A Battle Of Wits

The latest battle of wits Linnets versus Ringers took place at Gulf Lane, Lancashire on the morning of Thursday 30 January 2020. Here the village of Pilling merges with Cockerham village at the A588 Murder Mile junction where regular ringing challenges take place in the set-aside plot owned by Farmers Richard and Helen Jones. 

Murder Mile 

Gulf Lane

Before today and throughout late 2019 and into 2020, the Linnets have taken all the honours by soundly beating ringers on 99% of occasions. The day began with a pitiful total of 46 birds caught during the whole of the winter and the Linnets probably cock-a-hoop at their ability to stick two feathers up at their opponents. The Linnets’ daily and prolonged use of the site coupled with their knowledge of how, where and when to still find natural food while avoiding mist nets is mysterious but wonderful to behold. 

The regular team of two Andy and Phil arrived in the dark at 0730 armed with bacon butties fresh from Pilling Stores, keen to redress the balance of recent disappointments. Tactics agreed they set a whoosh net in preparation for the arrival of Linnets and then dropped a bucket of millet & rape seed in the penalty area. Surely this week, as the hunger gap widens, they could win the match? 

Whoosh Net 

Linnets arrived in dribs and drabs of fives, tens and twenties, until by 1100 hours their numbers had swollen to 120 or more. There followed the familiar end-to-end stuff as Linnets flew back & forth and around the plot while coffee supping Andy and Phil grew more frustrated at the Linnets’ reluctance to sample the rape and millet. 

And then just as it looked like the game might end in a draw, at 1115 the flock made a dreadful mistake. One of their number rested in the penalty area and began to feed, closely followed by more. Whoosh! Too late, the ringers had scored a last minute goal. 

Linnet 

A total of twenty-five Linnets was the best of the winter; this comprised of 11 second-year males, 9 second year females and 5 adult males. No adult females.

There seemed to be a few Scottish participants today by way of a couple of noticeable dark, streaky females and also three males with wing lengths of 85 mm. 

Linnet- adult male 

Linnet - second year female 

Twenty-five Linnets represents 20/25% of the morning’s spot counts so the catch is unlikely to be repeated soon, the Linnets are too cute for that to happen. 

The meaning of “cute” - attractive in a pretty or endearing way. 

Or - clever or cunning. 

Take your pick. 

And anyway, the weather forecast is not good for the next few days or more. Back to normal.

Linking this post to Anni's Blog and Eileen's Saturday.

Mainly Men

With so much wind and rain in recent weeks there’s been little chance of getting to Gulf Lane. This is highly frustrating, even embarrassing, when a recent count realised 280+ Linnets on site compared to our miserly catch of just 30 birds for the whole of this autumn/winter. 

Monday promised better things so I met up with Andy at 0815 to a clear if cold and frosty start of Minus 2°C. We were joined today by Bryan. 

Linnets appeared soon after dawn and continued to arrive in small parties until at the peak of activity at about 10 am when we estimated 300 birds. 

Our catch was much better today with 20 Linnets. The catch included a first winter male already bearing a ring (AYD5167) but not one of our own. We hope that when details of its original ringing emerge it will prove to be another bird from Scotland, especially since its biometrics came in at 83 mm wing length and a weight of 20.3 gms. Three of the other males today had wing lengths of 86, 84, and 84 mms respectively. 

The 20 Linnets caught comprised 11 first winter males, 5 adult males, 3 first winter females and 1 adult female - so this was something of male morning. Pure chance or perhaps other factors; who’s to know? Ideas on a postcard to …… 

Below is AYD5167, a first winter male. We named him Jimmy and sent him on his way. 

Linnet AYD5167 

Today's Linnets 

The flock today appeared to be wholly Linnets apart from one or two Tree Sparrows. Otherwise we noted several thousand Pink-footed Geese leaving the nearby marsh. We saw 3 Buzzards in the vicinity of our plot but all in flight. 

I believe there’s something planned for tomorrow; someone just mentioned peeling spuds, carrots and parsnips. So that's me signing off for a few days. Hopefully back on Thursday. 

Where Did The Birds Go?

All the birds from Friday must have kept going overnight because this morning was noticeable for the absence of  Wheatears after probably hundreds of them made landfall in the North West yesterday. I couldn’t find any Wheatears at Lane Ends or Fluke Hall this morning, and no sign of yesterday’s Ring Ouzel either. 

There was a chilly old start, a Great-spotted Woodpecker greeting the dawn with a series of drumrolls just as the sun peeped through the mist and cloud. 

Morning Mist - Pilling

The highlight of this morning was the mass of Meadow Pipits on the move - again. Even though they are late this year the numbers of Meadow Pipits coming thorough has been phenomenal. A guess is that the cold weather through the early part of the year cleared almost every single one out of the UK and places further north, ensuring that they all have to come back again. Looking in the usual place for Wheatears I found just Meadow Pipits instead, and any pipits on the deck weren’t for staying off passage long before they joined in the stream of birding heading east and inland towards the hills. I counted 4/500 Meadow Pipits on the move in about three hours along various part of Pilling shore. 

Meadow Pipit

Pied Wagtails everywhere were the other main feature, with some at Fluke, others at Lane Ends and also Pilling Water, in all 45+. 

Pied Wagtail

At Fluke Hall I watched the Kestrels in their post-dawn pair bonding, all noise and action - mating within sight of their nest box home too. Good thing the kids aren’t at home just yet. 

It was this about time last year when the Jays appeared at Lane Ends. I’m not sure where they are based and I can’t decide if the villains are looking to nest or looking for nests, but there they were this morning searching silently through the trees again. Two Chiffchaffs were fly-catching from the willows which overhang the pool, a sheltered part of the site which can often be much warmer than the nearby shore just yards away. Two Redwing suddenly dropped into the trees and then further up and from the gate I noticed a number of Blackbirds and a Song Thrush had left the cover of the wood to feed out on the open grass. Like the Meadow Pipits, there has been a noticeable arrival of thrushes this Spring. 

Not much doing at Pilling Water, a couple of Skylark, 300 Pink-footed Geese, 4 Linnet, plenty of Meadow Pipits and the first Whimbrel of the year whistling across the marsh.

Another pipit shot, it wasn't a great morning for photo opportunities - same bird different pose.

Meadow Pipit

On the pools a Snipe, 10 Shoveler and 8 Teal, the other wildfowl and waders of recent days departed too. Those Shoveler duck are handsome creatures aren’t they? 

Northern Shoveler

Apologies for a quiet day on Another Bird Blog. There will be owls soon - promise. With this post I'm linking to The Weekly Top Shots .

The Pilling Way

Another cool, cloudy start saw me at Fluke Hall earlier than most, with just one car in the doggy walkers starting grid. The brambly hedgerow there just behind the sea wall is the best place to find the first Whitethroat, this morning’s bird obliging with a blast of scratchy song the moment the car door opened. 

Whitethroat

I set off towards Ridge Farm, and then negotiated the Pilling Puzzle, hoping for other bits and bobs along the way which heads back to the sea wall. I kept a wary eye on the menacing sky which threatened an April shower or two as I logged 4 singing Skylark, 5 Swallows dashing east, a couple of Linnets and a field with 40+ Woodpigeon and 2 Stock Dove. A Collared Dove obliged by staying on the gate post, but this was to be my best photo opportunity of the morning, hence the filler landscapes and peas on a drum later in the post. 

Collared Dove

Pilling Puzzle

Pilling Sky

Back in Fluke Hall wood I logged my first Blackcap of the year, singing as tiny Blackcaps do at a volume sufficient to be heard many, many metres away. Also here in the shelter of the woodland, 2 Willow Warblers and a Chiffchaff. 

Along Backsands Lane a roadside Kestrel carrying prey appeared to be hurrying towards Damside where a pair nest most years, and as I stopped to watch the Kestrel I noted a pair of Redshanks together in the wet field. 

At the car park I broke off birding to admire an old motor vehicle. In some ways out-in-the-sticks Pilling is a tad out of date, stuck in its ways even, but not when it comes to money. The owner of this Austin Seven pick-up offered to sell me the vehicle for £10,000. I told him I could buy a good Canon lens with ten grand, but he just gave me an old fashioned look. 

Pilling Transport

 It was a great morning to be out, even if I wasn’t seeing many birds along the way to Pilling Water: 1 Grey Heron, 1 Little Egret, 2 Tufted Duck, 2 Little Grebe, 2 Meadow Pipit and 8 Skylark. At Pilling Water I stopped to count the geese as there looked more than of late and came up with 600+ Pink-footed Goose and 1 Brent Goose. Looks like there’s been an influx of geese from Norfolk where the majority of the wintering Brent Geese belong to the Dark-bellied form bernicla. The geese were distant, more so when a jogger came along the sea wall behind me to spook them further away. 

 Brent Goose with Pink-footed Goose

Not much else along here, 2 Teal and a Shoveler on the wildfowler’s pools, more Skylarks and a flock of 45 Golden Plover, attacked at one point by a Peregrine which flew off when at first it didn’t succeed. 

 Golden Plover and Lapwing

Back at the car park I took the picture below. I am a dog lover, grew up with dogs and have the scars to prove it. Nowadays some dog owners are extremely selfish and inconsiderate to the extent that the latest fashion is to discard bags of dog shit in public places where they expect volunteers or poorly paid public servants to pick it up instead of the owners taking it back home where it belongs. I’ll bet they were visitors to a local caravan park or incomers – Pilling People simply don’t do that. 

Litter Louts

News Or Three

There’s not much bird news this morning. It was too breezy for ringing on the moss so I went over to Pilling where I found 4 Wheatears and a single Whinchat along the sea wall. I didn’t have any luck with the spring traps but did with the camera, and then only with a Wheatear. The Whinchat image is a relic from a Menorca trip.

Wheatear
Whinchat

Other birds this morning: 80+ Swallows, 2 Kestrel, a Sparrowhawk and a Buzzard. A good number of duck on the wildfowler’s pools with 140 Teal, then 80 Goldfinch and 45 Linnet feeding on the nearby thistle heads along Broadfleet and the sea wall.

By special request there are a couple of pictures of the unremarkable sea “wall” that stretches from Cockerham in the north to Knott End in the south. Strictly speaking the construction is a “bund” – an Asian word for an embankment or dyke that surrounds rice fields or a reservoir and acts as a breakwater to prevent flooding. The first photograph is a view from Pilling to Cockerham with the Pennine hills east of Lancaster in the far distance. The second is a view in the opposite direction. It is not so much the wall that produces the birds, more the variety of habitats like tidal shore, farmland and wooded land that lie on each side of the wall along its several miles.

Pilling view

Below is a view from Lane Ends, Pilling looking south to the distant trees of Fluke Hall. Fluke is a regional name for flatfish, more accurately a flounder, found in the shallow tidal sands of Pilling shore and elsewhere.

Pilling view

With the lack of bird news today I’m posting details of three recent recoveries of our ringed birds, all on them recaptured by other ringers in the UK. The first one comes from the ringing of Siskin in Will’s garden near Garstang during early 2011 when we recorded almost 300 Siskin captures. A second relates to a single Goldfinch from those ringed at Out Rawcliffe in the autumn of 2010 and a third to a Reed Bunting also ringed in the autumn of 2010.

A summary of the Siskin ringing in Will’s garden can be read here , but we now have further evidence of where those early spring migrant Siskins were headed and not surprisingly the destinations included Scotland. Ring number L300924, a Siskin ringed on 16 February 2011 was recaptured a month later on 18 March and then soon after took up its spring migration. Later in the year it was caught by a ringer at Tarbot, Loch Lomond, Scotland on 22 June 2011, 288 kms away from Will’s garden. Of course in June it would be in the throes of the breeding season.

Catterall, nr Garstang to Loch Lomond
Siskin

During the autumn of 2010 during September to November we captured 49 Goldfinch at Rawcliffe Moss where we presumed many of those birds to be from further north. In the case of Goldfinch L300722 it proved of no great distance but typifies the often short movements across Morecambe Bay of this and other species (see the Reed Bunting below).Goldfinch L300722 was first ringed at Out Rawcliffe on 10 November 2010 and then recaptured at Walney Island Bird Observatory on 4 occasions between 7th March and 16th April 2011; after these captures it may have settled down to breed nearby or even moved further away during the later spring and summer. The distance between Rawcliffe Moss and Walney is just 29 kms.

Out Rawcliffe to Walney Island
Goldfinch

A young male Reed Bunting L300408 ringed at Rawcliffe Moss on 7th November 2010 was recaptured in the breeding season of 2011 as an adult male at the RSPB Leighton Moss Reserve on 20th June 2011. This movement is fairly typical of juvenile Reed Buntings in travelling fairly short distances during their first winters, in this case just 34 kms.

Out Rawcliffe to Leighton Moss RSPB
Reed Bunting
Fingers are crossed. The weather looks promising for a ringing session tomorrow.

At The End Of The Day

I had three birds to kill with one stone this morning, a swim followed by a sauna session with the other Saga louts – a chance to put the world to rights, the Post Office for some cash, and then finish off with an overdue haircut. But I forgot Roger’s closed on a Wednesday, so the long hair poking out from the bulging baseball cap will have to wait for another day. It’s an ill wind etc., so the time I saved allowed a spot of leisurely birding down Pilling way.

There’s not much of a report from Lane Ends, on the marsh 28 swans in the distant channel seemed to be all Whoopers, an equally far away Dark-bellied Brent Goose, 2500 Pink-footed Geese and 2 Little Egret. A Raven seen off by the other corvids enlivened things somewhat, as did a Peregrine taking to the air down towards Cockerham with yet more corvid attention. Once again the pools held 4 Goldeneye, 2 males and 2 females, a pair on each pool. Wednesday is Hi-fly shoot so I didn’t venture to the boundary of their shoot at Pilling Water, but I could hear the shots going off, and the associated noise and human activity was the reason for the long-range geese, wildfowl and waders.

Dark-bellied Brent Goose – courtesy USFWS

I motored to Conder and then Glasson Dock. The pool at Conder was totally deserted save for 18 distant Wigeon, outnumbering even the 6 Mallards. The creek itself was also quiet with single Redshank and Curlew but 30 or so Teal.

It was a nice afternoon, sunny, almost spring like, so I decided to mooch around sleepy Glasson Dock and maybe get a picture or two. I walked the dock, the basin and the canal and on the water came up with 8 Goldeneye, 28 Tufted Duck, 1 Cormorant, 48 Coot and 4 Mute Swan. The canal side proved a little more varietal but not numerous as the hawthorns and scattered trees of the church grounds yielded 1 Pied Wagtail, 18 Goldfinch, 1 Mistle Thrush, 2 Redwing, 3 Tree Sparrow and 3 Fieldfare.

Glasson Dock
Goldeneye
Tufted Duck

It had been a quiet, uneventful couple of hours with just a few photographs of disinterested Tufted Ducks and slumbering Goldeneyes, and as I motored back towards Pilling I was ready to call it a day. Until that is a winter afternoon Barn Owl appeared near Crimbles, floating over the road and off into the fields to save the day in the last half an hour of daylight.

Barn Owl

Somewhere (Near The Rainbow)

I wanted to bird but I stopped at Gulf Lane because it was a pretty spectacular rainbow, even if it was accompanied by torrential hail stones. If I’d had an 18mm lens I could have got both ends of the light show in the picture.

A Pilling Rainbow

I was on my way back from Conder Green after a couple of hours of not very productive birding where 3 Spotted Redshanks in the creeks may well have been the highlight because apart from the usual 7 Snipe, 1 Greenshank, 5 Redshank, 2 Curlew and circa 50 Teal, all was quiet. From the platform I looked west into the afternoon light but couldn’t see more than 5 Little Grebe silhouettes. I was peering in the opposite direction when I heard the splash of a Kingfisher behind me but as I turned it had already returned to the stone parapet. As I made for the camera it shot around the pool in a semi-circle before hovering Kestrel-like for a second or two before disappearing again. The bird is still here then, but the light is much better in the morning direction for trying to photograph a Kingfisher.

Redshank
I checked out the flock of 40ish Greenfinch at Cockersands where I bumped into PW and JB, but I left them to do the heroic stuff like counting the waders on the beach from the windswept road. For wader enthusiasts I am sure there will be a count here http://woodruff4.blogspot.com/

Near Lane Ends the fields were awash with mainly 350 Lapwings, 60 or so Curlew, several Redshank and 1 Golden Plover, a species strangely absent so far this autumn.

At Fluke Hall Lane the geese were being sent out to the marsh by a combination of a camera toting clown walking along the roadside in full sight of the massed flock, ably assisted by the noisy Hi-fly quad bike arriving with sacks of wheat. I managed to find 5 Barnacle Geese with the thousands of pink-feet before the whole lot erupted out of sight, but even as I took the shot the geese were up and alert, ready to go.

Pink-footed Goose

From the car park I heard the Chiffchaff again and if it is the same one it has been around for several days now, with Robins and Long-tailed Tits for company. Several Little Egrets were huddled together on the shore and by scanning east and west waiting for heads to pop up and down from the old ditches I doubled that score to 15, no problem.

Robin

With luck we might just squeeze a ringing session in on Wednesday morning – overnight frost and 10mph northerlies. Could be worse.

It's That Hobby Again

It was another snatched hour or two when in between rain showers I ventured down to the local patch Pilling shore. I wanted to take a look on this the highest tide for a week or two, where I hoped for a few early autumn waders or whatever else might come along.

First off were the Lane Ends Reed Warblers, two of them singing below the car park, but not much else apart from the building numbers of Greylag on the pool and the shore, 31 of them today. The walk to Pilling water yielded the usual Kestrel, a singing Meadow Pipit and couple of Skylarks. The Kestrel sat about near the pool, and so did I, but on the stile as the grass was soaked from a previous shower. I found the four Common Sandpipers along the outflow, unwilling as ever to come close so I settled down and counted the 550 Curlew and 110 Lapwings, the most numerous and obvious birds until the tide runs in a little more.

Kestrel
Curlew

I really couldn’t believe it, but it happened again, the same Hobby from 12 days ago or a new Hobby, cruising over the incoming tide as it scattered the birds below on the marsh. I made the elementary mistake of taking my eye off the bird as I fiddled with the camera in the belief I could lock onto the Hobby again, but I couldn’t and it disappeared.

Hobby

The Hobby is real mystery bird up here, a will-o’-the-wisp thing, here one minute gone the next. I was left wondering about the influx to the UK in early July, the one I saw on July 2nd and the one or two extra ones that suddenly appeared in Lancashire without any obvious reason or explanation.

I settled down again maybe knowing that if the Hobby came back the birds on the shore would know before me and alert me accordingly. I counted the Black-headed Gulls coming and going from the sub-roost and spotted an adult Mediterranean Gull heading off towards Lane Ends and eventually probably Bank End where the gulls settle on the higher tides. There were groups of Dunlin going to and fro, circling and calling, settling occasionally on the margins of the marsh which allowed me a count of 80, but apart from 20 or so Redshank, I didn’t see much wader variety.

Dunlin
Dunlin

Terns sometimes appear at the Pilling Water roost, usually at or just after high tide when they follow the tide into the bay from Knott End way. That's how it was today when 2 Common Tern flew in to settle down on the outer marsh until the tide dropped.

Common Tern

I had watched the dark grey clouds head in from the south, and jacketless as the rain thundered down I put a roof over my head in the birder’s shelter for a while. It was temporary only as the rain continued and I headed back to the car, wet but happy that my hobby is so rewarding.

Birder’s Shelter