FLYING AROUND THE FARLEIGHS WITH RAY MORRIS
LATE AGAIN!
The usual editor’s email arrived saying (and I paraphrase and extrapolate here) ‘you’re late again with your article so can we have it yesterday please’, prompting a minor panic because I’ve been far too busy to give it any thought. So, in a lightbulb moment I thought I’d write a little about what I have been doing far too busily, after all, it does concern things flying around The Farleighs in the sense of them being outside it.
I suspect it’s a long time since many of you have heard a Turtle Dove, let alone seen one flying around The Farleighs. I took this photo in my garden many years ago and I’ve not seen or heard one here since.
The reason for the bird’s precipitous ninety-eight percent decline since the 1970s is intensive farming – herbicides denuding farms of agricultural weeds (the doves only eat seeds) and the removal of tall, bushy hedgerows and scrubby corners (where the doves nest) in the interests of efficiency. Being shot for sport as they migrate through the Mediterranean to the Sahel region south of the Sahara accounts for probably tens of millions more.
But the species is being thrown a last-minute lifeline by farmers, particularly in Kent where a third of the country’s turtle dove breeding population is now found. There has also been an EU moratorium on hunting observed by France, Spain and Portugal, although notoriously only honoured in its breach by Malta and Cyprus.
Members of the Marden Farmer Cluster (which extends across the Low Weald from Frittenden to Coxheath and Hunton) are providing supplementary seed to help them quickly get into breeding condition in May when they return from migration. Field margins are lightly tilled to expose wildflower seeds in the soil, while hedges are being encouraged to grow tall and thick again for nesting, helping a myriad of other species as well, including the essential pollinators.
To gauge the success of this help we started putting colour rings on the doves in 2022 so they could be individually identified, monitoring their use of the extra seed with trailcams on the feed sites. This demonstrated a definite impact on the doves’ feeding and, along with sightings sent in by volunteers via the Marden Wildlife Facebook page, we were able to begin building a picture of the local population. But what it didn’t tell us was where the doves were spending their time or where they were nesting and roosting etc. Significantly, it didn’t tell us if or how they were using the features of the local farmland that farmers were being paid to put in place to help them.
Last year, therefore, with support from Kent Wildlife Trust and a special licence from the British Trust for Ornithology, we fitted three doves with tiny GPS trackers so we could follow their movement in detail for a month – to a level of accuracy of just a few metres.
The data received proved very interesting and instructive. While one dove behaved exactly according to the book, staying near its supposed breeding area of just a kilometre or two. The other two re-wrote it, travelling around the area as far south as Hemsted Forest, east to Headcorn and west to Collier Street, visiting places where local people had no idea they were. So, do these timid doves visit The Farleighs? Are they covertly breeding here? We may find out this year as KWT has secured funding for ten more GPS tags and we’ll be working with an MSc researcher from the University of Kent – who is also tracking nightingales as they tend to share the same habitat as turtle doves.
So far this year, four of the original five doves we ringed have returned and been caught on camera. Not only has this provided important scientific data about their survival, but it has also provided a glimpse of their social behaviour, as this post on the Marden Wildlife Facebook page illustrates.
Not for nothing are turtle doves synonymous with true love! Who knows, this year we may discover them Flying around The Farleighs too!