Site Guide: The Forest of Dean
With any site guide comes the
choice to approach individual sites or rather, species. However, seeing as
nearly any stretch of woodland in this diverse area can potentially be
productive, I’ll instead deal with locating individual species. Normally I’d be
reticent to even write one of these but as we’ve been birding the area with
great regularity since 2003 and collected gen from wardens and in the field I
feel I can offer some valuable assistance.
1. Hawfinch.
Goshawk aside this is arguably the
forest speciality and best located in the first two hours of daylight on clear,
windless days between January and late March. For us there is no contender to
Parkend Church as the site for these, with 5 out of 5 trips in 2005 producing
views and it never taking more than 2 trips to connect in subsequent years.
Park at SO619077 in front of the church, accessed by turning right at the
crossroads as you approach the village from Lydney on the B4234 and then right
again. Walk downhill to the right of the lower
cemetery, walking parallel to the cemetery until you reach a clearer area where
a tree signposted “Parkend Beech” should be clear. The birds are best seen from
here, perching in treetops and flight-calling overhead. Excellent views can
often be obtained. Other sites for this species include the hornbeam trees
directly south of Speech House Hotel at SO619120 where birds forage more
covertly amid winter thrush flocks, often around the horse paddocks. Birds can
be encountered throughout the forest as flyovers.
2. Goshawk.
An easy species to see here from the now-famed raptor watchpoint at New Fancy
View, where up to five or six birds can be present in the air at one time in
displaying season when the weather is warm, bright and windless. February and
March are the peak months, with 8-11 and then 1-3 in the afternoon extremely
productive. Elsewhere, closer views can often be obtained over the coniferous
northern end of Nagshead RSPB reserve at around SO605098 and over the adjacent
Cannop Ponds though sightings are by no means guaranteed.
3. Lesser-spotted Woodpecker. The true bastard of
woodland birds, only ten pairs now survive in the forest according to the
forest warden, who knows the forest intimately. Most of these nest in a north
to south belt from the Beechenhurst Craft Centre down along the east side of
the Cannop Ponds to Parkend. The best site according to wardens is the dense,
damp deciduous woodland that borders the NE end of the upper Cannop Pond. Park
in the main car park at SO609107 and walk NW into the woodland between the pond
and the road to the car park. The woodland around the waterways at SO610112
hold at least two males, both of which we watched displaying for an hour in
2007. Another area which holds 1-2 pairs is the woodland block at SO611098.
Park at the Cannop Stoneworks off the B4234 and cross the bridge before
continuing across the cycle path and taking the path which holds mature
deciduous forest to the right. Birds call here regularly at dawn. Elsewhere,
the Hawfinch site at Parkend holds a pair but these seem to be easily put off
by the large number of visitors to the site so a dawn visit is probably
essential. Warm, sunny and windless
mornings are essential.
4. Willow Tit.
Several key sites exist, one being Brierley where birds are present but elusive
in late-winter and early spring in the mixed woodland just opposite the petrol
station at SO624150. Three other specific sites are recommended. One is the
woodland immediately around the feeding station at Cannop Stoneworks,
especially the very damp trees bordering the Brook where it leaves the weir at
SO608099. Another is a woodland ride accessed via a mud track from opposite an
old warehouse where several buses can be seen parked. Leave Parkend on the
B4234 and take the track on the right opposite this site, continue to park
where you reach a wooden gate. The ride beyond this gate at SO614086 is very
good. Another is a very localised area of Nagshead. Park in the car park here
and take the path beyond the visitor centre that runs with a coniferous block
to its left. On reaching a turn to the left, turn right into the woodland here
- birds frequent the older damp trees in between clusters of ivy. Elsewhere in
the forest, Willow Tit is regularly encountered around the Mallards Pike Lakes
early mornings, and in the low mixed woodland around Crabtree Hill (see later).
5. Crossbill.
A notoriously wide-ranging species and fluctuating species, this is very
difficult to provide any fixed sites for. In good years and mainly between
December and early February, the pines bordering the lower cemetery at Parkend
can be excellent; watch from the car park. The coniferous woodland at Brierley
has been our best site; the general area around the ridge (reached by turning
right at the petrol station and continuing straight and uphill towards an
obvious summit) producing annual sightings. New Fancy View, however, can often
be the best site as it commands such a wide-ranging view of coniferous forest
and birds are often noted calling overhead or moving between trees.
6. Turtle Dove:
One of the more elusive summer visitors, this species is now confined largely
to two sites in the Forest which represented its entire county population in
2007. The first is the low, mixed woodland around the summit of Crabtree Hill
at SO641134: the young pines S of the hill itself being best. Park off the
B4226 in the obvious car park at SO632123 and walk right under a hanging
stained window - turn left and continue straight until you intersect a cycle path.
Walk right along this obvious gravel path before taking the first laid path
turning left uphill. Calling birds can be heard from here on sunny days from 10th-12th
May and are best seen immediately following arrival. The other site is
Oakenhill Woods near Parkend at SO628077 to SO628079, best accessed by following
tracks from Parkend Church. 4-6 birds males were recorded here in 2007.
These are the chief
problem-posing species in the Forest for most birders which is why I have
accorded them so much time. However, a wide range of other reasonably
interesting species such as Woodcock, Tree Pipit, Redstart, Nightingale, Wood
Warbler, Pied Flycatcher, Marsh Tit, Lesser Redpoll and Brambling amongst
others can be encountered but with greater ease at a greater number of sites.
If any birders wish to know more or visitors would like a tour around, please
get in touch, February to May being the peak times.
On Just How Much A Tick Is Worth.
On the 9th
October, an American mega - a Buff-bellied Pipit to be precise - was located at
my local reservoir of Farmoor. Having a policy of not missing anything local
overruled my general instinct to avoid mass twitches of visually-unremarkable
birds, and so I went. The journey was painless and on arrival I easily reached
the spot, marked by a dense a human throng as I have ever seen outside of
Oxford’s Cornmarket Street. Simple directions were given and I was onto the
bird straight away; noting all the key features; in addition to the buff-front
there was the thin bill, lack of belly streaking and to me, a more pronounced
white fringing to the primaries. This said, the bird was unremarkable as was
its choice of location; a concrete causeway. Furthermore and to the point of
this article, it meant nothing. I had read up on Buff-bellied only weeks before
on noticing an “influx” into the UK. When it came, I went, and I saw. No chase,
no difficulty, no expectations, nothing. Just a tick, advancing the list
through the mid 270s, a result of leaving megas and even one-star rares to the
hoards. If it hadn’t been rare, I wouldn’t have blinked. The bird was shite.
On the 17th
October at 17:25, I was sitting on a Norfolk bus with the sun pouring in
grinning like a Cheshire cat on LSD. I had finally put to rest a bird that had
plagued me on and off for five or more years. It began in 2001 on my first trip
to Norfolk when, arriving at Walsey Hills, one had been seen 100 metres up the
track. Dad had felt ill and said he was sure we’d see one again. New autumns
and new school years; the bird was up the road at Slimbridge but the homework
was on the desk; now the bird was down at Clevedon but the parents were busy. I
watched them appear by the dozen in Cornwall and Dorset, looked at glowing,
perfect photos appearing on Surfbirds. I could only watch from a distance. This
year I determined to nail it. My first shot was Portland; the bird had been
present for days. A train journey took me to baking Weymouth, I braved a bus
full of obnoxious holidaying children with worse parents to reach the crowded
Bill. The bird had been seen, but not since first light. Five hours later,
sunburned and with only a tantalising glimpse, I retired beaten. A week on Fair
Isle saw the wind on the west; I watched Barred Warblers frolicking around
everywhere but apart from that, all was dead. Next came Cornwall. A howling
westerly meant that I should have been enjoying the hoards of petrels and skuas
passing Pendeen but like a stoic birder I persisted, traipsing Land’s End with
a tape lure for five hours in the hope my target would show. Again, too late;
this time, the wind was to blame. Uni came round and by mid October it was
looking impossible short of a trip to Scilly. A weekend in Norfolk proved that
it could be reached and I enjoyed the influx of Yellow-brows, even finding one
myself. The day I got home there it was - one at Warham Greens. Me and a fellow
birder had driven past it. Agony ensued. Essays were pressing. I put it off a
day; see how long-staying the bird was. It was pouring with rain. RBA showed
nothing. Then at 5, it had been seen. A weather check -yes! Solid rain all
night until morning, ensuring no night-time departure. After that, it would
probably stay a fourth day. Sod it all - I was going.
And this time the trains
worked; every single one was on time and I missed no connections. At
Sheringham, the bus driver even knew where Warham Greens was. The weather was
stunning - everything was in place. I arrived and saw cars everywhere. It must
be present. A dour Yorkshire birder gave sharp, precise directions. He didn’t
even mention the bird. I didn’t ask. I near ran the five hundred yards. Suddenly, sunlit tripods
everywhere. Quiet expectation but relaxed. Bird present but not for forty five
minutes going on a hour; some idiot photographer had flushed it. Sinking
feeling - flushed birds sometimes don’t come back for hours. Train to catch rises
up in back of mind. I haven’t got my binoculars, they’re being repaired. If the
bird does fly in, I’ll have to be damn good with the scope.
Movement. Brown. Everybody
moves. Left of the gorse bush. Shit. Scope flies round, pre-focused, past the
bush and there it is, glowing in the afternoon sun - its bizarre
bracken-striped head popping up, bittern-ish stripes running down its back.
Exactly like the books. Wryneck.
Surely not, though, there must be some mistake. It’s gone. I do the rounds of
the bushes and come back. Just missed it. Five minutes later a bird undulates
in - I’m onto first again - cracking views of the back end before its gone. I
move again - it’s ahead of me on the path, nobody else quick enough. Then the
killer view, I sneak up on it as it forages in the grass, showing those classic
serpentine movements of the neck as it feeds. Then it dives deep into a bush
and is gone.
It’s amazing the ups and
downs that a search for one bird can bring. As I sat in the afternoon Norfolk
sun, having realised my favourite country had produced the goods yet again and
that an encounter with an amazing bird had laid to rest five years of autumn
frustration, I was very happy. It meant something. The Ł40, early start, tube
station chaos, missed breakfast and unwisely abandoned workload are eclipsed,
both immediately and on my return to a sleeping house seven hours later, by
what this little moment meant. It was, twitching of course but what
satisfaction in tracking one of my childhood ambitions from the comfort of my
student house to the sunlit reality in Norfolk, where time seems to stand
still.
The joy of twitching is when
it’s a matter of choice, of pinning down a bird you really want from miles
away; of moving slowly through obstacles and all the moments of confidence and
doubt until finally you reach the deciding second when something moves and the
shout goes up - even then, will you get it? Twitching need neither be obsessive
or a destructive form of birding so long as the end result justifies the time,
physical and psychological energies taken to reach it. The pipit wasn’t only
too easy and too dull but I had never wanted to see it; I just went because it
was there. I even wondered whether the half-hour’s travel either way had been
worth it. The Wryneck was a different story. I was left with a feeling of
satisfaction that was much greater than putting tick to paper and more
importantly, a sense of achievement in overcoming the odds.
Northern Peru 2004: A Baby Once More.
Since 2003, I have remained
fairly confident that if I am to be let loose in any UK birding environment,
that I have a good chance of identifying the majority of species that come my
way. Invariably waders and distant shearwaters still even now scare me witless
at times but all in all – here and in France, my other birding country - I
could feel reasonably at ease.
In summer 2004, I leapt at
the chance to visit Northern Peru for a month, home to such mythical birds as the
Andean Condor, a vast black conglomeration which I first saw in
Gloucestershire’s Newent Birds of Prey Centre and the Hoatzin, a spectacular
and ancient species which still possesses a claw on its hind-wing. With over
one thousand species, South America is the most biodiverse continent on Earth
and by spending a week in Amazonia, I would be encountering a bewildering array
of new species. Aside from two or three Eurasian familiars, I would be
literally starting all over again.
On arrival with my Team Challenge
friends it soon became apparent that birding would have to be snatched in
between the array of other tasks and experiences that were to come. In Lima on
the first day alone we had to exchange money, hire taxis, book flights ahead
and visit the South American explorer’s club for trekking information.
Binoculars were generally cumbersome and took second place to my beloved camera
and so a new type of birding emerged, based on the memorised memo. Sightings
were often glimpses and observations with the naked eye and as the species
piled up, a journal of notes began. Often absurdly brief, they were my lifeline
to the world back home where I might later identify a fraction of what I was
taking in. In other words, I felt something like Darwin, Audobon and all those
other pioneers must have felt when they were the ones paving the way for the
field guides, as opposed to just memorising them.
The wonder of being a birding
baby is, of course, that you can enjoy everything, without assigning
qualifications. If I see a Nuthatch in the Forest of Dean at the back of my
mind is the thought, ashamed as I am to say it, that I’ll see plenty more and I
better start tracking down that Hawfinch whilst early morning is still on my
side. Stepping off the plane into the sweltering heat of jungle city Iquitos, I
prioritised nothing and enjoyed more. I didn’t know that the three vultures of
which I noted the following: "Vulture sp 1 – all black, long broad wings –
large flocks"; "Vulture sp 2 – hawk like, tail held straight, two-tone
brown from below, head paler than body"; "Vulture sp 3 – black with
white wing flash on tip, short thick wings, thin all-black head" were in
fact two species, the first and second descriptions both Turkey Vultures; the
last and more useful one to American Black. Neither did I know that I would see
hundreds more. In my baby state, I just enjoyed them for their novelty. Soon I
was desperately noting everything with varyingly useful field notes, even birds
which just swooped overhead as I dodged homicidal rickshaws in this chaotic
city. I found on returning home that the majority of my notes were to be
hopelessly inadequate, with the number of similar species in South America
mocking most of my ID efforts. However, they sometimes paid off. A “pigeon sp
with ochre-red front, small, grey-head, perched on tin roof [!]” turned out to
be a Ruddy Ground Dove whilst later, on a river trip, a “Heron, size of night
heron with mottled rufous-brown plumage all over and barred pattern… crept up
branch by water” was revealed to be the more elusive Rufescent Tiger Heron –so
on and so forth. It was great to be a birding baby once more and enjoy without
knowledge.
A lot of the magic
in travelling is when the myth becomes reality. The more important the
myth and the more you think that you’ll never realise it, the more amazing that
moment when it happens. Peru held several of these moments – the ones where the
rest of the world around you closes off and it’s just you and the bird, your
concentration just there, your mind on nothing else. First was the hummingbird.
It was nearly 40° and I was working in an Amazonian village for the project
phase of the trip, carrying water to where we were assembling the toilets,
sliding in the mud and probably dehydrated. Suddenly time stopped as a bright
blue hummingbird shot in and hovered feet away from me. Like a chimera, it was
gone in seconds. I never saw another like it. Like with most of my notes,
“hummingbird sp – v.small, all violet blue, dark bill” was never identified.
All such moments came as brief flashes of calm and beauty in the middle of
doing something busy and exhausting, often at amazingly unexpected times.
Having spent two days sailing
down the Amazon, an amazing two days of respite which saw my most frenzied
note-taking of the trip – we were white-water rafting near Tarrapoto in low
cloud forest, the richest bird habitat on the planet. We had just smashed
through a wave when the guide casually pointed out some vast, eagle-like birds
crashing around clumsily in the treetops. “Very old bird” he said in broken
English, “ancient”. They were Hoatzins, too heavy to take off after their
punishing diet of dense foliage. Like relics of a bygone age they screeched
around our heads and for one moment, I forgot my precarious surroundings. Weeks
later we were climbing in the Andes – yet another change of scene on this
amazing expedition – and altitude sickness was rife. I was nearly delirious and
a lot of the group has already turned back down the hill when I put my head up
to catch my breath. Vast, black, white-maned, an Andean Condor breached the
skyline, moved overhead without a wing-beat. No one else saw it. I felt lonely,
but special. It gave me the strength to finish the walk. aviHavingI was feeling
the surge of happy disbelief you often see in young children when they can
couple what they have read about with what they are seeing for the first time.
For me, the condor was a link with my very first awe at a bird, many years
before. In a country where everything from the transport and trees to the
people was novel, here was something both new and familiar.
These days the search for new
species is often tarnished by the shadow of listing for listing’s own sake and
of those who seek new sights purely because of what they represent on paper.
For me and surely for a lot of birders and travellers who seek new sights each
year, though, we’re looking to realise myths in reality and see how they
measure up. The Taj Mahal, Machu Pichu, the Bengal Tiger, the Andean Condor… We
see them because they’re there and because they start off as stories and
pictures. The brilliant thing is, of course, that the reality and the
priveledge that goes with realising the myth is often the best of all.
