Slowly Does It

The ringing squad aka The Old Crocks could not make it this time. Too much beer/wine, baby sitting and/or too many aches & pains left me alone to seek birds. Better luck Friday when we hope to tackle the Cockerham Sand Martin colony for the first time this year. 

A sunny morning beckoned as I set off north along the notorious A588 through Stalmine, Pilling and Cockerham, FY, PR and LA respectively, not as far apart as those differing post codes might imply. The tortuous road is less dangerous since at great cost and much protest from late-to-work boy racers a large number of average speed cameras made everyone slow down; we are told the bright yellow devices work in the dark, can detect drivers using mobile phones and record a driver’s eye colour. 

A little late but 1984 is definitely here with Tory Boy followed seamlessly on by Starmergeddon; more taxation and then The Magic Money Tree to stoke inflation. More surveillance, nanny statism and nationalised services about to make everything worse. Wait until 80,000 new windmills sit proudly across every rural constituency in the cause of Joke Zero. What a coalition that will create - anarchists, useful idiots and environmental swampies, as middle class retirees fight for their property value with lumps of newly laid concrete. Sit back with the popcorn and enjoy the show. Only five years to go. 

Mind you, the A road is still dicing with death as I found out when slowing to an almost stop at double white lines and then a sharp bend at the sight of Barn Owls, first at Pilling and then at Cockerham. Some fool almost took my door mirror off! Hanging around for more pics was definitely dodgy so luckily the blog archive of circa 90/100 Barn Owls pics saved the day. 

Barn Owl

After a slow start with flooded fields and dykes in early 2024 it’s clear that the local and ever adaptable Barn Owls are now feeding young in a number of scattered locations. 

Barn Owl

A flash, a putative pool, some 60/70 yards distant at Cockerham held three brown Shoveler ducks, the species now quite scarce, distinctly wary & unfriendly to those bearing a camera (or a gun). Some weeks ago I saw the male alone on a different flash of water from where he flew in the direction of this latest sighting, thus making a record of likely breeding for this overlooked species. 

Shovelers

Shoveler

Nearby were a couple of Golden Plover, a colourful adult and a spangled individual; a rather unusual time of year but a species which may still breed on high ground inland not  too many miles away in the Pennine Hills. 

Golden Plover

Golden Plover

Lapwings are beginning their autumn gatherings with 40/60 on Conder Pool, the once peaceful area of water loved by birders, now transformed by experts and renamed Gull Hell in homage to the several hundred Black-headed Gulls that now call it home. 

To be fair the gulls give protection to a number of Common Terns that nest on rafts where no raptor worth its salt would want an onslaught of hundreds of Black-headed Gulls.  

Common Tern

We gained a cacophony of noise - gulls, terns and Avocets while losing breeding Lapwings, Redshank and Tufted Duck but left Oystercatchers hanging by a thread. Such is progress. 

Oystercatcher

 

I drove to a quiet spot and took a few pictures of common birds in the bright light of morning. 

Linnet

Woodpigeon

Reed Bunting

Pied Wagtail

The forecast looks good for Friday and Sand Martins. Take a look soon and see how The Old Crocks performed. It may not be pretty or at a fast pace but we try hard. 

Bluebirds, Blackbirds, And A Song

All through October and November we looked, listened and waited for Fieldfares to arrive in the west when their size, colour and loud chuckling voices would send our eyes skywards in appreciative glances. 

The Fieldfare is not a species a wide awake birder can miss when the thrushes make it from Norway in their dozens, hundreds, even thousands and drop into glowing-red hawthorn hedgerows to then feast like there’s no tomorrow. 

Fieldfare

Maybe the constant wind and rain of autumn here in the west persuaded many to remain in the North East and then travel quickly south towards France and Spain rather than cross the backbone of England to warm wet Lancashire? 

Whatever the reason for the deficiency of recent weeks it was more than good to catch up with a small number of Fieldfares out Cockerham last week when the sun shone bright and Fieldfares looked their best. But for this interlude it might be February, March or April before Fieldfares make another appearance, this time on their way back to Northern Europe. 

 

Fieldfare

Fieldfare

In the days of the last century, before even me, the thrush we now call Fieldfare was known as Bluebird to distinguish it from its allies the Mistle Thrush, then named Greybird, and the accurately named Blackbird. 

As I focused on the Fieldfare’s multifaceted colours and clicked the button, I thought that Varied Thrush - The Haunting Voice of Ancient Forests, might be a more suitable name but posting pictures on the Internet of a Varied Thrush at Cockerham might cause a stampede through the narrow lanes.  For sure any such mistake, deliberate or otherwise, would upset local farmers and not help my notoriety among local birders. 

Near the top of the hawthorns up popped the ultimate rarity, a shyster; but no, not a politician, the timid, unsure, and now impossible to find Song Thrush. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw one, let alone a half chance at a picture, a species now hardly ever reported by local birders. 

It’s too late to rescue the British Song Thrush. We rip out hedgerows and blanket the countryside in concrete and white elephant windmills where Song Thrushes can’t live; but no one cares. Follow The Money. 

Song Thrush

 

The few Blackbirds around proved harder to picture than gregarious Fieldfares. The Fieldfares might sit there motionless for a minute, eyeing up a bunch of berries until they decided to eat while the Blackbirds stole through the black branches nicking a berry or two if they thought no one was looking. 

Blackbird

Fieldfare

Blackbird

I drove back through Pilling where roadside Lapwings, Golden Plovers and Curlews provided a background symphony of wild calls to the thrum of traffic going nowhere while seeing nothing. 

 

Golden Plover

Lapwing

Lapwing

Curlew

It’s always Lapwing to the fore, Curlews a little further away and Golden Plovers way back, 100 yards or more, out of sight out of mind, except to shooters. Yes in 2023, Golden Plovers are Schedule 2 species, which means that it is legal to shoot them outside the closed season and a feather in a shooter's cap to bag one.  

No one cares. Follow The Money. 

Saturday Sortie

Almost three weeks of cold easterly winds has meant not much ringing. There have been a few migrants arriving but not in any great numbers. Until today I had seen a single Swallow and just two House Martins, the latter back on territory at the big house on the corner on 12th April. 

Saturday morning and the dashboard read 1°C as I set off birding in winter woollies. 

There was a fine start at Pilling by way of a couple of rarities followed by the customary Barn Owl. At Lane Ends, Pilling I watched a couple of Little Egrets on the marsh just as a larger egret flew east towards Cockerham. Something made me lift my bins to look closer at the Grey Heron sized bird, upon which it turned out be a Great White Egret – same jizz, same size as a grey, but definitely all over white and with a large yellow bill. Four Swallows flew east as both Chiffchaff and Willow Warbler sang from the trees. 

Great White Egret 

Not far away a pair of Grey Partridge fed in a weedy field where the mild winter has produced a second crop of oilseed rape. As noted here on the blog many times, the Grey Partridge is now exceedingly uncommon in this part of Lancashire, so scarce that it is difficult to see how even with environmental schemes designed to help the species can ever reach its former status as a common farmland bird. 

Grey Partridge 

Compare the sad state of out native partridge with the introduced and now ubiquitous Red-legged Partridge. This is now the common partridge of the UK courtesy of the shooting fraternity who release many millions into the countryside each winter for “sport”. The birds left from the winter slaughter go on to breed in the same countryside that is now devoid of our native partridge and many other farmland birds. Such is the topsy-turvy way that we in the UK are governed by hopeless politicians and disinterested administrators whose loyalties are given to anyone but the people who pay their wages. 

Red-legged Partridge 

The Barn Owl, a poster boy for Wyre Council, was one of two I saw this morning, the other around Jeremy Lane when on the way to Cockersands. 

Barn Owl 

Barn Owl 

At Braides Farm there was a Merlin, a single Wheatear, 8 Linnet, 4 Pied Wagtails, 1 Little Egret, and three more Swallows flying into the easterly breeze. 

At Conder Green the principal species at the moment is Oystercatcher and where just as a week ago I counted 50+, most of them still in the throes of sorting out their forthcoming family life. If these numbers stay the same we should end up with 10-12 pairs breeding on habitat now highly suitable to their requirements. No Avocets today, or at least none in sight or heard, so perhaps the dozen or more individuals seen this year have all gone elsewhere. Otherwise - 12 Greylag, 4 Canada Geese, 12 Shelduck, 8 Tufted Duck and 2 Little Egret. No Swallows, Sand Martins or House Martins seen but there was 1 Willow Warbler in brief song. 

Oystercatcher 

A drive up to Cockersands proved uneventful apart from a single but elusive Barn Owl that twice escaped closer inspection as it hunted a wide expanse of fields. Barn Owls are pretty easy to see just now if you know where to look. I suspect that a good number of hunting birds are feeding young, their sitting partner, or both. 

I found a lonely Swallow on the way to Cockersands. A single bird was sat above a traditional farm’s doorway, waiting for someone to open the door. The poor thing had not long arrived from scorching Africa to a familiar UK greeting of cold easterly winds and daytime temperatures of less than 10° C. 

Swallow 

There was a lovely flock of about 800 Golden Plovers on the fields at Cockersands. A flock has been thereabouts all through winter but it is only now that many begin to show their black and gold-spangled plumage. The Golden Plover is a truly beautiful bird that unbelievably, in 2019 and for the foreseeable future, can be legally shot in this country and many others. 

Golden Plover 

It is very difficult to get photographs of our Golden Plovers, hunted as they are throughout Northern Europe by homo sapiens.  

I watched as the flock spread out across two large fields, feeding as they went, stopping occasionally to crouch in unison as an unseen threat emerged. Their spangled plumage serves them well, even in the winter when they might become the target of an overhead Peregrine.  

Gradually, after a minute or more and when the coast was clear, they would stand one by one, two by two, and then continue feeding at a walking pace until all were at 80 yards or so from the field edge. And then soon after, at some unknown signal or perhaps when they sensed they were too close to the road where people and vehicles pass by, they would rise and fly as one back to the far edge of the field 400 yards away. Very quickly they started again their slow crossing of the field in search of food.      

Although the forecast is for yet another week of cold, easterly winds, back soon with more news.

Linking today to Anni's Birding and Eileen's Blogspot.

Out At Last

What with half-term, car service & MOT and pretty poor weather, I’d been out of birding action for a week. 

Thursday morning and as is often the case I wasn’t sure where to go on my local patch while allowing sufficient time to spend at each. There’s nothing more annoying than birding at one place and seeing not very much to then hear later of birds seen in the same spot soon after. It’s a form of Sod’s Law that applies to birders and probably other obsessives. 

Through Pilling village was the first Chiffchaff singing from an annual location but as I drove past I spotted a hunting Barn Owl ahead. The owl was on a fast, large circuit that took it over fields, behind tall hedgerows and through farmyards so I quickly lost sight. 

Barn Owl 

I drove up to Conder Pool, the first time for a couple of weeks. Very evident here was that the water level here is tremendously high after the autumn and winter rains with very little in way of margins for waders. I counted 8 Shelduck, 6 Tufted Duck, 22 Teal, 2 Little Egret, 1 Grey Heron and a good number of Mute Swans. There was a single Kestrel knocking around. Waders consisted of 2 Avocet and 8 Oystercatchers. 

Two Avocets have taken up territory on one of the far islands in exactly the same spot as last year. 

Avocet 

Having bred successfully both adults and offspring Avocets are faithful to a site in subsequent years. And with an average life span of 10-15 years there’s a more than a reasonable chance that either or even both of these birds were here last year. But more’s the pity as Avocets are not the friendliest towards other species. 

It’s not like me to be controversial but I'm far from certain we should be encouraging too many Avocets on Conder Pool, a piece of real estate that for many years was home to more common species. I would much rather see several pairs of species that co-exist rather than pairs of aggressive Avocets that allow no other birds on “their” patch. 

Surely several pairs of declining Redshank, Lapwing, Oystercatcher and maybe one or two Little Ringed Plover would be preferable? There now, naughty me, I've gone and upset the whole of the RSPB and the band of birders who judge a species by rarity value rather than taking a holistic view. 

A tour of the Jeremy Lane and Cockersands found a good selection of species but little in the way of migrants. Even the many hares I saw appeared lethargic, mainly sitting around and uninterested in the fact that it was April 12th and their mating season. 

Brown Hare 

There was a huge Peregrine hunting the marsh where it made several passes but caught nothing. Lapwings are mostly all paired up now with much dashing display, frantic calling and chasing off the crows so I suspect some are on eggs. Not so the Golden Plover, wintering birds only with a loose flock of 180+ birds, but many resplendent in their black& gold summer plumage. It is mostly impossible to get close to this species and as I've mentioned here before, to the UK’s eternal shame that this species is allowed to be shot by hunters. 

Golden Plover 

On the fields here – 40+ off passage Meadow Pipits searching the soggy fields, 8-10 Skylark and 20+ Linnet still flocking. 30+ Sand Martins at our ringing quarry looks promising and where with luck we’ll begin ringing after the first fledglings are on the wing. 

Meadow Pipit 

I was out birding all morning but still didn't see or hear many migrants. A handful of Swallows and two singing Chiffchaffs was the sum total of my summer birds. 

We’re promised warmer weather soon. Not soon enough where migration so far has consisted of a small flurry of early birds while everyone waits for the big fall that hardly ever takes place. 

Saturday looks promising for ringing with a light southerly of 5 mph and no rain. Believe it when we see it!

Linking today to Eileen's Blog.

A Photo Or Two

I didn’t get many photos this morning. As each week passes the adult birds and those born last year get older and wiser about birders and keep out of the way of cameras and bins. 

An early morning Barn Owl is pretty much guaranteed at the moment when food is scarce and the owls spend longer on the hunt. So it was this morning as the owl stayed alongside the moss road but hidden by distance and the straggly hedge at eye level. I made do with a Kestrel and then a Buzzard just sat in the opposite field but keeping a wary eye on passing cars. It looked like last year’s bird. 

Buzzard

Along Lancaster Road a farmer was out early taking the tops off and shaping the hedgerow. It rather stopped my looking for finches and much else but the flood at Rawcliffe/Pilling held 4 Fieldfare, 1 Kestrel, 180 Lapwing, 10 Pied Wagtail and 8 Meadow Pipit. At Gulf Lane the Linnet flock is down to about 40 birds, the lowest count of the winter but not surprising given the battering of rain, wind, snow and ice that both birds and vegetation have taken since August. 

Around the moss road produced a couple of calling Buzzards on territory as 5/6 Meadow Pipits scattered ahead of the car. 

Buzzard

 

I called at Conder Green out of habit more than optimism and the chance the Avocets may appear any day. They are already in Lancashire after their winter away. No up-turned bills just the usual 3 pairs of Oystercatcher, 15 Curlew, 12 Redshank and a gang of 10 noisy Shelduck. Spring is definitely in the air with Robins and Skylarks in song although next week we’re back to cold and frosty air. 

Robin

A trip around Jeremy Lane and up to Cockersands produced a healthy if unspectacular mix of species. Best was a mixed flock of Starlings, Fieldfares and Redwings numbering 200/200/6. Redwings are much scarcer than Fieldfares in early spring as if the Fieldfares make a leisurely journey north while the Redwings dash through mostly unseen. 

Near Cockersands was the usual Kestrel, a female Stonechat and some pretty huge flocks of Lapwings and Golden Plovers which numbered in the few thousands of each. Also, 30+ Skylarks, 30+ Redshank, 18 Twite, 13 Pied Wagtail, 8 Meadow Pipit and 6 Tree Sparrow. 

Kestrel

 

Golden Plovers

I saw a three or four Brown Hares this morning. One stopped in a gateway to clean its feet after it ran through a muddy patch of ground. I’ve seen them do that before. 

Brown Hare

 

There’s ringing tomorrow, something of a novelty this winter. But the forecast is half-decent with just a 10mph wind at a partly sheltered site. I’m meeting Andy at 0700. Log in later to see how we did.  

A Saturday link toWild Bird Wednesday,  Anni's Blog and Eileen's blog.

Plovers Galore

Ask any birder their least favourite time of the year and November is bound to feature highly. 

Autumnal contact calls and mornings of migrants on the move becomes a thing of the dim but not distant past, to be replaced by thoughts of where to spend the mostly grey, murky mornings that November brings. Damnation to those dark mornings where a sprint from the starting blocks rarely beats a doggie walker to an early stroll, or where midday sun quickly becomes 2:30 pm, faded light, and a trail of bouncy finches headed to a rapidly approaching roost. 

With sunrise timed at 8:06 am it was just 0750 plus two when I set off in the usual directions. “Plus two” was the time it took to clear the windscreen of frost.  Now there’s a novelty but with the bonus of clear skies and promised sunshine. 

A single shooters’ car stood at Gulf Lane. By all accounts the shooters have enjoyed a poor season as the “pinkies” refused to cooperate with well-practiced plans. Often the geese have gained height too quickly and were out of range of the guns, or they played it cool and flew west, east or north across the bay of Morecambe. This year the geese have roosted further out in the bay and stuck to the main tidal channel that has moved north with the result that by the time the geese fly over the marsh they can be too high for the shooters. 

When I looked across the bay from Lane Ends and towards Heysham Power Station the geese were uncountable through the sheer density and distance of the flock but certainly in many tens of thousands. 

 

Pink-footed Geese and Heysham

Sadly, I spoke to a person who was heading out with the sole objective of shooting a Golden Plover. Like me, he’d noticed that in recent days and probably as result of poor weather and snow north of here, our area had seen a large influx of these beautiful but still unprotected plovers. To the eternal shame of Great Britain in 2017, Woodcock, Snipe and Golden Plover are waders of “legitimate quarry”. 

Golden Plover

Just like the geese the numbers of Lapwings and Golden Plovers today were almost uncountable in the many fields that line the coast road. From Pilling Lane Ends to River Cocker I estimated 4,000 Golden Plover and 7,000 Lapwing, many hundreds of Curlew and in the region of 7,000+ Starlings! 

Golden Plover and Lapwing

Golden Plover and Lapwing

Lapwing

The Linnets at Gulf Lane numbered 170+ with still a male Sparrowhawk in attendance but an unsuccessful one at least on this occasion. Not far away was a Buzzard, one of four that I saw on my travels today. The photo distance is about on the limits of tolerance for a local Buzzard and even then it stares into the way off lens. 

Buzzard

I tried my luck at Conder Green with the distant duck. A dartboard max of 180 Teal, 37 Wigeon, 35 Tufted Duck and 40 Mallards told me that water levels were up and waders were down to handfuls of Redshank, Lapwing and Curlew. Conder Green holds more “tufties” than the more traditional site of Glasson Dock at the moment with a quick look there showing just 12 Tufted Duck but 3 male Goosander. 

There wasn’t much luck towards Cockersands where the 500+ Whooper Swans have done a bunk. More likely is that the farmer decided the trampling of his field was getting too bad, hence the lines of tractor tracks throughout the field which betray an extravagant amount of back and forth action but nothing in the way of crops. 

Best here was a flock of 25+ Greenfinch, in recent years a number now almost unknown plus handfuls only of Tree Sparrows and Fieldfares.

Greenfinch

The First of December already. It will soon be Christmas with only 24 days of birding left for the lucky ones.

Linking today to Eileen's Blog.