Missing The Grey

At last a slightly better morning with a hint of sunshine. There was no rain but too breezy to plan a ringing session, so it was birding for me. 

With these 0800 late starts there’s always traffic about. Near Hambleton I spotted a Barn Owl sat on the roadside fence. But on a single track road where “white van man” was closing fast in the rear view mirror there was no option but to sail past the owl. I stopped at a pull off point 50 yards away just in time to see the owl fly over the tall hedge and off towards its daytime roost in a broken down old building. I consoled myself with the thought that the owl was so close to the road that had I stopped it would have flown off anyway. It’s the same location where I saw Barn Owls a number of times in the summer and autumn. 

Barn Owl

I stopped at Pilling to check on the Linnets where if the wind speed will drop we hope for a ringing session before weekend. There are still plenty of Linnets to go at with 200/240 flying around the plot this morning. Nearby a Buzzard sat atop a pole while taking a close interest in goings on below. 

Buzzard

Near the farm at the head of the lane there was a Kestrel, one of four I saw this morning at Stalmine, Pilling (2), and then Cockerham. I’m hoping that these possible incomers can replace the Kestrels we appeared to lose this year. Kestrels are partially migratory and dispersive whereby young ones move from their birth areas and in their second and subsequent years may breed many miles from their initial home. 

Kestrel

I stopped in the gateway of Braides Farm and scanned the distant flood and the many birds thereon. It’s worth spending an hour more here as there is a constant movement of wildfowl and waders arriving, leaving or simply flying around after being spooked for a not always obvious reason. This morning : 500+ Lapwing, 190 Curlew, 80 Black-tailed Godwit, 60 Redshank, 75 Teal, 24 Wigeon and 22 Shoveler. 

I spoke to a wildfowler coming off the marsh about the comings and goings of the geese and wildfowl. Like many wildfowlers he was very knowledgeable and he told me of his sighting of a Grey Phalarope as recently as 8th December. I had no reason to doubt his claim, especially when he described how he watched the bird from 10ft away. 

The Grey Phalarope is a truly pelagic species and it spends up to 11 months of the year at sea, only coming to land to nest. The migration route of Canadian and Greenland birds takes them past Britain and Ireland, but normally well out to sea. Here in North West England it is a rare passage migrant, usually after Atlantic depressions that bring strong westerly or north-westerly winds towards the western side of Britain. There are approximately 500 records of this species in the UK each year and when they turn up, they are invariably highly approachable. 

Grey Phalarope - Phalaropus lobatus-

Photo credit: Drbrown1970 via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA

I made my way to Conder Green where my beginner’s mistake of not keeping an eye on recent tide levels meant that the creeks were full of water from the rising tide of the River Lune. 

Conder Green at high tide

So a somewhat different and reduced species count for here of 230 Teal, 45 Wigeon, 16 Snipe, 22 Redshank, 1 Spotted Redshank, 4 Little Grebe, 2 Shelduck. Fifteen Whooper Swans flew to the outer marsh and 5 Fieldfare were feeding in the near hedgerow. 

Around the lanes of Jeremy and Moss I noted a hundred or more Fieldfares feeding in the wet fields and also noted that many hawthorns are quickly losing their berry crop. 

Fieldfare

 

It’s about this time of year that Fieldfares turn from feeding on hedgerow berries to searching fields for earthworms. Or they may even appear in urban or suburban gardens, as one did this week in my own garden where it found the laden crab apple tree planted some 10 years ago and which until now has been mostly neglected by garden birds. 

Look in again soon. There might be pictures of that Fieldfare and if Andy I get to Pilling, a Linnet or two.

More Snobs, Belated Phalarope

I’d been stuck indoors on Thursday morning waiting for the heating engineer and then when he came, discussing our non-functioning radiators with him. When I eventually reached Pilling to indulge in a spot of birding the afternoon proved a frustrating one with a flyover of 2 Snow Buntings, belated news of a Grey Phalarope and then a finish soon after 3pm when the almost-December light failed me. 

I set off from Fluke heading east along the usual path where a number of Redshanks and Curlews flushed from the marsh and the several hundred Jackdaws, Carrion Crows and a single Raven took to the air at my coming. 

Suddenly a Peregrine appeared from “nowhere” and briefly chased a Redshank towards the wood before doing the usual disappearing act over Ridge Farm. There were 15 Whooper Swans on the marsh, the birds now less tolerant than when they first arrived from Iceland in October and more inclined to flee from would-be observers. By 3pm I’d counted 165 Whooper Swans as they came and went between the marsh, the stubble field and an inland spot not far away. I hear tell some were killed as they hit overhead power lines near Eagland Hill - what a terrible end for such a majestic creature of the air. 

Whooper Swans

Waders on the wet stubble amounted to 44 Black-tailed Godwit, 14 Redshank, 75+ Lapwings and 1 Snipe. Passerines just 2 Skylark and 2 Linnets until I glimpsed two brown jobs lift off from Hi-Fly’s spilled wheat track, the birds showing flashes of white. As they called and flew they instantly became 2 Snow Buntings and I followed them as they continued flying over the wood, heading south and into the near distance. 

After a number of consecutive years when Snow Buntings have been rather scarce 2013 has seen a turnaround with the arctic buntings seemingly at a number of local spots. The picture is of a Snow Bunting here at Pilling on November 10th a few weeks ago. 

Snow Bunting

I watched as good numbers of Pintail and Shelduck arrived at the wildfowlers pools for their free meal, roughly 40 Pintail and 60 Shelduck, but no wary Teal just now. 

Along the sea wall came a non-birding acquaintance of mine who can put an accurate name to many birds but perhaps not to less well known ones. He told of a day some weeks ago and a small grey and white wader feeding at the surface of a pool, not a Snipe or a Jack Snipe, but smaller. The bird was so close and untroubled by his being there that my pal walked within 6 feet of it then took a picture with his mobile phone; I knew he had seen a Grey Phalarope. His pal who had also seen the bird later found something similar on the Internet and reckoned the creature might be a Grey Phalarope. 

Grey Phalarope

As my acquaintance has previously seen a winter Bittern in almost the same spot I ensured that this time he has my mobile number for future reference. 

Just a few short hours but for finding and seeing birds there’s no substitute for getting out there and actually doing it is there?

Back home the garden has been quiet for weeks on end, enlivened by a visit from a Treecreeper, a couple of sightings of a male Sparrowhawk, and the reason for the hawk, several feeding Goldfinch.

 

Goldfinch

There’s more news soon, belated or not from Another Bird Blog.

Old Pictures, Old Tales

More wind and rain promised this week doesn’t bode well for much birding or photography but I live in hope of some extensive sunshine later in the week when I will have time to get out. Anyway, today is babysitting and I wouldn’t want to miss that.

So for this evening I’ll post a few aged pictures coupled with a few ancient stories.

When I looked up the date of the first two pictures by referring to some old bird reports I was amazed by how old the transparencies were, how long I held onto them and how they managed to survive the ravages of time. I suppose it helps they were stashed away in the dark in little plastic boxes, and despite a few moves of home and the clearouts that came with pleas of “throw out that old rubbish”, which I resisted on the grounds of preserving vital historical information for future generations, they survived.

The first two show a Grey Phalarope from 26 years ago, September 1983 that turned up at Fairhaven Lake after rough weather. What was fairly remarkable about this bird was how confiding it proved to be, allowing close approach to within feet away as it sailed around the edge of the lake and took to wandering over the grassy areas. Within a few days of its arrival a Red-necked Phalarope was also blown in after a storm, as together the two species entertained the assembled watchers for a day or two. If I remember correctly, the new arrival wasn’t quite as obliging as its counterpart, probably the reason I don’t have a picture of the red-necked, but I do remember seeing them within a foot or two of each other feeding in the detritus of the lake’s surface. Even now I laugh about the somewhat garbled phone message I received at the time "Red-necked Fallahawk on Fairhaven Lake", still something of a household joke.

Maybe there is someone out there who has old slides of them both together. What a furore the same event might cause nowadays, but the resulting multitude and quality of digital pictures would be phenomenal in comparison with my tired old ex slides.

Recently there was a lot of interest shown in a Long-billed Dowitcher found locally near Cockersands and there were also a few others in the UK, but the next picture is of a Short-billed Dowitcher. I took this old photo slide in Ontario Canada in May 1989 where I became fairly familiar with the look and call of the species in the month that I spent there.



Later that year in September 1989 a dowitcher sp turned up at Marton Mere, Blackpool spending its initial time on the northern bank of the mere from where I and one or two others heard it call as it flew around a couple of times. From the diagnostic call, there was no doubt that this bird was a Short-billed Dowitcher, the dull, staccato but fastish Turnstone like “tuttuttut”, quite unlike the high pitched call of Long-billed Dowitcher.

The bird soon relocated to the mere island opposite the south bank where it was not only further away, but where it remained silent until it left later in the day. At its time on the island other observers convinced themselves, perhaps by default as the more common species to occur on this side of the Atlantic, that the bird must be a Long-billed Dowitcher. I believe that the bird was later “accepted” as a Long-billed Dowitcher which really didn’t concern me as I knew what I had seen and heard.

It was in subsequent years, especially in the 1990s, that separation of autumn long-billed and short-billed firmed up, but as they say, “Short-billed Dowitcher, it’s on my list”.

However for anyone with a particular interest in these two species I recommend the following read:

http://www.surfbirds.com/ID%20Articles/dowitchers1005/dowitchers.html

My thanks to Eurico Zimbres for the fantastic picture below of Short-billed Dowitchers, wow, what long bills short-billed have.

And my thanks to http://www.naturespicsonline.com/ for the equally stunning picture of Long-billed Dowitcher.



There was some reaction to my Bardsey memories of a few days ago from fellow Bardsey buffs, so just for them, here is another picture, Yellow-browed Warbler, instantly recognisable as being taken on Bardsey for them that know.