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More birding features
We All have our favourite patch, a place that is in easy reach and can be visited regularly at any spare moment that crops up. Earlier this year I had a very heavy workload, long hours and weekends coupled with the long illness and final loss of my father, all a bit of a whirlwind of things going on, my patch became a very therapeutic place to take stock of what was happening around me and escape for the odd hour or so, it was all the birding I managed for a few months, and maybe only totalled an hour or two per week at the very most.
Having had my birding so restricted was actually, when seen in hindsight, quite a salutary lesson in so far as I had some of my best quality birding for a long time. Ok, no rarities but fantastic close views of birds that many of us take for granted, only using them to bolster up our day total. I am sure you are thinking this magical place must be a good reserve, well no; it's a patch of old rotting sugar beet, turnips and dung about half the size of a tennis court, it stinks and it pulls in the birds by the bucketful. Locally we know it as 'The Midden'.
Situated in the lane between Ashwell in Hertfordshire and Eyeworth in Bedfordshire this is a great birding site. The cultivated fields around have been known to get Dotterel in the spring and Golden Plover are frequent in winter, while reports of Hen and Montagu's Harrier are not unusual. This last two years Buzzards have been noted on and off. I have seen Red Kite over the lane also. The area is possibly the most reliable local site for Corn Bunting and Grey Partridge. Night-time can also be good, especially if there is drizzly rain, as Little Owl and "Tawnies" hunt worms there and usually a Fox or Badger shows up. I have yet to find a good rarity on it - Rose Coloured Starling or Hoopoe maybe! Perhaps a Citrine Wagtail even.
I always bird with a camera (I take it everywhere) and generally use the car as a mobile hide at this site. At The Midden there is a lot of agricultural activity that the birds seem used to, so it is only a matter of minutes before they return after your arrival. I also use "realtree" camouflage (deer hunting) clothing, and have a cape in the same material that I can drape over my camera equipment. This is the next best thing to being invisible, and I use it when the light is in a direction that is impossible to work with from the car.
During April there was a steady flow of Yellow Wagtails, one flava, Northern Wheatear including two leucorhoa (Greenland) and on the 28th April I found a nice male Whinchat.
May saw lots of activity with displaying Skylarks and at least three pairs of Yellow Wagtail settling down to breed. The females would regularly court males other than their partner which led to much chasing and posturing. Two pairs of Pied Wagtails bred not far away and spent the days catching flies on The Midden.
The pools that formed after any rain drew in Linnets, Goldfinch, and Starlings. Swallows and House Martins collected mud and the "wags" would bathe as little as ten feet away. I also had Grey Partridges arrive to feed and dust bathe, these would regularly turn up at about the same time - 5:30'ish - normally quite skittish but they seemed unaware of me.
Now the Midden is all overgrown and not much seems to be there, hopefully the farmer will turn it all over in time for returning migrants to use. If so, I will be there too.
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Nigel Blake
Web site www.nigelblake.co.uk
e-mail me at nigel@nigelblake.co.uk or nigel@birdphotos.fsnet.co.uk