Monday 19th. March 2012

Another cool morning greeted me at Sevenoaks Reserve today , but the sun soon started to lift the temperature , and encouraged large numbers of midges to take to the air , and the warmer it got , the more midges appeared . Still plenty of bird song about , but bird numbers seemed well down on recent visits . With the low sun , I kept it to my back and headed for the Public Hide . Two Little ringed Plovers were reported over the weekend along with a juvenile Glaucous Gull , but none of these were found . At least three pairs of Great Crested Grebes were still displaying to each other , and two of the pairs were occasionally going back and adding a bit more material to the nest , before heading back out into deeper water . Also displaying , on the island right outside the hide , was a

female Lapwing , contorting her body and giving a strange clicking noise that I haven't heard before . She was trying to interest her presumed mate , who was standing on the far side of the island , seemingly uninterested by her performance . Slowly the uninterested bird made it's way around the shoreline of the island towards the female , searching for any tasty morsel on the way . Eventually , he reached the female , who by now had reached a crescendo of contorting and clicking , only for the

other bird to pass her by as if she wasn't there at all . A lady birder arrived at the hide , who turned out to be not just a fellow birder but a fellow Blogger , Marianne / The wild side . We actually met in Willow Hide back in mid winter , but neither of us realised who the other one was . Good to put a face to a name Marianne . I headed off down towards Tower Hide , finding very little apart from a

flock of about 25 Siskins , including this female , feeding in the Alders on the way . Nothing found around Slingsby hide , so I headed around to the other side of East Lake . Wrens everywhere and all the expected species in full song , including at least two Chiffchaffs . Long lake was deserted apart from the two adult Mute Swans , who were crashing their way through the reedbed from The Darenth . Heading for Willow Hide , the 'ugly duckling' , juvenile Mute Swan , was on the river just by the bridge . The view from the hide was very sparse , just a few Canada and Greylag Geese along with two Egyptian ones . Not even a Gadwall in sight and even the Coots had finished their constant bickering and moved on . The only interest were five Shoveler , four males and a single female , who stayed over by the reedbed where the Bittern was usually seen . Much scrapping between the males

for the female's attention , and her seemingly non-plussed by all that was happening . Every now and
again , the group would lift off and fly crazily around for a bit , then land and start the arguing all

over again . One of the males was a bit behind the other four when I took this shot . And that was about as exciting as the Reserve got on this visit
After a quick lunch in the car , I headed off to the Downs , in now warmer conditions , but with a cool breeze , which seemed to keep butterflies tucked up , as I only recorded 2 Brimstone , 1 Small

Tortoiseshell and 1 Comma during the visit . It didn't seem to bother the Bee Flies / Bombylius major , nor the solitary bees that they predate upon , they were seen all over the chalk grassland . Still

not much colour around , but Wild Strawberry / Fragaria vesca is starting to come into flower . Three

Slow Worms were found , and surprisingly seven Common Lizards , including this one which I heard

scuttling away as I approached a fallen tree trunk . I stood still and waited , and sure enough , after a couple of minutes , it returned to it's basking position on the trunk . I was beginning to think that the visit was going to be Adder-less , but in the last 10 minutes or so on the way back to the car found

three males , which included this one , tucked up well in vegetation .
Well , this post has taken about four hours to put together . I started Monday evening and finally finished it first thing this morning , Tuesday . All the trouble has been with uploading pictures to Blogger , as usual . My patience is wearing very thin , and I really can see the whole thing going out the window in the near future .