Birdsong

With most of us spending considerably more time at home (and in the garden) many people are enjoying the sound of birdsong - all day long!

The Covid-19 lockdown has resulted in fewer vehicles on roads, almost deserted skies and a cleaner, more peaceful, environment. Birdsong seems amplified by the reduction in other noise.

Birdsong is really relaxing - the perfect tonic in these worrying times. 

It's disappointing when people complain that 'birds are too noisy' or feel they're a nuisance because they might poo on a garden fence! 

The Hoo Peninsula is best known for having a vibrant bird life. 

Along with the wider Thames Estuary, the Hoo Peninsula is a vital migration hub for hundreds of thousands of wintering wildfowl and wading birds, as well as providing a summer breeding ground for migratory birds.

From garden birds to nightingales at Lodge Hill and herons at High Halstow - our local landscape provides rich pickings and a safe haven for many species. They enjoy hedgerows and gardens, farmland, waterways, wetlands, salt marshes, mudflats and woodlands.

Keep tweeting birds - and make everyone feel a little bit better.

  

The Hoo Peninsula is open for business!

With half term approaching, I’d like to encourage you to visit the Hoo Peninsula - a fantastic landscape offering wilderness and heritage.

It stretches from Cliffe (or thereabouts) in the west to the Isle of Grain in the east. Our villages include Upnor, Cliffe and Cliffe Woods, Cooling, Hoo St. Werburgh, High Halstow, St. Mary Hoo, Stoke, Allhallows and the Isle of Grain.

We have a fabulous, and in my view unrivalled, network of dramatic walking routes, marshland, wildlife, heritage, farmland and vibrant communities. There are many local shops and businesses, including a super selection of pubs, cafes and restaurants and we are never short of fetes and community events.

We are very proud to be the home of RSPB Cliffe Pools Nature Reserve, Upnor Castle, RSPB Northwood Hill Nature Reserve, Grain Coastal Park, St. James’ Church at Cooling (made famous by Charles Dickens), Deangate Ridge Golf Club near Hoo, Medway Microlights at Stoke Airfield and Port Werburgh in Hoo (just some of our attractions).

If you’ve never been - please come and see us and enjoy the great outdoors right on your doorstep. You’ll have a great time!

Take a look at Medway Council’s website for more information about local activities, search the Hoo Peninsula on the internet or browse this site.

We are open for business and ready to welcome you!

  

Our great outdoors is waiting for you!

I’m sure many of us don’t need an excuse to get out the house and enjoy our fantastic local landscape. I certainly don’t, as it’s long been one of my favourite pastimes.

But it’s really good to see that a North Kent Walking Festival has been organised, with walks and events taking place from Saturday 25 May to Sunday 2 June.

Even more exciting is the fact that seven of the events listed on the guide, shown below, are being held right here on the Hoo Peninsula - all of which look fabulous fun! They include Grain Coastal Park, RSPB Northward Hill, Allhallows-on-Sea, Great Chattenden Wood, St. James’ Church at Cooling, RSPB Cliffe Pools and Cliffe Marshes.

I hope to see you at some of the walks and events planned, let's just hope the weather stays nice.

Time to enjoy our great outdoors!

  

Going for a song - Nightingales in North Kent

With half term fast approaching, I thought I’d share some information supplied by the RSPB about events taking place at Northward Hill:

Nightingales are back for the summer on the Hoo Peninsula, probably the most important site in the UK for this species, and now is the best time to hear their song. To celebrate their return the RSPB is hosting a series of guided walks at some of the best places to hear and perhaps see these shy birds.

Nightingale photo by John Whitting.

Alan Johnson, Kent’s RSPB reserves manager said, “Now is the time because once the male has found his mate he falls silent. I never tire from hearing the nightingale’s song and we’d like to give everyone else the opportunity. Despite the bird’s popular appeal many have never heard one singing and the birds are disappearing from our countryside fast!”

British Trust for Ornithology research has revealed that the UK‘s nightingale population halved between 1995 and 2008 and their distribution is retreating towards the southeast of England. The Hoo Peninsula is now, probably, the most important area for the species in the country. Well over 1% of the national population nests at Lodge Hill and there are healthy populations at RSPB Cliffe Pools and Northward Hill, Chattenden Woods and Blean Woods.

The nightingale, a charismatic avian lyricist, litters our literature as far back as the 8th century BC. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Shelley and Keats couldn’t resist writing about nightingales, and the alleged songster of Berkeley Square has itself been sung about by Vera Lynn, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and even Twiggy and Rod Stewart! Many people confuse song thrushes, robins and blackbirds for nightingales since these birds will sing by the light of a street lamp but the real thing is unmistakable.

A choice of guided walks are available to the public over the next few weeks and full details can be found on the RSPB website here, or by clicking here. You can also phone the RSPB office on 01634 222480.

Sunday 19 May, from 10am to 12pm
RSPB Northward Hill “Wild About You” Bird Ringing 

Tuesday 28 May, from 7am to 9am
Great Chattenden Woods “North Kent Walking Festival” Walk* 

Wednesday 29 May, from 6am to 8pm
RSPB Northward Hill “Spring Strings” North Kent Walking Festival Walk and cello* 

Sunday 9 June, from 10am to 12 noon

RSPB Northward Hill “Wild About You” Bird Ringing

*A donation is appreciated, all other walks have a fee. 

RSPB Northward Hill is well worth a visit, so please try and pop along to one of these events!

  

Olympic Tern at RSPB Cliffe Pools

Supplied by the RSPB:

As London prepares to receive visitors from across the globe for the 2012 Olympics, RSPB Cliffe Pools expects to welcome back its very own athlete of Olympic proportions. The nature reserve is an important home to wintering wildfowl and waders but also a summer breeding ground for migratory birds such as the common tern.

This sleek seabird of pure white, with a blood-red bill, black crest and swallow tail, has nested on the islands created by the flooding of the old cement works since they closed in 1970. As the world looked forward to the Seoul Olympics, back in July 1987, Roger Kiddie, a science and math teacher from Gravesend, rowed out to the tern colony at Cliffe Pools with Cliff Sharr, a local villager and renowned ornithologist on the north Kent marshes. The men spent the afternoon ringing the common tern chicks under a relentless attack from the adults. Common terns defend their nests aggressively, attacking more furiously those they recognise as repeat offenders. The chicks leave the nest almost immediately after hatching, so time was against the men.

Common tern at RSPB Cliffe Pools by Les Foster (website) 

Roger said, “Common terns spend their winter off the west coast of Africa, indeed, most of their life is spent at sea, so the chances of recapturing a ringed tern is always slight; but in the 1980’s ringing still presented the best opportunity for us to learn where these birds migrate to. We now know that common terns return each year to the colony from which they hatched, for Cliffe Pools that means an annual round trip of about 10,000 miles.”

The average lifespan of a common tern is 12 years so they rack-up a lot of sea miles, ably assisted by the Trade Winds and the unusual ability to replace worn-out flight feathers twice in a year.

In December 2011, a fisherman from Guinea Bissau, on the west coast of Africa, found a tern on his decks with an injured leg. Terns are known as sea swallows, their graceful appearance and dainty build affords them a different respect than the raucous gulls. The fisherman attended to the bird and returned it to the ocean in good health, but not before noting the details of a ring on its other leg. From this information, just received by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), we know that this tern was one of those chicks ringed by Cliff and Roger 25 years ago.

Roger has since retired, but continues to ring birds for the BTO. In the tern’s lifetime the Olympics have been to Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, Athens, Beijing, and with a little more luck, it is now wheeling around the Thames Estuary looking down onto the London Olympics. In its own feat of Olympic proportions this little bird (equal in weight to a tin of sardines and with a wingspan of just one human arm’s length), has now flown the same distance as from the Earth to the Moon!

Roger Kiddie said, “This has to be one of the highlights of my 40 years bird ringing experience, it is truly remarkable.”

Visit the RSPB Cliffe Pools website by clicking here.

  

RSPB January newsletter (On the Marshes) out now!!

The January edition of the RSPB’s newsletter for the North Kent area, ‘On the Marshes’, is out now - just click the image below to download a copy!

Visit the websites of the local RSPB groups: Gravesend and Medway.
 

RSPB October newsletter (On the Marshes) out now!!

The October edition of the RSPB’s newsletter for the North Kent area, ‘On the Marshes’, is out now - just click the image below to download a copy!

Visit the websites of the local RSPB groups: Gravesend and Medway.
 

A message from the RSPB

I've been sent a brief update from the RSPB about their activities locally, supplied by their representative Rolf Williams (pictured below).

'Beefing up our birds'

It is a testament to the reserve teams’ expertise and skillful water management that 2011 has been a good year for breeding birds on the marshes. The unusual weather patterns in 2011, with a spring drought followed by early summer deluges, may be a portent of things to come since this matches leading climate models of our future. The RSPB’s North Kent reserves feel like wild places at the mercy of the weather but half of them are working farms, coastal grazing marshes that we manage in the interests of nature. They produce hay (for horses), wool, lamb, and beef, but, in a complex relationship between water, vegetation, and grazing, the right habitat is also created for internationally important wintering and breeding birds.

Through the hard graft of reserve staff, volunteers and contract graziers, and despite the unseasonal weather, the birds have done all right this year. We managed to utilize what water we had in such a way that breeding bird figures are as good, if not better, than normal years for precipitation. Numbers of breeding lapwing at Shorne Marshes, Cliffe Pools and Elmley Marshes were excellent, totaling 132. Redshank traditionally fluctuate in their breeding numbers but 180 pairs at Elmley Marshes broke a six-year record. The herons at Northward Hill are showing recovery after two particularly harsh winters - 96 pairs, and 45 nightingales filled the air with their song on the Hoo Peninsula reserves. Now we look forward to the winter spectacle as thousands of birds fly in to the Thames, Medway, and Swale Estuary… and why not join them for a wild day out?

Rolf Williams
RSPB North Kent Marshes Nature Reserves

If you'd like to find out more about the RSPB, take a look at their Northward Hill website by clicking here - where you'll find links to other RSPB sites in North Kent, including Cliffe Pools. You can get in touch with Rolf by clicking here.

Thanks for the update Rolf!
 

Cliffe Marshes Walk

Walking through the night for the Relay for Life, made me think that I ought to get back to exploring the many countryside walks around the Hoo Peninsula.

So on Sunday I headed for Cliffe, where there is no shortage of interesting walks. In fact, the newsagent/post office on Church Street (near the Six Bells pub) has a good stock of leaflets about local walks, produced by the Friends of North Kent Marshes.

Setting out from Pond Hill in Cliffe, I followed the Thames and Boundary trails (both sharing walking route RS82), which are part of the RSPB Cliffe Pools Nature Reserve. These trails lead past the pools and then on towards the sea wall - along what seems at times like a never ending gravel track.

When arriving at the sea wall, I turned right to walk north east, passing Lower Hope Point and Redham Mead, before stopping for a tea break at a point overlooking the site of the old Curtis & Harvey Explosives works.

This closed in the 1920s, but even now with relatively few of the hundreds of buildings still easily visible from a distance, it is clear this was once a very important part of our local military heritage. Although few would have known it was there at the time, given its ‘top secret’ nature.

The inward view of Cliffe Marshes is really impressive, even though the landscape seemed endless with the tea having run out and the long walk back to Cliffe still to go!

The other side of the sea wall is a little less than idyllic. Unless you have a thing for oil refineries of course. The River Thames generates lots of rubbish. I lost count of the number of Port of London safety helmets washed-up on the shore - it must cost someone (probably us!) a lot of money to keep buying replacements.

Whilst walking along the sea wall, I was stopped by a couple who were out exploring the area because of its connection with Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 Vietnam war film ‘Full Metal Jacket’ (pictured below). Apparently Cliffe Marshes doubled up as Vietnamese paddy fields! I didn’t know anything about this, but I checked the internet when I got home and it’s all true - you learn something new every day.

Just before reaching Egypt Bay, I turned onto a track and followed the signs pointing south westerly to Cliffe. There’s quite a few ditches to cross on the return journey and, at one point, I had to ‘walk the plank’ in order to rectify a mistake caused by my less than perfect map reading abilities.

After 3 ½ hours walking, and having covered a distance of about 8 miles, I eventually arrived back in Cliffe via Wharf Lane.

A really enjoyable walk on a nice summer’s day.

New Year’s Day Walk - Cliffe

On New Year’s Day, I headed for another RSPB Nature Reserve, this time at Cliffe Pools. I started out from Cliffe village on Pond Hill and then onto Pickles Way. Unsurprisingly, there were lots of people enjoying the fresh air and taking the opportunity for some exercise.

Although there are many trails to choose from, I opted for the Saxon Shore Way – heading through pools and lagoons towards Cliffe Creek.

When I arrived at Cliffe Creek, I had a look for Cliffe Fort, which was built in the mid-nineteenth century. Although derelict and closed to the public, it is still possible to view some of its exterior walls from the footpath. There are also the 100-year old remains of the Brennan Torpedo installation (on the shore side). Such a shame that these once important naval defences are now largely forgotten.

Within a couple of hundred yards of the fort rests the wreck of a Danish schooner, the ‘Hans Egede’. Although damaged by fire in 1955, she was used for many years as a coal and grain hulk on the Medway.

Heading back to Cliffe village, I took the less scenic, but more direct, route along Salt Lane, West Street, Higham Road and Church Street.

An excellent few hours spent exploring a small part of RSPB Cliffe Pools Nature Reserve, with some interesting local history along the way. I’ll certainly be back soon, as there are plenty more routes left to explore!

More information about RSPB Cliffe Pools Nature Reserve can be found by clicking here.