Local Rarity

A Barn Owl floated across Stalmine Moss but that wasn't the reason to stop. I’d heard a local rarity singing from the same spot where I saw a couple of the creatures in deepest winter. It was a Corn Bunting, that once abundant bird of local farmland but now a very occasional sight. 

Corn Bunting 

Counts of Corn Buntings are now desperately low. There are hardly any local breeding records and pitifully low numbers in wintertime when we might expect a few to feed on farmland stubble. Therein lies the problem. 

Not too many moons ago the Fylde was a summer arable landscape of growing vegetables followed by views of autumn and winter stubble, fields of waste and weed seeds left from the harvest that kept myriads of buntings and finches alive through the winter.  Those same fields are now grass and silage for sheep and cows, meat the only food that most people eat since abandoning live vegetables. Big Mac and the like have a lot to answer for. 

I read an article recently that suggested cooking skills may die out completely in the next two generations because we Brits are losing interest. Although we declare ourselves too busy to cook from scratch, opting instead for takeaways and factory food, we have plenty of time to watch TV.  The national obsession with cookery shows and watching other people prepare food on TV does not prompt us to actually cook anything other than microwaved ready meals or beans on toast. A home-made steak and kidney pie is now as rare as hens-teeth in Kentucky Fried Britain.

I digress. Back to the birds. There was a scratchy singing Whitethroat too, one of 8/10 seen this morning; so at last they have arrived. Likewise a few more Swallows scattered around farms, 30+ in total but still very few House Martins, the latter still in single figures. 

I stopped briefly at Braides, the scene of much frenzy last weekend with birders desperate to add a few Yellow Wagtails to their yearly list. How many Yellow Wagtails went unseen in other similar locations is anyone’s guess. Today a couple of Linnets, a pair of Kestrel, one Grey Heron, several Swallows, and unusually for here 4 Rooks. The Rook is a more handsome and beneficial bird than the ubiquitous and villainous Common Crow. 

Rook

I called at Conder Green where the water level is still too high for many species but the four to five pairs of Oystercatcher are not so choosy so remain on territory. There was a single Common Tern on the nesting island, the first tern back in 2018 as far as I know. I noted the bird wore a very shiny ring on the right leg but far too distant to read the inscription. Also, a single lingering usually winter only Goldeneye, 6 Tufted Duck, 6 Teal, 2 Pied Wagtail and a Kestrel. Along the hedgerow - a singing Whitethroat. Nearer to Glasson singles of Lesser Whitethroat and Willow Warbler.  

Common Tern

The circuit of Jeremy, Moss and Slack Lanes threw up a good selection of migrant birds in the shape and sound of 4 Wheatear, 4 Whitethroat (all males), 2 Sedge Warbler, 2 Willow Warbler, 2 Reed Bunting, 2 Meadow Pipit, 2 Pied Wagtail and 1 Whinchat. 

Whinchat

It was good to count 12/15 Skylark although a flock of 110 Linnets is suggestive of the still below average temperatures. Heartening also to see upwards of 15 Lapwings sat on eggs but impossible to predict how many will survive the plough of the coming weeks. 

Not everything is late this spring as proven by the Blackbird with a beak full of giant worms for the family meal. Good to see that the Blackbirds at least survive on a diet of fresh food. 

Blackbird 

Please login soon to Another Bird Blog. Can’t promise rarities but there’s always a picture or two!

Linking this post to Stewart's World Bird Wednesday.

Play It Cool

I think some birds are responding to the continuing cold weather because on my Knott End to Pilling round this morning I found a few changes to the usual scene. Although the mercury was in the red this morning, it isn’t yet down to the forecast for tonight of minus 10 degrees.

As I passed the abandoned building site at Knott End I could see a lady at the bus stop looking up at the steelwork next to the Bourne Arms, and I reckoned the Black Redstart was still about. After I parked up and went for a peek the woman had got on her bus but the redstart was still there, high up and partly hidden by the steelwork, but as I watched the bird bobbing about it flew across the road and landed on a bungalow roof opposite and then down into someone’s garden. A “good” bird for a garden list, but I don’t think you can count birds seen in other people’s gardens, unless someone knows otherwise.

Black Redstart

I found a couple of rooks in the car park, birds probably from the rookery above the village library. One of the Rooks bore a metal ring, but the bird with the ring proved too wary for me to read the inscription. I imagine there aren’t too many ringers who climb into tall rookeries in order to ring young rooks, so maybe someone has been ringing “branchies” in recent years; stand-by for one of Another Bird Blog’s occasional forays into things culinary. “Branchie” is an old name given to young rooks which leave the nest early and clamber about on nearby branches pending their fledging, until that is an unseasonal wind springs up and deposits them on the ground below the rookery. In some years I used to find a few young rooks under the Singleton Hall rookery and then ring them as 1Js before putting them back on the highest branch I could reach. “Branchies” were also the probable origin of the ancient verse, “Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye, Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie” as young Rook meat is said to be very savoury with a similar taste to Wood Pigeon meat.

Rook
Ringed Rook

The stubble at Fluke Hall Lane is frozen solid, and apart from the Jackdaws, there’s nothing much to report, just the usual half a dozen Tree Sparrows and Reed Buntings around the Hi-fly track.

Reed Bunting

The east pool at Lane Ends is now frozen solid, with not a single duck there, just the Mallards on the small patch of unfrozen water on the west pool. A walk through the plantation, taking care not to flatten the Snowdrops, gave a count of 15 + Blackbirds, 2 Redwing, 4 Moorhen and 12+ Chaffinch.

Snowdrops
Lane Ends - Frozen
Chaffinch

As a change of scenery I walked east along the sea wall and logged 3 Pale-bellied Brent Geese, 18 Greylag, with 8 Little Egret and 2 Grey Heron flushed from the inland ditches where drainage water still trickles. It was up here I found a party of 18 Meadow Pipits, and on the inland field, 80 Black-tailed Godwit, 5 Golden Plover, 10 Dunlin and 300 Curlew.

Greylag

Opposite Gulf Lane was a huge concentration of Pink-footed Geese, maybe 7,000 in all, but alongside the stretch of road where to stop is dangerous, as I found out when I drove slowly along there later to the accompaniment of car horns and angry sideways looks. All these folk rushing about like there’s no tomorrow, why don’t they just relax, chill out and take up birding?