#Newtown Newtown National Nature Reserve & a budding ornithologist

It is the day after New year's Day. I have just been out for my early morning bike ride along the seafront. It is still mild - greyness pervades but not in a heavy way - it is the weather - the elements. It is good to be out. (I am out a bit later today - sidetracked by a xmas present from my daughter - a biography of Don Revie. It is a surprisingly good read. I knew of course he was a top class manager - but I didn't realize his record as a footballer - a former Footballer of the Year and an England international.) There were more people out today - partly I guess because I am out a bit later and it is still a holiday day of course but mainly I think because a lot of people are keeping up with their New Years Resolutions. They are going to get fitter - take up walking and particularly take up jogging! Good luck to them. It is the same every year. Will they keep it up. Most probably won't. I have seen over the years people go hard at it for a while - often over do it and it becomes unsustainable. Anyway I digress!

On New Year's Day after a bit of exercise and a nice breakfast I headed for Newtown Creek which is west of Cowes (entry to the lovely little unspoilt harbour from The Solent.) This was one of my New Year - not so much resolutions but an objectives for 2022 ha! (will I keep it up?) In a nutshell I have plenty of active leisure interests and stuff I do indoors - but I want something in my life that is outdoors but is gentler and realistic and interesting. I have come up with bird watching - ornithology! It sits well with fishing and sailing and of course cycling and walking - but I like the idea of literally sitting down in a nice place and see what I can see. I suppose I have always had a bit of interest in bird watching but I have decided I am going to put a bit more into it. I will not be a "twitcher". I will not carry big long spotting lenses or try to be a photographer but I do want to know more about the birds that are around and particularly the birds that visit our seashores. Last year I cycled the Hebridean Way with my brothers and the Outer Hebrides' was a bird mecca. Mike and I particularly enjoyed stopping and watching the birds on the shore line and it was in my mind then it was something I would like to do more of.

So New Years Day - off to Newtown with a flask of coffee, my binoculars, bird book and camping chair for a couple of hours!

My first encounter was with a couple of curious swans - and I had not even got out of the car :

A bit about Newtown. Newtown is run by the National Trust - this is from their website :

A quiet backwater with a busy Medieval past, now bursting with wildlife and a town hall with no town...

The nature reserve

This is the only National Nature Reserve on the Isle of Wight. It is a beautiful retreat that has something to offer boat owners, walkers, wildlife enthusiasts and historians or just those in search of peace and tranquility. You can wander past flower-rich hay meadows, through ancient woodlands with rare butterflies and red squirrels, and look out over salt marsh and the clear waters of the harbour, bobbing with sailing boats in the summer and alive with birds in the spring and winter. For those on the water it is a beautiful place to explore and a good way to look out for wetland wildlife.

Newtown Harbour was saved in the 1960s from the threat of a nuclear power station being built near the harbour entrance. The efforts of local people conducting wildlife surveys proved to the authorities how special the place is. The landscape has remained little changed for decades and the pattern of fields reflects Newtown's Medieval origins.

From Wiki :

Newtown is a small village in the civil parish of Calbourne, Newtown and Porchfield, on the Isle of Wight, England. In medieval times it was a thriving borough.

Newtown is located 5 miles (8 km) west of the town of Newport on the large natural harbour on the island's north-western coast. It is now mostly a national nature reserve owned and managed by the National Trust.

The Caul Bourne streams through Calbourne, passes Newbridge and Shalfleet and empties into the Solent at Newtown.

The town was originally called Francheville (i.e. 'Freetown'), and only later renamed Newtown. It was probably founded before the Norman Conquest. There is some indication that it was attacked by Danes in 1001.

The earliest known charter was granted by the Bishop-elect of Winchester, Aymer de Valence. He signed it at his ecclesiastical estate of Swainston Manor in 1256. The early hopes for its success are reflected in the names of its streets, such as Gold Street and Silver Street. However, it will have had competition from Yarmouth, Newport and Southampton. In 1284 it was somewhat reluctantly given to Edward I. Apparently there were about 60 families living in Newtown at the start of the 14th century.

By the mid 14th century, Newtown was starting to mature into a thriving commercial centre. In 1344, it was assessed at twice the value of Newport. Its harbour was busy and reputed to be the safest on the island. There was a prosperous saltworks and abundant oyster beds. There was an annual three-day festival on the "eve, the day and the morrow of the Feast of St. Mary Magdalen", who was honoured in the name of the local thirteenth-century chapel. Then, the great plague struck, and subsequently a French raid in 1377 destroyed much of the town, from which it never truly recovered.

By the middle of the 16th century, it was a small settlement eclipsed by the more easily defended town of Newport. A survey in 1559 noted that Newtown no longer had a market, and did not have a single good house still standing. Its harbour slowly became clogged with silt and inaccessible to larger vessels.

In 1584 Elizabeth I breathed some life into the town by awarding it two parliamentary seats. A town hall was built in the 17th century. However, these seats ultimately made Newtown borough one of the most notorious of the rotten boroughs, prevalent in the UK before the 19th century reforms. By the time of the 1832 Reform Act that abolished the seats, a survey found that Newtown had just fourteen houses and twenty-three voters, whilst massively larger municipal areas with many more voters had less representation.

The town hall was restored in 1813, and again in the 1930s. It is now open to the public.

The Newtown Arms Inn was closed in 1916. It was in an unusually shaped building referred to locally as "Noah's Ark."

Newtown remained small, but this has preserved its original layout, which is of historical interest. There are two square ponds by the boathouse, which were dug as salterns as part of the former local salt industry. The harbour and salterns have since become a habitat for fish native to the Isle of Wight and its surrounding waters, with large populations of Flathead grey mullet living in both the harbour and the salterns. Although there are a number of private residences still in use and the harbour is still accessible and used by small to medium vessels, Much of the land Newtown is situated on is now under the ownership of the National Trust, with the hamlet being at the centre of a nature reserve built around the old harbour. Newtown is popular with tourists and birdwatchers, as numerous uncommon native species use the salt marshes to nest.

So this is where I headed on New Years day for a while. The tide was up which is not quite such a nice spectacle and not ideal for watching the seabirds that feed on the exposed mud of the salt marshes as the tide drops. But I really enjoyed being there and found a spot away from the occasional walkers and watched mainly Brent Geese as they repeatedly swooped in in numbers and drifted down on the gentle tide.

Key information

The brent goose is a small, dark goose - of similar size to a mallard. It has a black head and neck and grey-brown back, with either a pale or dark belly, depending on the race. Adults have a small white neck patch. It flies in loose flocks along the coast, rather than in tight skeins like grey geese. It is an Amber List species because of the important numbers found at just a few sites.

Brent Geese are the smallest geese to visit Britain. One goose can travel over 135,000 miles in its lifetime between its winter habitat in the UK and its summer habitat, the Artic tundra. Young Brent geese stay with their parents for their first autumn & winter and feed & fly in family groups within the flock.

Here are a few photos I took with my mob camera :