When I was at school almost all my birding was done in the local area, other than a few trips with my school wildlife club and family holidays around Britain. Over the years I have traveled much further afield in search of birds but right now I find myself back where I grew up, with travel becoming ever more restricted my birding has become more focussed on the areas I birded when I was much younger. This has given me the opportunity to rediscover local bird hotspots as well as find scarce local birds that I haven’t seen in the area for many years. Until today the standout highlight of my old local patch along the Darent Valley in Kent has been Lesser Spotted Woodpecker (Birding Walk in the Darent Valley) along with Little Owl and my old favourite, Corn Bunting. On my walks in the area of the past few weeks I have visited a spot that used to host Woodcock in harsh winters but although I have searched hard I didn’t find any; until today. Although I didn’t succeed in getting any photos it was really great to track down this bird and enjoy taking some photos of more common birds.

On a gloomy day getting photographic opportunties wasn’t easy but a nice Song Thrush sat blasting its song full of mimicry from the top of a tree, giving me a private performance. In fact an unusual number of Song Thrushes were singing along the course of my walk; they certainly added some joy to an otherwise dismal time.

These Song Thrushhes were just a warm up for what was to come in terms of thrushes. I saw at least eight Mistle Thrushes along the course of my walk including two pairs having a territorial dispute with each other, easily detected by their noisy rattling call. Large numbers of Redwings were feeding in berry trees and calling from treetops everywhere and a couple of Fieldfares hot in on the action too. However, the only other thrush I got a decent shot of was a smart male Blackbird, one of many, again very obvious from their activity scoffing down berries on hawthorns trees.

I found it interesting that Song Thrushes are so vocal at the moment but Blackbirds are not, uttering just contact and alarm calls. In terms of noisy birds there were plenty of Ring-necked Parakeets around, a species that was absent here when I was young. Another introduced species that I am seeing in this area a lot now is Egyptian Goose and today I saw three pairs of these colourful aliens.

Another species that I would have been very excited to see in this area when I was young is Little Egret. Having colonized UK of it’s own accord it is now a frequent sighting around the country but even so a total of eight birds was a little surprising for this area.

A lot of alder trees along the Darent Valley provide food for flocks of Siskins at this time of the year and I found a nice group of over thirty birds to watch for some time although with the grey skies the photographs showed nothing more than little grey dots! Flocks of Long-tailed Tits and Blue Tits were everywhere and by investigating a church yard I found a Coal Tit feeding in the yew trees; the distribution of Coal Tits in this area is almost entirely determined by yew trees in church yards.

Easier to take photos of were a small group of Black-headed Gulls hanging around pools in a wet field, along with a subadult Herring Gull.

My interlude with a Woodcock came when I investigated some ditches lined with alder trees around an old watercress bed. This area always turned up some interesting birds in winter when I was young and it was very pleasing to find this impressive species in a place I last saw them back in the 1980s. A few steps further along the footpath and I was looking across some fishing lakes where a small group of Tufted Duck had been joined by a make Common Pochard; an unusual bird at this location. More usual were Great Crested Grebes.

An overflowing lake had turned the footpath into a mudbath so I decided to walk back home via another churchyard and some fields to look for Little Owl and Corn Bunting.

In fact by the time I reached home I had seen quite a decent collection of birds; a surprise or two along the way as well as some of the local specialities. Under the current situation I am sure lots of birders will be walking around their local areas and may be able to find something interesting too.