Romney Salts - warm, sunshine and showers, SW3 - My first Goldcrest of autumn heard and seen in the back garden just after dawn, along with a light overhead passage of finches was a fine start to the day. Once the rain cleared we headed down Church Lane for our Ted walk out on the arable lands, but first a check of the spinney revealed several more Goldcrests, a Chiffchaff, a Jay and about ten each of Song Thrush and Blackbird, presumably migrant birds having dropped in last night. The farmland walk out to the back of the airfield revealed more hedgerow Blackbirds and Song Thrushes, several Yellowhammers and Reed Buntings, plus small flocks of Goldfinches and Linnets. A saturated stubble field held at least 50 each of Skylark and Meadow Pipit with more trickling overhead along with a party of ten Redpolls; while Ted flushed a pair of Grey Partridges amongst a host of Red-legs and Pheasants. It was no surprise, given the recent volume of rainfall, that since my last visit a week ago the water levels in the drainage sewers across the Salts had noticeably risen. With more heavy rain forecast we could be in for some serious flooding locally over the coming week.
However, the morning was most memorable for an encounter with a distant feline. Scanning down a broken hedgerow I noticed a large, grey-brown cat creeping furtively along an adjacent track and moving steadily away from me. I estimated it to be about 300 yards distant and through the binoculars, in the bright sunshine the contrasting dark body prompted an example of `size illusion - it looked for all the world like a `big cat`, and I could easily see how it could have been mistaken for such. Anyway, I took a few pics which confirmed that it was just that - a large domestic cat - and certainly one of the largest of the many such animals I`ve encountered in the field down the years, but all the same, food for thought...
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