Abbotts Court

A trip down to visit Keith last week, on his home patch at Abbotts Court on the Isle of Grain in Kent. We started off at Jacobs Lane and walked through the ‘new diggings’ an area where there is active gravel extraction. This is a good area in the winter for waterfowl but all we see on this trip are a large group of Tufted Duck, plus a few Coot, Mallard, Gadwall and Pochard. When we reached Abbotts Court we turned towards the River Medway and then turned North again along the seawall. There were a few waders on the marsh, Oystercatcher, Lapwing and we thought we heard a Redshank call. Inland we saw a juvenile male Marsh Harrier, which along with Buzzard and Kestrel where the only birds of Prey we saw. We retraced our steps back along the sea wall before returning to Abbotts Court. In all we had seen 42 species of bird on our walk.

In addition to the Birds we saw, we also saw a good number of insects, although to be honest we had hoped to see a wider variety of butterflies. We did see good numbers of Small Heath and Common Blue plus a few Holly Blues, but no larger butterflies. We did see 5 species of Dragonfly: Common Blue, Azure and Blue-tailed Damselflies plus Hairy Dragonfly and Black-tailed Skimmer.

Smaller insects were also present in good numbers especially Swollen Thigh beetles. Did find a Fairy-ring Longhorn Beetle, so called because its larva feeds on fairy-ring fungus.