Hello Sunshine Person!
Welcome to my Biking Birder blog.
My name is Gary Brian Prescott and I am known
as The Biking Birder.
Since my first Biking Birder adventure back
in 2010, the story of which I am currently telling, I have had five other
Biking Birder adventures.
From I to VI, here goes . . .
BBI – 2010 A whole year cycle around the United Kingdom visiting every RSPB, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, nature reserve and W&WT, Wildfowl & Wetland Trust visitor’s centre. (251 bird species seen)
BBII – 2015 A repeat of 2010 but with more RSPB reserves to visit and a change of route in order to add some of the summer migrant bird species missed in 2010.
BBIII – 2016 Just continued cycling with the
aim of trying to beat The European BIGBY record. Big Green Big Year, Ponc Feliu
Latorre of Catalonia, Spain held the record having seen 304 bird species by
cycling in NE Spain/Catalonia.
The story of my BIGBY is in a book available
on Amazon . . .
BBV – 2019. Well the aim was to cycle back
from the Ebro Delta Bird Festival in Spain/Catalonia. Unfortunately the bike’s
back wheel had other ideas as I cycled in the Pyrenean foothills!
BBVI – 2022 No fossil fuel transport of any kind being allowed for a ‘clean’ BIGBY, I spent the whole year cycling on the British mainland, most time spent along the east coast, trying once more to break Ponc’s European BIGBY record.
So there you have it.
More Biking Birder adventures to come!
25th January Hymn to The Fallen. Theme to the film, Saving
Private Ryan
And so with a lighter bike, I arrived back at Canterbury in order to set off yet again exactly where I had caught the train back to my family. My rule was that I would not gain any distance on the journey by 'carbon' means. Canterbury was where I had left my route and so Canterbury was where I would take it up again. Now the train had gone via Ashford, which was a lot closer to my destination than Canterbury but the thought of cheating only entered my head as a sort of laugh ridiculing my own honesty. Yet those wonderful guardian angels of mine sought to reward me almost immediately on me getting back on my bike. Whilst leaning the bike against a five-bar gate, there by my feet was a wet and dirty five pound note! Brilliant. Thanks Angels.
I rode down the incredibly straight B2086 road and found a freshly dead
Redwing; another species on my 'killed by a vehicle' list and photographed it.
Along the same road there was a dead Badger and four Pheasants; the latter all
within one hundred metres of each other! Then it was almost my turn as I nearly
went into some brambles whilst counting a covey of Red-legged Partridge in the
field to my right as I cycled past them! Twit. Eventually I cycled down a
lovely, long steep hill at speed. Then a turn off right was taken in order to
cross the M20 before riding past Folkestone Racecourse as the sun was setting
behind it.
I stopped at Dymchurch Post Office, where Loren and Lola served me, La
la la la Lola, to buy a few food items to keep me going and then went along a
long sea wall. It was dark by now and I could see distant orange neon streetlights
over the sea, over The English Channel. They were on the French northern coast
not that far away; quite surprising how close they seemed. This made me ponder
on why Hitler had not crossed The Channel after Dunkirk in WW2.
Cycling in the dark with the sound of the sea to my left, I suddenly
came across a whole section of sea wall that must have only just recently been
put down, for the concrete was still wet and clung to my wheels. I had not been
able to see it in the dark and there were no barriers to prevent one from
cycling onto it all. I quickly got off and dragged the bike to an adjacent road
and found puddles to quickly wash off the grey sticky stuff before it had
chance to solidify.
Back on the cleaned-up bike, I was surprised at how quickly I reached
Dungeness and was also surprised to find a smashing Bed & Breakfast; Pluto,
named after Operation PLUTO – the extraordinary Pipeline Under
The Ocean. This was a WW2 operation to construct undersea oil
pipeline between England and France. The pipeline helped fuel the advancing
liberating armies from the Normandy invasion.
The house had been built to disguise a pump room and fuel was indeed pumped through the pipeline from this house to the Normandy beaches during the D-day landings! Enemy aircraft did not know what the building contained so did not bomb it. My choice of today’s music better suits the feelings of that conflict than the trivial theme from The Longest Day. I have visited the D-day beaches before and know the solemn feeling that sitting on Omaha beach brings. How devastated one is when faced with the mass graves of the dead in British, American and Canadian cemeteries and what awe overcomes you when the remains of the Mulberry artificial harbour can be seen from Arromanches-Les-Bains' cliffs and seafront.
31.03 miles 760
feet elevation up 1009 feet down
26th January Battle of Britain Theme Ron Goodwin & Sir William Walton
Usual early morning start, awake at 6:00 a.m. and breakfast taken at 7:45 a.m. Huge breakfast it was too, full English, washed down with cups of coffee. Thanks Betty! In the breakfast room on top of a sideboard was a framed newspaper article of a Dark-eyed Junco, an American Passerine, seen in Betty's garden some years before. I knew I was in a good birding area. Well I knew that already. Just the previous year, 2009 I had rushed down here with my friends Ian – Bearded Tit and Ste - Great Tit, in order to see a Crested Lark. I had seen hundreds abroad, especially in Spain and Tunisia but never before had I seen one in Britain.
Now I do not really bother that much about my British list. Yes, I have
got one and it is over four hundred so I must have done quite a bit of
twitching. Actually, and its sacrilege to say so but I prefer my European list
as it lists birds that I have found for myself. Mind you the opportunity to
have a day out birding at a place I had not been to that often, with great
friends and a new bird to see, had me lying in the dark, locked in the back of
Ste's van before we got to Ian’s house to collect his car. More luxuriously we
got down to Dungeness to be greeted by the sight of an extensive line of
birders along the approach road to the lighthouse area.
Maybe my memory serves me wrong but I seem to remember that the 'over
the top' order was given for 8:00 a.m. and that a whistle went just after the
warden gave instructions. Over the top went the birders, armed with telescopes,
tripods and bins; over the shingle they marched and through the low vegetation
until someone shouted, “there it is” and a small lark tazzed over all of our
heads. It went over the road we had all just left and disappeared onto the
shingle behind that. Well it felt like that. It felt like the last episode of
Blackadder, the World War One series. All it needed was Baldrick and his
cunning plan and George carrying his stick.
Here was a small lark, maybe not that far from home but lost anyway and
for an hour or so it was chased and flushed, flushed and chased until it gave
up and stayed put in a small depression of open shingle. Here it allowed everyone
to see it properly and list all of its diagnostic features; a lark to be sure
with a long bill and a larger crest than the more plentiful Skylarks, greyer
too. I was not enjoying this and maybe the First World War analogy was a little
unfair but I wanted to go home. I had seen enough.
As the birders flushed it on one occasion, the bird flew off over
towards the lighthouse about half a mile away, to be followed by them. They
must have had splendid views already but some wanted more views. So we left them
to it and drove all the way to a much more satisfying twitch. This one had the
birders corralled behind a rope set up in a field corner, which gave views for every
one of the large trees on the opposite side of a small field. In those trees,
very obligingly, was what we had come for and for the next hour or two we three
watched it perform admirably and undisturbed by the admiring throng. Portland
Bill, Dorset, 2009 and a beautiful male Collared Flycatcher to view and tick
off with pen onto a BOU British Bird list. A brilliant bird with a wide
complete white collar around its neck, it sat out in the open on a Sycamore's
branch and did what flycatchers do. It caught flies with spectacular sallies
into the air. A collection was being made, for the Air Ambulance, I think. I
wonder how much they raised.
Today I had the world's largest expanse of shingle to explore. I cycled to the 'Patch,’ a large boil of warmer water piped into the sea from the nuclear power station. Only one such boil now as reactors are closed. The weather was very cold with a wind chill factor due to a stiff easterly. Cloudy too with no sun to warm me. On the beach and around the swirling waters were hundreds of gulls; mostly Herring and Black-headed Gulls with a few Common Gulls. Then the first-year tick of the day came past, one of my favourite birds, large white seabirds with black-tipped wings, large yellow heads and grey-blue dagger like bills – Gannets [110]. I settled behind a hide, not in it due to the unfortunate use of the building as the local toilet and counted the birds for the next hour. I always like to do that when seawatching; count for an hour and then either start a new list for the next hour or move on.
Fifty-seven Gannets, all adults, sixty eight Great-crested Grebes,
fourteen Brent Geese, heading west. c.one hundred Wigeon, heading likewise as
were eighteen Cormorant and four Oystercatchers. Then there were the year
ticks: Red-throated Divers - two, Black-throated Diver - one,
Guillemot – around forty, Razorbill – two. [111-4] Not a
lengthy list for Dungeness but at least there were birds and I always love
watching the sea.
Next it was to the bird observatory to meet the warden for the last
twenty plus years, David Walker. David had been out and done a sea watch at
7:30 a.m., whilst I had been enjoying my sumptuous breakfast. He had seen twenty-four
Red-throated Divers, over a hundred Great Crested Grebes, over two hundred
Gannets, a Bonxie or Great Skua if you prefer, over nine hundred Auks and six
Kittiwakes. Sea watching rule: get out there early!
A Snow Bunting [115] had been reported the previous day by the fishing boats and I soon found it as I photographed some anglers using a bulldozer to push their boat into the sea. Next, I cycled to Dungeness RSPB reserve via the ARC pit with three red-headed Smew [116], one male Gadwall, nineteen Teal, fifty-one Shovelor, one female Goldeneye, eight Shelduck and good numbers of Pochard, Tufties and Mallard.
As I approached the entrance, I noticed rabbits along the grassy verge.
Suddenly not ten metres in front of me, a stoat jumped onto a rabbit and
wrestled him to the ground, his teeth rigidly attached into the creature's
neck. I stopped to watch as the stoat dragged the moribund rabbit across the
road and then tried to get it through the fencing alongside. This it could not
do as the mesh was too small.
Now some people would say I was cruel but I went across to help. Indeed
I did. The stoat disappeared into brambles as I approached, leaving the almost
dead rabbit by the fence. I picked the rabbit up and lifted him over the fence
for the stoat to enjoy his meal.
Along the stony approach track I went after this incident, stopping to look over each grassy area, pool or stony, bramble patch. Common birds I had already seen I noted down and I arrived at the superb visitor's centre. Greeted by the RSPB staff, I spent a warm half hour or so looking through the large windows out over the immense pits and enjoying the explanation displays and bird photographs. The shop there looked to be extremely well stocked with a variety of birdy things; books, cuddlies, bins and scopes.
Then it was out into the cool outside, to go from hide to hide counting and listing the birds seen. A Slavonian Grebe [117] was amongst a few of its commoner cousins, Great Crested Grebes. There was also a male 'he who should not be named', Ruddy duck [118]. There I can say it now as this particular bird will be long gone, in one sense or another. Either it has flown to pastures new or been shot as part of the controversial Ruddy Duck cull.
In fact a really enjoyable few hours as I explored the reserve before
the late afternoon was spent in a hide hoping for Penduline Tits. Reported in
the area the day before, unfortunately they did not show. A remarkably close
group of Bearded Tits [reedlings][119] became another mark on the
year list. A stunningly beautiful sunset made up for this dip. What made the
scene particularly memorable was a World War 2 Spitfire flying overhead!
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