It’s All Going To Pot

Yes, It’s been over a week since a post from me with nothing of note to share since the last outing produced over fifty birds ringed but very little since. It seems that just lately our ringing has "gone to pot”. 

Visits to the ringing site/supplementary feeding spot between bouts of rain and wind produced small numbers and tiny catches of the usual suspects of Chaffinch, Reed Bunting and Blackbirds. 

 

Blackbird

Reed Bunting

Chaffinch

Regular sightings of both Sparrowhawk, Buzzard and once or twice a ring-tail Hen Harrier suggested that they at least were having some luck in catching birds. Nonetheless I stuck to the feeding regime and hoped as ever that bird numbers would improve. 

Sue and I motored up Glasson Way on a couple of occasions where after the secret bacon butty shop brunch (2 barms and 2 teas for £9.50), I took a peek at Conder Green. 

Bacon Barm

 

For a week or two and depending upon the state of the tide in or out of the creeks, there’s been a wintering Ruff, one or two wintering Greenshank, the ever present but always numerous Redshank and tidal Little Grebes. 

Greenshank

Ruff

Distant across the far side of the pool were two Stonechats a species that is not common here but one that will now appear with more regularity as an early spring migrant. 

Again ,and depending upon the tides were anything from 50 to 200 Teal plus the expected build up of noisy assertive Greylags looking to start their breeding season. Last Wednesday morning I counted upwards of 100 Greylags but where only three or four pairs are likely to eventually breed here. 

Teal

Greylags

It’s at this time of year that numbers of Canada Geese appear and I was not pleased to see more than 50 of this species, a bird more problematical than Greylag. 

Canada Goose

The main issue that many people experience with Canada Geese is the sheer amount of noise that a group of them will make  This problem has grown increasingly serious as time goes on since there are few natural predators of the Canada Goose in the UK. This has allowed their population to grow unchecked, and develop from as little as 2200 in 1953 to more than 100,000 by the millennium. Not only are the geese noisy, but they can also be highly territorial, especially when guarding their goslings. It is far from rare for members of the public to be attacked by Canada Geese in parks and along riverbanks. 

Just today I was chatting to a wildfowler who told me that while a Greylag for the pot makes a pretty good meal, a within range Canada Goose is not worth wasting a pot-shot as the meat is not nearly so good as a Greylag. We had an interesting conversation about his gun, an old 1878 model that he likes to use  sometimes together with his hand made powder and bismuth cartridges.

Lets finish with music from Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson. Two old dudes laying down a track better than any modern day 20 something’s can via a song title that sums up the world of today. This folks, is what talent looks like.  They don't make them like this anymore. RIP Merle.

 

Enjoy the song. Back soon with Another Bird Blog.

Linking at the weekend to Eileen's Blogspot and Anni in Texas.

No Page Threes

The last ten days proved very frustrating. Since returning from Greece in the early hours of 18 May, I’ve not been able to get out ringing or do any meaningful birding. 

Skiathos, Greece - May Days 

My return to a typically British summer of wind and rain meant that gardening and other chores took priority. There’s one thing to say in favour of the good old British climate - it certainly makes things grow, as testified by our green waste bin now bursting to overspill with clippings of grass, trees and hedgerow. 

At last, I’m free so on Saturday I met up with Andy at Oakenclough at 0600 and a promised sunny morning with less than 10mph wind and the customary cold northerlies. 

As I drove on site a buck Roe Deer leapt over the wire fence ahead and disappeared into woodland. I searched in the boot for hat and warm jacket in readiness for the display of 6°, unlike the 27° of recent Skiathos. 

There were Willow Warblers and Garden Warblers in song, a foretaste of that to follow as we caught with good variety, unspectacular numbers but thankfully not a single one of the customary titmice. In fact throughout the morning, a single Coal Tit was the only representative of the tribe. 

14 birds caught – 5 Willow Warber, 2 Chiffchaff and one each of Blackcap, Garden Warbler, Bullfinch, Goldcrest, Pied Wagtail, Robin and Dunnock. 

The adult male Bullfinch was a stunner.  

Bullfinch

Both the Blackcap and the Garden Warbler proved to be adult female with full brood patch, the Pied Wagtail a second year male. 

Pied Wagtail

Garden Warbler

Blackcap

The young Dunnock an example of how soon young birds are able to leave the nest and become at least partly self-sufficient when upon release it flew strongly into the trees from whence it came. 

Dunnock

We caught adult Willow Warblers only with no examples of recently fledged ones. The cold weather of May has slowed the species’ breeding season with the emergence of young a week or more away. 

Chiffchaff

 

Willow Warbler

Birding was quiet because migration is more or less over apart from late stragglers that often surprise. Several families of Greylag, 6 Oystercatcher, 2 Lapwing, 4 Pied Wagtail, 2 Mistle Thrush, 4 Swallows, 4 Garden Warblers, 12+ Willow Warblers. 

Greylags

Linking this weekend to Eileen's Blogspot and Anni in Texas.

Sunny Start, Rain Later.

We have 0900 starts for now until the days lengthen but amazingly or not, our garden Dunnocks and Great Tits are already in song? How do they know? 

Great Tit - CC-BY-SA-3.0

There was sunshine this morning so I kicked off at Linnet Square and dropped yet another bucket of seed at the catching spot where dummy poles mark the line of our whoosh net. Tracks and holes in the soil told me that our seed had been found by small mammals and deer.

Trouble is, the mild, wet weather and the Linnets themselves have conspired to make catching impossible since August. The past three winters have seen a number of counts around the 400/500 mark but this season’s average is around 130 only with and a total catch of just 28, way below our target. The count this morning was 150/160 very mobile Linnets and several Chaffinches, none of which stopped to use our seed while natural food seems still plentiful. The sowing mix the farmer uses is so good that the resultant seed seems to last right through the winter until the flock disperses in March. 

Linnets 

Linnet Square 

There was the usual Kestrel, 2 Stock Dove and a single Little Egret. 

When fifteen minutes later I stopped at Conder Green the effect of the continued mild weather was noted again by way of a female/first winter Marsh Harrier. A "Gold Top", circling over the back of the pool and behind the bund, pursued all the way by a complaining Magpie. 

Marsh Harrier  

It was roughly 20/25 years ago that Marsh Harriers were something of a rarity in this part of Fylde, central Lancashire. It was around that time that Marsh Harriers began to breed in the northernmost part of the county at Silverdale, since when the species has never looked back by increasing its spread and numbers into more southern parts of the county. 

In recent years the  harriers seem able to survive through the winter months by preying on the abundant wildfowl in their chosen wetlands. There have been sporadic attempts to breed on farmland here in Fylde but with very limited success. 

The harrier was the highlight of the pool with little else to cheer except the continued and consistent presence of 140+ Teal in the tidal creeks. Otherwise it was 15 Redshank, 4 Curlew, 24 Wigeon and singles of Little Grebe, Little Egret and Grey Heron. 

Little Egret

Grey Heron  

Teal 

There was a second Grey Heron at Glasson Dock along with 25 Tufted Duck but zero Goldeneye. The Goldeneyes tend to fly into Glasson Dock at the onset of ice and snow. Our wintry days with zero temperatures have so far been counted on one hand. 

I looked for the harrier in the fields beyond the pool with no luck except for two quite separate gaggles of geese, 20 Greylags and 19 Pink-footed Geese. Never the twain shall meet. 

Glasson Dock 

Greylags 

Pink-footed Geese

By 11am clouds rolled in and rain began to fall. I reluctantly headed home after an interesting few hours and a forecast for Tuesday of a decent day. 

Andy thinks we should try for a catch of Linnets but I’m not so sure. 

Picture This

The postman knocked on the door. Katrina had emailed to say there was a package on the way. I slid the precious contents from the tube. This was rather like Christmas.  But here was a job for an expert picture framer, so I made my way to Garstang Picture Gallery. But bad news, they were busy and I must wait three weeks for the framing job.

Picture This

Meanwhile here on the Lancashire coast, where many, many thousands of wild Pink-footed Geese spend the winter and where their calls and daily flights are part of everyday life, it is impossible not to become a fan of these rather special creatures. 

Into the New Year when the shooting season is over and the daily legions of wildfowlers lay down arms, our geese become comparatively less wild. They quickly learn that not every human wishes them harm and perhaps understand that us birders thrill to the sight and sound of their daily coming and going. 

With luck, and if the feeding on new grass or unharvested potatoes is especially good, the geese become tolerant of an inquisitive car with a telescope poked from a partly lowered window.  Mostly the Lancashire hordes are “pinkies”, but with the occasional bonus of a Bean Goose, White-fronted Goose or Barnacle Goose hidden in the mix. Very often, a gaggle of Greylags tag along for the daily ride. 

Pink-footed Geese 

White-fronted Goose 

Pink-footed Goose 

Bean Goose

Greylags

Barnacle Goose

To whichever species they belong, all geese share certain characteristics. Geese are highly intelligent team players - protective of their environment, inquisitive, amicable, loyal, caring, helpful, but aggressive where necessary.  Geese have eyesight more highly developed than man or dog, with hearing superior to both; hence the employment of domesticated geese as security guards in many situations, not least in the average farmyard where urban thieves, naïve in the ways of the countryside, may get a bite on the leg for their trouble. 

Yes, I'm a devotee of geese. So when I saw author and illustrator Katrina’s van Grouw’s stunning evocation of geese in her new book Unnatural Selection, I made enquiries as to how I might acquire a copy.

Unnatural Selection is the finest book I have read in many a year. Read my original review at Another Bird Blog.  

Goose Ancestry 

To cut this long story short, there’s now a new picture hanging in the hallway, a signed copy of the above in pride of place, visible from my workspace. I can't thank Katrina enough for the time and trouble she took to send me this wonderful picture. 

Goose Ancestry by Katrina van Grouw 

As you will see, Katrina is a brilliant artist. She also has a way with words that makes her prose equal to her artistry. Here she is on domestic geese, taken from “Unnatural Selection”, a passage that effectively explains the origins of the multitude of farmyard geese that cause all sorts of trouble to new (and sometimes not so new) birders. 

“By defining a species as something that can only interbreed (and produce fertile offspring) with others of the same species, you’re effectively denying any possibility that species can interbreed — otherwise, they wouldn't be species. But animal species do hybridize, and they do produce fertile offspring. And for evidence, you only need to look, once again, to domesticated animals. 

Take geese, for example. Geese are among the few domesticated animals that have not just one but two wild ancestors. I don’t just mean subtle genomic differences that suggest a hybridization event early on in their domestication history. No, pure-bred geese that derived from two totally separate species — the Swan goose, Anser cygnoides, from Central Asia and the Greylag goose, Anser anser, from Central Europe — hybridise readily and regularly. 

Out of any mixed farmyard flock, it’s normal to find a substantial number of hybrids between the two. Even several recognised breeds, like the Steinbacher from Germany, are hybrids between the two parent species. The domesticated forms of the Swan goose are the sublimely elegant Chinese goose and the more heavyweight African goose. 

Although Swan geese have a slender head and bill like a swan, with only a subtly raised “knob” at the base of the bill, both of the domesticated varieties have a deeper skull, and the bill knob is positively enormous. Both, however, share the Swan goose’s unusually smooth silky neck feathering and (unless they’re leucistic) the deep chocolate brown stripe running from the crown to the base of the neck. Greylag geese have a much deeper, more powerful bill than Swan geese and have the deeply furrowed feathering down the neck so typical of the majority of goose species." 

Unnatural Selection  

To read more about Katrina van Grouw visit  her web page.

Unnatural Selection is available from Princeton Press at £35 or Amazon at about £22.

I am not a fan of huge global companies dominating world trade to the detriment of small players whereby I deleted my Amazon account years ago. But I understand that in this case at least, the author receives the same payment as someone buying from the publisher. So there is a monetary saving to be made for those who have no issues with using Amazon.

This book would make a great Christmas or birthday gift to any aspiring author or artist.  A student of biology, science, history, or evolution would find this book indispensable. I am none of those things but I was enthralled by this most remarkable of books and I wholeheartedly recommend it to readers of Another Bird Blog. 

Linking today to Stewart's World Bird Wednesday.

Living Dangerously

After yesterday I just knew that Oystercatcher nest was close to the road. But why would the silly birds make their nest just 12 inches from the verge where vehicles whizz by and where just yards away large wagons and other vehicles park while the occupants stretch their legs. 

Feet away on the other side of the hedgerow is Conder Pool with tons of places they might set up home. The “oyks” picked a spot where a tiny area of gravel lies next to a roadside marker post. Good luck with that - they will need it. 

Oystercatcher

 Oystercatcher nest

Oystercatcher nest

Maybe the other pairs of Oystercatchers, at least four others around the pool, chased them away, or possibly the two pairs of Avocets? I noted that the female Common Tern is now sat on her nest on the floating pontoon, the bird just visible behind the opaque screen while the male stood guard just a metre away. 

Also today in my flying visit – 120 Black-tailed Godwit, 8 Tufted Duck, 6 Little Egret, 2 Wigeon, 2 Greylags, and a handful of both Sand Martins and Swallows. Two Ravens croaked overhead as they flew around in a circle and then back up the river towards Lancaster. 

Greylags

Black-tailed Godwit

I drove down towards Bank End in time to see a rainbow and just before it dissolved into the morning sunshine. 

Bank End, Cockerham

Bank End, Cockerham

The quarry held about 120+ Sand Martins, two pairs of Oystercatcher and a pair of Redshanks. At the end of the lane I counted 15/20 Lapwing and 6 Oystercatcher on the bare earth field where I think the farmer has designs that don’t include nesting waders. In the coppice there was both Blackcap and Willow Warbler in song plus a male Reed Bunting singing from a post on the marsh. I watched the male fly into a patch of reedy marsh and where it was joined by a female. 

Redshank

A Pied Wagtail waited for my car to move as she sat on a barbed wire fence with a bill full of sheep’s’ wool with which to line her nest. There’s enough sheep’s wool around here to line a million nests. Eight or ten Brown Hares were having a frenzied chase around until one stopped to take a morning wash. 

Brown Hare

Pied Wagtail

I had things to do like still catching up from Menorca, but time to take a look at Gulf Lane. 

Farmer Richard has replanted his set-aside with a crop of wild bird seed and other goodies so that the field looks spot-on for a productive autumn of ringing as long as there’s no more avian flu. There was Sedge Warbler singing from the ditch, Oystercatcher on eggs, a pair of Skylarks, 5 Stock Dove and a distant Buzzard. 

Things are looking good!

Meanwhile I'm linking to Anni's Birding. 

Shades Of Green And Grey

My weekend was rather uneventful when a visit to the hills near Oakenclough and a mooch around the ringing plantation proved somewhat disappointing. I’d hoped to locate a few Willow Warbler nests but not taken into account how cool, wet, windy and changeable the Lancashire uplands had been during my two weeks in the warm Mediterannean. 

In the course of getting very wet feet I managed to locate at least 12 Willow Warbler territories without more than a sniff of where a few nests might be located. The first week of June is the historical peak of nesting activity with over the years c400 Willow Warbler nestlings ringed. A week or ten days of dry weather should see more intense activity as well as making the site more negotiable. 

Willow Warbler

During the watching and listening I ringed 3 Willow Warblers, all three showing the necessary signs of breeding activity. A Stoat ran across the road and into the ringing site. I hope it has a dietary preference for voles rather than Willow Warbler eggs or nestlings. 

Willow Warbler

There was a male Cuckoo doing the rounds all morning, flying over the fells, stopping off to “cuckoo” from the topmost point of a stand of pines, heading off towards Oakenclough and then circuiting the ringing station, a tour of a mile or two in the hope of attracting a female. There’s a regular Kestrel too and probably as a result of the number of voles amongst the heather and bilberry, the little animals darting back into the crevices as my feet sloshed through the heavy ground. 

I noted at least 4 overflying Lesser Redpoll, a pair of Pied Wagtails, 4 Swallow, 2 Bullfinch, 2 Mistle Thrush and 2 Song Thrush. 

Song Thrush

Two pairs of Greylags have 7 young between them and appear to be operating a crèche or “safety in numbers” system whereby 4 watchful and wary adults don't miss much. 

Greylag Goose

The Greylag or Greylag Goose Anser anser is the ancestor of the domestic goose and also the original “wild goose”, known in pre-Linnaean times known as the wild goose - Anser ferus. 

The Greylag, a native of northern and central Eurasia, has been domesticated and raised for meat and egg production for over 1,000 years. It can be white or completely grey like the wild form or somewhere in-between as a result of interbreeding with other geese. The often strange looking offspring from such marriages are guaranteed to cause confusion amongst those starting out as birdwatchers. 

The Greylag Goose is the only grey goose seen in numbers in the UK during the summer months. There are two breeding populations currently recognised - 1) the northwest Scotland (or native) population, which is the remnant of the population that once occurred more widely across Britain, and 2) the population of birds released primarily by wildfowlers during the period from the 1930s to the 1960s, birds which began the establishment of feral populations and a correspondent increase in the abundance and distribution of Greylags during the 20th and the early 21st centuries. 

Greylag Goose

So because Greylag Geese might be of uncertain provenance they are mostly ignored or treated with suspicion by the average UK birder. Birders prefer to spend time looking at wholly migratory and “authentic” grey geese like Pink-footed Goose or White-fronted Goose. It’s rather a shame because Greylags are certainly a characterful and handsome goose but with an unfortunate lineage. 

Half-term and grandad duties with Olivia and Isabella on Tuesday, Theo on Wednesday.

Back for more birding soon with Another Bird Blog.

Linking today to Stewart's World Bird Wednesday in Australia.