The Watchers

The Devil’s Punch Bowl is one of my old haunts and it is always a great delight to return here in the company of Tony Davies, who used to warden this patch in his younger days. This morning we are watching the activity of a pair of stonechats, the birds feeding over an area of heather and short turf. The male is alert, perching prominently and remaining close to his mate, who is making short flights down to the ground to collect insects for a brood of chicks that we have yet to locate. 

It seems that we are not the only watchers with an interest in the stonechats this morning. Off to our left the bright sunshine catches the back of a fox, his coat intense and vibrant in the flattering light. The fox is hunting, working the heather patches methodically and dipping in and out of sight. Soon he has worked his way closer towards the stonechats, the birds still unaware of his presence. It is not until the female stonechat makes a longer flight with a beak full of food – the flight which should see her return to the nest – that they become aware of his presence. The female breaks off abruptly and flies up to the top of a bush, the male joining her and the two alarming at the intruder.

Unphased, or perhaps even encouraged by the response he is getting, the fox continues to search the heather. Stonechats are thin on the ground this year, no doubt a consequence of the harsh winter weather, and Tony is keen not to see a brood of young lost to a predator. Tony stands and walks towards the fox in the hope that it will move away. After a brief stand-off, the fox slinks away and can be seen disappearing down the valley.

Twenty minutes later and the stonechats have settled back into their routine, the female feeding and the male perching sentinel. We watch as the female breaks these foraging flights with the longer flight back to the nest, the location of which is in the centre of a broad patch of heather. The nest will be well hidden and, we hope, far enough into the heather to avoid the unwelcome attentions of the fox, should he return.

You'll have to take my word for it - this is the Stonechat nest, beautifully hidden.

Scolded by a restless bird

Yet another damp morning saw me out in the Brecks and on my way to my pair of crayfish traps. These are part of a monitoring programme being operated on the River Lark; the traps put in place for twenty-four hours, once every two weeks. On this occasion my walk in towards the river drew a series of harsh, scolding calls from one of the scattered bushes; each agitated call resonating and reminiscent of a pair of small pebbles being struck together. The source of such harassment was a male stonechat, resplendent in his finery – a black head, warm russet underparts and a beautiful white collar that curved down from his nape and around between the edge of his wing and his proud chest. This nervy little bird was a welcome sight on such a miserably damp morning.

The stonechat used to be a familiar sight over much of Britain, favouring the scruffy uncultivated habitats that made up a sizeable portion of the landscape in those halcyon days towards the end of the Nineteenth Century. Sadly, as land was claimed for agriculture and forestry, so the stonechat was squeezed out of its former haunts and vast tracts of eastern England were left without this delightful bird. Here, within Norfolk, that great champion of Breckland, W. G. Clarke, reported stonechats breeding on my local patch – Barnham Cross Common (just on the southern edge of Thetford). That was in 1937, yet by 1946 the species had been lost completely as a breeder from the whole of Norfolk. The cold winter of 1940 and the aforestation of so many Breckland heaths had both taken their toll; it was not until 1961 that breeding was again confirmed within the county. I mention severe winter weather here because the stonechat is largely insectivorous, something that is fairly unusual in a resident, and this makes it susceptible to periods of pronounced bad weather. Unable to find sufficient invertebrate prey, overwinter mortality can be high. Fortunately, with the capacity for three broods of chicks each year, the reproductive potential can help populations bounce back after a difficult period.

The recovery of the stonechat population within Norfolk, from its low point of the 1940s and 1950s, is something of a recent phenomenon and even now the population probably only numbers 50 or so breeding pairs. These are centred on the Brecks and on the coastal heathlands. While it seems unlikely that the species will ever recover its full former breeding range, there is every hope that the breeding population here in Norfolk will increase further. Maybe the scolding calls of this fidgety and restless bird will be heard more often from suitable patches of uncultivated land.