Twitching in Kent - Eleanora's Falcon

Tuesday 31 May 2022

Worth, Kent

Martin and I travelled deep into the Kent countryside today to twitch the Eleanora's Falcon - a "lifer" for me and a UK first for Martin.

We met up, as usual, this morning to carry out our respective tasks with other friends in the Weir Wood Conservation Group.  Obviously the hot topic of conversation was the continued presence of the Eleanora's falcon  at Worth, way over in NE Ken and it set in motion the idea of  twitching it. Time was of the essence, however, as tomorrow wasn't a good time for Martin and there was no guarantee that the bird would still be there then. At this time of year - the breeding season - there is a limit to what we can do at Weir Wood and, thankfully, we had more volunteers than we really needed so we left things in the very capable hands of our fellows and headed off .  

The effort was well rewarded!

 

When we arrived in the area, the RSPB group had the event organised to a tee and we were soon directed to the appropriate field to park the car.  

 

A 20 minute walk saw us in position at Pinnock Wall, overlooking Great Wood.

The Eleanora's falcon  was already giving a remarkable aeronautical display to the small group of assembled birders.   

• It spent most of the time flying between the marshes and Great Wood, at times flying high, at other times swooping low and occasionally passing just overhead much to our entertainment and delight.

courtesy of Martin Jeffree

courtesy of Martin Jeffree

courtesy of Martin Jeffree

courtesy of Martin Jeffree

The Eleanora's falcon wasn't the only bird we had come to see - there was also a red-footed falcon on site too.  Today this bird was hunting in the area on the opposite side of the wood between the car park and Minnis Farm.  We had looked for it briefly after we arrived and we had some distant but inconclusive views of a possible match.  We now returned to the car park to have another, more thorough, look.  This was a much more difficult ID than the Eleanora's falcon simply because the bird was more distant and there were problems caused by the heat haze.

• Eventually we got our quality sighting.  A nearby, female, birder spotted a likely candidate on the wires in the distance.  However, the bird had flown off by the time she had alerted us.  Thankfully, I soon picked it up in flight and we able to track it in our scopes and make the ID.  It eventually landed on a post and then on the wires again and we were able to confirm our initial ID.  By this time several other birders and RSPB staff had joined us so to share the enjoyment.

courtesy of Ray Allen and Facebook

• The third falcon on this site was much easier to see and ID - there were several very obliging hobbies around too.

Minutes after we departed the Worth area the heavens opened and there was a huge downpour - how lucky was that for us!

Another great twitch with a lifer and a year first to boot. 

 Year total - 194

• Eleonora's Falcon is a very rare bird in Britain. A true mega that has been recorded only seven times before and one that does not hang around, as all previous records have involved birds seen only on the day of discovery. You have to go immediately or just forget it. This has bestowed on the falcon a somewhat iconic status in birding circles.

• Eleonora's Falcons  breed on islands in the Mediterranean, especially Greece, which holds two thirds of the population, and are also found on the Canary Islands as well as off the coast of Spain and Morocco. Their winter homes are in Madagascar, surrounding islands in the southern Indian Ocean and coastal southeast Africa.

• Similar in plumage to a Hobby, they come in two colour morphs, pale and dark.The bird found today being a pale morph. They are a tad larger than a Hobby, with longer wings and tail, browner upperparts, are more buff on their streaked underparts and their flight, when not hunting is more languid, although they possess similar acrobatic, high speed flying skills and hunting methods to a Hobby. Dragonflies and small birds are their exclusive diet, both of which are caught on the wing and in the case of dragonflies often also eaten while still flying. They breed colonially and delay breeding to coincide with the autumn migration of small passerines which are intercepted as they approach the falcon's breeding cliffs. Uniquely, some of the small birds captured are kept alive, have their flight feathers removed and are imprisoned in cracks in the breeding cliffs, the falcon returning, often  days later, to kill the bird and feed it to its young.

courtesy of Black Audi Birding