EYES TO THE SKIES

                                                                                                                        

                                        EYES TO THE SKIES

             A TALE OF BIRDS IN OUR UK GARDEN IN SOUTHERN ENGLAND

My wife Sue and I have always loved birds and gardening, so we're lucky that our Dorset home is an ancient cob cottage, it’s two acre wooded garden a wildlife haven from which the source of the Ashington Stream flows down to the River Stour. During our forty five years living here, we’ve been lucky enough to see and hear in or above our patch a hundred and nine species of birds - so far! But fear not. This is not going to be a simple bird list but a description of how the many habitat changes we’ve made on our patch have modified the avian arrivals during the creation of our little nature reserve. It certainly didn't look like this when we first arrived.

Being lifelong lovers of wildlife, we bought our decrepit cottage and overgrown garden because it had freshwater springs bursting out of the ground and this gave us the potential to create wetland habitats.

 

So as soon as we moved in, we ignored repairing our creaking cottage, cleared a big patch of the spindly birches in the woodland, hired a JCB to dig out a large pond and then puddled it with clay ‘Capability Brown’ style, leaving islands for the hoped for nesting wildfowl. That’s getting our priorities right! Here's a couple of 'before and after' pics.  

                 Transforming the potential into reality means we've never looked back.

            Turning dry heathland into water is magic - though not everywhere of course!

Our home appears on maps dated 1843 and this glass plate pic of it was taken in the late 1800's when it was three single storey worker's cottages in a heathland clearing. In our early days at this East End of Corfe Mullen, we used to see stonechats and yellow hammers in the garden. However, soon after our arrival, oak, birch and hazel started to colonise and as these added to the existing few Scots pines and yew trees on the heathland hill above us, we had the delight of a woodcock’s spring rodding flights over the cottage.

Sadly, once the oaks grew too big, the woodcock abandoned our patch, though instead we now have buzzards nesting in the Scots pines above our kitchen. We found this ‘colonisation’ of buzzards into east Dorset remarkable because when we moved here in 1980 we’d have to travel west of Dorchester to enjoy seeing them.

The Scots pines the buzzards nest in now attract small parties of feeding crossbills, mainly in late summer and on one memorable year, a pair of wood warblers nested somewhere in the birches behind the kitchen and even raised young. 

This picture of one of our local buzzards died of hunger in the icey cold of the 'Beast from the East', despite us leaving dead squirrels and scraps out for it, even a chicken carcass, but sadly to no avail.

 

 

 

 

 

All three woodpeckers once nested in the wooded garden though sadly, the lesser-spotted

only during our first two years, followed by just three brief visits to the bird feeders many  years ago. 

Green woodpeckers raised young in our large willows and birches for many years and were regular ant hunters on our lawns, though maybe because we’ve turned one of them into a wet wildflower meadow, yes, even flooded occasionally, we hardly ever see them now.

However, great spotted woodpeckers nest here every year and bring their chicks to the feeders.

Nuthatches and treecreepers breed here too and we’re always delighted to see them of course. We had nesting spotted flycatchers here in the early days but only see them on passage in the autumn now, along with the bonus of pied flycatchers once in a while, with September 2025 being particularly good.

We dug channels for the freshwater springs around the edges of our patch and joined them up to create a stream that fed the main pond, and by linking the other five smaller ponds, we now have a damp garden that sequesters carbon. Geologically, the low hill is a greensand ‘super-sponge’ and our wetland wildlife and biodiversity improves every year, the streams proving to be very attractive to all the birds, stock doves included.

First to arrive in our large wooded pond were nesting mallard.

They were followed soon after by moorhens, though the recovery of otters here in Dorset and their predation of our ponds soon saw the sad end of the moorhens, our mallard chicks occasionally too.

These three almost fledged ducklings became very tame and would come indoors for their tea but they were eaten in broad daylight by the otter soon after this snap was taken. 

I guess everything has to eat and I love otters, having made the first ever films for the BBC on wild otters in Shetland in the early 80's and wrote a book about the experience too, but we still find the loss of our wildlife very sad. However, the return of otters to almost every county in the UK is a remarkable conservation success story and I still get excited when I see one, even in our garden!
 

'Our' naughty otter was looking for breakfast at 08.15 on a frosty February morning and they make a few raids each year, a privilege perhaps, even though they trash our ponds and destroy the perfect dragonfly and damsel habitat. 

Our cottage pond big 'uns have all been eaten! 

Grey herons and little egrets also enjoy eating our native fish species, including the minnows that use our streams for spawning.

The shoals feed kingfishers and they even use the conservatory door for a launching pad.

Our visiting herons have bigger prey to feed on, the colourful rudd that breed in the ponds and provide red-finned highlights when sunbathing in the summer.

    Trying to attract beauty into the garden is the name of the game.

 

Mandarins visit frequently and feed close to the cottage and on one memorable day, a very rare ferruginous duck dropped from the sky into the dense lilies on the big pond and immediately fell asleep. Was it the one that used to be seen on the gravel pits at Sturminster Marshall? We’ll never know of course and after half an hours doze it suddenly woke and sprung into the sky, never to be seen again.

We planted a patch of phragmites in our main pond a while back and it's spreading nicely, in anticipation of visiting bearded tits of course! though all we’ve attracted so far are two sedge warblers and a grasshopper warbler. 

Loadly singing blackcaps are common breeders, chiffchaffs too and these harbingers of spring are particularly welcome, especially when they greet me by singing at my office window. Another highlight a few years back was an April visitor from the Mediterranian, and a rare sighting in Dorset, a little serin. We’d just returned from a holiday in Sicily, sharing the poolside with them every day, so there was no mistaking their song, even if a pleasant surprise.

We’ve dug out a large wooded marsh to provide a home for frogs [which are dropped on from a large oak by our buzzards in the spring], but the big advantage of this habitat is that being spring fed it doesn’t freeze, even during the ‘Beast from the East’. So during harsh winters we have attracted several snipe, an occasional water-rail and a redshank and on three consecutive winters enjoyed the delight of a green sandpiper feeding in the ice free streams for a week or more. We suspect it was our loyal individual as it roosted in the same spot each winter. 

 

Our many ponds and streams attract numerous species of dragons and damsels,

one of our less frequently seen being the beautiful golden-ringed dragonfly.

Our daughter Katie and I were sat with a cuppa one afternoon, admiring a golden ringed dragon hovering very close to us over the cottage pond when there was a load smack as a hobby swooped down and nabbed it right in front of us. Wow, what a surprise! We do occasionally see hobbies around the garden, nightjars too because we are not far from DWTrust’s reserve at Upton Heath but this was spectacular.

Like us, many birders are keen on raptors and the lie of the land around our patch certainly provides us with many highlights. Living on the top of a low hill, the prevailing wind, the  tall trees and woodland ponds provide lots of lift, so the garden appears to be a beacon for many passing birds as they find thermals overhead, Mediterranean gulls among them, along with night calling whimbrel on migration and of course, our favourite raptors.

Buzzards are a daily delight and in early February each year, one of our local ones perches here so it can  look down on the marsh where the frogs spawn and usually takes a few for breakfast.  

Of the other BOP’s, passing peregrines provide occasional bonuses but not so often recently, hovering kestrel’s over the veg plot the same, and there was a notable period when goshawks smashed several of our too numerous wood pigeons, five in one week a few years back, but we’ve only ever seen the gos a couple of times - briefly! 

In more recent years, red kites are providing frequent celebrations as they pass over our little wildlife patch, for when growing up and making chilly winter camping trips to Wales in the early ’60’s, seeing just one of the few surviving Welsh kites was an annual highlight. 

So it seems extraordinary that these beautiful birds are now flying over our Dorset garden. Ain’t it wonderful they are thriving!

The kites don't seem to be hastled by angry crows so much as our poor buzzards, but we like having the crow family around, especially as we have a small colony of 'always sounding happy' jackdaws in a large oak tree at the bottom of the garden. Even better are the numerous jays because they are such characters and when they gather for a natter, their large variety of calls are highly entertaining ... and they are very good at mimicking our tawny owls too.

On a hot day in 2019, this jay was enjoying the sun by leaning on an oak tree outside the kitchen window and it's mate was beside it, sleeping on a log. What lovely birds.

We've enjoyed other colourful visitors to the garden too. Over two years, this pair of pheasants became very tame, the cock bird even standing on our table and taking food from my hand as we enjoyed a cuppa. I nicknamed him Wilhelm but when his mate started to eat the flower heads off our snakes-head fritillaries, Sue called her Dinner! Wilhelm always seemed to enjoy being around our other colourful visitors too. Beautiful birds!

 We are blessed by having lots of breeding species, including all the usual suspects like bullfinches and wrens, this one having artistic tastes by using clematis flowers for his nest by the kitchen door.

One comparatively recent newcomer has been a pair of grey wagtails and in the last couple of years they have raised two young. Where they find to nest in a wooded garden is a mystery but they bring their two chicks onto the ponds and streams to be fed. They are delightful birds but I wish they wouldn't feed their young on so many of our beautiful damselflies.

Our frequent garden hunter is of course the sparrow hawk and they have nested close by for several years, though on one notable year a particularly tame pair raised one chick in a tall birch right in the heart of the garden.

Neither of the pair would take any notice of us as we gardened under their nest, so they were quite remarkable and nested close by the next year too. 

I’ve filmed spars many times around the UK and they’ve always been very shy, but this local female would allow me to photograph her in the open as she collected sticks and built her nest. As for the male, he would allow me to walk right up to him without a care in the world. 

He loved a morning bathe in our streams, this happy snap taken by my close friend Mike Read. He would then preen for hours in the sunshine on top of our tall birches, so I nicknamed him ‘Fancy Dan’ and being trusted by him sure was an unforgettable privilege.

Perhaps the most exciting bird we’ve enjoyed during this last year is several sightings of thermalling white-tailed eagles, remarkable because I was the lucky cameraman filming Attenborough’s BBC prog about their first reintroduction to the UK in 1980, the year we moved here. 

Filming them in Norway, it was exciting seeing them hunting in icey fjords and in the summer bringing food to their chicks before a Norwegian scientist took them from selected clifftop nests before friend Roy Dennis escorted them to Scotland. 

John Love carefully raised them on Rum before I filmed their first flights to freedom. So to see these massive birds that are probably related to those I filmed in Norway circling over our Dorset garden is difficult to believe and a soul stirring experience.

It’s easy to become despondent about all the declines in wildlife these days but luckily we have inspiring pioneers like Roy Dennis to thank for the extraordinary recovery of ospreys, red kites and white-tailed eagles, especially as they are now nesting in Dorset, so we have a lot to be grateful for and celebrate.

My wife Sue and our two very young children spent two magical summers in Scotland in the ’70’s to make a film about ospreys for the RSPB, so these beautiful birds are close to our hearts, particularly as Roy helped us to repair their nest before they returned from Africa.

He even came with me to west Africa to film them in their winter quarters and the film recieved the honour of being featured on the front cover of the Radio Times.

Apparently, the film sold to sixty four countries around the world, which just goes to show how charismatic these spectacular birds are. And now they are nesting successfully just down the road. Wonderful!

 

As for our little garden nature reserve here in sunny Dorset, we will continue to do what we can to enhance it’s biodiversity while also enjoying it as a garden for flowers, bees, butterflies and our friends.

 

And while we are here we love being trusted by our birds, so trying to tame our robins is a given. And it might take a year or two to win their confidence but when mum trusts us enough to allow her chicks to join in the game, it feels like the warmest possible sort of reward. 

We've been very lucky to have enjoyed half a lifetime of birding here while we nurture our little bit of garden for wildlife and we'll certainly continue to treasure it while we can still wield a spade. It’s been a real privilege just to be here.