4. Wildlife 1970/80 Part 1

With most of the marshes going under the plough and Dutch Elm Disease in the 1970’s, this led to a severe loss of nesting sites for some birds. Lapwings, Rooks and Jackdaws are just three of the more commonly seen birds to suffer.

Almost every grass field on the marshes would have a few Lapwings nesting on them every April. When ploughed the fields would be planted in wheat or barley. The Lapwings still made their nest on the fields but the sparse lines of the cereal crops meant that their nests were much more exposed than in a grass field, this made it much easier for Crows to find the Lapwings’ nests. It was also common practice, in those days, to roll cereal crops in the spring, which completely destroyed any nest. The birds would lay again, but cereal crops grow very quickly making it hard for the adults to find food and for them to find their young. The sight of Lapwings doing aerial acrobats over the marshes on an Autumn evening was something special to be seen. You only see a few winter visitors these days.

Quite a few people may say that the parish has enough Rooks nesting in the village - being woken up at five o’clock in the morning from March to May by Rooks arguing when building their nests, and young asking to be fed does not go down well with some. Rooks are social birds and like to nest in colonies (Rookery). Today we have several small groups nesting throughout the Parish. Before Dutch Elm Disease, the main nesting site near the village was around the entrance to Docker Hill Farm, here the treed area was five or six times bigger. I don’t think I would be wrong in saying that there would have been at least fifty breeding pairs within the Rookery. A few nested at the bottom of the Drove. The biggest Rookery (I think within the Parish boundary) was to the right of the road to Wingham, between the Railway and the River Stour, quite easily twice the size of the one at Docker Hill Farm. As the majority of the Rooks’ nests were in Elm trees, by the end of the 1970’s they were homeless and as we do not have large groups of mature trees, we now have several small colonies of Rooks nesting in the Parish.

Jackdaws suffered loss of nesting trees too. Old Elm trees had many holes and hollows in their trunks and branches which were ideal nesting sites for Jackdaws. Jackdaws are also social birds and like to live together.

There used to be a colony on the west side of the wood at Docker Hill Farm and one in the Elms that were around Monkton Court’s small Chalk Pit (filled in during the 1980’s). Some now nest in the Sycamore’s in the Church Yard and on a few houses through-out the village.

I think that Bats also suffered from a great loss of habitat when the Elms were cut down. As a teenager I remember seeing many of them flying between the gaps in the trees at dusk at the bottom of the Drove.

Next month Starlings, House Sparrows and Swallows.

Terry Marsh

Originally published in the Monkton News (December 2022).