Rained Off, Nearly

After a rather out of the ordinary but welcome dry spell of weather it’s not often in recent months that the rain stops me getting out as it almost did today. I watched the promised rain clouds hover above and listened to the persistent but just spitting rain drops on the conservatory roof, not nearly as bad as this morning’s BBC weather forecast graphics suggested. At 11am as I looked westwards the sky cleared briefly so I set out to check the Swallow nests at the Hambleton village smallholding I survey.

Swallow
There was progress from a week ago with 7 nests now in various stages of construction, egg laying, incubation or feeding young. The first nest I checked had four or five tiny young of perhaps two days old showing the first signs of downy feather growth. Seeing newly emerged nestlings so reminds me of the close relationship between birds and reptiles.

Downy Swallow Chick
Two nests had four eggs which may or may not be complete clutches, as five is the norm in these parts. Two more nests had 2 eggs each, then another with 3 eggs. At the final nest only 6 feet off the ground I ducked to avoid fresh horse hair hanging from the nest, the give away to occupation, and found the nest lined and warm ready to accept the first egg.

A Pied Wagtail scurried about the driveway, but before I left to darkening clouds I checked on a few other friends, Danny the Shetland pony and the yet unnamed but promised to another Border Terrier pup.

Danny
No Name
Pied Wagtail
I’m note sure why but I associate gulls with rain so here are a couple of pictures of gulls. The first is Audouin’s Gull, one of the rarest gulls in the world, found only in the Mediterranean Sea and with a total population thought to number less than 10.000 birds. I really like the second photograph a Yellow-legged Gull, can’t explain why, but maybe it has something to do with the gull’s expression.

Audouin’s Gull
Yellow-legged Gull
The weather looks better for tomorrow, dry and sunny but a bit windy. Oh well, it will be an improvement on today.

Green And Red

I don’t have much of an update today despite my walk and wander down Pilling way, so a quick post is in order, plus soon we head off to the revamped Seven Stars for pub grub and a non-driving pint of the best, so time is of the essence.

Lane Ends has 4 singing Willow Warbler, but the Sedge Warbler of recent days would appear to have moved on, replaced now by the more usual Reed Warbler singing very loudly below the sea wall against the bluster of a north west wind. For just a second there, and back in the Med, I tried to convince myself it was a Great Reed Warbler, but no, it certainly wasn’t that loud.

That Redshank continues with surprises as it left the nest at the very last second of my walk a couple of yards away to reveal four eggs. If they continue sitting so tight for the next 25 days in the face of constant foot traffic nearby they could leave me with the egg on my face. I guess the moral is never to underestimate a bird’s determination to breed.

Redshank Nest
On the roadside fields I counted four Lapwing chicks, the two now very large ones of last week, and two more from another successful pair that hid from me in recent times.

At Pilling Water small parties of 20 Ringed Plover and 35 Dunlin moved about with the incoming tide, and a single Greenshank, almost outnumbered the marsh breeding Redshank. A pair of Meadow Pipit continue in their breeding attempt but despite not allowing me to find their nest, I did get a reasonable picture today.

Greenshank
Redshank
Meadow Pipit
I did say it wasn’t much of a post, but as compensation here’s a picture of a Spotted Flycatcher, back in the Fylde in better numbers this year, and a totally unrelated picture of Cattle Egret that may come in useful if the wind turns southerly this week and the late May/early June unexpected turns up

Spotted Flycatcher
Cattle Egret

Clackers

Will and I had an appointment with a large garden near Garstang where we hoped young Little Owls would now be big enough for ringing. The largish box was meant for Tawny Owls, but Little Owls adopted it quite quickly a few years ago. The adult female was also at home today brooding the young, so we captured her as well as the four healthy good sized young that indulged in plenty of bill clacking and snapping as we dealt with them.

Little Owls
Little Owl
”Tawny Owl” Box
Little Owl
Little Owl
We put the young back in the box and posted the female back through the entrance hole to her young, giving her time to settle in.

Will thought he might know of a Tawny Owl nest in a likely looking tree near Calder Vale, so off we went. It was just as well we did because below the tree a Tawny Owl chick, far from fledging size, tried to hide in the roadside vegetation. The tree hole looked and proved quite shallow and the young but mobile owl had obviously climbed to the edge of the nest, as young Tawny Owls are prone to do, and promptly fallen out.

Tawny Owl
It clacked and clacked while Will retrieved the sibling from the tree, we ringed them both to a clacking duet, then reunited them back in the hole together, our good deed done.

Tawny Owl
I think most species of owls use bill clacking, where the bill is shut rapidly and repeatedly, with a sound like two sticks hit together rapidly, as part of a defensive strategy and posture when they are not yet ready to fly. When threatened the owl fluffs up its feathers making it look twice as big, and to further increase its size, the bird raises its wings over its back like a large fan and spreads its tail feathers. Add some hissing and bill clacking and a young owl might look pretty scary to a predator. Potential enemies can find this posture very convincing and quickly leave the young owl alone.

One of the biggest clackers I ever encountered was this Great Horned Owl in Canada, and as a potential predator to the young owl I can honestly say I was impressed with its defence mechanism and treated the bird with some caution.

Great Horned Owl
On the way home I called in to a farm at Out Rawcliffe to mop up a Tree Sparrow brood. It was very disappointing to find one young only with three eggs that didn’t hatch. These things happen but at least the whole of the nest information can go on a BTO Nest Record. In any case all was not lost as I found another Swallow nest to follow and record.

Seems Like Work

Today I revisited a few Tree Sparrow nest boxes on Rawcliffe Moss where I knew there was a bit of follow up required, 5 nestlings to ring, a single bird in one box and four in another. Nestlings are like most other babies, they look better when they get a bit older.

Tree Sparrow
Tree Sparrow
Carrying the ladder and not looking properly I cursed as I fell a couple of times through the tangled undergrowth of the wood before getting back to the car. My plans were to visit another farm once I had taken a look around the ringing area and other parts of the farm. Will scuppered my plans by turning up with the agricultural equipment, the strimmer and branch lopper, keen to improve our mist net rides. I am not one to discourage keen volunteers so I left Will to it while I looked through the plantation for nesting birds.

I counted 5 singing Willow Warblers, 2 Sedge Warblers, 5 Whitethroats, all similar to our recent counts, but this time only 1 Reed Bunting, with a couple each of singing Chaffinch and Goldfinch. The Willow Warblers and Whitethroats aren’t eager to give away their nests just yet, and certainly the Sedge Warblers, which I find very hard to locate. However I did find one female Whitethroat sat on 5 eggs, probably by now the complete clutch, while close by the male churred a warning and watched me.

Whitethroat Nest
Male Whitethroat
Will completed a cracking job and got a better result with the net ride clearing than I did with nest finding.

Before
After
Even for me but certainly for Will it was very much like work a job of work rather than birding, but the top of the moss seemed fairly quiet with a new Corn Bunting singing, the patrolling Kestrel, two Mistle Thrush, one of which carried food towards the birch wood, and a lone Wheatear in the usual untidy spot that every good farm has.

Wheatear
Kestrel
Corn Bunting

Scops Owls, Help!

I finished sorting through the last of my photographs from holiday, perplexed over how best to remove the “red-eye” from my Scops Owl photographs. The red eye certainly made them look fierce but obviously it wasn’t entirely accurate in depicting them. Eventually after a bit of trial and error I found that IrfanView did the job best.

A pair of Scops Owls roosted opposite our Menorca hotel in trees in the grounds of some large villas and houses; not the best place to go wandering about with a large telephoto lens and binoculars on an island where bird watchers are largely an unknown species. So we just waited for the owls to come to us as they did every night. The hotel grounds were well lit at night by ambient brightness from the building itself but also from guest’s balconies, sources of light that allowed the owls to hunt for e.g. large beetles, moths and centipedes. After dinner and sat with a sun downer each on the room balcony we set our watches by the owls, calling at 9pm from the distant trees, then between 920pm and 945pm one or the other or both would fly calling into the nearest palm tree before landing at the top of the trunk just below the fronds, from where they surveyed the immediate ground. After a minute or two they would go off to hunt, either dropping to the ground, flying to other palms or watching the ground from the top of the daytime sun canopies, a convenient perch.

Getting the pictures was a bit hit and miss, as in the darkness the camera autofocus couldn’t work leaving me to try manual focus through the dark tube of the telephoto. So I set the ISO at 3200, and using the inbuilt flash, crossed my fingers at f5.6.

Scops Owl
Scops Owl
Scops Owl
”Red Eyed” Scops Owl
A dozen or so pairs of House Martins nest in the hotel’s rear entrance, and one night there was an almighty din when one of the owls may have gone into the roosting birds to try and take a sleeping bird. This caused all the martins to panic and fly around the grounds calling, until they either went elsewhere or settled back to rest. Scops Owls are known to take small birds, possibly up to Redwing size.

House Martin
One night we were watching the Scops when a Barn Owl flew into the hotel grounds and landed in a palm tree. It was a bit far away but in the ambient light also clearly visible as it went off briefly to hunt then return to the same spot to eat its prey. I think that Barn Owl is a pretty good species to see in Menorca and it certainly made that night memorable for two other hotel guests who joined us on our grandstand balcony to see the Scops Owls.

In the daytime the canopies the owls favoured were also utilized by the hotel’s resident Kestrel, a convenient stopping off place between its vantage points of the hotel roof and balconies and thence to the ground. If it couldn’t find morsels of its own the Kestrel was not averse to robbing the efficient Hoopoe of its large insect prey.

Kestrel
Kestrel
Kestrel
Hoope
Who ever said that holiday hotels are dull?

Oh,I think I might use one of the Scops as a header picture but can't decide which one. Help!

Good News, Bad News

A quiet Sunday morning walk is what I wanted and that’s exactly what I got when I did my standard visit to Lane Ends and Pilling Water this morning. It’s just that time of year when spring migration has all but ended, resident birds are engrossed in their breeding cycles and bird watchers accustomed to seeing new things each day settle for less daily changes, but if they are ringers maybe take the opportunity to test their nest finding skills or concentrate on nest box schemes.

At the Lane Ends car park a couple of Woodpigeons were finishing off the remains of the plants in the giant plant pots after most of the others were nicked. Now that’s not a surprise and quite predictable given the history of the site in the last twenty five years I have been involved there. More precisely the years between 1986 and c2002 when I gave up trying to get anywhere with Wyre Borough Council or The Environment Agency as my telephone calls and letters remained unanswered, and whilst optimum habitat for breeding and roosting Linnets was ripped out, as well as an overgrown patch of bushes where Lesser Whitethroats sang in May and areas that had breeding Sedge and Willow Warblers were left to develop into thick woodland.

At least the wood still holds a few singing Willow Warblers and a Blackcap, with a single Sedge Warbler clinging to the margins of the pool this year, but I haven’t heard Reed Warbler more than once this year. The plantation also has a healthy population of Woodpigeon that compete with the abandoned chickens for ground food put out by the animal lovers, but how different it might all have been with expert and enlightened management.

Woodpigeon

The other bird pushed to the edge here quite literally has been Reed Bunting, with 2 birds singing at the extremes of the poolside, which represents two breeding pairs I think; and they are inconspicuous enough to be safe from interference, unlike the Sparrowhawks of previous years. The fenced off pool still holds Little Grebes, I heard them trilling from the water behind the impenetrable woodland, whilst over in the east pool 4 Tufted Duck floated around in the ever encroaching green algae on the surface.

At Pilling Water there were still 2 female Wheatears “chacking” along the fence posts and one allowed me a reasonable approach for a photograph. I had a pleasant surprise when I checked the Redshank nest and found the female had laid another egg, but with a fine sunny day today and many passing walkers, I am afraid she will probably spend a lot of time off the nest.

There was another Reed Bunting singing here, a couple of Linnets along the shore, a Grey Heron in the ditch and sundry Lapwings and Oystercatchers moving about the dusty fields with none of them acting in a parental manner at my approach.

Wheatear

Redshank Nest
Grey Heron
Ok, so I have had a bit of a moan again, but that’s probably because I care about what happens, it’s not just a job, it’s a passion.

On the heron theme I’ll finish with a picture of Purple Heron from Menorca, not because it has anything to do with today but there is an interesting post about them at http://woodruff4.blogspot.com/

Purple Heron

Overdue

Sometimes you don’t catch a particular species for weeks or months then just when you least expect it, the mist net finds them, just like today when not only did Will and I catch a Sparrowhawk but also Mistle Thrush. Mistle Thrushes don’t find our nets very often and the chances are that we ring nestlings rather than catch full grown birds. Not content with catching the first one for some years, just like buses, two came along at once when we caught two birds, a male and a female, together in the same net.

And after a run of Sparrowhawks for months back neatly flying under, over and around our nets, this morning a second calendar year male stayed in the pocket long enough for me to pull it out. This was soon after we found its last item of prey, a freshly dead partly eaten male Corn Bunting, probably the one that has sung from the same set of song posts for weeks now. The song posts it used were amongst the line of small hawthorn bushes along the edge of the plantation – woodland edge, a favoured hunting habitat for a Sparrowhawk.

Sparrowhawk
Sparrowhawk
Mistle Thrush
Back to the beginning. The morning started at 0310 when I awoke to glance at the alarm clock set for 0400, and careful not to doze off, I waited until 0345 to get up. Most ringers will agree that the promise of a netting session prevents them from sleeping until the alarm and more than likely the early hours are spent actually waiting for the alarm to ring; I’m sure it’s something to do with unconscious anticipation of the unexpected. But it did mean that I wasn’t late for our appointment at Rawcliffe Moss for 0500 where we set the normal 320feet of net and waited for the rush of birds.

New birds caught today were 4 Whitethroat, 1 Chaffinch, 2 Goldfinch, 2 Willow Warbler, the aforementioned 2 Mistle Thrush and 1 Sparrowhawk. Retraps were 4 Whitetroats, 1 Chaffinch, 2 Goldfinch, 2 Willow Warbler and 1 Dunnock.

A couple of the Goldfinch showed very noticeable build up of what we though to be nyjer seed residue on their bills. One of those Goldfinch is shown below and it would be interesting to know whether these birds are still finding nyjer in gardens or whether their bills are coated like this from a winter feeding on the black seeds.

Goldfinch
Willow Warbler
Female Whitethroat
As expected, migration has all but ceased and the only definite migrant we saw was a Wheatear.

We found our friendly neighbourhood Buzzard still maintaining a vigil on the the same branch of same tree as some weeks ago, near the pair’s nest and a single Kestrel hovering over our nets and the set aside fields. Otherwise much was quiet while most birds settle in to nest.

Kestrel