August Time

After the relative quiet of birding of June and July, the first days of August sees many birders pick up their bins again. There’s hope that the new month will bring post breeding dispersal with signs of true autumn migration and a wealth of birds that may arrive with unsettled weather and cooling temperatures. 

Sunday morning at Cockerham was cool with a pronounced westerly breeze and ever changing bouts of sun and cloud. I had single panel nets in the four foot high seed plot where I hoped to catch the first Linnets of the autumn. Hidden in the lee of the car as protection from sun, the cool breeze and the threat of a shower I switched a couple of times from a shirt to adding a jacket and then back to jacketless as the sun returned.

All the while Linnets arrived from both west and east, individuals, small groups and even a flock of 25+ that eventually gave a count of 60 or more Linnets; a clear sign of the autumnal flocking behaviour of small finches. 

A couple of Linnets escaped as I walked to the net however I did capture six, 3 moulting adults and 3 juveniles of the year. There was also an adult female Blackbird. 

Linnet - adult male

Linnet - adult male

Linnet - juvenile/first summer

Blackbird - adult female

 

Perhaps and in view of the weather it was no coincidence that the morning produced a clear movement of Swifts heading south, singles and twos at first. And then rather suddenly about ten o’clock and directly above the nearby pool came a vortex of Swifts, 50 or more feeding below the billowing grey cloud. Within minutes they were gone, back on high and out of sight to continue their southerly flight. 

Swifts

 

Other species seen and heard – 190/200 Carrion Crow, 12 Curlew , 1 Willow Warbler, 1 Great-spotted Woodpecker, 2 Tree Sparrow, 15 Swallow, 2 Goldfinch, 2 Little Egret, 2 Grey Heron, 1 Buzzard. 

The huge numbers of predatory Carrion Crows in recently cut fields suggests a very successful breeding season but does not bode well for small birds and breeding waders in 2022. 

Carrion Crow

In other news. It was here in Cockerham that a Great Egret lingered through May and well into into June 2021 and where earlier in the spring there has been two or even three individuals.  At one point I hoped that the egrets might join the Little Egret by becoming a breeding species of this part of Lancashire. It was not to be but now comes news of Great Egrets from the South West of England. 

Great Egret - Fylde, Lancashire

 

From Bird Guides.“Great Egrets have enjoyed a record-breaking year on the Somerset Levels, as the species continues its rapid colonisation of Britain. An estimated 50 chicks fledged this year on the Avalon Marshes. Nesting took place at 10 separate locations across Shapwick Heath, Ham Wall and Westhay reserves, with 25 of the 37 nests found going on to successfully fledge young. "

"Great Egret joined the list of breeding British birds as recently as 2012, when a pair nested at Shapwick Heath Somerset – the epicentre of the current population in the country. For much of the 20th century the Great Egret was restricted to the wetlands of Eastern Europe but, since the 1990s, the species made a comeback, nesting in increasing numbers across Europe and then spreading west." 

"Since 2012, numbers of breeding birds in Somerset increased steadily. In 2017, a pair of Great Egrets fledged three chicks at Holkham Nature Reserve Norfolk, marking the county's first successful breeding attempt.” 

In 2019, a single pair nested in Cheshire for the first time, at Burton Mere Wetlands, a flap and a glide into to Lancashire for a Great Egret. 

More news and views soon. Stay tuned to Another Bird Blog. 

Billy No Mates

Saturday morning, 17 July. My usual ringing pal Andy is laid up for some weeks following his knee op this week. Regrettably that means he will lose his part time job as a Car Park Attendant as he won’t have the essential qualifications of a lop-sided limp - (his joke, not mine). There’s no way Sue will accompany me at 0600 and support the far end of a 60ft mist net while I tie the near end. She’s not keen to provide secretary duties either. Arrangements like that would probably cost me dearly in the way of a contribution to the Gordon’s Gin Empire. 

Fortunately Billy No Mates knows of a quiet place where he can sit in a shaded chair with a couple of mist nets up and also bird with eyes and ears, even though in mid-July there’s not a lot to see or hear. 

This venue is private with no one to trouble me except for the pesky sand flies that even through a shirt dig their needle teeth in as soon as they land. This is not a place to catch piles of birds but rather a place to watch the world go by and wonder how I have managed to stay sane for 18 months while the world around has gone completely insane. 

The seed crop isn’t quite ready to split and drop but already the mass of flowers hold a myriad of insects and creepy crawlies. It’s no wonder then that a single net through the crop catches insect eating Sedge Warblers and Reed Warblers that visit here from a reed bed fifty yards away. 

Seed Plot

Seed Plot

So here’s a quiz for clued up non-ringers or even ringers who see few “acros”, acrocephalus warblers. The two pictures below show two ages of Sedge Warbler, an adult (male as it happens) and below that a juvenile born in recent weeks. Which is which? The differing stages of their respective plumage provide the answer. 

Sedge Warbler - juvenile/first summer

 

Sedge Warbler - adult

 

Differentiating the ages of Reed Warblers is less easy. At this time of year one of the best and quickest methods is to examine the wear on the primary flight feathers, especially at the tips. Birds of the year look fresh, new and unworn, whereas the equivalent feathers of an adult will be slightly worn and bleached at the outermost points. 

See the two pictures below. 

Reed Warbler - juvenile/first summer 

 

Reed Warbler - adult

 

Reed Warbler

 

A stroll along the paths led to a locked gate and the farmer's sign “Bull in Field”, an essential to deter trespassers of many kinds.  As I looked over, the young bull stared back. He appeared d harmless enough with blunt, stubby horns and a kindly face, nothing like those steamy nostril Spanish bulls that trample bullfighters into the Iberian dust. 

Beware of the Bull

 

As docile as the hulk appeared it’s best to never approach a bull, young or old, especially if there are heifers around. I also know to steer clear of the occasional Galloway cow found in local cattle herds; given the chance they can get fairly obnoxious and chase unwary birders across a field. 

Half a dozen Reed Warblers, two Sedge Warblers and a Wren the sum total of my ringing efforts. Adult Reed Warbler AKH0265 was from elsewhere, further details will follow. A Common Whitethroat sat atop a nearby hawthorn bush, the berries green with youthful innocence and the “throat” an older male with a greying mop, a wise old bird that I didn’t catch. 

Whitethroat

 

Likewise an unexpected count of 35 House Sparrows and 40+ Swallows were my highest counts of both species this year. Sad to say not a single Swift crossed my path - a poor year for this species. 

And sad to say, no other warblers where I might expect a couple of Willow Warblers and /or Blackcaps. 2021 - What a strange year in many ways when this cold spring followed the abysmal weather, poor breeding and low productivity of 2020.  There are no finches in the seed plot yet because natural seeds of the countryside are abundant for now, but the variety of the seed plot will work its magic soon. 

All season I watched the secretive Tufted Ducks that gave nothing away as to where the nest might be. And then today the family, minus dad of course, toddled along the track and then dived off and into the pool as mom saw me ahead. 

Tufted Ducks

 

On the waterway also - 3 Little Egret, 2 Little Grebe, 1 Grey Heron.  An entertaining morning for sure, even if there was no one to talk to except the birds or myself. 

 

A Smelly Subject

Here’s a story with conclusions that may not be all that surprising to many bird watchers. It’s about birds’ sense of smell, a subject tackled here on Another Bird Blog in December 2014. 

https://anotherbirdblog.blogspot.com/2014/12/do-birds-smell.html  

The story below is from Science Daily of July 2021 - “The fine nose of storks." 

"The sharp eyes of an eagle, the extraordinary hearing of an owl - to successfully find food, the eyes and ears of birds have adapted optimally to their living conditions. Until now, the sense of smell has played a rather subordinate role. When meadows are freshly mowed, White Storks often appear there to search for snails and frogs. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behaviour in Radolfzell and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz have now studied the birds' behaviour and discovered that the storks are attracted by the smell of the mown grass. Only storks that were downwind and could thus perceive the smell reacted to the mowing. The scientists also sprayed a meadow with a spray of green leaf scents released during mowing. Storks appeared here as well. This shows that White Storks use their sense of smell to forage and suggests that the sense of smell may also play a greater role in other birds than previously thought."

 

White Storks

"For farmers around Lake Constance, it's a familiar sight: when they start mowing their meadows, storks often appear next to the tractors as if out of nowhere. The White Storks live in the wet areas around the lake, feeding on snails, frogs and small rodents that find shelter in high meadows. If these meadows are mowed, the small animals are easy prey. However, the storks do not always appear when mowing takes place. Until now, it was not known how the storks locate the rich food source. "

White Stork

"Previously, it was believed that birds relied primarily on their eyes and ears rather than their sense of smell. "It was simply assumed that birds can't smell well because they don't have real noses," says Martin Wikelski, director at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. "Yet they have a very large olfactory bulb in the brain with many receptor molecules for scents." So birds have the best prerequisites for a fine nose. 

Wikelski has spent many years observing storks and researching their migratory behaviour, among other things. When he talked to his colleague Jonathan Williams about the storks' puzzling reaction to mowed meadows, Williams had an idea. Williams works at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, studying volatile organic compounds and their effects on humans and the environment. "My guess was that the storks were reacting to the intense smell of freshly cut grass," Williams says. This typical smell is produced by so-called green leaf odorants and consists of only three different molecules. "These are also added to perfumes, for example, to give them a fresh, "green" note," explains Williams. 

The researchers now wanted to find out whether the sense of smell actually leads the storks to freshly mown meadows. To do this, they monitored the birds' movements both from aircraft and via GPS sensors of tagged animals. "We first had to rule out the possibility that the storks could hear the tractor or see the mowing process," Wikelski says. Therefore, they only included storks in the observation that were more than 600 meters away from the mowed meadow and did not have direct visual contact. The researchers also made sure that the storks were not alerted to the mowing process by the behaviour of conspecifics or other birds. 

When mowing began, only the storks that were downwind flew to the meadow in question. The conspecifics that were upwind and thus could not perceive the grass smell did not react. To test whether the smell of the cut grass alone attracted the storks, the researchers switched to a meadow that had been mowed two weeks earlier. "The grass of this meadow was still very short. Therefore, it is uninteresting for the storks to forage," Wikelski explained. On this meadow, he and colleagues spread grass that had been mowed a short time before at a greater distance. A short time later, the first storks flew in and searched for food in the mown grass. 

The researchers finally mixed a solution of green leaf scents and sprayed it on a meadow with short grass. The meadow then smelled intensely of mown grass and also attracted storks from the surrounding area. "This proves that storks find their way to feeding sites via scents in the air," Williams says. This finding contradicts the previous assumption that storks primarily use their eyes to find food. Rather, the birds rely on their sense of smell to do so. "There have been storks that have flown more than 25 km from the other side of Lake Constance to mowed meadows," Wikelski says. The researchers suspect that the sense of smell may also play a greater role than previously thought in the foraging activities of other bird species." 

Birds of prey such as Buzzards, kites and falcons spring to mind. These species are regularly observed flying over or within striking distance of meadows where their sense of smell probably plays a part in their hunting prowess.

Buzzard

Red Kite

Buzzard

These scientists might be surprised to learn that experienced bird watchers already suspect that birds find their food by many methods, the sense of smell being just one of them. Birders have a nose for such things and are often ahead of the game. If only they were consulted a little more often by experts. 

Kestrel

 

Red-footed Falcon

 Story via - Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.  ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 12 July 2021. 

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