Trying It On

They were waiting for me this morning as I opened the back door, but I was ahead of them as I went in the garage and dug out today’s supplies to heap on my seed, peanut and apple strewn “lawn” before heading out to try the roads and see if I could find a few birds that weren’t in the garden.

Fieldfare

Robin

Blackbird

I hoped to find a few thrushes at Lane Ends where in previous hard winters Fieldfares utilized the Sea Buckthorn berries as a last resort food; but not today, just 10 ground feeding Blackbirds in the car park, a Song Thrush and the resident Chaffinches.

Chaffinch

In the field opposite the car park I found several opportunist Meadow Pipits feeding around the soft earth created by some large horses trampling over the frosted ground and two Lapwings trying their luck.

Meadow Pipit

Lapwing

From the top car park I followed the still trickling not entirely frozen ditch east where I hoped to find Snipe or something similar. And I did, 2 Snipe tucked into a few reeds and a dozen Mallards that flew off as I crunched through the icy footprints of last night sheep round up. Of course I didn’t see the farmer who had come to do the morning check of the sheep but instead found me crouching and kneeling in the ice encrusted, snowy ditch to take a photograph of his field drain. Oh well, it probably confirmed his view that bird watchers are nuts anyway without the need for me to demonstrate it.

A Touch Frozen?

Both pools are now frozen solid so no chance of much out there, but I did find another Snipe in the trickle of water that emanates from the west pool. Then just behind the sea wall I found a single sickly, undernourished, light as a feather Redwing, struggling to feed; just one of many thousands of birds to suffer an undignified end during the present period. Very distressing.

Redwing

Out on the marsh everything was distant, way out near the tide and well away from the immediate but now whitened wetland, save for a few dozen Lapwing sitting it out closer in and two ghostly white Little Egrets flitting between ditch lines. From Braides gateway the birdless expanse of frost stretched in directions east and west, which left a blank entry in my shiny new notebook of 2010.

I had a brief look at Conder Green where groups of bright, shiny Teal flew around in the strong sunlight before they settled in the creek where I counted them at 90 plus without venturing to the Stork where I would have easily increased my count were I not so lazy. Two easily visible Snipe stuck to the open water’s edge with the usual tally of Redshank and Curlew whilst 2 Grey Herons quarrelled and flew off, one pursuing the other. There were still Lapwings around here, out on the marsh obviously, but also in the rough grass areas around the pool and roosting on the still snowy islands.

Sunday morning, not the best time to park outside Thurnham church where someone might see my car and think I had seen the light, but the spaces stood empty. It was a long time since I last I walked birding through a snow-white wood, almost a new experience. The Jays saw me immediately, them scolding me and I cursing them for giving me away to everything else before I had barely closed the car door.

Jay

It didn’t matter; I enjoyed it, tramping through the paths listening to the other birds that had also easily picked me out invading their now white woodland, Blue and Great Tit and a couple of Nuthatch together with Treecreepers. I watched a Woodcock rise ahead of me then glide down near the stream and between two distinct trees, where I mentally marked the spot, then approached camera at the ready. Not to be of course, that would be far too easy.

Back home my Fieldfare still guarded the apple, but I was saddened by the Redwing and the thought of all those others.

Fieldfare

A Quick Ring

After a few hurried phone calls it was a last minute decision to try a bit of ringing in Will’s garden near Garstang. “Stay in second gear over the hill” said Will, “Four cars went off the road and through the fence yesterday”. With some trepidation I reached then negotiated the said spot where a blue Police “Accident Here” sign stood and a team of chaps and gritting wagons worked belatedly to provide grip for passing vehicles.

When I reached Will’s place to a rising, bright, warming sunshine and a welcoming hot coffee it seemed like a good decision to try a couple of nets in a small part of the garden for an hour or two.

View from Will's garden

We caught steadily for a couple of hours helped by bacon butties and more coffee until a slightly strengthening breeze, sudden cold and numbing fingers about 1430 brought an end to our session.

Chaffinch

Greenfinch

Greenfinch

Brambling

Brambling

Jay

Goldfinch

Birds caught totalled 40 new and 1 retrap.

Chaffinch 16
Dunnock 1
Great Tit 8
Robin 4
Blue Tit 5
Goldfinch 2
Greenfinch 1
Blackbird 2
Jay 1
Brambling 1

We caught a very fat adult male Blackbird; in fact when I took it out of the net I remarked on its bulging fat reserves and that in my hand it felt more like a Fieldfare, Mistle Thrush or Collared Dove. When we weighed the Blackbird the Pesola balance hit 149 grams! Later IPMR told me it was 9 grams over the maximum expected weight for an adult Blackbird. The second Blackbird we caught was a more normal 96 grams, but when we later weighed the Jay we caught, it too was 149 grams, equal to the weight of supersize Blackbird.

Other birds seen this morning included a couple of Sparrowhawks, 1 Mistle Thrush, 2 Nuthatch, several House Sparrow, 3 Redwing, 2 Fieldfare and 3 Collared Dove.

Collared Dove

Fieldfare

Fieldfare Pics

Slip Sliding Away

To quote Simon and Garfunkel “Slip sliding away, slip sliding away
You know the nearer your destination, the more you slip sliding away”

And positively dangerous, that is the state of all minor roads and most footpaths around here, a little foolhardy to attempt any birding destinations. More to the point, the effect that this prolonged severe weather may have on bird populations is very worrying.

So I slipped up the hill to Top Shop then slid back down in the course of buying supplies for us and a bag of apples for the garden birds.

At the local park the full of bread Mallards have hung on but I wouldn’t be surprised if they too visit my garden soon for a bit of food variation.

Mallard

My news today is simply garden pictures, the star of which is the single Fieldfare that found the Bramley baking apples and the damsons that I rescued from the freezer. Well we’ll just have to make our fruit crumble another day.

Blue Tit

Pied Wagtail

Chaffinch

Starling

Robin

Fieldfare

But if the northerly breeze relents a bit overnight we might get a bit of ringing in tomorrow.

Random Resolutions

I guess I wasn’t the only one snowed and iced in today unable to get out birding. A good opportunity to deal with other birdy tasks whilst chucking seed out for the garden Chaffinch and the back door Robin. Also a chance to think about things I must do in 2010.

Icy Mallards

Snowy Chaffinch

I sent off to the BTO my end of year Nest Records for 2009 that included Tree Sparrows, a few waders and warblers, but mainly 20 Swallow nests. Those nests had 83 eggs which later led to 79 hatched young, of which 76 fledged. And that is a 95% success rate, the 5% failure caused by the comparative failure of one latish nest. My own Swallows obviously had a fairly good year, reflected elsewhere I believe. In fact it’s not that long before Swallows return, even less time before other species respond to the lengthening days and only a matter of weeks when I can start up my nest recording again. This year I set myself the objective of recording more nests than last.

The picture below is of fledged Swallows taken with my old Nikon Coolpix back in late July while checking some of those nests. Because the birds were barely fledged they were oblivious to my presence, enabling to me to get close with the standard 50mm lens, but what a pose they struck in trying to be invisible within the dark little room from where they fledged via the ledge on the door.

Fledgling Swallows

That Nikon, a bit of a stop gap while I waited for digital photography to evolve slower and in a slightly less expensive manner, was ok for landscape or family photography but really couldn’t cut the mustard for birds. For months I waited for the price of cameras and lenses to come down so that I could include some photography with my birding or ringing and begin a bird blog; Then in early August my new Canon arrived and within a day I photographed Swallows again when I was astounded by the speed and quality of the camera/lens combination and the resolution of the images. The picture below was one of the first I took with my new Canon when a whole bunch of mainly juvenile Swallows just perched up for me on a convenient metal rail at Pilling Water. If only I had this camera available for the previous shot!

Swallow

As you do, hoping to improve on the duff shots I later found, I went back in the coming days but the Swallows did not do the same thing again and as happens often, photo opportunities occur once.

So for the coming year I resolve to a) go out as often as possible b) always take the camera c) always have the camera ready for action d) take hundreds of shots just to be on the safe side, because most never ever turn out as good as you might hope.

This blog isn’t just about birding or photography. I have ringed birds for 25 years but the pleasure and privilege of doing so will remain with me for ever. It is not just the handling of the birds at close quarters; it is the real feeling that ringing contributes to our knowledge about birds. I had reason to look in The Migration Atlas the other day where once again I was astounded by the depth and scale of the information contained therein; a phenomenal achievement of the BTO and each volunteer ringer or bird recorder who contributed to it. If anyone out there doesn’t have this book I suggest they not only treat themselves with some of that left over Christmas cash, but importantly dip into this book often, as I intend to do in 2010.

The Good Book

With some of my Christmas cash I bought a portable USB Hard Drive to store my ever increasing number of pictures and give my sluggish PC a break. At 320 GB the HDD plugged into my PC tower is slimmer than a notebook and the size of a postcard. I’m told it will store enough pictures to keep me going for a while and I have resolved to now keep all my pictures in correctly labelled folders according to bird families or species groups etc. Impressed?

So in the course of transferring some files I found the next picture of a Sanderling as one I overlooked to post a week or two ago. Although similar to others and I did take dozens, this one captures a bird taking a morsel of food in its slightly deformed bill as the gale force winds fluff out its insulating belly feathers. It was a lucky find, a combination of circumstances, the cold and wind kept people indoors, the tide ran in to float the right food into the Sanderling’s path and I was there to watch them at close quarters. How fortunate is that?

Sanderling

Below is probably my most photographed bird of 2009 Grey Wagtail, mainly because of obliging birds that kept popping up in front of my camera in September and October. Who could resist taking more pictures of a Grey Wagtail? Therefore I’m not promising there will not be more Grey Wagtail photos this year.

Grey Wagtail

Today I also caught up with some Birdtrack records and keeping up with that input must be one of my New Year pledges, but I’m not daft enough to mention any others on here just in case someone holds me to them.

First Of The Rest

What a fabulous morning, a bit of frost, clear blue sky and zero wind and my first birding of 2010. I couldn’t wait to get to Out Rawcliffe this morning, one of my favoured places, even if the road surfaces were still distinctly dodgy in spots where the car slid sideways a few times.

It started well when I checked out two Little Owl spots and found single birds at both, the one below was the only one close enough to photograph. It tolerated me for a while until I was joined by Colin and George in their diesely, noisy Land Rover when it flew off .

Little Owl

The two gamekeepers told me Skitham Lane was closed because of dangerous ice since the Police lost one of their own vehicles down the side of the raised moss road. Not to worry, I had negotiated a few slippery roads on the way, and then by the time I was ready to go home the roads should be a bit better.

I grabbed a bucket of seed for the feeding station and headed across the moss where 11 Starlings, 34 Fieldfares and 6 Redwing fed in the roadside fields, then further out a flock of 20 Lapwings had also found softer ground.

Fieldfare

The hedgerow to the feeding station yielded 110 Tree Sparrows, 12 Chaffinch, 4 Yellowhammer, 2 Reed Bunting, a mixture of Blue and Great Tit and several more Starlings.

I could hear Jays protesting noisily in the wood so I crossed the field to investigate what the commotion was all about, then entered the wood via the shooter’s stile. Following the noise I found 2 Jays plus Chaffinch and Blackbirds scolding something near the top of an ivy covered tree. I couldn’t see anything up there but I can only assume it was a Tawny Owl somewhere in the dense green cover but by now my presence had moved all the birds on except the silent cause of the fuss and a Great–spotted Woodpecker that hung around a likely looking fit for excavation tree.

Great-spotted Woodpecker

Out of the wood I listened to the clamour of 1500 Pink-footed Geese rise from a nearby farm then watched them fly north towards Pilling against the snowy Bowland backdrop.

Pink-footed Geese and distant Bowland

Up alongside the big field I heard and saw a couple each of Meadow Pipit and Skylark, obviously hanging on in there close to any remaining damp patches despite the apparently all consuming frost.

The clear air had made the Buzzard calls travel, and whilst I saw a couple of them flying away from me as usual, even though I tried to call them nearer, I am sure I heard and saw at least three. I saw just a single Kestrel today, as ever hunting the stubble.

Near the birch wood I found little flocks of 5 Goldfinch and another group of 20 Chaffinch to add to my previous finch counts, but crunched through the frosted plantation at little reward except for three Brown Hares, an animal that this week seem to have become more active. I also flushed a couple of Grey Partridge from the perimeter where the trees are thinnest.

Chaffinch

As we might expect Woodpigeon numbers are down in the last few weeks but today I still counted 140 scattered around the farm.

Taking an alternative route home at lunch time via Pilling Moss I found a single Stonechat near Union Lane, noted that Skitham Lane had part barriers but I didn’t see any Police vehicles in the ditch.

The Last Post

Not quite the last post but it is the final one for this year, the 95th in fact. That’s an awful lot of birding, ringing and photography in five months with the equivalent amount of nonsense bashed out on a PC a couple of times a week to get to this, the end result. I can promise that this year’s blog will not finish in a big firework display of red hot bird news and superb photos; more like the usual run of the mill report of this morning’s birding of Over Wyre places with a few average pictures of common birds thrown in. Rarities always were and often are yesterday’s news. So here goes for today 31st December 2009.

The initial route - Burned House Lane, Lambs Lane, Wheel Lane, Fluke Hall Lane, and then Backsands Lane, names that tell stories of ancient farms, flounders and the flat sands of Morecambe Bay. As I drove along six overhead Whooper Swan called in unison as if to emphasise that over here in rural Fylde there are still pockets of the wild and wonderful.

Whooper Swan

In the last few days the alien frozen fields have gradually given way to the more familiar damp, soggy Pilling landscape of old so that where the frost relented, the waders returned to probe through or pick over the soil. Between Fluke and Lane Ends I totted up 210 Lapwing, 80 Golden Plover, 18 Curlew and 90 Redshank with just the occasional Oystercatcher turning carrot bill to brown stick. So if yesterday was a duck day, today so soon was turning out to be a wader day.

Curlew

Lapwing

Oystercatcher

Even more Lapwing, Redshank but especially Golden Plover at Braides Farm where I estimated 300 Tewits, 1100 Goldies and 90 Rowdyshanks. Most of them congregated a few fields back near the sea wall, from where the inevitable Little Egret appeared via the ditch and flew out to the marsh.

I wasn’t out to break any records this morning, no hurtling around to count everything at each point I reached, just a gentle stroll or drive, then stopping, staring and searching. And how eerily quiet it was for a Thursday morning, hardly any folk or cars around. Having a lie in no doubt on another cold, wind chilled morning with nothing to do until the shops open again or the telly resumes its repeated dross.

I anticipated a frozen Conder Green but because I hadn’t been for several days I still relished the thought of that initial peek over the fence, the unexpected sighting, the flurry of avian activity when I showed near the screen hide. I must take a picture of the “hide” for all to see; it was obviously the visionary design of someone who spends too much time in an office overflowing with paper. Nevertheless on here and in the creek I counted 4 Wigeon, 16 Shelduck, 75 Teal, 2 Spotted Redshank, 2 Little Grebe, 2 Snipe, 24 Lapwing, 1 Grey Heron, 2 Curlew and 8 Redshank before the tide rolled gently in to cover the creek bottom.

Lapwing

Redshank

From the lay by I looked across to the cycle bridge where beyond and above the incoming water a Merlin dived from on high to play havoc with the Bar-tailed Godwit, Knot and even more Lapwing.

A quick tour of Jeremy Lane found the 120 or so Mute Swan spread across two large fields then 2 ground feeding Fieldfare, a pitiful pair looking so out of place for such a gregarious species.

At Glasson Dock I thought that the numbers of Tufted Duck had reduced to 18, didn’t see any Pochard at all, but did pick up on the male Goosander and a Little Grebe. A Kingfisher flew across my view towards the lock gates then soon back again before I could locate its exact whereabouts.

Kingfisher

I don’t mind Bank End, not everyone’s cup of tea but somehow I always see a few bits ‘n pieces by sitting and watching or walking a while along the shore. Not a lot today except that a Greenshank and a single Meadow Pipit gave small picture opportunities, but as ever without any helpful sun. Oh, and 2 Little Egrets, probably my bird of the year if frequency of sightings was the criteria.

Greenshank

Meadow Pipit

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for looking into my blog in 2009; I hope I entertained you with my views, observations, photographs and recounting of my birding activities. Thanks also for all your comments which has not only encouraged me to continue with the blog but also to try and improve and enhance it for the coming year.