Duck Days

I really didn’t think I would get out today what with the grey dawn that precludes much camera work, the cold easterlies, a lack of general enthusiasm and a promise to look after Little Paul that would take up our afternoon.

After I missed the Ring-necked Duck yesterday I must admit I wasn’t in a great hurry to get out to Fleetwood to catch up but when a phone call told me the said bird had relocated to this side of the river within a mile from home at Preesall Flashes, I motored down Back Lane. In fact I am ashamed to say it was almost a trip down Memory Lane as I visit the flashes very infrequently nowadays, and whilst I found the car park, the other paths were less familiar.

The duck was there of course, in the deep unfrozen waters of the long expired salt pits amongst a flotilla of other related but less exotic athyas, 4 Tufted Duck and a dozen or so Pochard, but so easy to pick out it is such a striking drake.

Ring-necked Duck

Tuftede Duck

Pochard

I guess that the open water has also increased the Coot count lately. Therefore a count of 200+ was good to see even if they all kept their distance, unlike the normal suburban park example.

Coot

Likewise the several hundred Mallard, with an enormous concentration on the whole flashes, but most of them are of the “released for sport” variety. Exotica appeared again in the form of 2 drakes and 1 female Mandarin, origin unknown but I must check with my pal Graham who has/had a couple in a plastic pool at his back door a few weeks ago.

Mallard

Mandarin

More legitimate was the sight of two Great-crested Grebe, several Teal and a couple of female Goldeneye, all long standing visitors to the flashes.

Great-crested Grebe

Teal

Goldeneye

Back at home I still have a dozen Chaffinch and a dozen Blackbirds in the semi frozen garden. And today a male Sparrowhawk that put in a brief but noticeable appearance that scattered all and sundry.

A trip around some of my more usual haunts tomorrow I think.

A Learning Curve

There must have been some burning ears in the BBC weather centre as Will and I speculated why the predicted overnight “freezing fog” had simply never even looked like forming. No matter, we didn’t believe it anyway, having learnt to treat their predictions with some scepticism, so we headed off anyway for a ringing session on a cold but clear frosty morning but definitely no fog. Will had diligently fed Lee Farm for weeks, but only now was the weather good enough to give it a try as a couple of singing Robins watched us put the nets up.

Trusty Toyota

Robin

A three hour stint gave us 38 new birds with 2 retrapped from previous occasions. The recaptures were low because we hadn’t worked the site since last winter.

Birds caught:

Blackbird 9
Tree Sparrow 3
Blue Tit 2
Chaffinch 15
Robin 4
Song Thrush 1
Dunnock 6

We caught a couple of heavyweight male Blackbirds with visible fat, one of 126 grams, another of 127 grams. A nice adult male below.

Blackbird

And always good to catch a Song Thrush, now few and far between.

Song Thrush

Song Thrush

The farm is a good site for Chaffinch due to the amount of suitable hedgerow and woodland habitat close by. Out of our fifteen caught, twelve were males.

Chaffinch

Chaffinch

There seems to be no shortage of Dunnocks at the farm as we caught 8 but ringed only 6 of them. We left two unringed when we saw they had signs of “Bumblefoot”.

Dunnock

And here’s a fact with the loosest of connections to the above.

Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal (Ronald Jay Blumental) is an American guitarist, songwriter and producer best known for being one of two lead guitarists in the hard rock band Guns N' Roses. He got the name "Bumblefoot" from the bacterial infection, which he learned about while helping his wife review for her veterinary exams.

So there are things to learn by logging into Another Bird Blog! Probably more than by logging into the BBC weather forecasts.

Ice Drive

The idea was to put out some bird food at Rawcliffe Moss and then have a wander round birding. The drive down to the track was both interesting and educational as I negotiated the narrow sheet of ice at about 10mph, luckily without meeting any vehicles coming in the opposite direction. I don’t think I will be taking up Scandinavian ice driving though.



After a week of snow and ice the Tree Sparrows are still around, if in much reduced numbers, and I counted 110 this morning with the usual 12-15 Chaffinch, 2 Dunnock, 9 Starling, 3 Yellowhammer, but only 3 Blackbirds, a couple of Jackdaws and several Wood Pigeon. I dumped another bucket of seed. That should keep them going for a few days but not if more snow covers it.

Blackbird

Looking west I could see six Roe Deer in the stubble of the next farm over but they quickly disappeared over the brow and out of sight before I could raise the camera. I decided that not only was I visible against the expanse of snow and ice behind me, I was also making a lot of noise by crunching over the packed icy roadside in an effort to avoid the slippery vehicle tracks. I persevered a bit longer by where possible sticking to the virgin snow enough to disturb 6 Grey Partridge from under a hedgerow and a mixed party of Chaffinch with several Blue Tit and Great Tit, but it was noisy, slow progress from me.

I walked through the wood where at least I wouldn’t be as visible or clatter over the ice, just the winter brash of fallen branches. In there more than 30 Woodpigeon exploded from the tree tops with a few extra Blackbirds and a single Song Thrush rummaging through the litter.

Rather than spend more time trudging through the deep and crisp and even to no avail, I decided to return the bucket to the barn and maybe use a little time with camera at the ready to see what turned up. Up there the Dunnocks and Robins quarrelled amongst themselves over possession of the best bits of the farm bric-a-brac, the jumbled mess of old discarded machinery, the rattling plastic and muddy chaos of daily ins and outs, whilst a couple of tail in the air Wrens rattled around the nooks and crannies of discarded timber.

Robin

Dunnock

It was the alarm calls that alerted me that a Stoat Mustela erminea was also mooching through the long left bits and pieces, but the birds were watching it and so was I.

Stoat

Stoat

Apparently Stoats mate once a year and the female is pregnant for 11 months, which is a long time for such a small mammal, and while they have several youngsters which are called kits, the males do not help in raising them.

I hadn’t seen a Grey Wagtail for a week or two but without warning one reappeared in the usual spot.

Grey Wagtail

Grey Wagtail

And another late lunch.

Snow Birds

Another 4 inches of overnight snow on top of previous ice is most unusual for the Fylde and not a good recipe for birding. So, do some pre-Xmas jobs and gain the corresponding Brownie points, then practice some photography in the snow and grey light seemed the best option. No point in my trying to bulk out the pictures with superfluous words about common garden birds. Just enjoy.

Mistle Thrush

Mistle Thrush

Jay

Chaffinch

Blue Tit

Collared Dove

Collared Dove

Blackbird

Blackbird

Blackbird

Please look in again after Christmas.

Four And Twenty Blackbirds

Impossible for me to get out birding today because of the snow and ice, not to mention baby sitting; but then we are also rapidly running out of time as the big day with the compulsory non-birding time impinges. On the positive front, today December 22nd is the first of the longer days. Hooray!

Not quite 24 Blackbirds but as happens every year at the first sign of snow or frost, our garden fills up with thrushes, mostly Blackbirds, the occasional Fieldfare and Song Thrush, or on two previous consecutive and cold Christmas Days, a warbler in the shape of Blackcap.

Anyway I did count 17 Blackbirds in the garden today fighting with the Starlings over apple possession in which the Blackbirds almost always give way to the Starling’s insistence. One or two Blackbirds hopped straight out of a Lars Jonsonn book to be in the garden but a Mistle Thrush wouldn’t come closer than the back fence.

Blackbird

Blackbird

Starling

Mistle Thrush

Unexpectedly the snow and frost cut down the number of visiting Goldfinch to one or two at a time in contrast to ten or twelve last week, so I will have to see if this is temporary or if they moved on. It’s less surprising that several Chaffinch stayed around and that the resident Robin became less shy.

Goldfinch

Chaffinch

Chaffinch

Chaffinch

Robin

A striking looking albino Blackbird paid a quick visit but hid partly out of view preventing me from taking a full picture.

Blackbird

I had to put out extra peanuts to make a Jay hang around for more than a few seconds.

Jay

Down the lane towards the River Wyre it is still icy but the sun is making headway; and I saw the albino Blackbird. So that's where it came from!

Snow Joke

Half the country at a standstill because of a few inches of snow and even here in the Fylde part of Lancashire UK where normally we escape it all, we have lying snow with the promise of more to come, icy roads and temperatures of minus 6 degrees.

It’s just a bit of an excuse or tenuous link to devote a post here to Snow Geese, even though in the UK we might see one or two a year of the global millions. The other night I watched Gordon “F Word” Ramsay on the telly. You know, he’s the bloke that is a bag of nerves and jumps up and down like a demented frog. He seems to be a reasonable chef; although where other worldly things are concerned I just think he comes across as a complete Philistine and more than a bit of a prat. He also plays up to the comic book image of a Super Hero, whether by fishing for goose barnacles in Spain, fleyging for Puffin in Iceland, or just lately jetting off to Canada to shoot Snow Geese. He was disappointed that in Canada any Snow Geese shot are for personal consumption rather than cooking up for commercial gain in overpriced restaurants or selling on in the local butchery. But then maybe he’s never heard of the tale of the North American Passenger Pigeon?

It just happens that one of my favourite books is The Snow Geese by William Fiennes, a quite beautifully written description of the author’s travels north in spring from Texas to Canada with the migrating Snow Geese.

Here’s a passage from the book:

“Excited, I began walking north along the track of dry dust and stones that ran the few miles from the refuge entrance to Houghton Dam. Thickets of cattail rushes and phragmites made a golden rind round the lake, stems clamped in ice at the shins or ankles, the cattail tipped with stiff brown seed heads like fat cigars. Sometimes pickups driven by hunters wearing camouflage cruised past me on the dirt track, each vehicle’s slipstream agitating the cattail and phrags. The yapping thickened to a drone. I passed a small farm, then rounded a headland, walking faster and faster towards the source of the noise. Snow Geese came into view like a kept promise. Thousands of white-phase and blue-phase birds were huddled on the ice in the middle of the lake, a huge white almond-shaped spread tapering to a point at its north and south ends. The birds’ heads were raised high, their necks extended perpendicular to the ice. Close to, the flock’s gabble was a wild encompassing din, the birds’ calls travelling through the ice like marbles rolling on metal. I stood still, breathing deeply, half hidden by cattail”.



“.....there was a commotion in the flock. The calls of the geese grew louder, more urgent. Suddenly, as if detonated, the flock took wing. Thirty thousand geese lifted off the ice in front of us, wing beats drumming the air, goose yelps gathering to a pounding metallic yammer, the sound of steel being hammered on anvils, in caverns. The ice thrummed and sang with it. The exploded flock filled our field of vision, a blizzard of birds. Most of the geese flew low in circles, but some settled back on the ice almost immediately, while others continued to gain height. Drifts of geese passed through, behind and across other drifts of geese; the flocks kept wheeling round and round, swirling with eddies and countermotions, a salt-and-pepper chaos of white wing backs catching the sunlight. Whole swatches of the flock went dark when birds flew side-on, and swatches flashed white when they banked or veered, breasting the light. Then slowly, goose by goose, the flock settled again; the almond shape reformed; the extravagant din dwindled; the steady flock drone resumed. For a moment, I had forgotten to breathe”.

Although I am not in the business of reviewing books I heartily recommend this one as a great book to read on a wet winter day when there’s no birding. Alternatively, take it on holiday and read on a sun bed while dreaming about the autumn birds that await back home.

And Gordon, don’t become a joke, stick to cooking, less of the Action Man and leave our birds alone.

Knott End, Sanderling City

The cold and strong wind kept everyone indoors today at Knott End but I went up to the jetty to see what occurred. About 90 Sanderling roosted under the sea wall making forays to feed upon the debris left by the cockle pickers a few weeks ago.

A small number of Turnstone joined in, with Black-headed Gulls taking advantage of the quiet.

Roosting Sanderling

Sanderling

Sanderling

Sanderling

Turnstone

Turnstone

Black-headed Gull

It's better when my photos turn out ok.