Look Out

I always had reasonable success in the past near Barnacre Reservoir when I looked for Willow Warbler nests, in some years finding 10 or 12 nests in a fairly small area, where the openness of the habitat allowed me to easily watch birds from a distance back to their nests. Over the last ten years or so the habitat has gradullay changed from the original fell side full of heather and bilberry with scattered hawthorn, willow and the odd tiny Rhododendron, into what is now burgeoning woodland where the latter invasive species now threatens to engulf the whole area. Species like Tree Pipit and Yellowhammer that nested there in the early days no longer do so, and although Bullfinches and Willow Warblers still breed, their numbers are much reduced as the open areas of low growth and grassy areas disappear under the purple and bright green of the unchecked Rhododendron growth

This morning I spent about three hours beside the reservoir looking for Willow Warbler nests and ended up finding one, with at least two other pairs feeding young and four or five more singing birds, but because of my restricted vision through the overgrown vegetation, or perhaps my early season rustiness, my nest finding wasn’t too successful. The nest I found had five well grown young, one at the front peering out of the nest, with all of them just on the upper limit of the ideal age to ring nestlings, but they went back in the nest perfectly with a hand over the entrance to for a minute or so to settle them down in the dark.

Willow Warbler
Willow Warbler
I got my first ever Lesser Redpoll nest when I watched a female bring nest lining material to a Rhododendron before I found the nest about 2 metres up in the heart of the bush. It should make an interesting and informative Nest Record Card with several entries from start to finish if the nest is successful. There is a very healthy population of Lesser Redpoll here, and I saw at least 25 birds there this morning; whether they will stay around in future years when the Rhododendron takes over completely I can not say.

Lesser Redpoll
Rhododendron – Taking Over, Look Out
Barnacre is a useful place for reviewing the difference between the similar Blackcap and Garden Warbler songs because the vegetation is at the stage where Garden Warblers like it but Blackcaps apparently don’t. I counted at least 7 Garden Warblers singing their faster more raucous than Blackcap song, fine until I encounter both at somewhere like Thurnham where both occur and confusion sets in again.

On the way back home I stopped off at Calder Vale to check progress on the 2 Tawny Owls ringed on May 26th and to make sure one or more hadn’t gone on a walkabout again. There was one there, perched on the edge of the hole, looking out on the world but it quickly ducked down when I drew up, hence the rather poor initial and only photograph. Let’s hope that both birds are in there waiting for the time they really can leave home.

Tawny Owl

Tidy Up

I was stuck in the house all day with rain beating down so I tidied up my pictures in Photoshop, sent many to the hard drive archive then found a few to share, mainly from Menorca. So for all my friends both there and here in the UK that share my passion for the island, its people, flora and fauna and the landscape, here are a few more pictures.

I think I said how Spotted Flycatchers were just everywhere, I never tire of watching them home or abroad.

Spotted Flycatcher
Spotted Flycatcher
Spotted Flycatcher
Spotted Flycatcher
The Egyptian Vulture is also called Pharoah’s Chicken after it’s very lengthy association with men and drawings of it have been found inside the tombs of Egypt. There's a good population of them on Menorca.

Egyptian Vulture
The pool water wasn’t just for swimming in, the gulls came for a drink.

Audouin’s Gull
Yellow-legged Gull
Here are some Menorcan specialities, all very easy to see.

Tawny Pipit
Hoopoe’s Lunch
Blue Rock Thrush
And to rest up from birding, some Menorcan places to linger.

Sa Placeta, Ciutadella-Great Coffee
Plaza de Es Born, Ciutadella
The Town Of Ferreries

Keep It Quiet

It was a week or two since I visited Conder Green, so this morning because I was up with the lark I decided to motor on up there before the Bank Holiday motorists turned off for Glasson where mooching about doing pretty much nothing is a favoured pastime.

It was so quiet early on that I heard a Mistle Thrush singing from across the main road along the river, near that other pub that I forgot the name of. Also in that direction I heard a Whitethroat in song and then a Meadow Pipit a little nearer, over the roadside marsh. Other passerines moving about were several each of Linnets and Goldfinch.

I expected both the pool and the creek to be quiet with birds, but the light was good for photographs if anything came along, so I hung around counting the comings and goings of the few resident wildfowl and waders.

I think 7 Tufted Duck is the normal count now but it wasn’t difficult to count them, along with 8 Oystercatcher, 2 sitting of them on eggs, together with 5 Shelduck and a single drake Wigeon. Down in the creek I counted 8 Redshank, 1 Curlew and 2 Grey Heron, pretty slow stuff but I was getting a few pictures in the good light and the peace and quiet without parked up HGVs with motors going or other passing traffic. I even spent a minute or so trying to photograph a Swift or two when 10 or 12 moved through early on, perhaps the biggest number I have seen in the Fylde this spring; It looks like another poor Swift year.

Swift
Grey Heron
Tufted Duck
Tufted Duck
Tufted Duck
Tufted Duck
Shelduck
Oystercatcher

I called at a farm near Thurnham where I watched male and female Pied Wagtails visiting a nest, their bills stuffed with large amounts of food, so I decided it best not to visit the nest in case the young “exploded”. Instead I looked for evidence of breeding Lapwing and Oystercatcher and found 3 Lapwing chicks a distance away, but closer, an Oystercatcher sat tight in a field of dairy cows. Over towards Thurnham village I heard more than one Buzzard call and looked across to see two of them moving between woods, harried as always by gangs of corvids. I was near Nateby yesterday where in a single field I saw more than 240 Carrion Crows, and this before the breeding season is over. Is it any wonder we lose so early lots of ground nesting birds when these gangsters are forever on the lookout?

Braides Farm next where our dry spring did nothing to help the land enhancements aimed at helping breeding waders. But I hear that a second phase of work will take place, so fingers crossed for next year.

One pair of Lapwings had young, distant over towards the gorse, too far to trek while I remained so visible to the parents, and 2 Oystercatchers sat watchful on distant posts. There were a few Linnets and Goldfinch here, plus 3 Skylark and at least 2 pairs of Meadow Pipit. I swear one bird was so intent on watching the parachutists it didn’t notice me approach quietly and take a portrait.

Meadow Pipit


Buzzard

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.