Friday and Saturday Birding

Friday dawned grey and breezy with the threat of rain. So I took a leisurely tea and toast as an hour or more elapsed before the sky brightened and motivation kicked in. I set out for a walk at Pilling - Fluke Hall to Pilling Water along the sea wall and shore, then back via the woodland. 

Two Ravens croaked across the marsh and headed in the general direction of Lane Ends, and as I scanned east I noted 14+ Little Egrets and a single Grey Heron scattered at suitable intervals both on the marsh and just inland. Although the species roosts communally, a single Little Egret will vigorously defend a quite small feeding territory. I was late as most of the Whooper Swans had set off inland where up to 200 have been feeding on flooded fields near Eagland Hill, the inland hamlet all of 33ft above sea level. I was left with just 8 Whoopers to consider. 

Whooper Swans

The 11am tide was running in and producing some good flights of birds. Many were too distant to bother with in the grey light and stiff breeze but I had good counts of 29 Snipe, 23 Black-tailed Godwit, 60+ Shelduck, many hundreds of Wigeon and dozens of Pintail. 

Black-tailed Godwits

Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a bird fly low along a flooded ditch, thought it might be a Green Sandpiper but as it turned and flew along the main channel and lost to view I could see it was the local Kingfisher. 

The tide was moving passerines, mostly Skylarks but also 50+ Linnets and several Reed Buntings, the Reed Buntings flying into the cover given by wildfowlers’ maize. Adding the Skylarks shifted by the tide to those already feeding on the wet stubble field I reached a total of 60+ individuals. 

Reed Bunting

The wind increased, the grey persisted so I headed for the relative calm of Fluke Hall, pausing to watch Redshanks, Snipe and Lapwings rise from the flooded field. 

Lapwings

At Fluke was the resident Kestrel pair, a single Buzzard, 1 Mistle Thrush, 1 Great-spotted Woodpecker, 2 Jays, and several newly arrived Blackbirds, the thrushes feeding quietly in the hawthorn hedgerow alongside a few Tree Sparrows 

Saturday, and after a rather dismal week apart from Wednesday morning which provided a ringing session in the hills at Oakenclough I went back there this morning. It was time to top-up the feeders and weigh up what’s about in readiness for mid-week ringing if the weather improves. 

Driving across the moss roads of Stalmine, Pilling and Winmarleigh I clocked up an early Barn Owl, 4 Whooper Swans, 3 Buzzards and 2 Kestrels, and then beyond Garstang another Buzzard feeding in a stubble field. 

The feeding station seemed a little quiet with seemingly not as many birds around as in the week but a good mix of titmice, a few Goldfinches, Chaffinches and Bullfinches plus a Mistle Thrush. Otherwise - 90 Lapwings, Great-spotted Woodpecker, 2 Kestrel. 

 Feeding station

Mistle Thrush

Looking to the south-west I could see Saturday’s rain arriving so headed home to greet the deluge.  

Stay tuned. There’s more soon from Another Bird Blog. 

In the meantime I'm linking to Anni's blog and Eileen's Saturday Blog.

Weighing It Up

The new feeding station near Garstang was due a top-up this morning and it was time to see how many birds have found the foodstuff in the last ten days. Depending upon the numbers present and the species mix there could well be a ringing session soon. 

It’s a thirty minute car journey inland heading in an easterly direction towards the Bowland hills, through countryside where I glimpsed more than a few interesting birds but no time to linger - Kestrel, Buzzard, Tawny Owl and Mistle Thrush. 

Mistle Thrushes often start singing from early November, December and into the New Year, from a treetop or other elevated spot. The male is most vocal in the early morning with its tendency to sing after, and sometimes during, wet and windy weather, a trait which led to the old English name of Storm Cock or stormcock. 

Mistle Thrush

As I neared the wooded uplands I noted several Jays, many crows plus dozens of pheasants and Red-legged Partridges. Yes, it’s sporting countryside within a stone's throw of where Hen Harriers are sought out for special attention. 

As I arrived there was a Roe Deer rushing up and down, trying to find its way over the barbed wire fence and back to where it came from, away from vehicles and humans. After a while the animal found the open gate just down the hill. Linking today to Run-A-Round Ranch.

Roe Deer

Birds are no different to us humans in being able to find food, and just as we can see and smell a takeaway shop along the high street, so are birds able to quickly locate a new buffet table laid out near their homes. 

Around the bird feeders and from a standing start just over a week ago, I found a good mix of 12+ Coal Tit, several Great, Blue and Long-tailed Tit, 4 or more Goldcrest and single Chiffchaff and Nuthatch. The number of conifer trees in the area accounts for the good numbers of Coal Tits and Goldcrests. 

Blue Tit

Coal Tit

The general idea is to catch finches so good news arrived in the form of 20+ Chaffinch, 3 Lesser Redpoll, 2 Bullfinch, 2 Goldfinch, and then 1+ Siskin overhead. 

Goldfinch

Goldfinch

 Chaffinch

Other birds in the vicinity - 2 Kestrel, 4 Pied Wagtail, 6 Blackbird, 4 Mistle Thrush, 40 Lapwing. 

Pied Wagtail

I was out a good four hours this morning with no sight or sound of thrushes from Europe, the Redwings and Fieldfares now well overdue for their annual arrival in NW England. The wet and generally westerly weather, often overnight, has not been conducive to the birds setting off from Scandinavia. 

The prospects look bleak for the rest of the week as the forecast is for more of the same. Oh well, not to worry. If there’s half a chance Another Bird Blog will be out looking and reporting in here. 

Don’t miss it.

TWWWTW…..

Yes, That Was The Wet Week That Was, a dismal 5 days of rain which left Another Bird Blog with zero news and even less in the way of photographs. The weather relented a little on Friday morning to allow a trip out. 

Yards from home on Smithy Lane the rowan tree with rapidly depleting berries has looked good for a Waxwing or two. This morning I discovered the culprit to be a Mistle Thrush, too wary to hang around, even as I repositioned the camera from the car window. 

Mistle Thrush

The Common Birds Census Index for Mistle Thrush in the UK shows that this is another species losing out to the demands of the human race, probably by more than 33% over 30 years, with over half of that decline attributed to losses on farmland plots. This decline is certainly true locally where although never as common as the related Blackbird and Song Thrush, Mistle Thrushes are pretty hard to come by. 

Next stop Fluke Hall Lane for 12 Tree Sparrow, 4 Reed Bunting, 1 Kestrel, 6 Skylark, 1 Goldcrest, 1 Great-spotted Woodpecker, 12 Blackbirds and a single Redwing. On the wet fields, just a dozen or so Redshanks sharing the flood with 8 Whooper Swans; I was to see all of the Whoopers soon enough. 

Kestrel

The remainder of the Whooper Swans were further north at Cockerham, entrenched on a very wet stubble field, with as I watched, a number of laggards still flying in for a feed up. After a couple of tries I settled on a figure of 470 birds, the highest number I have seen locally. I agree the distant flock doesn’t look like 470 Whoopers, but in places the birds are ten and twenty deep into the field. 

Whooper Swans - Cockerham Moss

Whooper Swan

Whooper Swan

 

Nearby - 40 Chaffinch, 15 Tree Sparrow, 14 Meadow Pipit, 3 Skylark, 1100 Starling, 40 Curlew, 1 Kestrel, 1 Little Owl. 

Starlings 

Kestrel

On the way up to Conder Green I took in a view of Braides with not much doing except for 20 Lapwing and a Buzzard perched lookout on the sea wall. 

Conder Green next where most of the birds were on the pool: 130 Teal, 14 Wigeon, 1 Greenshank, 5 Little Grebe, 1 Snipe. Along the railway path I found singles of Fieldfare and Redwing outnumbered by 6 Blackbird, and then up at Glasson Dock, 2 Grey Heron, 48 Tufted Duck and a Kingfisher. 

Grey Heron 

Wow, that feels much better, a morning’s birding and a post at last. Long may it continue on Another Bird Blog - tune in soon for more news and views. 

Overdue

Sometimes you don’t catch a particular species for weeks or months then just when you least expect it, the mist net finds them, just like today when not only did Will and I catch a Sparrowhawk but also Mistle Thrush. Mistle Thrushes don’t find our nets very often and the chances are that we ring nestlings rather than catch full grown birds. Not content with catching the first one for some years, just like buses, two came along at once when we caught two birds, a male and a female, together in the same net.

And after a run of Sparrowhawks for months back neatly flying under, over and around our nets, this morning a second calendar year male stayed in the pocket long enough for me to pull it out. This was soon after we found its last item of prey, a freshly dead partly eaten male Corn Bunting, probably the one that has sung from the same set of song posts for weeks now. The song posts it used were amongst the line of small hawthorn bushes along the edge of the plantation – woodland edge, a favoured hunting habitat for a Sparrowhawk.

Sparrowhawk
Sparrowhawk
Mistle Thrush
Back to the beginning. The morning started at 0310 when I awoke to glance at the alarm clock set for 0400, and careful not to doze off, I waited until 0345 to get up. Most ringers will agree that the promise of a netting session prevents them from sleeping until the alarm and more than likely the early hours are spent actually waiting for the alarm to ring; I’m sure it’s something to do with unconscious anticipation of the unexpected. But it did mean that I wasn’t late for our appointment at Rawcliffe Moss for 0500 where we set the normal 320feet of net and waited for the rush of birds.

New birds caught today were 4 Whitethroat, 1 Chaffinch, 2 Goldfinch, 2 Willow Warbler, the aforementioned 2 Mistle Thrush and 1 Sparrowhawk. Retraps were 4 Whitetroats, 1 Chaffinch, 2 Goldfinch, 2 Willow Warbler and 1 Dunnock.

A couple of the Goldfinch showed very noticeable build up of what we though to be nyjer seed residue on their bills. One of those Goldfinch is shown below and it would be interesting to know whether these birds are still finding nyjer in gardens or whether their bills are coated like this from a winter feeding on the black seeds.

Goldfinch
Willow Warbler
Female Whitethroat
As expected, migration has all but ceased and the only definite migrant we saw was a Wheatear.

We found our friendly neighbourhood Buzzard still maintaining a vigil on the the same branch of same tree as some weeks ago, near the pair’s nest and a single Kestrel hovering over our nets and the set aside fields. Otherwise much was quiet while most birds settle in to nest.

Kestrel

More Thrush Pictures

A definite thaw today and by 4pm most of the previous days snow had gone, just leaving slippery pedestrian paths. So in between babysitting here’s a few more pictures I dug out of garden birds at the weekend.

The first two are dedicated to my ringing colleague Fernando down in sunny Spain who is a great fan of Turdus philomelus.

Song Thrush

Song Thrush

While it took three weeks of cold and ice for a Song Thrush to appear, the Mistle Thrush appeared on a few occasions, especially the coldest morning when it appeared to be well insulated against the frost whilst impersonating a Lars Jonsonn sketch.

Mistle Thrush

Mistle Thrush

A Redwing put in a brief appearance before being chased off by the increasingly confident Fieldfare. I’m afraid this is the best picture I could get from the quick visit.

Redwing

I did notice a lot of standing around on one leg or switching of legs on the cold ground as an added insulation or keeping warm technique. That Song Thrush looks strangely like a fluffed out lollipop!

Blackbird

Song Thrush

Fieldfare

But later, the Fieldfare didn’t take kindly to a Blackbird looking for a bite of the apple.





Fieldfare versus Blackbird

Snow Birds

Another 4 inches of overnight snow on top of previous ice is most unusual for the Fylde and not a good recipe for birding. So, do some pre-Xmas jobs and gain the corresponding Brownie points, then practice some photography in the snow and grey light seemed the best option. No point in my trying to bulk out the pictures with superfluous words about common garden birds. Just enjoy.

Mistle Thrush

Mistle Thrush

Jay

Chaffinch

Blue Tit

Collared Dove

Collared Dove

Blackbird

Blackbird

Blackbird

Please look in again after Christmas.