Trip Report: Stone Curlews at Tidgrove Warren (8 May 2022)
Many thanks to Keith Betton for organising a morning’s stone curlew event in the tranquil setting of Tidgrove, a small private estate in north-east Hampshire. For the last 25 years the farmland habitat has been improved and rewilded and now provides breeding habitats for increasing numbers of rare birds including stone curlews and lapwings.
Fifteen of us met similar numbers from Basingstoke RSPB and North-east Hampshire RSPB for an idyllic morning: introductory talk from Keith with coffee, stroll around the estate watching and hearing nesting red kites, house martins, lapwing chicks, willow warblers, yellow hammers and greenfinch etc all with Keith’s knowledgeable commentary, a rather frantic rush to finally see a stone curlew and then lunch by a beautiful lake whilst sitting on daisy covered grass, around a boating lodge! And just to add to the almost dreamlike quality of the morning, half way round the walk we met the owner, Raleigh, who showed us the excavation site of a medieval royal palace which was used by the Norman kings for sporting pursuits and as a convenient stop over between their lands in England and France. Just one of those things you have in your grounds! Everyone was also impressed with the number of hares that the estate supports and just how close they were happy to come to us. Raleigh’s assertion that it is kinder to kill hares with a rifle than a shotgun caused a collective sharp intake of breath however!
To return to the stone curlews, we peered at various fields of carefully prepared habitat, not just bare, stony, earth strips but adjacent strips with a bit more low, patchy green vegetation, with flints for camouflage. We had no luck but did see lapwings and their chicks. The last field to try was right next to where we’d parked our cars and where one of the other groups had seen one earlier. We scanned across the valley for two piles of stones that someone had placed 20 feet apart as a marker. I expect the piles looked large when he made them but from a distance, they were invisible in a stony field! So, Keith decided that we needed to go closer. Just as we were positioned by a hedge the group still on the hill saw one leave its nest as we approached. We rushed back up the hill and I saw it returning to its nest but the others didn’t. Luckily, one of the leaders went back to the cars and the bird moved again, even stopping to preen, and, with a bit of a panic to share scopes, everyone saw the bird before it returned to its nest!
To round off the day the three of us is my car then went to a beautiful old silk mill on the River Test for tea and cakes whilst watching trout in the river. Birding days out don’t get much more relaxed than that!
by Rebecca Dunne