Kent Trip Day 3 - Northward Hill RSPB and the Isle of Sheppey

Today I visited Northward Hill RSPB, a site recommended by a couple of people on Thursday evening 'Nightingale Walk' at Cliffe Pools RSPB, including walk leader David Saunders. The aim was to try to get a better view of a Nightingale and a Cuckoo, and I set off early arriving at the locked gates to the reserve at around 8:00am.
I knew the gate was going to be locked, but I had been told that you could park outside and still go in.  This proved to be very difficult because I wasn't happy with the parking spot, and there was no way around the tall gate so it would need to be climbed over with all my camera gear.  I did a reccy by climbing over the gate and soon realised that it was a long way from the farm buildings which act partly as an RSPB centre for the reserve and form the starting point for the trails.  Before climbing back over the gate however, I did watch a Barn Owl quartering one of the nearby fields for a few minutes.

I'd already decided that this was not the thing to do, and luckily I'd been told about another way of accessing the reserve through the woods at the foot of the hill.  The problem with this way was that it was difficult to navigate the paths in the woods to be sure of where you were heading, but I decided that with the aid of Google Maps on my phone I could do it.  So I set off to find another small car park on the edge of a housing estate where the track lead into the woods.  As it turned out, this entrance was marked by an old RSPB sign and I believe this was the original way to access the reserve before the RSPB moved to the farm buildings.

I set off on the very pleasant woodland trail and was soon enjoying being out amongst the trees on a bright and sunny spring day. Dave had given me some good instructions about where to look for the Nightingales here, but they were based on entering the trails via the farm - coming from the other side, it took me a long time to get my bearings and find the places he had mentioned, like the Heronry Trail, the bridge over the stream and Sweeney's View, but eventually I did reach all those places.

The first bird I heard was a Cetti's Warbler, but try as I might, I didn't manage to see it.   I continued to look around and eventually I came out at the farm buildings where I met a nice young lady who was the Assistant RSPB Warden.  I asked her about Nightingales and Cuckoos and she kindly gave me a map and pointed out a place where a bird had started singing loudly in the last couple of days.

So I set off with high hopes of finding it but the first bird I heard was a male Cuckoo, which was clearly nearby but mobile.  I caught a glimpse of it up in the trees and then it flew out calling to another tree about fifty metres away giving quite good views. That's where I took the best shots from this reserve today. I also had glimpses of a male Blackcap and a Chiffchaff but only managed record shots of them.

I later found the Nightingale spot as described by the Assistant Warden, and eventually the bird started being very vocal, but I didn't manage to get even a glimpse of it.  So I tried recording it's song instead.

I finished off my time here with a walk to the top of the hill, enjoying good views of the surrounding countryside on the way. It was still quite early when I'd finished and although I had a date with Robert to watch the F.A. Cup Final between our team, Manchester United, and Chelsea, it was a late kickoff at 5:15pm, so I had time to do something else.  Perhaps I mention at this point that today was also the celebrity royal wedding between Harry and Meghan Markle, but as that was of no interest to me, it didn't feature in any of my plans.



I set off for the Isle of Sheppey with the aim of visiting Elmley Nature Reserve again as well as the Capel Fleet Raptor Viewpoint on the Harty Ferry Road.  When I arrived at Elmley about 45 minutes later I noticed that there was a sign for a wedding on the entrance gate - the buildings on the reserve can obviously be hired as a wedding venue, so that was going to mean a lot of traffic along the main and only reserve track - not good for watching birds and other wildlife.

The first animals I stopped to photograph were three Brown Hares lazing in a stubble field, and for once they didn't run off the moment I turned the engine off.  I don't really understand the fascination with these particular creatures here as they are thin an rangy and not very attractive to my eyes.  However, there certainly is no mistaking them for rabbits.

There were quite a lot of chicks about on either side of the track with them mainly being Redshank, Lapwing and Coot.  This Redshank was carefully guarding one as it ran about feeding in the muddy edge to a pool and it would often let out a short burst of contact call.