Short Sunday

The weather people promised us torrential rain for most of Saturday but none arrived. Instead there was 100% cloud all day long combined with almost continuous and very irritating light showers. It was enough to ruin birding ambitions and save the job until the next day. 

Sunday at 6am started much the same with the sky failing to brighten until 11 am, a moment in time when Uncle Tom Cobley & All hit the Sunday Streets to signal that a birder’s work is done. 

In the meantime there was a Litle Owl at Crimbles again. And at Glasson I  thought there may be a Swallow roost nearby because upon arrival at the yacht basin and the dock there were more than 80 Swallows feeding around the two areas of water.

An hour or two later the only Swallows left were the local Swallows and a more normal 12/15 of them. I grabbed a few photos in the murky light with ISO800 again, but hope to take better ones when the sun shines next. High ISOs seem to destroy colour rendition from the images. One of the young Swallows below is especially fresh from a nest, its downy feathers and yellow gape all too obvious. 

Swallow

Swallow

Swallow

The Common Tern was feeding at Glasson again. It’s the same male which flies off to Conder Green carrying a fish for a female. It’s the male with one tail streamer. A Kingfisher flew across the dock from a boat and landed on a mooring rope but when I walked around to look for the bird it had gone elsewhere. 

Common Tern

Otherwise things were pretty much normal, with a short walk revealing 5 Tufted Duck, 2 Cormorant, 2 Pied Wagtail, 1 Grey Wagtail and 1 Great Crested Grebe. 

 Pied Wagtail

Black-headed Gull

Waders and herons at Conder Green: 130 Redshank, 26 Lapwing, 12 Oystercatcher, 10 Common Sandpiper, 4 Curlew, 2 Greenshank, 1 Snipe, 6 Little Egret, 3 Grey Heron. A Peregrine showed all too briefly as it flew over the marsh before disappearing behind trees to the east; I’m sure it will be back to finish off the job. 

Wildfowl: 2 Wigeon, 2 Little Grebe, 6 Shelduck. 

Lapwing

Two Pied Wagtails here as well as a Grey Wagtail near the bridge where there’s a good stand of reeds and where I spotted 2 Sedge Warbler, 2 Reed Bunting and 1 Reed Warbler. There was a Meadow Pipit still in song over the marsh as it has done all week now.

On the way home a Buzzard circled over Head Dyke Lane, and then over a neighbour’s house a gliding Sparrowhawk heading west towards the river.

If the weather people are to be believed there’s sun for birding next week, We’ll see.

Doing The Rounds

More terns on Monday, this time on the Glasson and Conder Green circuit. Even after such a lovely sunny morning I resisted puns and the obvious post title of “Terned Out Nice Again.” 

Many people confuse terns with gulls and although related the two families of birds have marked differences. Most terns are elegant, slim and streamlined and are often called "sea swallows" because of their long narrow wings, long forked tails and swift, graceful flight. In general the tern family of birds have long tapering bills and fly with them pointing downward as their keen eyesight scans the water below. Terns take live food but rarely alight on water, and instead plunge headlong into it to capture prey beneath the surface. 

Most gull species are scavengers of the highest order, more heavily built than a tern, with broader wings, square or rounded tails and business-like bills equipped for mischief. Gulls are not nearly as good looking as just the average tern. Oops, there goes my honorary membership of The Gull Appreciation Society (GAS). 

Common Terns were at Conder Green and at Glasson Dock, two at Conder and a single at Glasson Dock. The latter one was actively fishing both the dock water and the yacht basin, circuiting and then plunge diving into both at such breakneck speed that the autofocus could barely get a fix on it. Luckily there was a gull to practice on. 

Common Tern

Black-headed Gull

Although I arrived before the dock opened for operational business with its hustle, bustle and noise, there was no sight or sound of Kingfishers today. A Great Crested Grebe and 4 Tufted Duck sailed in and out of the margins according to activity on the towpath. The birds prefer to feed close to the retaining walls where there is probably a more varied choice of food but where the almost constant pedestrian traffic sends them back to deeper water. 

Great Crested Grebe

There were 5 Pied Wagtails around the bowling green, 3 Grey Heron and 2 Little Egret on the marsh and “many” Lapwing and Redshank all the way to Conder and silhouetted into the morning light of the river. 

Grey Heron

The terns at Conder Green seem to have adopted a stony, weed infested island, a perfect choice for nesting if only it were Spring. One sat with head just visible looking for all the world like it was at a nest while the other flew around the pool and the creeks for a while before heading off towards the canal and Glasson. Perhaps my three terns is after all a double tern? 

Waders and herons: 135 Redshank, 14 Oystercatcher, 9 Common Sandpiper, 3 Greenshank, 2 Black-tailed Godwit, 1 Spotted Redshank, 4 Curlew, 4 Grey Heron, 4 Little Egret. 

Juvenile Oystercatcher

 Curlew

Wildfowl: A pair of Tufted Duck with 4 youngsters reduced from 10 “newbies” just a week ago, 6 other Tufted Duck, 2 Wigeon, 2 Little Grebe and 2 Shelduck. 

Ods and Sods: 9 Pied Wagtail, 2 Stock Dove, 2 Meadow Pipit, 2 Reed Bunting, 1 Greenfinch.

Another Bird Blog will be here again very soon for all the news, views and more photos. Linking today to Stewart's World Bird Wednesday.

Round Up

A trip around a few local spots is the sum of this morning’s blog post. 

Read on while not forgetting to “click the pics” for close-up views. A new feature on Another Bird Blog is “Crosspost” whereby clicking the “Crosspost” button in the right-hand corner of any picture will allow a reader to share it to Facebook and Twitter. Go ahead, give it a try. 

During recent months I’ve rather neglected Knott End after the bad weather and ultra-high tides made it difficult to do any birding there, so to put things right I paid a quick visit today. It was a sunny and still morning, the low to medium high tide concentrating a few birds, but a number of them still out at the water’s edge. Redshanks were in in good numbers with a minimum count of 160 scattered along the estuary, 24 Turnstones concentrated near the jetty and 1500+ Knot staying at the tide’s very edge. Wildfowl numbers came in at 12 Eider and 18 Shelduck. The male Shelducks are now in particularly fine breeding plumage. 

Redshank

Shelduck

As usual I headed up to Pilling Lane Ends and Fluke Hall for a look. Fluke fields held a good number of mixed Golden Plover, Redshank and Lapwings, the recently arrived migrant “goldies” at 210+ outnumbering the 135 regular Redshank and 40+ but dropping in numbers Lapwings. 5 Pied Wagtail, 8 Meadow Pipits and 15+Skylark accounted for passerines on the flood. The wild and wary plovers stayed a long way across the still flooded maize field 

Golden Plovers

On the wildfowler’s pools/sea wall were 23 Teal, 30 Shelduck, 3 Little Egret and 600+ Pink-footed Goose; in the woodland - 3 Stock Dove, 2 Jay and 1+ Siskin. 

A whistle stop at Lane Ends via Backsands Lane gave a Kestrel, singing Chiffchaff and Reed Bunting, and on the pools 2 Little Grebe. 

Kestrel

More Golden Plover at the Cockerham, Braides Farm where another flock of this time 260 birds stayed their distance. Two Little Egrets, 3 Pied Wagtails and 8+ Skylarks here. 

Heading north again took me to Conder Green where I rounded up the usual suspects of 1 Spotted Redshank, 4 Wigeon, 2 Little Grebe, 8 Goldeneye, 22 Teal, 2 Little Egret, 24 Shelduck and 5 Cormorant.  Possibly “new in today” were 1 singing Reed Bunting and 1 Grey Wagtail. 

Spotted Redshank

 

 Black-headed Gull

Join me soon for more bird news and photographs via Another Bird Blog.

Linking today with Eileen's Saturday Blog .

A Little Post

It’s a bit of a short post today for blog readers; hopefully the weather will improve soon and enable some thorough birding to take place. 

After the overnight 100mph winds I spent a while this morning up at Knott End where I hoped to see a few wind-blown Little Gulls. I wasn’t disappointed, and in the still strong winds managed to connect with at least six Little Gulls flying into the Wyre estuary, all of them continuing to fly upstream until they disappeared out of sight. 

Little Gull

The Little Gull Hydrocoloeus minutus is a small gull of about 11 inches in length, 24–31 inches wingspan and a weight of approximately 100 grams, gull proportions which could perhaps more accurately describe the species as “tiny”. 

It breeds in Northern Europe and Asia with small colonies in parts of southern Canada. It is migratory, wintering on coasts in Western Europe, the Mediterranean and in small numbers in northeast USA; in recent years non-breeding birds have summered in Western Europe in increasing numbers. As is the case with many gulls, it has traditionally been placed in the genus Larus. It is the only member of the genus Hydrocoloeus, although it has been suggested that Ross's Gull also should be included in this genus. 

Little Gulls are not resident in the UK; neither do they spend the summer or the winter here. However, they do pass through in spring and autumn, usually April. The Little Gulls we see here in the winter are thought to be from the population wintering off the east coast of Ireland, many birds often blown towards the west coast of England, even inland during severe winter storms. 

Little Gulls also occur hereabouts in April en route to their breeding grounds around Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Baltic Sea, an area that many reach by taking a direct route across the Pennines, the North Sea and then into the Baltic. 

Little Gull

For comparison with Little Gull here’s a common Black-headed Gull, 16 inches in length, c40 inches wingspan and a weight approximately 300 grams. 

Black-headed Gull

There wasn’t much else doing, a still rough old morning and not one suitable for searching for passerines. There were 18 Turnstones, 140 Lapwings and 4 Redshanks huddled on the shore, 18 Eider defying the strong swell of the sea and the usual 2 Pied Wagtails along the esplanade. 

Turnstones

More soon from Another Bird Blog.

Linking today to Eileen's Saturday Blog.

Saturday Afternoon, Sunday Morning.

On Saturday afternoon the sea was flat calm at Knott End, the sun so bright the water so tranquil that out there hundreds of yards away I could see a Great Crested Grebe, 18+ Shelduck, 14 Eider and 3 Scaup, the latter being 2 males and a female; the female took a brief flight and even at that distance the blaze above her bill showed clear and bright. Looking on other websites I see that at a similar time the Scaup were noted off Rossall Point, Fleetwood. 

The sea was incredibly smooth as can be seen in the picture below which shows passengers disembarking from the Fleetwood to Knott End ferry. It is no surprise then that on flat tides the same birds can often be seen from both sides of the estuary as they drift on incoming and outgoing tides. 

Greater Scaup - Photo credit: milesizz / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND 

Knott End to Fleetwood Ferry

The Scaup, (Aythya marila) is better known in North America as Greater Scaup, that continent also blessed with the similar Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis). Because in the UK there is only the one scaup species, most birders drop the “Greater” and simply call the bird Scaup. 

Oystercatcher, Turnstone, Knot and Redshank are dependable at Knott End and I had counts of 1900 Oystercatcher, 80 Knot, 22 Turnstone, 65 Sanderling and 75 Redshank. Also 1 Meadow Pipit and 2 Pied Wagtail. 

Sanderling

 

I rose early on Sunday. I was up and running so quick that I decided to detour over the moss and perhaps see a morning Barn Owl. No luck there, just a Kestrel in the half light and a scarce Mistle Thrush along Union Lane. At Cockerham I found my Barn Owl sat on a roadside post, but the car’s oncoming headlights spooked the bird away and over towards its barn. Not to worry, the owl made for a good start to a bird filled morning. 

I wasn’t having much luck with the camera at Conder Green when the Kingfisher didn’t want to know and the 16 Wigeon, 6 Little Grebe, 5 Goldeneye, 6 Tufted Duck and 2 Little Egret all stayed on the far side of the pool. Still 2 Spotted Redshank and 150+ Teal in the creeks. A Robin popped up on the screen to sympathise with my pathetic photography efforts but still I couldn’t get a decent portrait. 

Black-headed Gull

Robin

Maybe I’d have better luck at Pilling? At Backsands Lane were tremendous numbers of geese spread across the pasture, probably in excess of 5000 birds.

The geese seemed remarkably tolerant this morning and although they did their usual “walkaway” when a vehicle, cyclist or passer-by showed signs of stopping, mostly the birds remained in the field for a good few hours. At one point a dog walker passed within 75 yards of the nearest geese, most with heads raised from feeding but the whole lot staying put. The telephoto lens foreshortens the picture but the geese behaviour was most unusual in this the depths of the shooting season.

 Pink-footed Geese

The only interloper I could find in the pinkies was a single Barnacle Goose, and while I can’t claim to have seen every single one of 5000+ geese, I did spend a good hour looking through them.

Barnacle Goose and Pink-footed Geese

A quick dodge around the stubble fields and the inland ditch revealed 145 Lapwing, 45 Black-tailed Godwit, 2 Snipe, 32 Redshank, 1 Green Sandpiper, 32 Whooper Swan, 4 Reed Bunting and 3 Meadow Pipit. In the wood, 1 Sparrowhawk and a single Jay.

Whooper Swan

Then it was time for home. What a cracking morning of birding.

Linking today to  Stewart's Bird Gallery .

Fancy A Sandwich?

I woke up once or twice on Saturday night with the wind rattling the trees and rain hitting the window. So Sunday morning I headed out to Knott End to watch the tide in and look for overnight strays. The morning was pretty grey as well as blustery, my cameras on a less than ideal ISO800. 

I think the wind had sent the small birds to the shelter of upriver as I could muster only 6 Redshank, 4 Dunlin and 7 Bar-tailed Godwit, although the sturdier Curlews hung around on the beach until the tide eventually forced them upriver too. By high tide just 90 Oystercatcher remaining with another 300+ having left as the Wyre channel filled. 

Terns were the stars of the show, many arriving with the tide, some soon leaving in the direction of Fleetwood, others staying put near the jetty and yet more heading east to the roost along the shore. A number of the terns took the opportunity to carry on feeding in the shallow waters at the edge of the tide. In all I estimated 170 Sandwich Terns and 30+ Common Terns in a couple of hours watch. 

After the Lapwings on Friday it was the terns turn to suffer the “dreads” today. A gang of 60 or 70 rested on the sands until every now and then the whole lot would erupt into the air, fly around for a minute or so and then land back on the beach. Their panic made me look around for a skua or maybe a Peregrine, but there seemed to be nothing to generate such a hubbub. There are three or four Common Terns mixed in with the 60+ Sandwich Terns in the picture below.

"Click the pics" for a full sized Sandwich.

Sandwich Terns and Common Terns

Sandwich Tern

Sandwich Tern

Sandwich Tern

 Sandwich Tern and Black-headed Gull

Black-headed Gull

The Black-headed Gulls aren’t the only ones after a meal at Knott End. Like at most seaside towns the gulls learn that cars = people = hand outs and each large gull defends a feeding territory by employing both noise and threats. 

  Lesser Black-backed Gull

More birdy snacks from Another Bird Blog soon. 

Toughing It Out

My early morning car journey produced another Barn Owl this morning, the bird flying across Head Dyke Lane just ahead of a cyclist. So close was the owl the cyclist might well have been surprised enough to stop for a closer look. He didn't, so maybe he needed to get to work and not clock in late after lingering to bird watch. 

I had about five seconds with the owl before it continued on its way across the roadside fields. Further along the road a Kestrel sat atop a roadside pole. After a horrific winter and spring Kestrels in these parts are definitely scarce this year with my own sightings limited to one or two a week. I fear many starved to death in the new year. 

Kestrel

There's been a high turnover of birds at Conder Green this week, the twice a day very high tides serving to clear birds from the marsh, many being pushed firstly into the creeks and eventually to the pool beyond. But when I arrived at Conder this morning there wasn't much doing on the pool or in the creek so counts are on the low side. 

After high counts of Little Egrets this week, think of a number between 1 and 16, today just two. Three Grey Heron, one on the pool, two on the marsh. One Greenshank, 35 Redshank, 24 Lapwing, 2 Common Sandpiper and 1 Little Ringed Plover. Yes, the plover that has been playing hide-and-seek with birders reappeared along the muddy edges before quickly trotting off to conceal itself on the back pool. Two Stock Doves and 2 Pied Wagtails picked through the muddy margins where the swans and now the cattle are doing a splendid job of turning it to wader heaven. 

 The wildfowl at least are mostly consistent even though I couldn't see/find any Little Grebe today, just 1 Goldeneye, 2 Wigeon, the Tufted Ducks with 4 young, and 4 Canada Goose. 

Canada  Goose

Goldeneye

Wigeon

Lots of Swifts this morning, 40+ here at Conder with 15 more at Glasson. A decent number of Swallows at Glasson, with 30+ hawking the walkways, the yacht basin and the dock. 

Barn Swallow

Black-headed Gull

There were 8+ Whitethroats alongside the churchyard and the canal tow-path, all skulking in the flower-filled brambles. It's going to be one hell of a year for blackberries. I stopped to take a picture of a family of Mute Swans, Mr Swan being especially assertive and more than a liitle aggressive. I reminded him that I may well have upended him to fit that blue ring some years ago, and if necessary I could defend myself. 

Whitethroat

Mute Swan

Mute Swan

Linking today to Weekly Top Shot,  Camera Critters and Anni's Blog.

What Bonaparte’s?

Resisting the slight temptation to drive the 20 miles to Heysham for sight of the Bonaparte’s Gull I instead spent a solitary hour or two this morning looking through waders and gulls at Conder. 

Patience paid off when both Little Ringed Plover and Green Sandpiper showed again. They would appear to be the same birds seen last Thursday and which have been playing hide-and-seek with birders ever since. 10 Common Sandpiper this morning, plus 4 new-in Dunlin (3 adults and 1 juvenile), 3 Snipe, 1 Greenshank, 1 Spotted Redshank, 40+ Redshank, 35 Lapwing, 2 Curlew and 12 Oysterctacher. Fifty Swift, 3 Sand Martin, 10 Swallow and 15 House Martin hawking around and above the hawthorn hedgerows. 

Others- 1 Raven, 2 Little Grebe, 2 Wigeon, 2 Tufted Duck, 1 Teal, 1 Goldeneye, 1 Grey Heron, 2 Tree Sparrow, 2 Reed Bunting, 2 Pied Wagtail, 4 Meadow Pipit. 

Meadow Pipit

Below are pictures of Bonaparte’s Gull and Black-headed Gull. Black-headed Gulls actually have a chocolate brown hood during the breeding season. 

Black-headed Gull

Bonaparte's Gull - Len Blumin / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

Bonaparte's Gull Chroicocephalus Philadelphia is named after a nephew of Napoleon, Charles Lucien Bonaparte, a leading ornithologist in the 1800's in America and Europe. The scientific name philadelphia was given in 1815 by the describer of the species, George Ord of Philadelphia, presumably because he collected his specimen there. 

Bonaparte’s are rare vagrants to Western Europe, where they usually associate with the somewhat larger Black-headed Gulls, just as the Heysham bird is doing. How long it has been hanging out with Black-headed Gulls is anyone’s guess but full marks to the birder who found and identified it amongst the black-heads. 

Bonaparte's Gulls breeds across subarctic North America from western Alaska to the Hudson Bay and spend winters along the Atlantic coast from Virginia, along the Gulf Coast inland to southern Missouri, and south into northern Mexico, and along the Pacific coast from Washington south to central Mexico. Their preferred habitats include large lakes, rivers, and marshlands. It is the smallest gull seen over most of North America and it is also the only gull that regularly nests in trees. 

They have a black hood and a short thin dark bill. The body is mainly white with pale grey back and upper wings. The underwing is pale and the wing tips are dark. They have pink legs. In winter the head is white. 

Aother Bird Blog is linking today with Stewart's Photo Gallery .