Wildlife Sightings

The 6 hour drive to Arne in Dorset for my 40th Birthday wasn’t entirely about seeing Dartford Warblers and Wasp Spiders, but to say the week long trip wasn’t influenced by those ambitions would certainly be an untruth. Despite a plethora of exciting wildlife walks  and adventures, both species eluded my lens and remained on my most wanted list, until this year (3 years later)!

A year after my Arne Adventure I learned that Thursley Common was a location where Dartford Warblers could be found. A forty minute drive from my parents’ house, venturing over during our Summer visits was too tempting to resist. Having grabbed my first glimpse and “record shots” last year, this year the only morning I managed to head over, allowed some better encounters and some half decent photos to boot.

As well as being pretty flighty, these warblers spent a lot, if not most of their time low in the vegetation feeding on insects. On several occasions I was frustrated with the rustling heather almost an armslenght away as a Dartford Warbler would forage tantalisingly out of sight. As I learnt to recognise their call and identify several popular perches above the heather line, I was able to create some better photo ops, though such opportunities were both fleeting and few and far between. Such challenges make for the best photo walks!

The days that followed prevented me venturing out to common again, but I did manage to head out to the much closer Bushy Park on most mornings, where I got increasingly obsessed with a family of common terns (another tale for another day). Our final visit to the park, on our final morning turned a little autumnal. Spiders’ webs that had been invisible in the days prior suddenly glistened in the early morning sun. And in the centre of several more intriguing webs was an eight legged creature I had almost forgotten about about. A wasp spider.

Several of them, scattered along the water’s edge between the spiked, tough, tubular blades of grass stretched those bejewelled webs with their distinctive vertical zigzags at the centre, fascinating, intriguing and a fitting ending, that left me with a sensation close to satisfied yet still wanting more, more time, always.

We overshot our approach the first time round. That’s because we were all caught transfixed at the crumbling farmhouse next door. The four of us, wide eyed, heads apprehensively turning in unison. Relief and excitement sprang as the actual house we were staying in (intact, roofed and rather impressive) came into view second time round!  

Arriving in Norfolk for the first of two spectacular 70th birthdays this year, this famed county was very much a feature of my childhood with many a holiday and weekend break here. It’s been an age, maybe several ages since then and while time has eroded, obscured and clotted many of those memories, I still remember with great clarity seeing my first spoonbill on a formative family walk over Cley Marshes. I was tempted to describe the experience with the term “boyish” excitement, but the truth is that the thrill of experiencing wildlife in the natural world has only grown as I’ve aged and my reactions all the more ridiculous (just ask the family). And so the excitement and anticipation of returning to a county celebrated for its conservation work was almost too much to contain. 

Visiting the Holkham Estate was incredible, the spoonbills I’d encountered as a rarity in my childhood seemed almost common, as did the three species of egret (little, great white and cattle) flying overhead, often disturbed by marsh harriers delicately dancing over the reserve. I could have sat in the dunes watching the little terns all day and I hope not too long passes before my next visit. 

It was however the wildlife in the immediate grounds of where we were staying that captured my imagination the most. An army of brown hares weaving through poppy fields the buzzards, red kites and marsh harriers patrolling and scanning from above. The ruins of the farmhouse and stables next door presenting a natural treasure trove. There is often a lot expressed over the habitat and wildlife during the conservation battles over greenfield sites, but maybe not enough is shared on the host of wildlife that thrives in abandoned brownfield areas like this. A family of barn owls, little owls and kestrels all within the same ground, creating something like a triangle of danger for all lived and/or ventured nearby. 

Waking up every morning to the sound of house martins investigating the bedroom windows though will always be the cement that holds all the wonderful memories of this wild 70th birthday in Norfolk… 

It was a couple of years before the stars aligned and I was able to join a licensed ringer and observe the ringing and recording of our local barn owl brood. It’s taken over a year before I could look over the pictures again; as these would be the last generation of a barn owl nest site that’s produced young for at least a decade.

I’ve been watching the barn owls in this territory for as long as I’ve been living here. A London suburb born and raised “towny”, I had to pinch myself when weeks after moving to the area I caught that haunting and unmistakable shape silently drift over the lane in front of me. In fact, as the days passed I began to doubt myself, maybe I imagined it? But the more I looked, the more I absorbed, the more I saw.

Ten years later and after thousands of images taken of the Sun Lane barn owls, I’m about to come eye to eye with the last generation this habitat will produce.

Less than six months on from this encounter and rumours of a bag blocking up this nest box would hit me like a stitch on a cross-country school run (probably the last time I got a real stitch). Fences up, foundations dug and show home close to completion within 12 months.

Progress is important, but so is remembering what went before and what’s been lost. A record of a magical, unique Summer’s morning…