CROYDON RSPB MEMBERS' GROUP - TRIP REPORT

Our day's birding was divided between two sites, both beside the Medway but overlooking very different stretches of that river. At the Riverside Country Park, to the east of Gillingham, we were on the southern shore of the estuary, with over two miles of water, uncovered mud and marshy islands between us and the Kingsnorth Power Station on the northern bank. We first turned our attention here to thick shrubberies near the well-equipped Centre, discovering a surprisingly large population of small passerines, including unusual numbers of dunnocks and, later, one (or two?) stonechats. Further on, from the boardwalk across a small reed-filled pond, we were able to study, at close range, first the remarkably intricate plumage patterning of a drake teal and then, a rare opportunity indeed, a water rail that strolled out of the vegetation to join moorhens feeding on some well-placed slices of wholemeal bread. Treading carefully among the canines arriving for 'walkies', we next made our way to a viewpoint for scanning across the estuary itself. Spread out across the mud were many redshanks, together with a few oystercatchers, curlew, ringed and grey plovers and shelduck. The tide was low, but half a dozen brent geese and a few great-crested grebes could be made out on the distant river channel. Moving our position to see more clearly along a deeper runnel in the mud, we found a small flock of elegant pintails and a rather scarcer wader - a spotted redshank - characteristically wading body-deep, or even swimming, and repeatedly upending to feed. (In winter plumage, this species is anything but 'spotted'; the spots appear later in the year, with the very different, very much darker, breeding plumage).

A dozen miles upstream at New Hythe, the Medway is still tidal, but only a stone's throw across. The main focus of our attention here was not the river itself but some of the fifteen or so abandoned gravel pits nearby to the west. We did, however, begin the afternoon on a length of narrow path through scattered bushes and head-high reeds along the river bank and it was here that we were startled by a single loud outburst of song from a Cetti's warbler* close beside the path. This species is notorious as a difficult-to-see skulker and, although a small brown bird was glimpsed darting into the brambles, no-one could be sure of its identity. Though we had time to visit only about six of the pits, we found a range of wildfowl, with tufted duck and coot the most numerous, pochard, mallard, shoveler and gadwall in smaller numbers, and just a single female ('redhead') smew. Two green woodpeckers were feeding in a pasture between pits and another pair were in trees beyond. Wintering flocks of fieldfares were still in the area, chattering noisily between treetops, but only one redwing was noted.

(* 'Who was Cetti?' - Francesco Cetti (1726-1778) was born in Germany of Italian parents. He became a Jesuit priest, as well as a noted mathematician and philosopher. He spent the final twenty years of his life as a university professor on the island of Sardinia and there produced a multi-volumed Natural History of Sardinia in which he described the rusty-coloured warbler that, over forty years after his death, was to be named in his honour. In Cetti's time, the breeding range of this warbler was limited to the Mediterranean region and it was only during the twentieth century that a northward spread began, leading to a first occurrence in Britain in 1961. Cetti's Warblers now breed in many of our southern counties, as well as in Belgium and the Netherlands.)