitethroat | 2 | 1 | 3 | ||||||||
| Nuthatch | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Wren | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Starling | 7 | 1 | 8 | ||||||||
| Blackbird | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||||||||
| Song Thrush | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||||||||
| Robin | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 6 | |||||
| Dunnock | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| House Sparrow | 10 | 10 | |||||||||
| Chaffinch | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 | ||||||
| Greenfinch | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Goldfinch | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| Linnet | 5 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 12 | |||||
| Corn Bunting | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 | |||||||
| Number of species | 14 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 8 | 10 | 8 | 30 |
The photo above gives a fairly good impression of how much of my site looks - wide, open arable fields with a few hedgerows and scrubby areas in between, a young woodland borders one side of the latter half. My transects start and finish around houses, hence the appearance of more garden species.
Some thoughts today - well firstly it was amazing to hear a Cuckoo calling briefly in the distance (>100m) just before 7am! This is a first local bird for me. There were probably two Yellow wagtails as well but they flew down into a stubble field before I could confirm. Of the patch 'specials' four Corn Buntings were holding their usual territories and Skylarks were marginally less obvious but I think this is due to the farmer's crop rotation this year. Linnet were fairly conspicuous, with a handful of pairs and some flyovers; their numbers seemed lower than usual in recent months so this is good. It seems to have been a good spring for whitethroats too with three distinct territories an improvement on last year's single. Off the square there is at least one prospective pair. Other than that, the list presents a pretty good picture of life on the patch these days and perhaps that of a lowland, intensively-managed arable farm in the south east in general?
So what's missing?
No comments:
Post a Comment