The seasonal dial continues to shift, albeit jerkily, from winter into spring, and our snipe count declined from 21 on 10th to none on 31st as birds dispersed to breeding grounds in Britain or returned across the North Sea to Scandinavia and Russia. Similarly, you might expect numbers of tufted ducks on Tonford Lake to tail off during the month, and indeed there were only three present on 31st, but a sneak look into April shows that numbers subsequently built up to 12, the highest total since December.
As some birds head out of the county, others are now streaming in from the south; a chiffchaff was singing its simple song on 10th, while the more tuneful melody of a blackcap (female among blackthorn, above), reminiscent of a robin’s song, was first heard on 25th. Less often thought of as a migrant, reed buntings abandon Hambrook Marshes in autumn and winter, with the odd pair or two returning each spring to breed in reed-lined ditches. Then there is the roaming
lesser black-backed gull, occasionally seen this March; unlike its more familiar cousin, the herring gull, which is very definitely here all year round, the lesser black-backed is a true migrant, spending its winters off the west coast of Africa, then heading north in spring, when a handful make a cacophonous beeline for the flat roofs of the Wincheap industrial estate.
A pair of stock doves occasionally breed in a tree hole on the old embankment; smaller and slenderer than a wood pigeon, they are much closer in appearance and behaviour to the despised feral or town pigeon. Unusually, I was able to watch a group of four stock doves in the hay field one morning. Unlike the waddling barrel of a woodpigeon, the stock dove is really quite a sleek, elegant bird, and in place of the wood pigeon’s white “badge” on the side of its neck, the stock dove has striking iridescent bars of purple and green.
Two great crested grebes were sailing regally on Tonford Lake on 25th, but their irregular appearances leave me unconvinced that they are about to nest there. We’re used to seeing moorhens on the river, but their larger, more belligerent cousins, the coots, usually haunt the nearby lakes, but one was here on 10th, just over a year after a coot popped up along the same stretch of river. Frequent kingfisher activity along the river after several quiet months may indicate that a pair will soon be nesting on the Hambrook stretch of water.
Snake’s head fritillaries gradually raised their delicate lantern flowers as the month progressed, and by the end of March 50 had been counted in the hay field, with the promise of more to come.