To borrow a term oft-used in “birding” (grrrrrr) circles, I thought I’d blog on the subject of (local) “patches”, after hearing over the weekend that a barn owl has been seen in an area of farmland behind my childhood home.

Ask a “birder” (grrrr) what their “patch” is, and they’ll not blush and point to the back of their pate (as described before on this website, anyone describing themselves as a “birder” is invariably male (and dull as dishwater to boot)) but describe an area of land often close to their home, where they spend a lot of time watching and often ticking bird species. They know their local “patch” very well and in many instances could probably tell you how many bird spp. they’ve ticked off in their “patch” from memory.

As mentioned, this behaviour seems peculiar to “birders” but I’ve often had a “patch” of my own during the last 35 or so years, just that I’ve never limited myself in the patch to “bird spotting”.

That said, very often birds are more noticeable than mammals, reptiles, amphibians  or insects (obviously) so when I think back to my ramblings around my local “patches” bird spp. figure strongly  - and a bird sp. at an old patch of mine is the reason I’m blogging on this subject after all...

For many years (at my childhood home and also well before I learned to drive and got a car) my main “patch” (please click to see the location) was limited to an area of mixed farmland dotted with small woods, a couple of recreation grounds, two tiny ponds and a few rough pastures just north of our house in (south) Buckinghamshire.

I grew up in Hazlemere, south Bucks, with High Wycombe on our doorstep. My country cousins all thought I was pretty “urban” compared to them, (living on the western fringes of the rural Cotswolds as they did) and I guess compared to them I was. I enjoyed the many benefits of living near a large town (mainly more than one pub to choose from when I became legally entitled to drink), a few more shops around, a cinema, a sports centre, that sort of thing – not to mention a few more opportunities to grab a paper round for pocket money or even a Saturday job (I washed cars at a local petrol station – and earned more then than I do know if you break it down to money per hour (the tips were GOOD!)).

That all said, almost all of my time was spent not in the town a mile south of us, but in the countryside 100 yards north of us, even if that relatively small patch of countryside  (9 square miles roughly) was ringed by a little SE England urban sprawl.

This “patch” was known as H7 for some time, by local planners. It might still be for all I know. The whole area was under constant threat of being lost under a sea of new houses and an A404 bypass – although thankfully, nothing like that happened – mainly (I suspect) due to various pressure groups’ protests.

It was there that I first became very interested in wildlife. I watched badgers in “dingly dell” on the patch, spent evenings calling in foxes (with my “startled leveret” squeaking), gazed at little owls, nesting kestrels, listened to the constant noise of displaying skylarks in the spring and summer, flushed grey partridge from stubble fields, marvelled at the huge flocks of hirundines and swifts in May (it was undoubtedly then that my lifelong fascination with swifts was born) and tracked weasels, muntjac & stoats in the snow. I searched for fungi in the autumn, collected frogspawn and went on the hunt for long-tailed tits’ nests in the spring.

You couldn’t take a car ‘round the patch (but I was without licence anyway), nor even a bike – so all my wanderings around this area of countryside were on foot. I heard and saw FAR more on foot than I’m sure I would have done driving ‘round the edge or even cycling over the footpaths (I was into (road) racing bikes then, not chunky-wheeled mountain bikes or even bmx’s like a few of my pals).

My old home “patch” was a source of great comfort to me. I grew up in a large family and whilst my family life was more “interesting” (let’s be polite) than many of my friends, I often liked to give myself some space and disappear into my “patch”. I was invariably alone and the area was not particularly well used by dog walkers, so solitude and peace & quiet was easy to get up at the farm.

When my sister died (I was about 16 at the time) I relied on my patch for days and days. It was a very quiet place for me to get over the shock of everything, alone. I’ve stopped returning to my old patch each year on her birthday (I always like to remember birthdays rather than the day someone died), but I did so for a number of years.

Reading the above out loud makes it sound that it was a place of sadness for me, for grieving or thinking – but whilst that was true, I also derived huge pleasure and enjoyment in my “patch”. I felt very comfortable there; all the sights were delightful to me and the sounds also (I spent months and months alone in the woods at night, listening to the nocturnal world come alive whilst the humans settled down in front of their TVs). I am of the opinion that I had a pretty privileged childhood (even though we were not in any way rich) and I look back now and know I thoroughly enjoyed the vast majority of my “yoof”.

When I was single and baking for a living, still living locally (but not at my childhood house which had by then been sold) I used to work nights and sleep the days off in the long grass, next to the fox earths. I was a strange chap I guess. A deep mahogany colour during each summer, and extremely knowledgeable about all the wildlife there in my old patch. No-one knew that area better than me.

Never did I see a barn owl on this patch though.

Not once.

In twenty-odd years.

And if one had been there... I certainly would have seen it.

These days, 20-30 years on, I very occasionally look on the Bucks bird news website to see what “birders” are reporting in my old “patch” and by chance yesterday noticed that someone has been watching a barn owl in the pastures at the old farm!

Now I thought the area always seemed pretty good for barn owls (quite a few old sheds dotted about, as well as ancient tree hollows with a few good scrubby pasture fields. I guess if anything the area wasn’t big enough to support more than an owl or two, but like I said, I never did see a barn owl at the old farm. Admittedly at that time (late 70s, 80s and the first year or two of the 90s) barn owls were not a common site anywhere – and whilst they still aren’t (I saw my first near Inverness of all places in 1987 and waited about 20 years before I chanced on one again near Reading) they are in slightly better shape now than back then.

So I am absolutely delighted that this most beautiful of owls has been seen a handful of times in my old patch. Not only that, but the old patch has been bought (at least in part) by the “Grange Fields Trust” and seems to be going from strength to strength, wildlife-wise.  I do happen to know the skylarks have disappeared from the area (and also their wonderful song also) but yellowhammers seem to be returning (they disappeared for a while too) so it really isn’t all bad news at all....

I also know very well (after watching three barn owls in my local area these days) that this particular species is incredibly transient at the best of times, so I wonder how long the barn owl will stay at the old patch... but for now, I can enjoy the feeling that a beautiful barn owl is softly quartering around a place that still remains very special to me – my old “patch”.

I left behind the old “patch” above many years ago and was “patch-less” for a time I guess.

Eventually I moved to London briefly to move in with my wife (girlfriend at the time), before moving back into the Home Counties in 2007 (Reading in Berkshire) and I suddenly had a new patch to explore.

This new “patch” I called “Fobney”.  (Again please click to see the location). A large area of flood plains just to the south of Reading, running alongside the Kennet and Avon canal with plenty of gravel pits and fishing lakes dotted around the area.

I only lived in that part of the world for a handful of years, but it was there that I walked a new “patch” at least twice a week – often more.

Highlights in this new “patch” were, I guess, barn owls, mandarin ducks, woodcock, snipe, roe deer, kingfishers and an otter – all fantastic things to see right on my doorstep – not to mention peregrines, wagtails, herons and all manner of waterfowl.

The really unexpected highlight at Fobney though, came when I least expected it – during the winter of 2010. I was on a ramble up the tow-path and across the flood meadows, on the hunt for the local barn owls in the gathering cold, wet gloom one December afternoon.

I clambered through a thorny hedge (better to keep any barn owl from seeing me) and scanned a large flood meadow next to the recycling centre (dump to me and you). No barn owls there that night – but instead a beautiful short-eared owl quartered over the rough tussocky grass not 50 yards from me. A wonderful sight and all the better because I would never have expected such an owl to stop off in south Reading (many “shorties” come down south in the winter, from their northern, upland breeding grounds, but our “local” shorties all seemed to gather on the Ridgeway gallops south of Oxford, rather than spend any time so close to the delightful, sleepy little hamlet called Reading.

I’ll never forget that winter’s afternoon in Fobney, or many other times spent walking that particular patch with my walking partner at the time, Mr.Pumpkin. (An old family friend who I lived next door to for a couple of years).

Fobney has been “regenerated” now, by Reading District Council and the Environment Agency –and I hear it’s probably better than it ever was I hear. I hardly ever get over there now (due to various health woes and the fact that we’ve moved again and now have a kid to look after), but Fobney was certainly my second real “patch” and will always have a spot in my warmest memories.

My wife and I (and our son and hens and cats) now live almost exactly 10 miles due East of our old gaff (“Swift Half”) and therefore 10 miles away from Fobney. So do I have a local patch these days?

Well of course I do!

My current “patch”  (Again please click to see the location) is large area of “horsey” countryside north of Bracknell, in South east Berkshire (we live pretty close to Ascot and several polo clubs so there are horse paddocks all over the place in the local countryside).

I have the privilege of owning a car these days and because of that, I tend to visit many, many more sites in the countryside now than I did without car – places far away from our home on the northern fringes of this pretty crappy post-war town. Anna and I (and now our son) visit the New Forest or the Ridgeway or local forests, gravel pits and Chiltern chalk hills. We walk along the Thames and regularly visit a delightful area of lowland heath near Broadmoor. We get about a bit – but my current “patch” is where I go to alone, the most often – and begins about half a mile from our back door.

The “patch” itself is a large, sprawling area of farmland and horsey farms (paddocks really) north of Bracknell and has far less access than the other patches I’ve described on this blog – I tend to drive around my current patch rather than walk it (and therefore probably see less I admit), but walk it I do occasionally.

Once again, my current “patch” gives me great comfort and huge pleasure. I couldn’t tell you (like the “birders” (grrrrrr) mentioned above) what my “tick list” is on my current patch but I could show you where to find all manner of lovely things to gawp at. Hidden from most, but not from me these days after two years of exploration.

I can tell you where the little owls are, where the barn owls roost, where you’ll have a great chance of seeing a stoat or three, where you’ll invariably find the green woodpeckers, which fence post the pale buzzard likes to sit on, which fox earth is being used at the time, where the swallows’ favourite telegraph wires are, where the bats like to hunt and where the pheasants all roost.

As described before on this webite, when my doctors allowed me to run, I ran through my patch every day and this is when I often saw lots of wildlife – be it a barn owl in a tree hollow or a stoat dragging a rabbit across the country lane, or the little owls dancing about  on their cattle shed of choice.

Regular visitors to this website will know I managed to photograph and film the family of little owls last year (they had a worse year this year and have moved down the road somewhat) and I often take a dawn drive through the patch on Sunday mornings – to keep my beady eye on all other beady-eyed things in the patch.

It’s predominantly a  mixed (cattle and arable) farmland patch again (like my first patch but unlike Fobney) so a lot of the suspected farmland spp. are here – skylarks remain here, roe deer, foxes, stoats, weasels, tawny barn and little owls, kestrels, buzzards, kites, all manner of passerines and small mammals and plenty upon plenty of rabbits and foxes. Then there are the red-legged partridge and ring-necked parakeets which add a certain je ne sais quoi to the mix. I have a very helpful farmer who allows me access to certain parts of the farm to watch the wildlife and film occasionally – as a working farm run by Syngenta, the farmer (farm manager he’s called there) is very keen to present a very green front if at possible – difficult at many times for syngenta I appreciate. But the farm does seem particularly green – with land set aside for and deliberately planted with wild flowers, a pond which is managed very well and plenty of wildlife for my wildlife fix needs.

Like I say, I derive huge pleasure from this patch and have got an immense amount of pleasure from my other patches throughout my life.

For me (at least), it’s really important to have a spot in the countryside if possible where I can relax and breathe – and watch all the fascinating things in this world that AREN’T human.

A patch doesn’t have to be in the wilds of the highlands or the rural Cotswolds or somerset levels. My patches have all been very close to large towns in the SE of England (in fact Reading is a city in all but name I guess and for a year or two my “countryside patch” was limited to just a semi-deserted recreation ground behind our first rented house in Reading where I watched damselflies, woodpeckers and the odd peregrine,

I certainly need a “patch” I think, to slow down the frenetic life we all seem to live these days.... and I’ll not change any time soon.

Just don’t limit it to bird spotting eh?

There’s more to see than birds.

If you take the time to stop.

And look.