Little Thetford .net

Local sportsman, John Rich, reports seeing a Hobby (Falco subbuteo) flying over Little Thetford last week. This is unusual as it is normally an April through September visitor, migrating from Africa, Europe and Central and East Asia. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds records only two thousand two hundred breeding pairs in the United Kingdom.

The Birds of Britain suggests this Kestrel sized bird, which settles in isolated clumps of trees around heath and farmland, can fly “… at a speed approaching 100 mph”. The Hobby feeds by transferring insects, often dragonfly, from its feet to its mouth during flight, hunting late into the evening.

See also a BBC wildlife article on the Hobby and a recent BBC report commenting on increasing numbers of birds of prey.

Peter Adolph at first attempted to register the trademark “Hobby” for his 1946 table football game. When this was refused, he settled on the Linnaean species name, subbuteo.

Whilst cycling along Sustrans route 11, Tony Shaw tells us he saw two Egrets.

Sustrans is the sustainable transport charity formed in 1983 from the 1977 Cyclebag network. Sustrans national cycle route 11 connects Harlow in Essex with Kings Lynne in Norfolk, passing Little Thetford towards Ely along the east bank of the River Great Ouse. Co-incidentally, the 50 km route from Cambridge to Ely, passing Little Thetford, is the same route said to have been used by World War II code breaker Alan Turing, whilst a fellow at King’s College, Cambridge. This part of the route is commemorated to this day as the Turing Trail relay.

The Little Egret (Egretta garzetta) is a member of the heron (Ardeidae) family new to the United Kingdom since 1989. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) classifies the Little Egret on its amber list noting that it is a rare breeding species. World-wide, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists its conservation status as of least concern. These fish eating birds are more generally found along the south and east coast of England although increasingly they are moving inland. These birds can be found all year round although more can be seen during autumn and winter.

Have you seen any rare or unusual wild-life in Little Thetford? Tell us about it and send us a picture if you can.

John Parish of Bedwell Hey farm saw a Corncrake (Crex crex) on his land during the harvest in September 2010. These small secretive moorhen like birds are rare in England and Wales, although larger numbers are found in Northern Ireland and western Scotland. The males have a distinctive rasping call.

This migratory species breed in the United Kingdom from mid-April and leave for sub-Saharan Africa in August – September. Their breeding grounds are meadows and arable farmland where progressively earlier and more mechanised harvesting since the 19th century has led to their European decline. Action by the RSPB and others since the late 1990’s has improved the population of these birds, although they are still a threatened species according to the RSPB; the IUCN red list of February 2011 lists the Corncrake as of least concern. There is a project co-ordinated jointly since 2001 by the RSPB, Natural England, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Pensthorpe Conservation Trust which began introducing Whipsnade Zoo bred Corncrakes to the Nene Washes, floodplain meadows in the Cambridgeshire Fens, east of Peterborough. Since then numbers have steadily increased.

When Bob Young first asked me to write this article I thought he had said “John Parish has seen a cornflake on his land and it flew away. Write an article for the village web site”. It took me a few moments to realise I had misheard him.

If you have an article for the web site, send it to us at: articles {at} LittleThetford [dot] org

John McCullough