Birding Braunie

Norfolk is one of the premier counties for birds. Not only does it hold some of our more scarce breeding birds including stone-curlews and golden orioles but it also plays host to a hat full of migrants each spring and autumn. In my mind, I had planned a sketchy idea of the places I wanted to go to. It looked a bit like this: Weeting Heath, Titchwell, Cley-next-the-sea and Snettisham. Overall, this stayed in place with the exception of Titchwell that annoyingly was as good as closed for pathway renovation. So anyway, first stop would be Weeting Heath. Weeting is situated just west of Brandon on the edge of Thetford Forest. This is brecklands country, an unusual  landscape with sandy heaths covered in gorse and ragwort and lined with Scots pine. Weeting Heath This site is famously important for a quite strange looking bird called a stone-curlew. It looks like something the artists at Pixar would dream up for a movie. It all seems out of proportion with huge eyes and a quit...

Why did I agree to this? It’s 4am and my daughter Tanya, bag packed (quite a small one for a change but that’s EasyJet for you) pushes me out the front door towards the car. Still, the reasonably short drive to Gatwick carrying three excited young ladies isn’t too bad when the roads are clear and the sky is blue. Now, I’m not one to miss a bird watching opportunity and one certainly presented it to me as I realised I would be within easy reach of Thursley Common and could be there for 6am. I’d been there a couple of times and with my trusty SatNav I just tapped in Thursley and figured the reserve would be easy to find. Think again Braun. The Thursley bit was easy enough. I passed some pretty little villages and pubs making a mental not of their names but now as I write, I can’t remember any of them. Thursley is just off the A3 near Godalming. The common is actually a vast area of heath and mixed woodland and a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). The trouble is, the car park i...

My early morning starts really have been bearing fruit or rather, birds. This morning I took myself off to a decent patch of scrubland in Chigwell, just off Five Oaks Lane. As per usual, the air was filled with birdsong, notably at least seven song thrush and maybe four or five willow warblers. Parking is difficult at this site. The area consists of a wide area of scrub with young hawthorn and rosehip bushes the grass is high (and wet with dew) so walking through this before the sun has had a chance to dry it out is rather uncomfortable. The scrub is surrounded by mainly oaks but with some fir and some other stuff – don’t really do trees. To the east is Havering Park and to the north, Hainault Forest golf club. There were plenty of birds to be seen. There were Great spotted and green woodpeckers in the wooded areas along with 3-4 blackcaps and many song thrushes. Dunnock The scrub held linnets, greenfinches, dunnocks and a couple of reed buntings. The scrub also had a very s...

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Another quick trip out this morning at 5am, this time to Sewardstone Marsh. Still part of the Lee Valley Park, Sewardstone Marsh is a small and relatively productive habitat with woodland, open scrub and marsh. It sits beside the King George V reservoir which makes it a useful spot for migrants. Sewardstone Marsh at Dawn The marsh had always been a strong site for the elusive cuckoo and a good site for nightingales. Unfortunately, there were no nightingales here this year but I did hear a cuckoo and kept my fingers crossed that one would at least show in flight. There were plenty of sedge warblers and whitethroats in the scrub area. Sand martins and swallows wheeled over the meadows by the Navigation canal. Blackcaps, chiffchaffs and one or two willow warblers sang from the trees along the pathways. They would give themselves away but flying short haul from one section of cover to another. Always difficult to focus on – near impossible to photograph. However,...

As a lot of my friends will tell you, I’m rather partial to a glass or two of wine. I can often be found scanning the shelves of Sainsbury or Tesco looking for that decent Pinot Noir or Grigio. Now this isn’t because I’m an expert on wine, far from it. What I’m looking for is a good, affordable wine that comes with a cork. It seems to me that 70% to 80% of bottles on our supermarket shelves are screw top and not cork and this has nothing to do with the environment. Retailers are understandably keen to deliver a good wine experience to their customers and screw cap bottles safeguard the old problem of a corked or tainted wine.  Customers feel confident the wine they buy will be drinkable and that is what we all have come to exp ect. In fact, I have even noticed that less and less diners feel the need to taste the wine before pouring. That’s how confident people have become. What has been overlooked, is the effect this has had on the cork forest industry. And here, confidence is at...

As my son and girlfriend stumbled into the house at 4.30am after clubbing in the West End, I was getting ready to drive the 5 miles it takes to get to the Lee Valley Park to experience the wonderful dawn chorus. Of course it takes a bit of effort to roll out of a comfy bed and into the cool (very cold really) spring morning but unless you have heard this incredible sound believe me the effort is worth it. Lee Valley Park at 5am. The vast chain of excavated gravel pits now turned into an amazing nature park for all is also a good place to find nightingales. They possess one of the richest and  the most beautiful songs that can be heard in the natural world. The rich medley of liquid notes of the Nightingale has been a source of inspiration for poets and musicians such as Keats, Coleridge and Beethoven. Wren. An incredibly loud song for such a tiny bird. I arrived at 5am to find a full car park! Anglers are even madder tha...