A Tale of Two Knepps Visits!

 Knepp Estate 

Sunday 5th May 2024

Ashdown Bird Group

9 members present

A strange visit to the Knepp Estate with some spectacular birding but a poor show from some of the usual stars. 

The white storks took centre stage today as they put on a magnificent display for us.

• They could be seen flying around us, virtually everywhere we went .

Courtesy of Phil Aylen

• We also got splendid views of them on the nest at various places on the reserve.

Courtesy of Phil Aylen

These birds have really transformed the Knepp Estate providing a superb backdrop to what was already a magnificent habitat.  

Today they showed up in fabulous numbers and stole the show. 

• The Tamworth pigs provided the most amusing moments of the day as the mother and piglets enjoyed the sunshine - smack bang in the middle of one of the most popular nightingale territories!

Courtesy of Phil Aylen

Courtesy of Martin Jeffree

• I finally managed to see my first cuckoo of the year.  It was a the top of a distant bare tree.  Phew!  Despite at least 10 encounters with cuckoos this year a sighting had eluded me till now.

Courtesy of Phil Aylen

Now for the down side of the visit.

• There was very little happening with the turtle doves apart from one time when we heard one purring.   Jem and I questioned whether or not we had seen the bird fly away when others in the group called it as a woodpigeon. 
• Incredibly we didn't see any nightingales and we had to settle for one singing male near where the pigs were sunbathing.  On a normal year we would expect to hear/see them in at least 6 territories.
• It was nearly as bad with lesser whitethroats.  I missed out on the only sighting and we only heard them a couple of times when, normally, we would expect to hear/see them all over the reserve.

Martin and I returned to Knepp a few days later, on Friday 10th May 2024, to take part in a turtle dove/nightingale/ lesser whitethroat survey along with about 20 other volunteers.  This time our results were much more like the normal situation. with at least 6 sightings of turtle dove, 7 or 8 nightingale territories were found including a very clear but brief sighting of a singing nightingale in one of them and the usual high number of lesser whitethroats were seen and/or heard.  All of this was on our patch so the final survey numbers for the whole group would have been much higher.  

Why the difference you might ask? Well we did start much earlier - 05.30 rather than 09.30 and there were hardly any visitors today, unlike on Sunday when the reserve was so busy.

A very good trip on Sunday where the white storks were able to grab the headlines - deservedly!  Normal service was restored on Friday!

2024 species count=170