Warm, dry and sunny, SW3 - I had to drop the car off at the garage in Lydd this morning for its annual check-up so decided to take Ted along and walk back to New Romney across the Salts. The market garden fields around Belgar Farm, beside the Dengemarsh Sewer, appeared to be suitable for small farmland birds but apart from a few Linnets and Goldfinches feeding on weed-seeds and a hovering Kestrel along the sewer margin all was quiet. However, one recently harrowed field attracted 20 Stock Doves, 100 corvids and 200 gulls, mostly Common and Herring Gulls, a dung heap lured a few Pied Wagtails and a couple of transient Yellow Wagtails, while a Kingfisher was a surprise on a pond near the golf course. I then spent a good hour or more observing the aerial antics of three Hobbies (an adult and two juvs) from a nest site in a farmland copse, snatching dragonflies (presumably Migrant Hawkers) in the lee of the trees. After a while the adult was easy to discern from the juvs, being far more athletic as it picked off flying insects with great aplomb on every lunge, while the fledglings, obviously still learning their craft, feinted aimlessly several times before hitting a target. Just as I was leaving the adult upped the tempo and arrowed out across a stubble field snatching an unwary Swallow in mid-air and returning to the tree cover leaving the juveniles in its wake. The Hobby is one of those birds that is always a joy to watch, no matter how long you`ve been birding - and when I started out in the 60`s they were a rarity, mostly confined to the heathlands of southern England. As I trudged home I pondered on the hazards that may lay ahead for this trio of falcons en-route to their winter quarters in central and southern Africa, and the likelihood of any of them returning next year to nest on the Romney Salts.
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