Dead On Time

Setting off birding early in the morning means there’s a chance of seeing owls, usually Barn Owls. This morning at Pilling there was a Tawny Owl at the roadside but unfortunately it was dead, the victim of an overnight collision with a vehicle. 

The woodland living Tawny Owl is very nocturnal and does indeed spend most of its time in the woods so is less likely to fall victim to motorised vehicles than the crepuscular Barn Owl. Barn Owls are very frequent road and rail victims. 

Tawny Owl

I stopped the car to take a look and recued the battered, dishevelled body, placing it in the car for later. There was a BTO ring on the owl’s left leg so I will report that although I’m pretty sure who the ringer is.

Tawny Owls are one of the UK’s most sedentary birds and although young birds disperse from their place of birth they rarely move far, the average distance being just four kilometres. 

Size "G" - UK Ringing Scheme via the British Trust for Ornithology 

I was working on borrowed time today with only an hour or two spare in which to visit the usual spots. The Common Terns really fooled me last weekend at Conder Green when the female was hunkered down out of sight on the nest as the male made less frequent visits to Glasson Dock, the seemingly regular feeding spot. Anyway today was more normal with even the female heading off in the direction of Glasson where I actually saw both birds, one where the canal meets the yacht basin and one over the lock. Could there be youngsters in that unseen nest?

Waders today: 3 Greenshank, 1 Spotted Redshank, 4 Snipe, 4 Common Sandpiper, 6 Curlew, 75 Lapwing, 90 Redshank. 

Lapwing

Also 4 Pied Wagtail, 1 Grey Wagtail, 2 Little Egret, 2 Grey Heron and 4 Teal. 

Pied Wagtail

Lapwing

Brown Hare

At Glasson the aforementioned Common Terns, 2 Grey Wagtail, 25 Swallow, 4 Swift, 2 Grey Heron and 3 Cormorant, but I was out of birding time so saved it for another day. 

Cormorant

Swallow

Swallow

Sunday doesn’t look good because what’s left of Bertha is heading across the Atlantic Ocean and about to hit the UK with wind and rain.

Never mind, Another Bird Blog will be back as soon as possible.

Linking today to Stewart's World Bird Wednesday.

Wood You Believe It?

After Wednesday’s Wood Sandpiper today provided another one this time at Conder Green.

By 0600 I was  headed for Conder, Glasson and Cockersands, a trio of pretty good birding sites that are close together and share many species, but I started at Conder Green. A Wood Sandpiper was feeding on one of the islands, perhaps easy to miss at long distance or when it decided to feed around the side of the island hidden from view and where it could remain for many minutes at a time. 

There were the usual and consistent wader counts of 120 Redshank, 35 Lapwing, 2 Greenshank, 1 Spotted Redshank, 3 Common Sandpiper, 14 Oystercatcher, 4 Snipe and 6 Curlew. And of course, 2 Little Egret, 2 Grey Heron, 3 Little Grebe, 4 Teal and 1 Cormorant. 

Common Sandpiper

A Kingfisher showed briefly and didn’t hang around for a decent view or a picture so I made do with a more obliging and dependable Pied Wagtail, one of three around. 

Pied Wagtail

I made for Glasson where the Swallow numbers were much reduced from recent days with just 30+ feeding over the waters today but overhead 9 Swifts. As the Canal Trust workers readied the lock gates a service boat for the rigs waited to exit the basin on its way to the river and then the open sea. Two Grey Wagtails on the far side of the yacht basin again.

Glasson Dock

Glasson Dock

The Tufted Ducks were fairly obliging this morning unlike some days when they just head for the deeps as soon as anyone looks at them. A standard count of 16 containing no males, just females and juveniles. Ducks manage to preen themselves without leaving the water by turning partly over and doing the necessary then repeating the process on the other side. This seems especially true for Tufted Ducks, a species loathe to leave the safety of water. 

Tufted Duck

 Tufted Duck

It was a beautifully quiet morning for a saunter along the canal, an undisturbed walk where I picked up on another 30+ Swallows, 1 Grey Heron, 8 Tree Sparrow, 5 Sedge Warbler, 3 Reed Warbler, 1 Reed Bunting and 1 Lesser Whitethroat. I couldn’t help but feel that I missed many more birds skulking silently in the still dense reeds and impenetrable hedgerows. 

Reed Warbler

Speckled Wood

Cockersands was serene in the morning sun, no cars, no dog walkers, no birders, just birds. Along the shore and in the close fields I found 18 Linnet and made a magnificent count of 110 Tree Sparrows and 400+ Starlings. 

Tree Sparrow

Starling

Along the shore and in the shallows I counted 26 Eider, 7 Whimbrel, 300+ Oystercatcher, 22 Redshank, 2 Grey Heron and 1 Little Egret. 

The ancient abbey above Cockersands shore was founded about 1184 as the Hospital of St Mary on the marsh belonging to Leicester Abbey. It later became a Premonstratensian priory and was eventually elevated to abbey status in 1192. 

In the background to the picture below distant Heysham Power Station dates from the mid 1980s.

Cockersands Abbey and Heysham

The tumbledown walls of the abbey provided good feeding and vantage points for 3 Pied Wagtails and 2 Wheatears, sitting stones where I took a rest and tried to imagine how many Wheatears had passed through here in more than 800 Springs and 800 Autumns. 

Wheatear

 

What a splendid morning of being out in the big wide world and enjoying it to the full. Better still, there’s more bird news and views on Another Bird Blog UK very soon.

Linking to Eileens's Saturday Blog and   Weekend Reflections.

It’s A Fluke

There was a change of scene on Wednesday with a short visit to bird the area around Fluke Hall and Pilling Water so a couple of hours birding to recount. 

Historically Fluke Hall would have been a desirable residence, a grand estate of lawned garden and woodland, the large ornamental pool with captive wildfowl a plaything for the wealthy Lord of the Manor. In recent years the fine old buildings have been split into various dwellings, the pool has become overgrown and neglected but the areas of shore, woodland and farmland remain a pleasant and often fruitful place to bird. “Fluke” is an old English word for flatfish, flounder or plaice, fish commonly found in local tidal waters in the summer months, especially where the sandy shores are flat as they are here. 

There were Buzzards in the trees, at least two, possibly three or four and young birds calling to be fed and it looks like the Buzzards bred close by. 

Buzzard

Fluke Hall

I walked east towards Broadfleet (Pilling Water to locals) a major drainage dyke that feeds into Morecambe Bay. Along the hedgerow a Whitethroat scolded me but carried on collecting food for youngsters, almost certainly out of the nest and a second brood by now. The path to the sea wall produced 5 Skylarks, several Linnets and 10 Goldfinch. 

After the rain of recent days there’s water in the wildfowler’s pools at last, with a couple of Redshanks and from the ditch beyond 3 Grey Herons, a Little Egret and a single Teal. At Pilling Water there was a Kestrel feeding along the edge of the ditch, the bird intermittently hovering, circling and then hovering again in a new place. Over the fields and in amongst the sheep at least 300 Swallows fed and good numbers of House Martins but feeding higher. 

Kestrel

There was a Common Sandpiper and 3 Redshanks on the seaward side of Pilling Water, with a couple more Little Egrets and a Grey Heron. A Redshank and a smaller wader flew towards me heading inland and towards the pools. I reckoned the smaller bird would be a Green Sandpiper, the pools here one of the most regular and reliable spots for finding a “green sand”. As soon as the wader called I recognised it as a Wood Sandpiper, a species that is rather scarcer than a Green Sandpiper. My first and possibly only Wood Sandpiper of the autumn and the first of the year if I discount the thirty or more seen in Menorca in early May. 

Wood Sandpiper

A nice but not without precedent find for early August and when I looked online there's loads in the country. 

But now the rain started to give me a good soaking before I could reach Fluke Hall. 

There are more birding flukes from Another Bird Blog soon.

Linking this post to   Anni's Birding Blog.

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.

Off A Duck's Back

There’d been a day or two without birding so I set the alarm clock on the strength of Thursday night’s forecast. It was raining hard at 5am so I dozed off for a while. Not long after something stirred me from slumber and the rain had relented, at least for an hour or two. By 0930 a threatening shower had turned again to more persistent rain so play was abandoned for the day after less than two hours of fun. 

A quick stop at Conder Green confirmed a Common Tern sat tight on a nest while two minutes later at Glasson the male was on his circuit. While the female Common Tern sits tight on the nest at Conder Green, the male Common Tern flies off to a regular tour of Glasson Dock 800 yards away where the preferred food seems both readily available and fairly easy to catch. 

The male starts with a round or two of the yacht basin, where it sometimes rests on a tiny but distant jetty, followed by a short flight to the dock where it quickly catches a small fish of the required size. He immediately heads directly back to Conder Green where he presents the fish to the sitting female. 

Both the dock and the yacht basin appear to be teeming with fish at the moment, food availability being a likely factor in the terns choosing to nest so late in the season. The pool at Conder Green seems to lack both the amount and availability of food on offer at Glasson Dock, but has the advantage of an island with the required structure of vegetation that is relatively safe from predators. 

Common Tern

The early rain had mostly kept people indoors but the dock was in noisy working mode with no sign of the regular Kingfisher amongst the boats and moorings. The late start meant less Swallows too, a count of 40ish being considerably down from recent ones. Eight or more Swifts overhead and 8 Cormorants heading south. 

Swallow

 Cormorant

Tufted Ducks numbered just 16 today, the picture below taken from the car when the rain started again and water droplets rolled off the proverbial duck’s back. 

Tufted Duck

A walk along the canal proved fairly fruitful until the rain called a halt. There’s an old neglected orchard with apple trees and fruiting plants like Blackcurrant and where I found 3 brown-headed Blackcaps, 3 or more Robins and several each of Blackbirds, Chaffinches and Goldfinches, 2 Song Thrush, and a Sedge Warbler in song. The regular Tawny Owl was there too, hidden in the dense trees and extensive cover where the scolding of Blackbirds and Song Thrush gave the game away. 

Robin

Further along the canal were 8 Tree Sparrow, and hiding in the waterside vegetation a minimum of 6 Reed Warbler, 4 Sedge Warbler, 2 Whitethroat and 1 Willow Warbler. It’s the time of year that a birder has to use ears rather than eyes to locate the tiny “brown jobs” flitting unseen before their very eyes. 

Whitethroat

Real rain had arrived so I “birded” as best I could from the car at Conder Green with counts of 145 Redshank, 4 Common Sandpiper, 8 Black-tailed Godwit, 3 Dunlin and 3 Little Egret in the immediate channels. 

It was no good, even with the car window partly down everything was getting a soaking. Time to save it for Another Day on Another Bird Blog.

Linking today to Anni's Blog, Camera Critters and Eileen's Saturday .

A Double Day

There wasn’t much time for birding on Monday however I did manage an hour or so at Knott End on either side of the 1 p.m. high tide. 

The highlight was a juvenile Marsh Harrier seen from the promenade about 1230, the harrier quite high above the tideline but heading purposefully west towards Fleetwood. Like many one-off migratory birds here, it probably flew up river towards the extensive marshes either side of the river and where it would avoid the Fleetwood conurbation. Marsh Harriers are very much passage migrants in this part of Lancashire and where they occur in fairly small numbers April/May and then again from July to September/October. 

Marsh Harrier - Photo credit: Ferran Pestaña / Foter / (CC BY-SA 2.0)

A reasonable only count of 110 Oystercatchers, but otherwise just 9 Dunlin, 1 Whimbrel and 1 Redshank completed the waders. Four Sandwich Terns on the beach, with 4 Pied Wagtails at the jetty and 2 Shelduck up river. 

Tuesday dawned bright and clear so I hit the road north to Conder Green and Glasson Dock. 

The numbers of Swallows flitting around the Glasson yachts was down to about 150 today. It could be that the Swallows are actually spending these warm nights roosting amongst the shelter that the boats provide and where the Swallows would be fairly safe.

Glasson Dock

 

 Swallow

When birds settle down to sleep, it’s called “roosting” and the place they choose to sleep at is called a “roost”. The main things birds are looking for at a roost are safety and warmth but also to minimise the danger from predators. Predators could be ground or avian predators like birds of prey, owls, foxes, mink, stoats, rats, cats, dogs or man. Dense cover, foliage, reeds or even farming crops can serve as a secure roost for small birds. Bigger birds have more options and can sleep on the water, on a branch, or even just right on the ground. 

Birds using communal roosts probably benefit by gaining access to food supplies: an individual that found insufficient food one day might, on the next, accompany others leaving the roost, and so be led to a new food source. So a roost is a sort of information and meeting centre, Facebook for birds. 

At one point a number of Swallows took off noisily to see off a Peregrine they’d spotted, the Peregrine coming in from the estuary and flying strongly in non-hunting mode in the general direction of Cockersands. It’s getting to that time of year when a Peregrine becomes an almost guaranteed sighting for a birding session along local coasts. Getting a decent image of one is another matter altogether. 

Peregrine

At Glasson I parked on the “wrong” side of the dock whereby 70 yards away the tiny Kingfisher was fishing the dock waters again from a huge mooring rope. I was just about to drive the wheeled hide around for a closer look when from under his nose an oblivious early morning dog walker sent the Kingfisher packing. 

One Common Tern was also fishing the dock with 2 Grey Herons waiting their turn. There was a Grey Wagtail on the dockside and then along the towpath 2 Pied Wagtails, a Willow Warbler and a Blackcap. No sign of Saturday’s Tawny Owl. 

Grey Heron

Conder Green was quiet again with little new to report except for consistent counts of 135 Redshank, 9 Common Sandpiper, 1 Dunlin, 1 Snipe, 2 Little Egret and 1 Grey Heron. 

 I checked Bank End, Cockerham to see how many wagtails were about after last Thursday gave a count of 130+ feeding on the marsh. Just 58 Pied Wagtails today, a more than reasonable number. There were a few Lapwings on the marsh, 2 Little Egret and a one legged Curlew struggling to make a living. 

Pied Wagtail

Curlew

The sun hadn’t lasted long. The clouds rolled in, it was backwards to ISO800 and at 10am I headed home, just in time to see a familiar Barn Owl heading for a familiar building near Pilling. 

He’ll be out again soon and so will I.

Linking today to Stewart's World Bird Wednesday.

The Owl And The Kingfisher

Saturday morning and I stopped at Gulf Lane to take a photo just as a singing Corn Bunting broke the silence. A touch of mist promised yet another fine day and a great photo opportunity for someone who knows what they’re doing. 

Cockerham

Farmers have taken a cut from the silage fields thereby making the fields more accessible to waders like Lapwings and Curlews which prefer to feed in short grass. I counted over 200 Curlews and 75 Lapwings on a very recently cut field, and then at Crimbles were more Curlews and Lapwings plus a Little Egret on a puddle of tidal water 

Conder Green has gone off the boil of early July. The water level is down, counts are down, species missing, but birders still arrive to check, just as I do and just in case. 

The female Common Tern still sits tight on the nest, the male arriving intermittently to present a freshly caught fish. There was a Cormorant today, it after fish too. Redshank numbers have fluctuated and were down at 35 this morning. Common Sandpipers have passed their early peak and 7 only today, also 3 Snipe, 14 Oystercatcher, 23 Lapwing and 6 Curlew. 3 Little Egret and 4 Grey Heron. 

There’s a Lapwing here named Hopalong which has claimed a stretch of mud along the edge of the pool. It has no foot on the left leg and so hops along the water line where it chases off other Lapwings and defends its feeding territory quite vigorously, making up with aggression what it lacks in the foot department. 

Lapwing

Wildfowl: 2 Wigeon, 2 Teal, 4 Shelduck and 16 Tufted Duck. 

 Tufted Duck

There’s often a Tawny Owl at Glasson. The other birds see it more often than I do but this morning the owl posed for a picture at ISO1600. When I went back with a smaller lens and more light the owl had woken up and flown off but I heard the other birds giving it a good telling off. 

 Tawny Owl

Whilst walking the canal towpath I stopped to chat to a Glasson Dock local who asked me how he might see a Kingfisher, adding - “You probably know what you’re looking for.” The Average Joe may think that Kingfishers are rare, exist only in books, on television programmes, or as figments of a birdwatcher’s imagination. When I explained that I see Kingfishers regularly in his home village, either along the canal, flying across the yacht basin, sat around the dock or along the main road half-a-mile away at Conder Green, he was truly astounded. 

I explained that although a Kingfisher may be brightly coloured, it is also quite tiny, mostly elusive and shy, and that a certain amount of experience and fieldcraft is required to obtain good views. Noting that he carried none, I added that a pair of binoculars would be useful to spot such a small bird from a distance.

I had in mind my own experience some fifteen minutes earlier when I glimpsed a Kingfisher from across the dock before it shot away into the distance. If someone is looking for a Kingfisher on a large expanse of water the picture below shows how small and inconspicuous one can look. It is probably the same Kingfisher from a couple of weeks ago which has already learnt that it is best to avoid the human race. 

Kingfisher

Kingfisher

There was a good count of approximately 300 Swallows again, the birds feeding across the waters of the dock and the yacht basin for an hour or more. Overhead, 20+ Swifts. 

Very soon the Swallows went their separate ways as I did too.