Reasons To Be Cheerful

Yay. We’ve gone beyond the shortest day with many reasons to be cheerful. From now on each and every morning and evening will see increased daylight as temperatures climb and winds subside. Birds will sing and flowers bloom. We will say goodbye to news & media doomsters and their visions of apocalypse around every corner. The viruses avian and human will fade into distant memory. My gold shares will rocket as crypto crashes, again.

Happy 2022 everyone. May all your days be bird filled.

Here’s a post I knocked up earlier while waiting for the rain to stop.

It was quite recently and not for the first time that a reader in the US thought that a UK Coal Tit was one and the same species as the North American Black-capped Chickadee. Their  respective scientific names are Periparus ater and Poecile atricapillus, two related species of the same bird family known in the US as "chickadees" and in the UK as "tits". The two species are remarkably similar but where similarities occur in other species of animal or bird, confusion is avoided by understanding and/or investigating the respective scientific or Latin names.

Black-capped Chickadee

Coal Tit

For many birdwatchers the use of scientific names is boring or inconsequential, at best a riddle and of interest only to ornithologists who speak Latin. But as well as a means of allowing people throughout the world to communicate unambiguously about birds, the name give an insight into the origins of the scientific nomenclature and hence the bird itself. Here are some examples and a few pictures from Another Bird Blog archives.

There’s a question that often crops up on TV quizzes, one designed to trap the unwary. Which bird has the Latin name Puffinus puffinus? The correct but perhaps perplexing answer is of course Manx Shearwater. In days gone by the word “puffin” was a synonym for a shearwater and not the unrelated seabird Atlantic Puffin, hence it was the shearwater and not the puffin which earned the Latin title of Puffinus puffinus. 

The “manx” refers to the species’ former abundance on the Calf of Man a small island lying to the south of the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea, while "shearwater” describes the birds’ mode of flight which skims or shears the water. 

Manx Shearwater - Puffinus puffinus

The scientific/Latin name for Wigeon is Anas penelope. I’m somewhat disappointed that the Anas part of the name for such a creature should simply mean duck-duck. It’s from the Latin anas and the Greek respectively, a duck that in Greek mythology was reputed to have rescued Penelope when she was thrown into the sea. 

Eurasian Wigeon - Anas penelope

Would anyone who has slept under a duck down duvet that contains feathers plucked from an Eider duck Somateria mollissima disagree with the Latin meaning “very soft woolly body”? 

Eider -  Somateria mollissima

Now for an easy one, Barn Owl. Tyto alba simply means white owl. I think we can all agree on that one for the often ghostly apparition that will sometimes allow a photograph or two.

Barn Owl - Tyto alba

One might think that the rustica element of the Latin name Hirundo rustica refers to the reddish forehead, throat or the often pink underparts of our common Swallow. In fact it means a rural or rustic swallow. The Swallow is a bird which graces our countryside for a few short months of the year. Long may it continue to do so until the politicians succeed in concreting over the entire landscape of England. 

Barn Swallow - Hirundo rustica

I’ve not heard of any Bohemian Waxwings Bombycilla garrulus finding their way to the UK this autumn and winter but if they are around soon I’ll be looking out for the “chattering silk-tails” that their Latin name describes. The Bohemian part of their common name tells us the species’ wandering habits were reminiscent of tribes of gypsies or Bohemians. The silk tail is self explanatory when an observer or lucky bird ringer receives close views of this beautiful species. 

Bohemian Waxwing -  Bombycilla garrulus

The Phylloscopus collybita of Chiffchaff translates as Phylloscopus a leaf-watcher, and collybita originating from a word meaning money-changer. The clicking, repetitive sound of the Chiffchaff’s song "chiff-chaff, chiff-chaff" was thought to resemble the sound of coins being clinked together. 

That’s a really interesting if somewhat esoteric explanation which may or may not be the truth. Readers should think about that one in the Springtime while watching and listening to a Chiffchaff in the tree canopy.

Chiffchaff -  Phylloscopus collybita

There was a Jay Garrulus glandarius in my garden just this this week, taking a break from raiding the young oak tree in a neighbours garden. Jays are often silent but “acorn-eating chatterer” would apply on many occasions. 

Jay - Garrulus glandarius 

Please excuse my bout of name dropping today. It's not something I normally do or even like to hear from others, but hopefully there will be more posts and news soon. 

In the meantime here's wishing readers, new or old a very Happy Christmas.

Back To The Future

Get used to it you birders. This is the dystopian, authoritarian future. The current lockdown is just a dress rehearsal for the real thing of the not too distant future. 

The Department for Transport has launched a consultation paper which calls for a major move from cars into cycling, walking and buses, but has told few people about it. 

The paper, Decarbonising Transport: Setting the Challenge, crept out on March 26. Citing the Government’s 2050 net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions target, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps writes of a vision where - “Public transport and active travel will be the natural first choice for our daily activities. We will use our cars less and be able to rely on a convenient, cost-effective and coherent public transport network.” 

He adds: “From motorcycles to HGVs, all road vehicles will be zero emission and technological advances . . . will change the way vehicles are used.” 

How will the reduction in private transport be achieved? By making private cars too expensive for ordinary people? Rationing cars to one per family? Rationing mileage  by road charging? Or maybe we will end up with scenes observed this week, where the authorities allow car travel for specific purposes only? Or more worryingly, cars for elite sections of society only - politicians by any chance? 

Animal Farm

Fortunately, happier thoughts are to be found in Another Bird Blog archives from December 2014 when I asked the question “Do Birds Smell?”.

==========

It’s a question I asked myself a number of years ago when noting how long it took for birds to discover new sources of food, in particular the introduction of bird feeders where none had been used previously. 

Birds were always thought to have a very poor sense of smell. But most vultures and many scavenging seabirds locate their food by smell. Any birder who has been on a pelagic trip to see seabirds up close will be familiar with the practice of chucking overboard buckets of “chum” or “rubby-dubby”, to lure shearwaters and petrels close to the boat. 

Manx Shearwater

Wilson's Storm Petrel

Scientists believe that other birds, e.g. homing pigeons, may use familiar odours in finding their way home or use their sense of smell during migratory journeys. Think about the various odours given off to overflying birds by different places, e.g. pine forest or ancient deciduous woodland, saline or fresh water, the urban jungle or the countryside. 

Egyptian Vulture 

A recent Dutch study determined that Great Tits found and located apple trees with winter moth infestations and big concentrations of caterpillar larvae by smell rather than sight. Tit species eat large numbers of insect larvae particularly during their breeding seasons when they feed them to their young, timing their breeding to do so. Trees benefit from the protection offered by birds removing larvae that would otherwise go on to eat the leaves and perhaps impact on tree growth and productivity 

Great Tit 

The Dutch experiments were designed to remove other possible ways in which the Great Tits might detect the winter moth larvae. The researchers removed the caterpillars, removed leaves with holes and even took away signs of ‘caterpillar poo’, ensuring no visual clues were left for the birds to locate the infested trees. Despite these measures the Great Tits repeatedly found the trees with larvae infestations. 

The results were clear, even when they couldn’t see the trees, the Great Tits homed in on trees with winter moth infestations when they could smell them. The researchers believe the trees gave off chemicals which birds can detect by smell to alert them to infestation. It has long been known that many plants attract insects using smells and benefit from the relationships as a result, but this is the first time they have been shown to attract birds in the same way. 

More research is needed to determine which chemicals are involved but infested trees were found to release more of a chemical responsible for the “green” smell of apples. 

Most bird feeders use metal/plastic tubes or wire mesh to make the food highly visible to birds and we naturally assume that birds start to use our bird feeders because they locate food via their keen eyesight. My new niger seed feeders arrived today, replacements for ones recently stolen from a ringing site. At first glance the design looks improbable and unlikely to work as the feeding holes are tiny. When the stainless steel cylinder is filled with niger, the seed is virtually invisible with just the tiniest point of an individual seed poking through a hole. 

Bird Feeders 

Nevertheless I experimented with this design of feeder a number of years ago and found them to be highly successful in attracting Goldfinches, Siskins and Lesser Redpolls very quickly and I attributed some of this to the birds’ ability to smell the seed. 

Goldfinches 

Here’s an experiment anyone can try at home. Buy a sealed bag of niger seed, open the bag and stick your nose in it. Then inhale and enjoy the sweet, oily, nutty fragrance which brings in those Goldfinches 

There’s is no doubt in my mind that birds and in particular Goldfinches have well developed olfactory senses, probably as good as our own. 

Now you must excuse me. From the kitchen I detect the unmistakable aroma of a tandoori chicken sizzling on the grill. 

Tandoori Chicken

I'm ready for a bite to eat. Back soon with more tasty morsels from the past.

Linking today with Anni's Blog and Eileen's Saturday Blog.

Spotted Saturday

If August is predictable as warblers and Swallows journey south to Africa, September is less so. 

Just this week saw the first returning Pink-footed Geese when a gaggle of around 200 flew over Pilling and then to the salt marsh beyond; the geese seem to arrive earlier each year. And then the weather turned more autumnal with strong winds and high tides that blew petrels, skuas, manxies, fulmars and gulls closer to shore. 

Manx Shearwater 

Pink-footed Goose

On Saturday came a break in the squalls when a ridge of high pressure built from the North West. With it came a chance of ringing at Oakenclough but with less certainty about what we might catch given the arrival of September. Would it be a morning of finches, warblers, pipits and wagtails, or perhaps a mix with a few of each? 

It was 0600 when Andy and I met at the ringing station to a cold easterly and 9 degrees C. The cold start gave a slow opening to the catch but as the morning warmed more birds arrived, especially the diurnal migrant, Meadow Pipit. Missing from our catch today were Willow Warblers, a regular feature here during June, July and August, but replaced now by Goldcrests, a September species for sure. 

The really noticeable migrant today was Meadow Pipit with a count of 100+ in steady and small arrivals from the north, a number reflected in our catch of 36 birds and 8 species - 14 Meadow Pipit, 6 Goldcrest, 5 Blackcap, 3 Chiffchaff, 2 Spotted Flycatcher, 2 Goldfinch, 2 Robin, 1 Blue Tit, 1 Chaffinch. 

The surprise bird today was Spotted Flycatcher, not one but two individuals, both first years, but caught three hours apart. It’s a species that we catch quite rarely although we suspect that some bred quite close to here this year. 

Spotted Flycatcher 

The Chiffchaff wing shows a shape and formula that is quite different to its close relative the Willow Warbler i.e. the short 2nd primary feather, “rounded” wing shape (3, 4 and 5 of very similar length), and emargination to the 6th primary feather. 

Chiffchaff 

Chiffchaff

Below is the wing of an adult Meadow Pipit that displays uniform olive tones, the squared olive/buff tips to the median coverts without “teeth”, well-defined margins of the greater coverts, plus tertials all of the same age. 

Ageing Meadow Pipits can be more difficult when birds born early in the season display many characteristics of adults, with sometimes just a few pale buff juvenile feathers left. The fourteen Meadow Pipits today split 11/3 in favour of first years but similarly sized catches might easily contain no adults, especially so as autumn progresses. 

Meadow Pipit 

Meadow Pipit 

All of our Blackcaps were first year birds, four female, one male, and one likely male with hints of a black cap. 

Blackcap  

Other birds today - 2 Jay, 15+ Swallow, 2 Great-spotted Woodpecker, 1 Nuthatch.

Linking this post to Anni's Saturday Birding.

Do Birds Smell?

It’s a question I asked myself a number of years ago when noting how long it took for birds to discover new sources of food, in particular the introduction of bird feeders where none had been used previously. 

Birds were always thought to have a very poor sense of smell. But most vultures and many scavenging seabirds locate their food by smell. Any birder who has been on a pelagic trip to see seabirds up close will be familiar with the practice of chucking overboard buckets of “chum” or “rubby dubby”, to lure shearwaters and petrels close to the boat. Scientists believe that other birds, e.g. homing pigeons, may use familiar odours in finding their way home or use their sense of smell during migratory journeys. Think about the various odours given off to overflying birds by different places, e.g. pine forest or ancient deciduous woodland, saline or fresh water, the urban jungle or the countryside. 

Egyptian Vulture

Manx Shearwater

A recent Dutch study determined that Great Tits found and located apple trees with winter moth infestations and big concentrations of caterpillars larvae by smell rather than sight. Tit species eat large numbers of insect larvae particularly during their breeding seasons when they feed them to their young, timing their breeding to do so. Trees benefit from the protection offered by birds removing larvae that would otherwise go on to eat the leaves and perhaps impact on tree growth and productivity. 

Great Tit

The Dutch experiments were designed to remove other possible ways in which the Great Tits might detect the winter moth larvae. The researchers removed the caterpillars, removed leaves with holes and even took away signs of ‘caterpillar poo’, ensuring no visual clues were left for the birds to locate the infested trees. Despite these measures the Great Tits repeatedly found the trees with larvae infestations. The results were clear, even when they couldn’t see the trees, the Great Tits homed in on trees with winter moth infestations when they could smell them. 

The researchers believe the trees gave off chemicals which birds can detect by smell to alert them to infestation. It has long been known that many plants attract insects using smells and benefit from the relationships as a result, but this is the first time they have been shown to attract birds in the same way. More research is needed to determine which chemicals are involved but infested trees were found to release more of a chemical responsible for the “green” smell of apples. 

Most bird feeders use metal/plastic tubes or wire mesh to make the food highly visible to birds and we naturally assume that birds start to use our bird feeders because they locate food via their keen eyesight. My new niger seed feeders arrived today, replacements for ones recently stolen from a ringing site. At first glance the design looks improbable and unlikely to work as the feeding holes are tiny. When the stainless steel cylinder is filled with niger, the seed is virtually invisible with just the tiniest point of an individual seed poking through odd holes. 

Niger feeders

Nevertheless I experimented with this design of feeder a number of years ago and found them to be highly successful in attracting Goldfinches very quickly and I attributed this to the birds’ ability to smell the niger. 

At lunchtime I took the new feeders to Oakenclough with fingers crossed that Scrooge doesn’t sniff them out before our ringing session which may well be tomorrow.

Goldfinch

Here’s an experiment anyone can try at home. Buy a sealed bag of niger seed, Guizotia abyssinica, open the bag and stick your nose in it. Then inhale and enjoy the sweet, oily, nutty fragrance which brings in those Goldfinches. 

No, there’s is no doubt in my mind that birds and in particular Goldfinches have well developed olfactory senses, probably as good as our own. 

Now you must excuse me. I’m sure that from the kitchen I can detect the unmistakable aroma of a curry cooking in the oven and I'm ready for a bite to eat. 

Linking today to Stewart's World Bird Wednesday.

A Strange Old Day

After more overnight strong winds and rain I went up to Knott End first thing on the off chance the weather had left a few bits and pieces behind. But there was nothing much out of the ordinary, just 3 Eider, 9 Cormorant, 2 Bar-tailed Godwit and neatly rounded approximates of 70 Oystercatcher, 1200 Knot, 700 Dunlin and 125 Ringed Plover.

The BBC promised an improving day, lessening wind and sunny intervals so I drove over to the feeding station for a look and to complete the chore of topping up the Niger feeders. I could see there were plenty of finches about; some on the feeders, but lots in the shooter’s unsprayed and full of weeds maize crop, 100+ Goldfinch, 100+ Linnet and 25+ Greenfinch. There’s those approximates again, but how does anyone accurately count mixed and highly mobile flocks of 200+ finches?

Goldfinch

Through the shower clouds I pretty soon spotted the elusive Marsh Harrier that’s been roaming far and wide for a few weeks now, from St Michaels and across to Pilling Moss, several miles of road for me but a flap and a farmland glide or two for Circus aeruginosus. I watched both a dive bombing Peregrine, then a Sparrowhawk and then a Kestrel have a go at the harrier, but the farmer in his combine harvester had the best view as the bird sped across towards Pilling Moss again. All I got was yet another distant shot.

Marsh Harrier

The wind and rain never did ease off properly, but then on my way home through Hambleton I got a phone call about a wind-blown manxie, and it’s a long time since I photographed a close-up manxie, Bardsey in fact. And I’m fairly certain I have never taken pictures of Manx Shearwater, Goldfinch and Marsh Harrier on the same strange day.

Manx Shearwater
Manx Shearwater

Chris in Iceland advises me that Meadow Pipits are poised for take-off. I’m ready for the off too Chris, all that’s required is a spot of half decent weather.

From the Archive

There’s not a lot to be done today with a weather warning out for North West England of heavy rain and floods. I did my swimming yesterday, but not outdoors in the floods even though lately I do appear to be growing a useful pair of webbed feet and I swear I contracted swimmer’s ear from the ingress of rain rather than pool water. I have an acquaintance who swims in the sea off Fleetwood in all weather; apparently there are a group of them that do so, but I don’t know if Seumus has spotted any when sea watching, unless they went down in the notebook as “unidentified mammal sp”. So it’s not just birders who are mad.

This morning I’m stuck in again in front of the PC trying to keep the blog going with a few old pictures to entertain other troubled British birders who need a bird fix during these inclement times.

This morning’s theme is “Birds I Don’t See In The Hand Much Any More But Here’s A Picture Of Some” with a bit of a story, a touch of reminisce and a smidgeon of nostalgia. And by way of an apology, because it’s so long since I have actually witnessed them in the hand, the pictures are by definition fairly old if not quite sepia toned which adds to the authenticity of a walk down Memory Lane.

The first photo is of a Manx Shearwater being released in the early morning following keeping overnight after becoming a casualty of the infamous Bardsey lighthouse. If my memory serves me correctly the hand in the picture belongs to one Colorado Dave, so called not because he hailed from Colorado but because he could demolish a plateful of spuds quicker than a Colorado Beetle.



There are many thousands of pairs of Manx Shearwaters on Bardsey Island where they breed in the rabbit warrens and tumbledown old walls. I spent many nights on Bardsey, not only going out ringing them but often waking up in Cristin hearing their harsh cackling, wailing and moaning sounds coming from the mountainside. A description of their voice on The Isle of Man in 1731, where they were originally known as Manx Puffins, reads: "The spirit which haunted the coasts have originated in the noise described as infernal. The disturbed spirit of a person shipwrecked on a rock adjacent to this coast wanders about it still, and sometimes makes so terrible a yelling that it is heard at an incredible distance. They tell you that houses even shake with it; and that, not only mankind, but all the brute creation within hearing, tremble at the sound. But what serves very much to increase the shock is that, whenever it makes this extraordinary noise, it is a sure prediction of an approaching storm. . . . At other times the spirit cries out only, " Hoa, hoa, hoa !" with a voice little, if anything, louder than a human one."

Well that is a bit of a dramatic description fit for the times I suppose, but I agree the calls are very spooky, especially from yards away in the pitch black of a windy wet Welsh island whilst trying to find the outside loo. And not the best sudden awakening experience from a bad dream when the previous night’s entertainment consisted of consuming a week’s supply of red wine during an extended round robin of the day’s sightings.

Talking of nausea, this isn’t the best video for anyone liable to sea sickness but it does show some manxies.



Ringers that live south of a line drawn from the Mersey to the Wash will be more familiar with Nightingale than us in coastal Fylde where news of a local Nightingale would create a stir amongst those that list. A stir?, I should probably change that to another word or phrase all the way up a scale from mild interest at the bottom to blind panic at the top. This is another Bardsey picture where just south of the imaginary line it is also rare, however not only did this one sing briefly, it also ended up in a mist net.



I contrast this scarcity with my limited experience in the south of England (where is Watford?) where I believe Nightingale is very common despite being confused with night singing Robins by softy southerners.

I am much more familiar with Nightingale from my visits to the Balearics and Menorca especially, where in May Nightingale is the most common species, more abundant even than Sardinian Warbler. As we tour the island most of that we hear through the open windows and sun roof are Nightingales and Corn Buntings from respectively below, middle or the top of proper hedgerows.

Then on Menorca there's always the Balearic Shearwaters at Cap de Cavalleria in a landscape so reminiscent of Bardsey, but that's a tale for another day.

But let’s all cheer ourselves up with a Nightingale song and pretend it’s spring again.



And Bardsey again where one autumn I walked this Ring Ouzel into the withies Heliogoland. Even up here in coastal Lancashire not far from the Pennines, Ring Ouzels are very scarce in autumn and getting rarer in spring, where I always reckoned to find one on my April 19th birthday somewhere close to the coast but now I’m lucky to find one in April full stop and this year it’s too late again.

A Fulmar

Someone phoned. A Fulmar found near Garstang after the recent gales was doing OK, eating food spontaneously and looking fairly perky. Could I take it and release it at Knott End near the sea where hopefully it would return to where it should be?

It’s good few years since I handled sea birds on Bardsey Island. Nights spent catching and ringing Manx Shearwaters near their burrows, deciphering worn and ancient ring numbers, or fitful naps in the tractor shed while waiting for periodic lighthouse attractions to deposit waves of birds on the ground where they might be rescued in one piece.

As soon as I saw the Fulmar and caught that unmistakable smell, that unique musty, oily but not unpleasant aroma that seabirds alone possess, it transported me back there to Bardsey and the Manxies, the Razorbills and the Gullemots.

Of course the name "Fulmar" comes from the Iclandic for a foul gull and refers to the smell that comes from the fishy oil in its stomach. The Fulmar is closely related to the Albatrosses in a group of birds sometimes referred to as "tube-noses". This name is derived from the tube that lies along the top ridge of the bill which contains the nostril and gives this group of birds a remarkably keen sense of smell used for finding food out at sea.

But this Fulmar wasn’t going anywhere, having taken a turn for the worse in just a few short hours. I took the obligatory photo before placing it in an overnight box.

This morning it was gone.