Why bird the Medway?

"This Blog is an attempt to piece together some random thoughts on the more common birds found about the Medway estuary, part of the North Kent marshes... I have limited myself to just the southern shore through necessity (I decided to no longer own my own vehicle), so watch routinely between the head of the estuary at St. Mary's Island, Chatham, to the estuary mouth just above Queenborough Spit-some eighteen or so miles as the seawall rat scuttles."

Now that blog introduction really does need a little more explanation.

Back in 2005 I quit my then job and straight away received an unprompted offer that would take me outside Kent. Sure, it wasn't exactly passport and visa stuff, just six and a half miles over the border into east Sussex, but I was out of here.

By then I'd already lost the national (twitching) bug, way back in 1989 thanks to the behaviour at the Norfolk Red-breasted Nuthatch. A lot of the 90s saw me local patching and learning how to ring. For a while I'd still travel to see a new species, one that I wanted to see, but after a few years even that failed to incentivise me.

Famously in 2003 I drove the vol wardens from Sandwich down to see the Dungeness Audouin's Gull where, declining all requests to even look at the bird for a nano-second, I went beach-combing instead while they had gripping views; to this day, still haven't seen one, still don't think my life has suffered for lack of seeing one. You're probably realising I'm not your normal birder.

During the eight years I was working in Sussex I was lucky enough to be chosen to help lead on ringing courses/expeditions in Asia, the Indian sub-continent, the Middle East and South America. All of which helped to kill off any desire to travel the world looking at birds. I knew absolutely nothing about the lives of these birds, and a few days/weeks with them didn't see me learn that much about them.

In 2013 I moved back to my house in North Kent and realised it was time to look on the doorstep. Because my doorstep is less than 800 metres from the estuary seawall as a crow flies, so if I couldn't get enough enjoyment from home I'd need shooting. Had the house for 32 years. yet never really patched from it (Before when I went 'local', it really wasn't; it was eighteen miles away as the crow drives, out on the Isle of Grain.)

I'd accepted now I was in my early fifties, it would be all downhill- why wait for the decrepitude of retirement to finish off my eyes and ears, why not just semi-retire now and do my retirement birding early?

Of course, by limiting myself to a small range of local birds, I still had to do my homework. All part of the plan. Thirty years building a birders' library, now was the time to get around to reading it properly.

And that's where the wheels came off. I really thought what was written on the Medway already would be useful. Wrong.

Let's take Redshank.

Trawling through the bird reports and WeBS results, a weird pattern emerged. I charted out peak monthly counts in excel, and once graphed you could see no real need for specific numbers- anyone trying to draw a picture for this whole estuary really wouldn't get much of a clue from what existed up to then:

And that obvious abrupt decline in numbers in the mid-nineties was mirrored in nearly all the wader species.

In recent years, peak maxima were appalling- Redshank petering out to double figures for the whole estuary in February? By the time of the 2011 county report came out, it was felt necessary to comment on these peak maxima tables:

"...birds feeding at low tide can be counted at roost sites within these estuaries (the Medway and the Swale). However... it can be difficult to get all areas counted each month, particularly in the Medway where a boat is needed to access some of the high tide roosts which occur on islands. Because of the difficulty of access, it is likely that some counts presented in the tables underestimate the true totals..."

Really? Can't get three figure counts of Redshank in February? Had Kent birders run up the white flag?

The BTO had picked up on those abrupt changes in the 1990s, and investigated. Their findings were published in BTO Report 400:

They had to include some statistical modeling because the Medway WeBS counts were all too often incomplete. And a grand job they did too. But whenever I read it in the back of my mind were the words of the famous statistician Donald Paul, 'all models are wrong, but some of them are useful'. The Medway should be one of the top ten estuaries in the UK. Just how useful was that partial data they were modeling from?

From early 2013 my personal goals came together.

To carry out routine counts
- in clearly defined areas between the head (Upnor Reach) and the mouth (the misleadingly named reach 'Sheerness Harbour') from the shore
- three times a month (once in each ten day period) between late June and early April and twice a month minimum during the rest of the year
- at the same time of the tide (just prior to covering on the rising tide).

I decided I was counting not for just a number, but to understand what was goes on. Understand behaviour better, understand movements through the estuary, understand movements inside the estuary. These first few years have been eye-openers.

The next aim came as an add-on following an exchange with one of the county society executives. Long story short, we plough our own furrows (actually they told me I wasn't welcome in their furrow), but was there something I could do that could help them? Taken some time coming (another long story), but here it is- this blog. Though written mainly for myself, this might hopefully encourage a few more visiting birders that their records could be extremely useful via Birdtrack or similar, being important supplementary data to all those surveys we all sit back thinking are doing what's needed to conserve the estuary.

I have been outspoken on local WeBS for many years now. IMHO it really has to be done correctly. The instructions state clearly it is imperative counts are co-ordinated on large waterbodies. If any body of water gets covered by some counters out earlier than others, there will be a false result- some will count uncovered mud, some will count covered. And if such counts are out by days, you can have such things as 'weekend effects' (different roosts favoured as recreational traffic on the islands increases/decreases) or spring roosts being counted instead of the many neaps. Not just WeBS, this can and does happen on Low Tide Counts (as I was told during the last LTC here on the Medway, 'had to come back later than suggested to count as tide covering this bit, because there were no waders here earlier').

As much of a p in the a some think me, some form of beta testing has been needed here for quite a few years. The estuary has been under-recorded up to now (2013). Fact of the matter, for many waders, even the latest available WeBS published maxima remain astonishingly low (here's Redshank again):

So, whilst piecing together my internal narratives on inter-tidal movements of the commonest species around the mudflats, I thought of a blog. Birders visiting the estuary might be encouraged into providing additional counts and records in formats that can be more usefully interpreted: Where does one site end and another begin in the flippin' great estuary? Why should I bother with tidal state? Surely any count of Redshank at the start of the winter is about the same as the end? (all genuine comments made to me of late).

All counts are useful. Some counts are more useful than others. And your counts could be the most useful.

Finally, remember I view the estuary through rose-tinted spectacles. The southern shore really isn't about 'comfy' birding; no hides, plenty of disturbance, often 'scope views of specks only, timing blown out the water (pun intended) by low pressure systems. Poor access. (Good news? The northern shore is even worse!) Over the years it just hasn't appealed as readily as the honeypot reserves available to the general birder in North Kent. It only has a few accessible freshwater scrapes and pools shore side. The estuary is officially deemed 'inland' according to BTO habitat descriptions- and they're right, it doesn't really 'work' as a coastal site for passage movements. It's never going to give up as many rares and scarces as your Cliffe and your Oares. Nevertheless, it still appeals to a few of us and, perhaps, will to a few more in the future.

And if you do now decide to visit and think you've bumped into me out on the wall, I'm that miserable looking one who, if asked 'anything about?', will bore you rigid on the highly exciting uber-common birds like Redshank. You have been warned :-)

Enjoy the blog.