Slowly Does It

Mid-June and It’s a struggle to come up with news or pictures today. Many birds are lying low, in the throes of breeding, moulting their feathers or in some cases both. But Another Bird Blog doesn’t give up that easily and I was out Pilling way as usual even though a little later than normal. 

Imagine my surprise to see at 0930 a Red Fox strolling across the often busy lane, the animal crossing from one part of the wood towards another. I saw it early and then slowed the car hoping the fox wouldn’t notice before I stopped for a photo, but just as the car came to a halt the animal melted into the undergrowth, so no picture to show. 

As usual I was left with mixed feelings about the thrill of seeing and wanting to photograph a predator with a repuation as bad as a fox. This particular fox may be living on borrowed time if it chooses to stay around “the shoot” environs. Come the month of August thousands of Red-legged Partridges will be released in preparation for the sporting season whereby nothing should hinder its success. 

Red-legged Partridge

There were 3 Kestrels this morning, the pair at Fluke Hall and one near the nest box at Damside. I think both pairs now have young to feed so actively do they hunt at the moment. One male had leftovers of the last meal attached to his bill and was already on the lookout for another family meal. 

Kestrel

In the woodland and along the hedgerows I found 6/8 Whitethroat, 1 Blackcap, 1 Chiffchaff, 2 Song Thrush, 2 Great-spotted Woodpeckers and a single Buzzard. Later another Buzzard was circling over Head Dyke, for such a large raptor an effortless flap and glide from Fluke Hall. 

Needless to say, I walked the (sea) wall where I suppose that even now I’ve not abandoned all hope of finding evidence of Lapwing, Oystercatcher or Redshank chicks. It can be the case that adults lead their broods of young from inland fields to the coast where they all feed in the still wet drainage channels and ditches, but still no sign of new youngsters today, just the calls and brief attentions of the one Lapwing pair with their single chick. Half a dozen Redshanks and five or six Oystercatchers showed no signs of concern at my passing by or even to escort me off the premises as they do when youngsters are in tow.

Along the sea wall signs of post-breeding with several extra Curlews, 3 Grey Heron and 50+ Shelduck. 

Back home has seen a number of Goldfinches in the garden, up to 15 at a time, with a number of fresh juveniles learning the whys and wherefores of niger seed. It’s hard to believe that those rather dull looking juveniles will turn into our handsome UK Goldfinch. 

Goldfinch

Goldfinch

Rather unexpectedly I caught a Treecreeper, an adult female which showed signs of feathering over a recent brood patch. The Treecreeper is another of those species which has suffered local declines and although there are copses and stands of trees quite near home, Treecreepers are generally much more difficult to find than ten or twenty years ago. 

 Treecreeper

There’s a full day pass tomorrow. Log in to Another Bird Blog on Friday so see if the birding moved up a gear or two.

That Kestrel on a barbed wire fence means a link to Theresa's Run A Round Ranch is in order. 

Linking Saturday to Eileen's Saturday Critters.

Well Sorted

Firstly my apologies to readers for the messy appearance of the blog for the last two days when the right hand column ended up below all the posts. This was caused by the simplest of problems, a stray piece of HTML overlooked in my last post Slightly Cuckoo. In the end the post title proved more accurate than envisaged. In due course and to compensate for this dreadful mistake, more new Cuckoo pictures will follow soon on Another Bird Blog.

I fixed the Blogger glitch this morning at 5am, just before I made tracks for Out Rawcliffe and a spot of ringing. On such a fine, wind free morning I suppose Will and I hoped for a big catch this morning, the first one for some time where we could use a full spread of nets. The overnight clear skies may have moved birds on ahead of us, our excuse for not catching enormous numbers. However we achieved a great variety of birds with yet more warblers plus witnessed clear signs of autumnal visible migration with our in-between net rounds birding.

We totalled 32 birds, 29 new, 2 recaptures and 1 “control”, an adult female Chaffinch ringed elsewhere – ring number R988282 other ringer bloggers out there? New birds: 9 Willow Warbler, 6 Chaffinch, 3 Blackcap, 3 Whitethroat, 2 Tree Pipit, 2 Lesser Whitethroat, 1 Garden Warbler, 1 Robin, 1 Treecreeper and 1 Blackbird.

Tree Pipit
Tree Pipit
Treecreeper
Lesser Whitethroat
Blackcap
Garden Warbler

Our recaptures: 1 Willow Warbler and 1 Whitethroat. As we are now well into the month of August the Whitethroats moving through the site are almost exclusively juveniles, i.e. 63 of 68 Whitethroat captures in the last 30 days have been young birds of the year. That is because most of the adults migrate earlier than the juveniles, young of the year which in August can be correctly aged but not sexed. Adult Whitethroats can be difficult to accurately sex at most times, in fact it is probably impossible in the field in August when they undergo moult. We thought today’s moulting adult may have been a male, until at home a check on IPMR records from May and June showed it to be a breeding female.

Likewise, autumn Willow Warblers are difficult to age and it is only in the hand that anyone can say with certainty that an individual is an adult or a juvenile.

Whitethroat moult
Whitethroat adult
Willow Warbler

More signs of autumn appeared this morning with visible Chaffinch movement – circa 30 birds passing overhead, contact calling as they headed south, then of course the capture of another ringer’s Chaffinch. Tree Pipits also fell into the “vis mig” category with 2 caught and a minimum of 4 birds overhead. The morning also saw a marked passage of Alba wagtails with upwards of 18 individuals heading west, the appearance of more Sylvia warblers and the early morning sound of Robin sub-song, a species that proved to be first in the nets.

Other birds this morning: 80+ Swallow, 4 Corn Bunting, 4 Grey Partridge, 1 Kestrel, 2 Buzzard and 50+Goldfinch. I almost forgot – the female Sparrowhawk that flapped from the net before we could reach it. Oh well there’s always another day.

On the non-birding front, Will who is a bit of a wildlife sleuth found the footprints of a Stoat where we often see one running alongside our plot, but we didn’t see the animal today, just Brown Hares and Roe Deer.

Stoat tracks

Did You See The Fog?

The forecast of fog and more fog didn’t inspire me last night so it was quite a surprise to get up and see a sort of bright morning, greyish cloud, but definitely no fog. Good old BBC, nothing quite like keeping the licence payers guessing. So I set off for a quick tour of the spots I hadn’t visited for several days, Conder Green, Glasson Dock, Jeremy Lane and Bank End, all well-worn but often fruitful avenues for finding birds and a sure fire way of assessing the effect of the last few weeks.

At the just about thawed Conder Pool the birds had yet to return, with the wildfowl concentrated in the tidal channels: 45 Teal and 220 Wigeon, with 5 Little Grebe that are usually on the pool. There was a substantial movement of Pink-footed Geese going north to south this morning, and I counted over 200 overflying here then several hundred more in the course of the morning heading in the general direction of their favoured feeding areas around Pilling.

At Glasson Dock canal basin many Coot were not only literally skating on very thin ice, they were obviously very hungry, as 70 or 80 birds showed when they rushed towards breadless me as I got out of the car. In all I counted 135 Coot, 120 Tufted Duck and 4 Pochard here with 140+ Goldeneye and 2 Eider on the estuary as seen from the bowling green.

Coot
Tufted Duck

After four weeks of snow and ice covered fields any feeding waders this morning were hard to come by anywhere, and whereas a normal mild winter would produce many hundreds of Lapwing, Redshank, Golden Plover and Curlew, today the combined numbers of all four species on my entire circuit barely reached one hundred individuals.

Lapwing

There were plenty of both Redwings and Fieldfares along Jeremy Lane and up to Cockersands, where a couple of shore feeding Redwing flew into the more usual field situation on my approach and 20+ Linnets hung around the set-aside allotment. Along the roadside and even after their near starvation diet of the last few weeks the thrushes were their usual shy selves, fit and alert enough so as not to allow a close approach - unlike the Fieldfare in my garden last week.

Redwing
Well-fed Fieldfare
Hungry Fieldfare

I saw more thrushes down Bank Lane, perhaps 30 Fieldfares and similar Redwing, some flitting between the hawthorns and the shore with Starlings, Chaffinches and a single Pied Wagtail. I found a handful of Curlew, Lapwing and Redshank down here and most unusually, a Treecreeper moving along the hawthorns. A crappy shot I know, maybe the BBC fog spoiled the picture.

Treecreeper

At Lane Ends Whooper Swans were in all directions, out on the distant marsh, overflying and in the near fields of Backsands and Fluke, in all 80+, all in the clear light of a pleasant morning and still no fog.

Bonus Birds

The weather forecast changed to a more positive aspect last night and although we couldn’t get to Rawcliffe Moss because today was a shoot day, Will and I and I decided to visit our woodland site near Lancaster. It’s not quite like catching Redwing and Fieldfare but at least we might be able to increase the Goldcrest and Chaffinch totals. We put up just three nets in easy locations because some clearance of rides is needed after the summer’s growth before we embark on anything more ambitious.

We caught just 20 birds, 19 new and one recapture, a Goldcrest from last week. New birds today, 9 Goldcrest which made 20 in the last 7 days, 4 Great Tit, and one each of Robin, Treecreeper, Long-tailed Tit, Coal Tit, Chaffinch and Song Thrush.

Goldcrest
Robin
Treecreeper
Long-tailed Tit

It was a cold morning, one of those mornings when birds are sometimes a little slow or reluctant to leave the hand. In fact it is a very cold and dark bit of woodland where the sun takes some time to filter through to where we ring, hence the rather dark background to some images.

Chaffinch

Other birds of the woodland today: 2 Nuthatch, several Coal Tit and several Jay, a Buzzard, but small numbers only of Chaffinch and Blackbird, probably until the leaves and the beech mast drop.

I had to pass Conder Green on the way back at 1115 am, and although the tide partly filled the creek, a peek on the pool revealed 3 Spotted Redshank, but too far away for a picture.

Back To The Other Patch

I looked in my notebook to see that I had been so busy ringing out on the moss that I hadn’t been to Lane Ends my other home, since September 20th. It was a good decision last night to postpone more ringing, with an accurate BBC forecast that predicted after a 9mph start, that the wind would increase quickly. But I must say I was ready for a leisurely birding session after the hard slog of ringing and Sunday looks more promising for mist nets.

I was pretty much the first person at Fluke Hall, early enough to find a Snipe on the wet, roadside stubble together with 8 Meadow Pipits and 2 wagtails that flew ahead of me before I could ID them properly – more “albas” in the notebook. There didn’t seem a lot of overhead stuff, just several Chaffinch and a couple of Greenfinch, but as I walked up towards Ridge Farm I did get 5 Reed Bunting, 3 over fairly high and 3 along the hedgerow. Below the sea wall were the obligatory 2 Little Egret and a Wheatear on the boulder stones. There were masses of Pink-footed Geese out on the marsh already flighting off to the sound of gunfire, and I made a mental note to count the flocks when I got up to Lane Ends.

Pink-footed Goose

I stopped at a partially flooded field at Damside, a favoured spot where autumn Ruff sometimes join the Redshanks and Lapwings. I looked through a flock of 40 Lapwings, and yes amongst them was indeed a single Ruff, but tantalisingly too far for a picture.

At Lane Ends a tit flock moved through the wood where with the usual long and short tailed variety I found a Treecreeper doing just as the label says, creeping up the side of a silver birch before it flew off with the rest of the horde. Obviously Treecreepers are fairly unusual at this spot but I ringed one here in 1997 and an earlier one was ringed by my colleague Simon in 1989; Simon is now “down south” where he rings Dartford Warblers, Firecrests and the occasional Hobby. And no, I don’t have a fantastic memory but IPMR the BTO ringer’s database does. There were a few obvious migrant Blackbirds here, dashing, secretive and in a hurry to feed up.

Treecreeper

There were more Little Egrets out on the marsh and my combined count from here, Fluke Hall and Pilling Water came to a round ten. That doesn’t approach the counts of 30 or so birds that have roosted on the island in recent weeks, but when they leave the roost they scatter west towards Knott End and east in the direction of Cockerham, a stretch of coast where a concerted daytime count effort would surely yield thirty or more individuals.

Little Egret

Towards Pilling Water was quiet, another single Wheatear,a couple of Meadow Pipits plus 30 or so Skylarks coming off the marsh and flying gently inland, but as always with Skylarks the mystery is not only “Why?”, but also “Where and When?” My casual estimate of Pink-footed geese was 12-15,000, huge but almost uncountable numbers.

Skylark

On my way to Conder Green I detoured via Jeremy Lane where I encountered a group of 10 Grey Partridge. Now if they are truly wild that is something to write home about, but I hope they are not released birds as I hear that some shooting syndicates may have released some recently with the hope of taking them back dead later. It’s just nonsensical to shoot all the Grey Partridge, complain there aren’t any, breed birds in captivity and then release them to shoot all over again; seemingly they are better “sport” than Red-legged Partridge.

At Conder Green I heard birders complaining about the lack of birds. Alright it wasn’t busy but it helps if you spend a little time and look properly instead of dashing off, foot on the floor, to the next place on the list. I found 9 Little Grebe, 3 Wigeon, 6 Snipe, 1 Grey Wagtail, 2 Cormorant, 160 Goldfinch, 45 Curlew, 1 Common Sandpiper, 2 Meadow Pipit and 1 Kingfisher. As the group fretted amongst themselves and earnestly discussed next options I watched 2 Barnacle Geese fly over, not too high but heading south west towards the pinkies.

Also today, here and there, several lingering Swallows.

Willies and Whites

Will and I both clocked dawn “on the way” birds this morning on our respective journeys to Rawcliffe but he beat me easily today with a Barn Owl sitting on a roadside fence at St Michael’s village, to which my pathetic riposte was a Kestrel sitting above the road at the start of the farm track. He does it every week, last week Grey Partridge, and now this.

Kestrel
Barn Owl

Afterwards it was a quiet, slow ringing session on the moss and it was just as well that for contingency purposes we took a couple of garden chairs to sit on between net rounds. Naturally we made sure the chairs sat on the topmost part of the road so we could monitor any overhead or close by bird traffic.

We caught 15 birds of 3 species, which isn’t a terrific result given the nets we set and the time spent, but thankfully our ringing isn’t a competition or a quest for ticks in a book.

We perhaps expected Willow Warblers and weren’t disappointed with 7 caught, 5 new and 2 recaptures, both adults still in the throes of completing their full moult before they can head south. We caught 6 Whitethroats, 4 new and 2 recaptures. Again the recaptured Whitethroats were adults already partially through their moult. We really must not complain as those warblers represented our 88th new Whitethroat and our 67th new Willow Warbler for the site in 2010.

A characteristic of the warblers we have caught this year has been the lack of visible fault bars on the tails of young birds. In a normally wet spring and early summer this is such a noticeable feature that when we caught a young Whitethroat with obvious fault bars near the bottom of the tail, we both remarked on how few similar we had seen in the many dozens of post breeding young warblers handled this year. The better tail feather condition must be related to the fine weather in May and June, which allowed the adults to feed the young more consistently plus find the necessary nutritional food more frequently.

The two other birds caught were a lone Treecreeper plus a juvenile Dunnock.

Adult Whitethroat in wing moult
Whitethroat – juvenile with tail fault bars
Willow Warbler
Treecreeper

Birding wise we had a greater variety than found the nets, with 2 Chiffchaff, a party of 9 Tree Sparrow, a single Sedge Warbler now that they have mostly left, several Linnet, plus 15 Goldfinch. Overhead or close by birds came as groups of 5 Snipe and 3 Golden Plover, 50+ Swallows, 15 House Martin, 11 Stock Dove, 2 Jay, 5 Greylag and the preordained 3 or 4 Buzzards, the hungry young still calling from the nearest woods.

I am loathe to mention the distant calling Quail because this as a lone record may appear on another web site as the sole record of avifauna on Rawcliffe Moss today, plucked from Will’s and my considerable endeavours above and presented not for the first time as the only bird seen in this several square miles of bird rich habitat, listed as a trophy bird to target, to the exclusion of all other less important species. But such a singular record of a call only bird, out of context, out of time, devoid of reason or explanation is meaningless and pointless.

Quail

Quality Street

That’s what Will and I called one of our net rides at Rawcliffe this morning when two 60ft nets especially kept catching warblers and finches. In fact it was a very successful morning’s ringing after a slow start at dawn but better once the early morning dampness cleared and the temperature rose.

We caught 49 birds, 35 new and 14 recaptures of 8 species. New birds were:
Willow Warbler 10
Sedge Warbler 3
Whitethroat 10
Goldfinch 8
Blackbird 1
Treecreeper 1
Dunnock 1
Great Tit 1

Recaptures came as:
Willow Warbler 4
Whitethroat 4
Sedge Warbler 6

We caught our first juvenile Sedge Warblers of the year, fresh and yellowish, looking so different from the whitened adults with plumage now worn by their travels in the early year and the demands of a breeding season.

Sedge Warbler-juvenile
Sedge Warbler-juvenile
”Quality Street”
We also caught a few Goldfinch which appeared barely out of the nest, short winged, short tailed youngsters but obviously independent enough as they flew off strongly in small parties of adults and juveniles. Whilst this went on around us we found Goldfinches at a different stage with a nest containing five eggs.

Goldfinch-juvenile
Goldfinch
Goldfinch nest
Treecreeper
Two juvenile Whitethroats with consecutive ring numbers we recaptured this morning had actually been originally ringed in a nest in the plantation on 9th June.

Whitethroat-juvenile
The actual birding as distinct from the ringing was very quiet this morning with no visible migration and the new birds caught today can be ascribed to post breeding dispersal of juvenile birds and moult dispersal of adult birds.

On the lepidoptera side of things we did find a cache of eggs on nettles this morning. A quick trawl of the Internet identified these as Small Tortoiseshell - Aglais urticae I think.

Small Tortoiseshell?
Another Dawn-Out Rawcliffe

Beware The Balls

My first admission is that I haven’t got any new photographs from today apart from the first one because most birds I saw simply weren’t playing ball for posing, but I also had the usual problem of too much grey sky and no sunshine. I like to use my own photographs to illustrate the blog but sometimes it’s just not possible to get new or relevant ones. What an excuse!

But at least I have some birds to report and if I stick in a few old pictures from sunnier times, maybe I can be excused this time or other readers simply wont notice.

After a morning swim and sauna but in need of fresh air I thought I might head off walking in a slightly different direction this afternoon but I first checked out the Knott End stuff along the foreshore and the jetty.

Go to the top of the jetty, just hang about there and for sure the Twite appear from wherever they were just spooked by a passing stranger. At least in the air I can get a reasonably accurate count as I did when the flock of 40/45 flew over twice before landing in the fenced off abandoned building site where the encroaching weeds must offer a bit of food. Three Eider, 2 males sharing a female, waited for the ferry on the concrete slope but as the boat got a little nearer and they saw the other passengers, the Eider changed their minds and slipped into the water. A sentinel Cormorant was long gone towards the Wyre Light when the ferry was only half way from Fleetwood.

On the pebbles and tidal debris below the jetty I counted 14 Turnstone, 12 Redshank, 2 Pied Wagtail 2 Sanderling and 1 Rock Pipit. And there are three of my older photographs taken at Knott End on previous occasions. I’m biased but I think the Pied Wagtail pic really captures the forever active spirit of the species.

Eider


Turnstone

Pied Wagtail


Sanderling

I didn’t count the Oystercatchers, Redshank and Shelduck further out on the beach to the north because I decided to head up river and south across Knott End Golf Course reckoning that few golfers might be out on such a cold, dismal, windswept day and thus make my walk across the fairways a little safer. As it happened I needn’t have worried too much from head height golf balls as most of the objects travelled fairly slowly at ankle height. Luckily I was now kitted out with walking boots, double skin trousers and thermal socks to protect my lower body, but from wayward golf balls as well as the cold wind.

I reached Hackensall Hall without major incident or little round indents to my boots; I stopped for a while to look around the old buildings and wonderful old trees, perfect for owls I thought, but not today, only Robins, noisy Blackbirds, and chattering Wrens, with a single Song Thrush and a Mistle Thrush.

I did find other woodland birds, like 4 Great-spotted Woodpeckers scrapping over the best trees even though I thought there were dozens suitable. Obviously the peckers know which ones are best for their purpose. Below is a “nearly” picture on a sunny day. There were surprisingly few Chaffinch about but a small flock of titmice included four Long-tailed Tits and 2 Treecreepers, just after I said a day or two ago that they are scarce.

Great-spotted Woodpecker


Treecreeper

The recently thawed pool with now the thinnest skin of either ice or much colder water was almost deserted save for a Moorhen and a Coot. Here’s a photo I took a week ago when I recall the weather being a little icy. What enormous feet, but useful for mauling bird ringers.


Coot
Out of the woodland I followed the track towards Barnaby’s Sands where on the other side of the hedgerow I counted 7 Redwings and 5 Blackbirds feeding on a damp grassy field with 15 Oystercatchers and 3 Redshank for company. I was rapidly running out of time after lingering in the woodland and watching the antics of a few less than accomplished “golfers”, but I was in time to watch both a Merlin and a Short-eared Owl over the marshes of the Wyre backdropped by hundreds of distant Teal and Wigeon. I retraced my steps to Knott End along the riverside path where behind the stone parapet I found an abandoned golf ball nestling bright yellow in the rough grass. I threw it back into the fairway to get my own back and hopefully confuse a wayward golfer.

To sum up, a pleasant, quiet walk with a good tally of birds and I'm still in one piece.