This is getting to be a habit from my travels, reporting an absence of species. Last week it was a scarcity of Swallows, a blog story that struck a chord with more than one reader. Today was the absence of our UK Common Kestrel a lack of which caused me to think back to the number seen in recent months. The answer was “very few”.
Driving over Stalmine Moss I passed a farm that is a traditional Kestrel location. Sure enough there was a single Kestrel on duty and sure enough, as this one always does, it flew off over the farm buildings as soon as the car slowed to a stop. I know of at least four or five locations in Pilling/Stalmine and Cockerham where there might be Kestrels, and at this time of the year, evidence of breeding in the form of flying youngsters. This year there are none, giving one more reason to worry about the state of our local bird populations. After all, maybe it’s important that birders should note the birds and the numbers they see but also vital to report what they don’t see when they are normally present and correct?
Kestrel
Many local farms are taking a long overdue cut of their crop of silage. Silage is made either by placing cut green vegetation in a silo or pit, by piling it in a large heap and compressing it down so as to leave as little oxygen as possible and then covering it with a plastic sheet, or by wrapping large round bales tightly in plastic film. The fermented silage is later used to feed the many sheep and cattle which crowd the fields in this area. I found a few potato fields in recent days but the rearing of sheep and cattle for supermarkets or export is widespread. This is both easier and more financially rewarding for farmers than growing labour intensive, time consuming and weather dependent spuds or carrots. In this part of Lancashire it now unusual, even rare, to see a field of crops other than grass. This all-encompassing grass monoculture has a damaging effect upon wildlife as a whole, and not just birds.
Silage
As I passed Crimbles I slowed to note 450+ Curlews feeding in a field cut just yesterday, the waders taking advantage of the still soft ground and short sward. Had I stopped the car rather than slowed the always shy Curlew would have flown over the sea wall and back to the marsh just 50 yards away.
Curlew
At Conder Green the Avocet pair has a single well-grown young but the Common Terns appear to have left. The single Common Tern I later noted at Glasson Dock flew across to the River Lune rather than follow the canal back to Conder Green.
Also on Conder Pool/creeks - a single Green Sandpiper again, 5 Common Sandpiper, 2 Stock Dove, 4 Tufted Duck, 2 Teal, 2 Little Grebe, 1 Little Egret, 15+ House Martin, 4 Swift.
Lapwing
Little Grebe
At Glasson was evidence of a post-breeding gathering of Swallows with 70+ congregated around the assembled boats where they rested on the masts and rigging in between bouts of hawking insects over the water.
Glasson Dock
Otherwise was a single Common Tern, 1 Grey Heron, 4 Tufted Duck, 2 Pied Wagtail and a further 8+ Swift hawking over the dock buildings and the village itself.
Grey Heron
Tufted Duck
Lesser Black-backed Gull
I’d enjoyed a useful couple of hours birding but now the other “b” my life beckoned in the form of babysitting.
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