BREAKING NEWS Ladybird is to revise its standard work on turtle doves! Marden's tagged birds are providing new insights into the way they use the local area and how far they travel. We've much to think about and share with landowners #TurtleDoves

It's not often pigeons are outnumbered!

While you’re there, pop along see how we study and look after what they are protecting! We’d love to chat to you.

#StateOfNature #farming #biodiversity #gained Nature Friendly Farming Network Defra UK The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust Thérèse Coffey Rob Yorke Sally-Ann Spence FRES FLS Just Farmers RSPB Hope Farm FWAG East BTO Suffolk Steven Falk BBC East SuffolkWildlifeTrust

Good to have Tony Juniper with Natural England and Defra UK colleagues to explore our farms using our waymark QR signs! Food & nature on the Marden min-till menu. Guy Eckley Kent Wildlife Trust Natural England - Sussex and Kent Team

Not many of these in Marden yet, but we’re only just a few m above sea level. Can anyone explain the purpose of the perforations at the base of its bill? Salt & pepper?😂

Happy Monday! 😊Would anyone like to provide an estimate of the numbers? Kent Wildlife Trust @BTO_Kent KOS

Well done Mark - a welcome new species if they stay. Our first common whitethroat was singing this morning. Three nightingales have arrived, but next door to their usual site, so hopefully they are extras for this year! 🤞

Two Turtle Doves ringed together in 2022 & still a pair, feeding up for breeding in 2024. Yellow/Green is at least four years old now and has survived four return migrations to Africa, Yellow/Black is at least three years old.

Five adult Turtle Doves colour-ringed in '22 have returned in '24. So far this year, four more TDs have been fitted with GPS tags. Survival seems good, now let's learn more about their use of local farmland to improve productivity.

One of our Turtle Doves brightens up #Glastonbury, painted on a tent by Marden performer and dove devotee #MARYJANE

Harry’s Happy Hour. After GPS tagging on a farm, his SatNav led us 3.5km SE to his woodland nest and his roost in a garden another 2.25km NW of that. He hangs out there too – with at least 4 other TDs. An intimate peep found him billing & cooing. There’s no privacy anymore!

A good season for turtle doves? Or a poor one for stock doves and crows?

Yellow/Black fattening up for her 5TH annual migration to West Africa. Ringed with her probable mate Yellow/Green by Jacques Turner-Moss in 2022, both are still being seen regularly together on camera.

Doesn't sound too bad to me!!

🧵Chilmington Green is a development of 2,700 homes. Developers propose discharging 927 cubic metres of sewage DAILY into a tributary of the River Beult, a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Read about it ⬇️ then email to object at [email protected]

Why not make this a New Year resolution? The more BBS squares we can get covered in Kent, the more species BTO can produce county trends for…..and use in our KBR👍

👍Meanwhile, a mile or so away, our overwintering (?) Dartford Warbler has spent the week in a splendid wildlife hedge. Thanks, local farmers. Food & wildlife (including bats and newts) and we have houses for people too. Tony Juniper Kent Wildlife Trust

We are while they're in the UK. But, as in the UK the hunting lobby is a powerful one with deep pockets.

Likely to be illegal. Where are the police rural task force?