More Goldfinch, More Whoopers

Early Sunday and perhaps too premature for Conder Green where an autumn mist lay across the pool so nothing to look at except the farmer’s two cattle. So I motored slowly up to Glasson where there might be a Kingfisher and a Grey Heron or two. 

It wasn’t misty here on the larger expanse of water. And then right on cue a Kingfisher appeared but didn’t stay. There was nothing doing on the water with just the regular 25 Tufted Duck and similar numbers of Coot. 

Tufted Duck

At Conder Green things had warmed up a little, the mist cleared and so I was able to tot up the waders and the Teal. 3 Spotted Redshank, 70 Redshank, 7 Snipe, 6 Curlew, 4 Lapwing, 3 Goosander and 90 Teal was OK but neither sight nor sound of the regular Greenshank or Common Sandpiper rather took the edge off the count.

One of the Spotted Redshanks has a droopy wing, I noticed it earlier in the week. Two of them were a bit far apart to fit in the frame. 

Spotted Redshanks

On the pool a Kingfisher, 2 Pied Wagtail, 5 Little Grebe, 1 Cormorant, 1 Grey Wagtail, 1 Little Egret. 

Pilling next stop. On the wildfowler’s pools I found 34 Whooper Swan, 2 Mute Swan, 38 Shelduck and 8 Wigeon while out on the marsh were “many thousands” of Pink-footed Geese, and I’m thinking 10,000 plus. The whoopers peeled off in small groups to fly south and over Pilling village - on their way to Martin Mere Wildfowl Trust at a guess. The folk at Martin Mere feed them even better than the Pilling shooters.

Whooper Swans

I gave the woodland a go with little to report save for a Nuthatch, a single Kestrel and 3 Jays but still no sign of Brambling or Yellow-browed Warbler despite my persistence. The weather charts suggest that things might happen on Monday/Tuesday in the way of Redwings and Fieldfares and possibly more.

Later and back at home I noted many Goldfinches in the neighbourhood treetops again plus a good number on the niger feeders. So after a leisurely lunch I set about catching more to add to the 19 ringed since Monday. The Goldfinches piled in and I ended up catching another 22 with no recaptures from Monday, Friday or today, thereby confirming once again that the day-to-day birds we see aren’t necessarily the same individuals, especially in the spring and autumn.

Other bits and bobs came in the form of 2 Coal Tits, a single Blue Tit and a Long-tailed Tit with attitude. A young male Sparrowhawk escaped from the net before I could get there and flew to next door's sycamore tree.

Coal Tit

Blue Tit

Long-tailed Tit

Goldfinch - juvenile

Goldfinch - female

Goldfinch - male

More news and pictures soon from Another Bird Blog.

In the meabtime I'm linking to Stewart's World Bird Wednesday. 

Forget The Weekend

If the rain of both Friday and Saturday was bad, Sunday’s was far worse, so no bird watching until Monday. At last today there was a half decent list of birds and so a little news to relate. 

On the way to Glasson Dock there’s a tiny, reed-fringed pool where a Grey Heron often stands. Not today, there was a Red Fox instead, so I whizzed the car round the mini-roundabout hoping to park up for a photo. Just as the car slowed almost to a halt the fox melted into the hedgerow. 

At the dock a Kingfisher flew to the favoured Noggers Ark ropes and then just as quickly disappeared towards the estuary without taking the plunge. 

Kingfisher

A Common Tern was fishing the dock waters but I didn’t see it fly off towards Conder Green with the catch as he usually does. When I looked at Conder Green later there was no sign of the female so I reasoned that the sometimes torrential rain of the weekend caused the nest to fail at almost hatching point. 

Maybe the poor weekend weather cleared out some of the recent Swallows too because I counted less than a hundred today feeding across the water, some of them resting on various parts of various boats. When the Swallows leave the local deck hands will have to get cracking with the old spit 'n' polish to clean up their shiny boat fittings. 

Swallow

Swallow

 

Swallows

 Swallows

There were 2 Grey Wagtails flying around the moored boats looking for insects, so restless that they hardly settled at all and I don’t know where they ended up. On and near the water, 55 Mallards, 15 Tufted Ducks, 22 Coot and 1 Cormorant.

Glasson Dock

At first glance Conder Green at high tide appeared very quiet whereby a certain amount of perseverance and waiting for the tide to drop was required in order to find any birds. I thought there might be 2 Spotted Redshanks but then decided it was just a single bird doing a full circuit of the creeks. It helped that it was an adult bird now in almost complete winter dress with just a hint of the black plumage of the summer months. Below is the best picture I could get of the distant and wary “shank”, however it does show the remnants of black adult plumage. 

Spotted Redshank

There were definitely 3 Greenshanks, all three feeding virtually together, almost running through the shallow water with the distinctive side-to-side sweep-feed action that Greenshanks employ. 

Greenshank

There were 6 Pied Wagtails and single Grey Wagtail here too; at one point the Grey Wagtail walked along the mid-creek bare tree that I’ve seen a Kingfisher use recently. Good numbers of Redshank scattered through the creeks and beyond the bridge with a conservative count of 190 individuals. Just 3 Common Sandpipers, 5 Curlew, 3 Dunlin, 12 Oystercatchers and 40 Lapwing with herons represented by 2 Little Egret and 2 Grey Heron. 

 Grey Heron

Wildfowl - just 15 Shelduck, 2 Wigeon, 2 Little Grebe. 

It was certainly a weekend to forget and a relief to get outdoors today. New news and more birds quite soon on Another Bird Blog.

Linking today to Stewart's World Bird Wednesday in Australia.

A Mixed Bag

Heading for Conder Green via Cockerham and 100 yards ahead of the car I spotted yet another Barn Owl, this one flying pretty close to the roadside. I slowed the car, switched off the still-on auto headlights and slowed right down to where I’d seen the owl. No luck, it had disappeared without trace, and even though I waited in a gateway for 15 minutes or so the owl didn’t reappear; the start of a slightly frustrating morning. 

Predictably at Conder Green and late June there was a return journey still summer plumaged Spotted Redshank, newly back from the tundra of the Arctic Circle - Norway eastwards through Finland to the forest zone of Siberia. Female Spotted Redshanks can leave the breeding grounds up to a week before their eggs hatch. Others desert their partners at an early stage to form post breeding flocks, leaving the males to look after the youngsters. The light was poor, the redshank too far away for a picture, so I borrowed one. 

Spotted Redshank -  Photo credit: Lorenzo L M. / Foter /  (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) 

Waders and heron species today: 145 Common Redshank, 3 Common Sandpiper, 2 Black-tailed Godwit, 1 Snipe, 12 Oystercatcher, 9 Little Egret, 2 Grey Heron. There’s very bad picture of the single distant Snipe taken in poor light at ISO800.

Snipe

Decent numbers of Swifts this morning with 60+ feeding both high and low. Three Sand Martin also. Passerines pretty much unchanged and singing-2 Whitethroat, 2 Sedge Warbler, Reed Bunting, Blackcap, Sedge Warbler.

The two drake Wigeon are still around, with an increase in the Tufted Duck to 19 individuals but no sign of ducklings despite the summering pairs. Spots of rain appeared so I drove the half mile to Glasson by which time it might stop.

There were a few Tufted Duck and a Great Crested Grebe circuiting the yacht basin, diving and feeding and then reappearing yards away.

Great Crested Grebe

 Great Crested Grebe

The grebe found me singing Chiffchaff and Reed Warbler around the margins of the water and led me towards a family of Otters. European Otter (Lutra lutra) is also known as the Eurasian Otter, Eurasian River Otter and Common Otter.

From UK Safari “Adult Otters have no natural predators, although in the past they were heavily persecuted by gamekeepers. Loss of habitat, polluted rivers, hunting and other human activities all contributed to the decline of native otters. During the late 1950's, following the introduction of new and stronger pesticides, the UK Otter population went into rapid decline. It's only in recent years that the otter population in the UK has started to recover through protective legislation and conservation programmes” 

By now the light was really poor with noisy folk beginning to appear from moored house boats. A couple of rushed shots were all I managed before the Otters melted into the water.

 Otter

Otters

The light improved slightly, enough for a look at Fluke Hall. Kestrels have fledged from a nest box there, the young still being fed by the adults along the edge of the wood. I watched as the adults saw off a really tatty looking Buzzard obviously in heavy summer moult.

Buzzard

There were a couple of Skylarks carrying food to what at first I thought to be two separate nests. After a short time I realised, and upon noting that the food items being carried were of similar size, that the adults were in fact feeding birds out of the nest, the youngsters spaced apart by as much as 30 yards.

I tracked one chick down in newly growing wheat where it lay motionless on the ground trying to blend in with the vegetation. Young Skylarks leave the nest when they are between 8-11 days old, sometimes before that if they are prematurely disturbed.

Skylark

I put the young Skylark back where I found it and waited out of sight for the adult to return with food.

 Skylark

A very mixed bag of stuff today, but what a thrill to see Otters so close to home. Yes, it’s hard to beat a local patch.

Linking today to Anni's Birding Blog and  Eileen's Saturday Blog.

Plan B

Plan A was to be a coastal walk soon after dawn to seek out more Wheatears and anything else lurking unfound by Spring birders. A bitingly cold north easterly wind soon put paid to that idea whereby I found myself in the car heading north with the heater and heated seat at “max”, but as usual the window turned down. It is somewhat mystifying but occasionally I see people apparently bird watching, sitting in their car with the windows up and the radio booming away; I wonder how they ever locate birds? 

Plan B found me at Conder Green for a look on the pool and the roadside creeks, with hopefully a few Spring migrants. The 2 Spotted Redshanks have wintered here. Now they are in the process of acquiring their summery black plumage it will be interesting to see when exactly they head off to Scandinavia/Asia to breed. 

Spotted Redshank

Spotted Redshank

There was a lot of long range birding today with over 200 Black-tailed Godwits feeding on the distant side of the pool for a while before flying off to the estuary. Not long after a similar number came back to the pool only to then do exactly the same by returning to the area of the River Lune. Mostly the godwits were in brick-red plumage with a small number of obvious second year birds and yet other intermediates. One fed in the creek for a while, distant as ever. One Grey Heron in the creeks also, with c15 Redshank and 1 Curlew. 

Black-tailed Godwit

The pool is pretty sparse for birds now, still suffering from excessive water levels caused by the wet, windy and tide-filled winter. As a diving species Tufted Ducks appear to like it, with 26 counted today as opposed to dabbling Wigeon with just a singleton noted. 

Tufted Duck

8 Oystercatchers are in residence seemingly paired up and waiting for good sized stretches of stones, pebbles and suchlike where their eggs can remain undetected. Not much chance of that on a favoured Oystercatcher island which is normally several times bigger than at present and so rather restricts their choice of a nest site. 

Oystercatcher

A “few” Swallows and Sand Martins headed north with other visible migration restricted to one or two Lesser Redpoll overhead. Singing Reed Bunting and Greenfinch along the hedgerow. 

A pit stop at Braides Farm gave 26 Golden Plover, 8 Linnet and 4 Swallows heading east. 

Finally it was Fluke Hall where the wind had not abated so I concentrated effort on the woodland. The male Kestrel was in the same location as normal and then I found out why. He dropped from the fence post to all of two yards away and then came back up with a good sized mammal. After taking a portion of the food for himself he flew off to the nearby nest box to present the animal to the female, the latter presumably now on eggs. It’s a big prey item for a smallish Kestrel and another long distance picture - 400mm x 1.4 converter. 

Kestrel

The woodland and hedgerow produced 2 Great-spotted Woodpecker, 20+ Blackbirds, 2 Song Thrush, 2 Blackcap, 2 Willow Warbler, 1Chiffchaff, and the arrival of one singing Whitethroat fresh from Africa. 

Whitethroat

In the field nearest the sea wall there’s a build-up of spring Linnets and a few Meadow pipits, about 100+ Linnets and 4/5 pipits today, flushed in all directions by a marauding Sparrowhawk. 

So Plan B didn’t turn out too bad after all. Tune in soon to see what’s scheduled next for Another Bird Blog.

Linking today to Stewart's World Bird Wednesday.

Round Up

A trip around a few local spots is the sum of this morning’s blog post. 

Read on while not forgetting to “click the pics” for close-up views. A new feature on Another Bird Blog is “Crosspost” whereby clicking the “Crosspost” button in the right-hand corner of any picture will allow a reader to share it to Facebook and Twitter. Go ahead, give it a try. 

During recent months I’ve rather neglected Knott End after the bad weather and ultra-high tides made it difficult to do any birding there, so to put things right I paid a quick visit today. It was a sunny and still morning, the low to medium high tide concentrating a few birds, but a number of them still out at the water’s edge. Redshanks were in in good numbers with a minimum count of 160 scattered along the estuary, 24 Turnstones concentrated near the jetty and 1500+ Knot staying at the tide’s very edge. Wildfowl numbers came in at 12 Eider and 18 Shelduck. The male Shelducks are now in particularly fine breeding plumage. 

Redshank

Shelduck

As usual I headed up to Pilling Lane Ends and Fluke Hall for a look. Fluke fields held a good number of mixed Golden Plover, Redshank and Lapwings, the recently arrived migrant “goldies” at 210+ outnumbering the 135 regular Redshank and 40+ but dropping in numbers Lapwings. 5 Pied Wagtail, 8 Meadow Pipits and 15+Skylark accounted for passerines on the flood. The wild and wary plovers stayed a long way across the still flooded maize field 

Golden Plovers

On the wildfowler’s pools/sea wall were 23 Teal, 30 Shelduck, 3 Little Egret and 600+ Pink-footed Goose; in the woodland - 3 Stock Dove, 2 Jay and 1+ Siskin. 

A whistle stop at Lane Ends via Backsands Lane gave a Kestrel, singing Chiffchaff and Reed Bunting, and on the pools 2 Little Grebe. 

Kestrel

More Golden Plover at the Cockerham, Braides Farm where another flock of this time 260 birds stayed their distance. Two Little Egrets, 3 Pied Wagtails and 8+ Skylarks here. 

Heading north again took me to Conder Green where I rounded up the usual suspects of 1 Spotted Redshank, 4 Wigeon, 2 Little Grebe, 8 Goldeneye, 22 Teal, 2 Little Egret, 24 Shelduck and 5 Cormorant.  Possibly “new in today” were 1 singing Reed Bunting and 1 Grey Wagtail. 

Spotted Redshank

 

 Black-headed Gull

Join me soon for more bird news and photographs via Another Bird Blog.

Linking today with Eileen's Saturday Blog .

Staying Warm

I sprayed defroster on the windscreen and then started the old girl up to see the temperature indicator flashing a “1°” warning. Definitely a morning for the heated seat and not hanging around on street corners, so stand by for a mixed bunch of stuff from this morning’s rapid transit whereby I managed five different birding spots in four hours. 

In the half-light there seemed to be good numbers of Little Egrets in the Pilling Roost so I stopped to examine the ghostly shapes in more detail. After two counts the best I could get was 36 and by then the early risers were already on their way out of the trees, others stirring as if to go. Early Whooper Swans, 30+, were flying over from their roost way out on the marsh and then heading south towards the fields of Eagland Hill where counts of 300+ Whoopers are now an everyday occurrence. 

Soon I headed back to Knott End and a check of the 0830 tide. The biting south-easterly wind made for a brief but bitterly cold look, with 1300 Oystercatcher, 6 Turnstone, 85 Dunlin, 60+ Redshank, 70+ Shelduck, 15 Curlew, 140 Lapwing, 12 Twite and 2 Pied Wagtails. 

Shelduck

On passing Lane Ends again I could see a flock of mainly Lapwing which upon closer inspection revealed 6 Redshank, 80+ Starlings and 320 Lapwings. There were more Lapwings and also 120+ Golden Plovers on the Cockerham flash floods and then as I scoped the sea wall, 2 Buzzards again, the birds on foot prospecting both along and up & down the embankment.

I’m not having much luck finding the unseasonal Common Sandpiper at Conder Green, but the 2 wintering Spotted Redshank are ultra-reliable in the creeks below the road, as they were again. 

Spotted Redshank

Also there today and as combined pool and creek counts, 280+ Teal, 30 Wigeon, 6 Curlew, 5 Little Grebe, 15 Lapwing, 4 Goldeneye, 3 Goosander, 1 Tufted Duck. Below is not a very good and also rushed Goosander shot with the equally wary Teal somewhat distant. 

Goosander

Teal

It was here that a walk around the block produced most of the Teal count, also 18 House Sparrow, 1 Tree Sparrow, 1 Reed Bunting, and on the outer marsh 20+ Linnets. 

A wildfowl count at Glasson Dock gave 55 Tufted Duck, 20 Goldeneye, 4 Cormorant, 1 Pochard, 1 Grey Heron and 4 Mute Swan. 

Tufted Duck

I know for sure that next week’s birding will heat up considerably, so stick around Another Bird Blog to see why. 

Linking today to Stewart's Wild Bird Wednesday.

The Lake District.

I bypassed Pilling this morning and made my way north to a local lake. Not quite “The Lakes” with the daffodils made famous by William Wordsworth, more the erstwhile pool at Conder Green now transformed to a deep-water lagoon by recent storm driven high tides. 

Piles of duck scattered across the water and some familiar waders in the roadside creek whereby my combined counts came to 190 Teal, 55 Wigeon, 7 Goldeneye, 7 Little Grebe, 3 Snipe, 2 Spotted Redshank, 8 Curlew, 4 Lapwing 1 Common Sandpiper, 1 Greenshank, 1 Cormorant, 1 Canada Goose and 1 Little Egret. That’s quite a list and the old pool doesn’t disappoint, the only bird missing today being the Kingfisher. 

It’s a pretty awful picture of a Spotted Redshank, the Curlew slightly better. 

Curlew

Spotted Redshank

I walked the old railway path to Glasson Dock and for my troubles found a few passerines, not the least of which was a single Fieldfare, a scarce beast of late. The Fieldfare was feeding in the hawthorns with a few Blackbirds, Chaffinches, Dunnocks, 2 Reed Bunting and 1 Pied Wagtail. 

 Dunnock

There was a female Sparrowhawk over the marsh carrying quite large prey that may have been a Snipe, the hawk eventually flying into some dense trees to finish the meal. 

The rising sun made for hard work sorting the ducks against the bright light so I went around the other side of the yacht basin to examine the wildfowl on the expanse of calm water: 70 Tufted Duck, 45 Coot, 5 Goldeneye, 1 Pochard, 1 Little Grebe, 1 Grey Heron, 1 Cormorant, 1 Grey Wagtail. 

Glasson Dock

Tufted Duck

 Goldeneye

The view from the east made for a scenic photograph. It was so picturesque I sat down and rattled off a painting. If only! 

Glasson Dock

Glasson Dock - Painting

Grey Heron

I stopped off at Pilling to see 200+ Curlews in fields near Lane Ends and just a few fields away, 450 Pink-footed Geese. I gave the geese a good grilling but couldn’t find anything out of the rather ordinary so headed off home, job done. 

Pink-footed Geese

By the way, and for those readers who asked about the painted sheep in my last post. Local farmers mark their sheep with a series of colours so that they can later identify their own animals should the thousands of them become mixed up with an adjoining flock by wandering over field or marsh boundaries. 

There’s been many a fall out over lost sheep, counts that don’t add up, and even accusations of rustling.  Life’s never dull down Pilling Way.