Last week I
had occasion to visit Maidstone Cemetery and couldn’t help but notice that it
might be interesting to take a walk in different circumstances. It is an old
graveyard, with headstones dating back to the mid 1800s, set in around 200
acres to the south of Kent’s county town. The main entrance is from the Sutton Road
at Google Earth ref; 51 15 20N 0 31 57E.
The cemetery
does not actually include bird watching on its menu of services and the gate
opening times reflect this, but it does provide a very quiet location to enjoy
a walk among mature trees and the grass has been left long with quite a
selection of wildflowers growing there. Without visiting regularly, I cannot
say that the plots are allowed to grow like this throughout the season, but
today there was a real meadow-like feel to it.
And there
were birds. Woodpigeons and Blackbirds were very common. Some of
the lawns around the entrance had been mown and proved popular with Song Thrushes.
Chaffinches and Greenfinches sang from the tops of trees, Coal Tits foraged in the manicured Yew bushes and a Green Woodpecker showed briefly on a
headstone.
Birds seen;
Black-headed
Gull 1, Herring Gull 2, Stock Dove 5, Common Woodpigeon 40, Eurasian Collared
Dove 2, Green Woodpecker 1, Eurasian Magpie 2, Carrion Crow 5, Coal Tit 3,
Great Tit 1, Eurasian Blue Tit 1, Eurasian Wren 1, Eurasian Blackbird 12, Song
Thrush 3, European Starling 4, Dunnock 1, Common Chaffinch 4, European
Greenfinch 2.
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