Beeding Brooks

29 July 2017

Very quiet as it is now the end of the breeding season.  A brief burst of Reed Warbler song, glimpses of Reed Buntings, but a very large 50+ flock of Goldfinches.  One of the unexpected benefits of the Envronment Agency being short of money is that they do not cut the grass on the riverbank.  There are lots of thistles - Goldfinch food! And other flowering plants.  Hencee lots of butterflies.  We saw Gatekeeper, Meadow Brown ?Common Blue and Tortoiseshell all along the bank.  

Flowers in the ditches included: Flowering Rush Botumus umbellatus, Great Willowherb Epilobium hirsutum, Water Mint Mentha aquatica, Gypsywort Lycopus europaeus, Meadow vetchling Lathyrus pratensis, while in the ditch there was lots of Frogbit Hydrochaeris morsus-ranae and some Yellow Water Lilies Nuphar lutea.

A family of Mute Swans were doing well with 5 young.  

Adur Valley

We took our usual short walk along the bank of the River Adur above the White Bridge this afternoon.  This was the first time since November that we have not seen Fieldfares or Redwings. They long ago exhausted berries in the hedgerows and had been feeding in the meadows, but today there were none to be seen anywhere.  But there were plenty of other birds to see.  We had good views of a Barn Owl, mainly working the fields below Stretham Manor. There were two Ravens on the top of a pylon which made a very peculiar noise, presumably some sort of an alarm call, when a lady with a Great Dane walked past on the footpath below.  Also high up on the pylons were 29 Cormorants with more arriving as we walked home. There are nothing like the numbers that I have seen in colder winters, but that is quite a respectable number.

In the river a male Mute Swan vigorously saw off some rivals and Songthrushes, Wrens Great tits and Robins were all heard singing.  A pair of  Herons seemed to be on friendly terms and it was almost possible to imagine that spring was just around the corner.

Floods in the Adur Valley

Here is a shot of the floods in the Adur Valley following the recent spell of heavy rain.

 It might look a bit alarming, but these fields are supposed to flood.  This is what they have always done.  They have reduced quite a lot in the few days since this was taken and from a wildlife point of view you could argue that the drainage is too efficient and keeping the water in would create some nice wetland habitats.  But the farmers would not like it.

Cormorants on the pylons

Today the cormorants on the electricity pylons in the Adur Valley near Steyning had abandoned the topmost rungs and cables where they normally roost and had retreated to the spars at the three lowest levels.  With the wind gusting up to 30 mph and promise of worse to come it is not surprising that they were avoiding the more exposed heights.

These have long been a popular roost for Cormorants.  This morning there were about 35 birds on one pylon and a few more on fence posts below.  I have seen up to 150 birds on the three pylons they favour.  Normally they occupy the top spars and cables.  They spread themselves out, maintaining a spacing of about one metre between each bird and its nearest neighbour.  
They seem very quarrelsome and I guess the spacing keeps each bird beyond reach of a lunge from its neighbours beak.  

They fish in the river and are a nuisance at the local angling ponds, but most probably spend their time out at sea and they can be seen at dusk flying up the valley singly or in flocks of up to a dozen or so to spend the night on the pylons.  Some mornings when we are sitting in bed drinking our morning cup of tea we see small groups in V-formation heading back down to the sea. They fish in the river and are a nuisance at the local angling ponds, but most probably spend their time out at sea and they can be seen at dusk flying up the valley singly or in flocks of up to a dozen or so to spend the night on the pylons.  Some mornings when we are sitting in bed drinking our morning cup of tea we see small groups in V-formation heading back down to the sea.