Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Voles at risk from kestrels – but cats are a greater threat
Hovering over fields, downs and motorway embankments looking for insects and small mammals, the kestrel lives up to its old country name of windhover and is probably Britain’s most common and widespread falcon.
Mice, voles, shrews and quite large birds such as starlings, blackbirds and collared doves may all fall prey, but the one photographed here which looks like a female was catching grasshoppers and other small insects – no doubt valuable diet supplements.
Kestrels hover by flying into and at the same speed as the wind with the air passing over their wings providing the lift they need. With incredibly keen eyesight they can spot prey from quite high up and they also have the ability to see ultra-violet light, useful when looking for voles as their urine glows in UV light.
The main threat to field or short-tailed voles in my garden comes not from kestrels but cats. Voles are beautiful little creatures with rich brown coats. They eat insects as well as grasses and store up food for the winter in underground burrows. Field mice storing hazel and cobnuts fare better than the voles as they scurry under a prickly butcher’sbroom whenever a cat approaches.
When I was young we often found beautiful garden tiger moths. They seem to have become more scarce in recent years, but a closely related species has now arrived in Kent, the Jersey tiger.
Once confined to the Channel Islands and the south-west coast they remain nationally scarce but one was seen in Forest Hill, south-east London just over 10 years ago and they have since spread eastwards along the Kent coast.
They are beautiful large moths with black forewings striped with white and hindwings in shades of orange, red and yellow. Like many other moths and butterflies they are attracted to buddleia. Their caterpillars feed on nettles, plantain, borage and many other herbs.
Last month I expressed concern about the effect pollution might have on a population of our native whiteclawed crayfish in a local chalk stream. Thanks to a group of local naturalists who first reported the problem, the Environment Agency were able to stop the pollution at the source and some crayfish appear to have survived.
Butterflies have been having a relatively good year so far. Marbled whites and gatekeepers have been common, particularly the latter with flights of five or six seen around nectar-bearing plants such as marjoram. Adonis and chalk-hill blues can be seen on the chalk downs in better numbers than the last two years.
One of the butterfly stars of recent years has been the comma, once very scarce but now abundant. But how did it get its name? When its wings are closed they are dark and bear a very visible white comma.
I’m hoping for some good warm weather later this month when woodland rides will be at their best. Some of the rides in Blean and Covert Woods can be spectacular at this time of year – lined with heather, brambles and beautiful stands of devil’s bit scabious, rosebay willowherb and goldenrod, attracting red admiral, peacock and in some years painted lady butterflies.
Scabious was once believed to be a possible cure for bubonic plague and other skin infections – the word scabious comes from the Latin word to scratch. It has a foreshortened root, hence the belief that the devil took a bite out of it as he was jealous of its success as a cure. August is often the month for flower shows.
Once there was usually a children’s prize for the best wild flower collection but the practice died out 50 or 60 years ago as many flower-rich grass verges were sprayed to extinction and people feared for the future of our wild flowers.
Children have sharp eyes and botanists and others with a love of wild flowers would examine the collections to see if there was anything rare. On occasions the late Dr Francis Rose was one of those, a remarkable man who knew so much that he never had the time to publish all his knowledge. Now the Kent Botanical Group and Field Club are gathering together as much of his research as they can. He died in July 2006, aged 84.