Yesterday evening a friend and I went to a poetry evening with Mary Colwell. She has written a book called Curlew Moon. At this event the plight of curlews Numenius arquata was explained to us with passion and gentleness. We had managed to speak to her before she shared her thoughts to those gathered. These thoughts were about the local curlew’s which have been recorded in the past at Thursley Common. (I had earlier in the year heard and seen with my two sons a curlew flying over the common).
With this in mind and a challenge from Mary to find out whether they had bred this year my youngest son and I went off for an adventure to Thursley Common.
Thursley Common is a large national nature reserve in Surrey. It is one of the last remaining lowland heath bogs in the area and has the most recorded species of dragonfly in the country along with numerous other species of flora and fauna. Since discovering Thursley Common when I was studying conservation management at Farnborough technical college, it has become one of my favourite places in the county to visit. It is a great place to get away from it all. One can lose the sound of traffic and urban life quite quickly.
On this particular visit Isaac and I arrived to a reasonably empty car park. We had prepared ourselves with plenty of water as this day when recorded later was reaching 33° Celsius. In France the day before the temperatures had reached their highest on record of 45° Celsius. Everywhere was still but it was early enough for some wildlife to be able to cope in the heat.
The sound of a bird singing drew us out of the woodland. Intending to walk along the boardwalk we were distracted by its sound so we headed towards it realising the more we got towards it the further away it actually was – the sound had been carried by the light breeze! Isaac was determined to find it as he had never seen what was making the sound. I wasn’t as confident of the song and didn’t want to say what I thought it was. He had seen pictures on the board of the bird and he himself wasn’t saying what it was!
On the way to finding it I was distracted by other wildlife such as the small dragonflies like jewels which were resting on the vegetation by the side of the path. I attempted with my camera and selfie stick to get as close as I could without disturbing a couple of them but technology got the better of me. I managed to get a distant shot of one with a narrow blue abdomen and bronze thorax. The photo below is not just a jumbled picture of heather and tree stump! If you zoom in you’ll be able to see what I believe to be a black tailed skimmer Orthetrum cancellatum.
Isaac had seen the bird which we’d been following the song of which turned out to be what I had suspected – a Dartford warbler Sylvia undata. He was desperate for me to see it too. In the end we were both saying there it is or no it’s there as it kept moving. We discovered that there was more than one! At one point we were so close to the singing bird that we could see down it’s orangey coloured throat.
Meanwhile dragonflies continued flying around the heather and other vegetation, landing and taking off. Suddenly one landed and I couldn’t help but check it out through the binoculars as the light was shining off its wings revealing yellowy, orange bronze! It was stunning! Dragonflies land with wings open so this whole observed sight was done with the wings fully facing me. The tail was a stunning bright orange also glinting in the light. For me it was one of the most memorable morning moments.
Throughout the morning goldfinches seemed to be everywhere. Isaac couldn’t quite get the hang of their calls and song as his attention would be caught and his curiosity would make him stop and peer at me questioningly, thinking it was another new bird!
Having him with me was a needed extra pair of eyes. At one point on the path something caught both of our eyes almost simultaneously, thinking it was a stick. A mid green coloured slow worm, the thickness of less than my little finger was edging slowly across the path. I decided to pick it up which Isaac wasn’t sure about when it started to move back and forth and defecated two or three times. I persuaded him to hold it and it played dead! As it was reacting in such a way I thought it best to put it back where it had last been heading.
All this activity had not moved us far along the track, we were still near its beginning. A reed bunting Emberiza schoeniclus was also playing hard to see! When I heard it I was asking Isaac whether he knew and remembered this bird. This was one that we had both together had a previous close encounter with which I may have written about previously. He eventually worked it out after some questions.
The next part of the walk was a little more uneventful and we stopped for a break and continued afterwards along the main boardwalk. The dragonfly numbers increased. You could hear them crashing into each other with their wings. This part of the boardwalk has also been a place where we have counted numerous common lizards Zootoca vivipara. Today we only had one. I think it was probably too hot even for them.
Two or three people had gathered standing around by the boardwalk junction we could see in the distance through the binoculars they had a considerable amount of kit which they had placed out along the boardwalk.
A cheeping sound drew our attention to a female Mallard Anas platyrhynchos with five ducklings which later turned out to be 8. All of a sudden Isaac said Dad, Dad! I looked from where I had being gazing to see a wading bird almost tumbling out of the sky with a long slightly curved bill diving into the edge of the bog area out of sight. My first thought was soon taken away of it being a curlew. This observation did not seem to be quite right as the bird was not quite large enough for a curlew. We waited some moments and then it burst out of the bog area, flying off again. The light was so intense it was difficult to get a fix on the bird but the impression it gave was that of a snipe Gallinago gallinago as it flew off. On speaking to the guys with all the kit one of them said it look like you saw the snipe. I had started the conversation by “Have you seen any curlews?” The man said “Not today but we did see some flying off…” This was where my listening faded out as I was pleased that he had seen curlews but can’t quite recall when he saw them! It was either the day before or the week before I can’t quite recall!
Isaac was really excited to see emergent dried out dragonfly nymph cases. I am not sure he had ever seen them before. At first he thought they were some kind of bug as they had caught his attention. I tried to pick one up but it was so fragile it fell apart. He wanted to take it to school because they are learning about lifecycles in class.
We had some good close views of a couple of dragonflies with narrow blue abdomen which were settling close to us on the boardwalk. It was useful to have our binoculars as we could examine them more closely I wasn’t going to attempt trying to get a picture as more often than not they fly off when I try! One individual was similar to the specimen seen earlier but the other was more like a keeled skimmer Orthetrum coerulescens which has a blue abdomen from top to bottom without a black tip.
For the rest of the walk Isaac and I were quite content. We didn’t really have any other key nature sightings or highlights apart from noticing trails of wood ants Formica sp. which we tried to follow to where they started.
We also saw an emperor dragonfly Anax imperator and a few damselflies which I didn’t identify apart from a beautiful demoiselle Calopteryx virgo and a whitethroat Sylvia communis which did a short song flight.
Unidentified damselfly
Later that day I laid out in the garden, I in my sleeping bag and bivvy bag and Isaac in the hammock settling for the night. I was trying to go to sleep gazing at the blue and a bat flew over me right in my line of sight. It flew in a straight line and the flight was rapid but not like a pipistrelle Pipistrellus pipistrellus. Due to its characteristics I believe it was a noctule Nyctalus noctula. Not long after there were some other dark shapes flying along the hedge line and a couple of birds flying higher up that looked unusual. I had to content myself with the mystery. It was a lovely end of a day.