Return To Ringing

The car headed east towards the hills of Oakenclough where I was meeting Andy for my first ringing session since returning from holiday in Lanzarote. There was a slight frost with both clear skies and the radio forecast promising a sunny day ahead. 

Andy had managed a successful catch of 40 birds in between bouts of wind, rain and mild temperatures before the frost and snow of late January; today would be our first opportunity to gauge the effect of a week or more of colder weather. 

Our four hours proved to be rather slow in both activity and numbers caught whereby we speculated that birds had moved from this high ground location to more urban locations a mile or three away where the temperatures would be more to their liking. We caught just 25 birds, 21 new ones and 4 recaptures, figures which support the idea of birds moving away from the site if only temporarily. 

New birds: 8 Blue Tit, 6 Great Tit, 3 Chaffinch and singles each of Goldfinch, Lesser Redpoll, Coal Tit and Robin. Recaptures: 2 Chaffinch and 1 each of Robin and Coal Tit. 

Lesser Redpoll - first winter female

Chaffinch - first winter female

The slow ringing left time to find a number of birds in and around the site. Brief but proper sightings of both female and male Sparrowhawk leaving the same stretch of woodland suggests a pair close by in coming weeks. A pair of Ravens flew overhead croaking as they went. A pair of Pied Wagtails stuck close together on a nearby roof, and on the neighbouring reservoir, 400 Greylags, 60+ Mallard, 7 Tufted Duck and 5 Cormorant. 

In the woodland 10+ Chaffinch, 3+ Siskin and 2 Great-spotted Woodpecker. 

Greylag

Cormorant

There’s more birding, ringing or photography or Lanzarote soon on Another Bird Blog.

In The Bag

Not a bad morning. A spot of birding, another Wheatear in the bag and I even nailed the reluctant Kingfisher.

The forecast was for a sunny day so I headed for Conder and Glasson but as the windscreen wipers drew back and forth I wondered if I’d made the right decision. The rain was quite steady at Conder Green where an initial look into the creek revealed the usual wader suspects and their by now consistent numbers - 2 Greenshank, 1 Spotted Redshank, 5 Common Sandpiper, 4 Snipe, 28 Redshank, 4 Curlew. 

The Lapwings seemed flighty this morning, not just those around the pool but the ones hidden from view near the canal. Their regular eruptions into the air before settling back down allowed a count of more than 150. Herons and wildfowl remain the same with 2 Little Egret, 2 Grey Heron, 5 Little Grebe, 2 Great Crested Grebe and 2 Wigeon. 

A Cormorant dropped in to feed, those are raindrops in the photo, the ISO at 800, and both I and the camera were getting wet. Time to head off to Glasson and bird via the car until the rain stopped. 

Cormorant

Seven Pied Wagtails and 2 Grey Wagtails near the Glasson car park with a Grey Heron on the far jetty and about 60 Swallows feeding over the water. 

I took a few rain spotted pictures of the resident but far from tame Tufted Ducks, their wary eyes watching my every move. I rather admire our commonplace and largely ignored UK Tufted Duck, a duck of town and city parks with ornamental lakes and ponds. But the Tufty is also a highly migratory beast whereby their numbers increase in the UK in winter as birds move here to escape the cold winters of Iceland and northern Europe. The numbers at Glasson Dock will swell from the present 15/20 to nearer 80/90 during the winter months. 

Tufted Duck

The sky was brightening a little so I made my way back to Conder Green. 

Looking North from Conder Green

At the pool a Kingfisher was surveying the scenery and fishing the waters. Don't forget to "click the pics" for close-up views of the Kingfisher.

Kingfisher

Kingfisher

Kingfisher

Kingfisher

Kingfisher

Kingfisher

Kingfisher

Kingfisher

There's nothing much to add to the earlier numbers of birds except that both Common Terns took their share of the tiny fish on offer and then returned to their nest on the island where they fed the hidden from view youngsters.

There was time for Pilling Marsh where I found Buzzard, Kestrel, Greenshank, 7 Little Egret, 2 Grey Heron and 5 Wheatears. One Wheatear, a juvenile of 96mm and 25.1 grams, succumbed to the temptation of a meal worm. 

Pilling Marsh

 Wheatear

Wheatear - juvenile

  Log in soon fior more news, views and pictures with Another Bird Blog.

Linking this post to Anni's Blog, Eileen's Saturday and Weekend Reflections.

Dead On Time

Setting off birding early in the morning means there’s a chance of seeing owls, usually Barn Owls. This morning at Pilling there was a Tawny Owl at the roadside but unfortunately it was dead, the victim of an overnight collision with a vehicle. 

The woodland living Tawny Owl is very nocturnal and does indeed spend most of its time in the woods so is less likely to fall victim to motorised vehicles than the crepuscular Barn Owl. Barn Owls are very frequent road and rail victims. 

Tawny Owl

I stopped the car to take a look and recued the battered, dishevelled body, placing it in the car for later. There was a BTO ring on the owl’s left leg so I will report that although I’m pretty sure who the ringer is.

Tawny Owls are one of the UK’s most sedentary birds and although young birds disperse from their place of birth they rarely move far, the average distance being just four kilometres. 

Size "G" - UK Ringing Scheme via the British Trust for Ornithology 

I was working on borrowed time today with only an hour or two spare in which to visit the usual spots. The Common Terns really fooled me last weekend at Conder Green when the female was hunkered down out of sight on the nest as the male made less frequent visits to Glasson Dock, the seemingly regular feeding spot. Anyway today was more normal with even the female heading off in the direction of Glasson where I actually saw both birds, one where the canal meets the yacht basin and one over the lock. Could there be youngsters in that unseen nest?

Waders today: 3 Greenshank, 1 Spotted Redshank, 4 Snipe, 4 Common Sandpiper, 6 Curlew, 75 Lapwing, 90 Redshank. 

Lapwing

Also 4 Pied Wagtail, 1 Grey Wagtail, 2 Little Egret, 2 Grey Heron and 4 Teal. 

Pied Wagtail

Lapwing

Brown Hare

At Glasson the aforementioned Common Terns, 2 Grey Wagtail, 25 Swallow, 4 Swift, 2 Grey Heron and 3 Cormorant, but I was out of birding time so saved it for another day. 

Cormorant

Swallow

Swallow

Sunday doesn’t look good because what’s left of Bertha is heading across the Atlantic Ocean and about to hit the UK with wind and rain.

Never mind, Another Bird Blog will be back as soon as possible.

Linking today to Stewart's World Bird Wednesday.

Off A Duck's Back

There’d been a day or two without birding so I set the alarm clock on the strength of Thursday night’s forecast. It was raining hard at 5am so I dozed off for a while. Not long after something stirred me from slumber and the rain had relented, at least for an hour or two. By 0930 a threatening shower had turned again to more persistent rain so play was abandoned for the day after less than two hours of fun. 

A quick stop at Conder Green confirmed a Common Tern sat tight on a nest while two minutes later at Glasson the male was on his circuit. While the female Common Tern sits tight on the nest at Conder Green, the male Common Tern flies off to a regular tour of Glasson Dock 800 yards away where the preferred food seems both readily available and fairly easy to catch. 

The male starts with a round or two of the yacht basin, where it sometimes rests on a tiny but distant jetty, followed by a short flight to the dock where it quickly catches a small fish of the required size. He immediately heads directly back to Conder Green where he presents the fish to the sitting female. 

Both the dock and the yacht basin appear to be teeming with fish at the moment, food availability being a likely factor in the terns choosing to nest so late in the season. The pool at Conder Green seems to lack both the amount and availability of food on offer at Glasson Dock, but has the advantage of an island with the required structure of vegetation that is relatively safe from predators. 

Common Tern

The early rain had mostly kept people indoors but the dock was in noisy working mode with no sign of the regular Kingfisher amongst the boats and moorings. The late start meant less Swallows too, a count of 40ish being considerably down from recent ones. Eight or more Swifts overhead and 8 Cormorants heading south. 

Swallow

 Cormorant

Tufted Ducks numbered just 16 today, the picture below taken from the car when the rain started again and water droplets rolled off the proverbial duck’s back. 

Tufted Duck

A walk along the canal proved fairly fruitful until the rain called a halt. There’s an old neglected orchard with apple trees and fruiting plants like Blackcurrant and where I found 3 brown-headed Blackcaps, 3 or more Robins and several each of Blackbirds, Chaffinches and Goldfinches, 2 Song Thrush, and a Sedge Warbler in song. The regular Tawny Owl was there too, hidden in the dense trees and extensive cover where the scolding of Blackbirds and Song Thrush gave the game away. 

Robin

Further along the canal were 8 Tree Sparrow, and hiding in the waterside vegetation a minimum of 6 Reed Warbler, 4 Sedge Warbler, 2 Whitethroat and 1 Willow Warbler. It’s the time of year that a birder has to use ears rather than eyes to locate the tiny “brown jobs” flitting unseen before their very eyes. 

Whitethroat

Real rain had arrived so I “birded” as best I could from the car at Conder Green with counts of 145 Redshank, 4 Common Sandpiper, 8 Black-tailed Godwit, 3 Dunlin and 3 Little Egret in the immediate channels. 

It was no good, even with the car window partly down everything was getting a soaking. Time to save it for Another Day on Another Bird Blog.

Linking today to Anni's Blog, Camera Critters and Eileen's Saturday .

March Madness

I hope this isn’t getting monotonous for blog readers but there isn’t much to thrill today after a quiet morning up Conder and Cockerham way. It’s just that time of year, early March when the winter birds thin out but before the arrival of the first true spring migrants in mid to late March. 

We enjoyed an awful lot of heavy overnight showers, a couple of sleepless spells as windswept rain lashed the bedroom window. When driving this morning there were lots of new roadside muddy puddles through which to splash. I made a mental note to leave time in the day for yet another bucketful of car shampoo, my unvarying chore of the past three months. 

When I arrived at Conder Green the River Conder was flowing towards the estuary both fast and high, filling the creeks to way above low water level, a sure sign of a night’s deluge. 

The regular birds were there, some in now smaller numbers as winter finally abates: 28 Redshank, 70 Teal, 4 Little Grebe, 3 Goldeneye, 1 Spotted Redshank, 1 Grey Plover, 4 Curlew, 1 Black-tailed Godwit, 1 Little Egret, 4 Shelduck, 6 Wigeon and 4 Oystercatcher. The Oystercatchers comprised two pairs, each taking up residence on the topmost points of the almost submerged islands where both Oystercatchers and Lapwings nest. After the winter rain and storms and using the sluice wall as a reference point it looks as though the water level of the pool is now higher by some 18 inches or more. 

Oystercatcher

Grey Plover

Teal

It remained pretty windy this morning whereby the often serene Glasson Dock had waves a plenty to hide the wildfowl. Receding numbers but still 30+ Tufted Duck, 7 Goldeneye and 8 Cormorants, the Cormorants lined motionless along a single landing stage, waiting for the signal to dive in if the photographer moved closer. 

Cormorant

Goldeneye

The fields at Jeremy Lane were stacked with mainly smaller gulls and Starlings. When I stopped to look closer I estimated 750 Black-headed Gull, 75 Common Gull, 1 Mediterranean Gull, 1 Little Egret and 1500 Starlings. 

Little Egret

Every so often there was a “dread” as all the birds took to the air before settling again to resume feeding on the saturated fields. It wasn’t until the third time that I saw the cause of their panic, a female Merlin dashing low and fast close to the throng of birds but failing to take anything. 

Somewhere in the distant fields was a flock of Black-tailed Godwits too, at one point about 300 of them flying around together before settling far away. 

It was good to see Brown Hares about this morning, just 3, but two of them engaged in their March Madness, chasing through the fields in the near distance. 

Brown Hare

There’s more Insanity in March very soon from Another Bird Blog.

Linking today to Camera Critters, Eileen's Saturday Blog and Anni's birding blog.

More And Less

A week after getting back from holiday I finally plucked up the courage to go birding for an hour or two and it was to the “old faithful” Conder Green and Glasson that I headed. After almost 30 years or so of visits I’m sure if I still had my old Mark 1 Escort Estate of all those years gone by it would pretty much find its own way there. 

The wind hasn’t let up much, making it difficult to count the waders and wildfowl but a little perseverance gave 190+ Teal, 35 Wigeon, 5 Goldeneye, 2 Little Grebe, 4 Lapwing, 6 Oystercatcher, 10 Redshank, 2 Curlew, 1 Little Egret and 1 Spotted Redshank. So nothing much changed in my 3 week absence, numbers and species much the same as winter birds linger on. 

The car park and railway path indicated that a few birds thought spring to be in the air, even though my hat, gloves and scarf said otherwise. In song were 2 Dunnock, 3 Great Tit and a couple of Linnets, although the male singers were amongst a flock of 18/20 in the tallest trees. A couple of Blackbirds here and also 6/8 Chaffinch but neither of those species in song,  plus a croaking Raven overhead.

I spent some time at Glasson watching the 12 Goldeneyes, the majority of them males which broke off their feeding spells to display to the few females on offer. The water was a bit choppy for pictures but I managed a couple in between the birds heading for the centre of the basin if any passer by showed even the least sign of walking the path. 

 Goldeneye

Goldeneye

Goldeneye

There was a single Great Crested Grebe back on the water, the bird sticking to the far reeds where the present water level can surely rise no more and leave ample nesting choices. The picture was taken here last summer on a much sunnier and calmer day. 

 Great Crested Grebe

Also here, 35+ Tufted Duck 3 Cormorants and 1 Grey Heron. 

Cormorant

During my absence fun was had with a Glossy Ibis that turned up in a field at Thurnham Hall, so on the off chance I drove up the familiar road and parked at the church.

It’s many years since my ringing birds at Thurnham where Marsh Tits, Garden Warblers, Spotted Flycatchers, Blackcaps and Nuthatches regularly turned up in the nets and where the fabled Lesser Spotted Woodpecker put in a final appearance before going locally extinct. There were no digital cameras then.

 

Lesser-spotted Woodpecker

No Marsh Tits or lesser spots today, just Great Spotted Woodpecker, Mistle Thrush, 2 Treecreeper, 15 Fieldfare, 1 Redwing, 2 Nuthatch and Coal Tits, lots of them. 

I didn’t see the Glossy Ibis but I sure found a good few memories. More news and maybe memories from Another Bird Blog soon.

Rainbow Time

I played at dodging the showers today, even managing a bit of birding during the few brief but welcome sunny spells. 

As usual I started at Conder Green with a momentary spot of sunshine and time to take stock. There were the usual Little Grebes whereby I’d counted 10 or more until a Kingfisher flew through the binoculars to divert my attention towards the creek, the direction it went. I didn’t see the Kingfisher again but found 2 Spotted Redshanks at the junction of the creeks with 10 or so Redshanks. 

Meanwhile on the pool/creek were 95 + Teal, 6 Cormorant, 3 Wigeon, 1 Grey Heron, 1 Little Egret and a single Pied Wagtail. Two Ravens flew overhead, with their loud and unmistakable calls heading west again. As I stood on the bridge a male Sparrowhawk flew past no more than a split second after alarm calls of Robin and Reed Bunting made me look around. 

 Conder Green

Cormorant

Very little to report from Glasson with the “highlights” being a flight over of 45 Pink-footed Goose, 3 Pied Wagtails and a feeding flock of 35+ Goldfinch. 

I checked the Whooper Swans on the marsh at Fluke Hall and then counted 18 of them plus 8 Mute Swans, 70+ Shelduck and 3 Snipe. I had good reason to thank the shooters when their maize crop on the other side of the sea wall became the only shelter from a particularly heavy downpour. As I stood against the tall, thick stems Whooper Swans were flying from the marsh roost and overhead towards the stubble with my camera set to black & white. Less than a minute later I was on the sea wall to take a snap of the rainbow against the black sky over Lancaster.

 

Whooper Swans

Pilling Marsh

When the sun appeared there was a procession of Pintail flying in from the outer marsh and dropping onto the wildfowler’s pool. In all there were in excess of 95 Pintail. The Pintail is certainly one of the UK’s most elegant and beautiful ducks. More about ducks in next week’s blog with another look at The Crossley ID Guide: Britain and Ireland and a chance to win a copy- stay tuned. 

Pintail

Pintail

There’s a good number of Lapwings starting to use the flooded field now, probably in excess of 300 although they are rather difficult to see amongst the black soil, the stubble itself and having to look through the still quite thick hawthorn hedge. Also on the stubble 30+ Skylarks and one or two more Snipe. 

In the trees at Fluke Hall, 1 Buzzard and at least 3 raucous Jays. 

More soon from Another Bird Blog. Linking today to Anni's Blog and Camera Critters.