Recent Activities


Well, the recording season is likely to be somewhat delayed this year! We are currently snowed in and soon will be burning the furniture to keep warm...! However, there have been reports of frogspawn in Kent. Frogspawn is typically first reported around Valentine's Day, although Dunkirk doesn't usually get any spawn until well into March. This year, I'm just hoping to be able to find the pond in March!!

Other Southern counties have been reporting the first adders. Although I have had to postpone several adder related field-trips, some activities have taken place. Below is a summary.

20th Feb: Coxhill. Despite the bitterly cold weather I managed to convince Erin (my five year old daughter) that climbing the downs at Dover would be a good way to spend the morning. So together with Kevin, Bill and Michelle we reviewed two important adder sites at Dover. One of these sites (Coxhill) has been monitored by Kevin Johnson for several years. The other site is located at Western Heights. Western Heights is known locally to be an important adder site, but there has never been a formal reptile survey undertaken. Hopefully this year we can collect some observations for the database. This is particularly important since the site is threatened by construction of a new hotel.

10th Feb: Riverside Country Park. This is the only known adder site on the North Kent coast. We have a good idea of relative population size in two key areas, and now hope to explore further along the coast to see if we can expand our knowledge of the adder's range. The day was spent checking on refugia and repositioning tins and felt in new survey areas.

5th - 6th Feb: Herpetofauna Worker's Meeting, Keele. Froglife did an excellent job organising this important annual event. There were several very interesting talks on various herpetofauna related subjects. There was even a talk by yours truly on the 'Adders in Decline' project! More details on the event and a summary of the talks can be found here.

1st Feb: Together with volunteers and staff from Kent High Weald Project, we set up two reptile survey projects. These were Cinderhill Wood and Barnett's Wood. Adder are believed to occur at or near to each of these sites.

30th Jan: Kemsing Down. A number of tins and roofing felt were set up on the downs and in other nearby suitable habitat. Adder have previously been reported from near Kemsing, but never from the reserve itself. Fingers crossed for this year!

27th Jan: Shorne Wood Country Park. Several keen amphibian workers visited this important great crested newt site to plan a strategy for this year's survey work. The site scored highest in last year's KRAG/Pond Warden GCN survey. Rather intriguingly we also had a report of adder from one of the park rangers. Shorne Wood is within an area where we believe adder occurred historically. I'm hoping to undertake some follow-up surveys this year to see if I can confirm the sighting.

Posted: Mon - February 28, 2005 at 10:44 am        

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