Quail

New Romney - cool, cloudy, SW 5 - A bright and breezy morning following heavy overnight rain with the wind picking up to near gale force by noon. We walked the farmland out towards Old Romney where I`ve been keeping an eye on a Kestrel`s nest in an old poplar tree; at least three young have now fledged and were making a furious din as the female delivered what looked like a juvenile Starling to the quarrelsome trio. A brood of Green Woodpeckers had also fledged with an adult bouncing about on an adjacent turf field searching for food.

                                 Reed Bunting

                                  Ted, having just had an encounter with a Mink...

On Monday evening Chris P discovered a singing Quail in a pea field between New Romney and St Mary-in-the-Marsh, and yesterday morning we strolled over to site just after dawn to be greeted by the bird still singing away, albeit intermittently. Quails have a mysterious and highly unpredictable migratory pattern and in some years a second wave of birds, having bred earlier further south, re-migrate and turn up here to have a second brood in late summer. It may of course be just a wandering individual or even a juvenile prospecting for next year; we shall never know, of course, which in some odd way only adds to the mystique of this enigmatic gamebird. Also noted early yesterday several Willow Warblers by the old farm, a flyover Great White Egret, Corn Buntings and Yellow Wagtails in the pea field and a huge flock of Mediterranean Gulls flying towards the turf field along Hope Lane.