Every year Keith and I visit Leybourne Lakes Country Park in Kent to look for, and listen to, Nightingale. This secretive small bird with a loud raucous call arrives in the south of England from its wintering grounds in late April and early May. The males sing until they find a mate and then silence. Leybourne is now one of the best sites in the UK for this species and last year held 35 breeding pairs. So last week we set out for New Hythe.
Arriving at New Hythe station, we walked along the eastern side of Roaden Island Lake and it was not long before we encountered our first Nightingale, singing from deep inside the undergrowth. In fact, we were to find at least 8 singing males as we made our way across Railway Scrub and then along the Southern edge of Railway Lake and Larkfield Lake to the Northern shore of Ocean Lake, which we followed till we reached the cafe, where we had lunch. Despite our best efforts, we didn’t actually see a single Nightingale, but then that is not unusual.
After lunch, we made our way towards Reed Pond and were very surprised to find a female Banded Demoiselle. I would not normally expect to see these till about the second week of May.
From here we walked north-east past Round Pond and along the western side of Larkfield Lake to reconnect with the railway at Snodland station.
We managed to see 8 out of the 9 species of common Butterfly you would expect to see at this time of year.
Other interesting finds during our walk included Alder Fly; Nursery Web Spider; Harlequin and 7 Spot Ladybirds,together with Mottled and Green Shieldbugs.
Although we didn’t actually see a nightingale it was a very interesting and productive day.
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