An Evening Surprise

Early morning wind put paid to ringing Sunday morning, but the promise of calm winds for later in the day led to an evening exercise at Out Rawcliffe in trying to catch a few Swallows as they fed over the newly harvested fields close to the plantation; also we hoped to pick up a few warblers. Will, Craig, Ian and I met up at 1730 as we put up a few nets and waited for Swallows whilst the wind dropped out completely.

We saw Goldfinches arriving in twos and threes, fives and tens but then as feeding Swallows appeared from the west and the north on their way to their maize roost somewhere in the direction of St Michaels village, we noticed that amongst the circling Swallows were large groups of Goldfinches. We had stumbled upon a Goldfinch roost of maybe 300-400 birds as from all directions birds made their way into the plantation to spend the night. We didn’t catch any Goldfinch because we hadn’t set nets for them in the deeper parts of the trees, but a bonus catch came in the form of 2 Sparrowhawks, a male and a female, which were clearly intent on having a Goldfinch or two as an evening meal, and as Sparrowhawks do, had found and probably exploited the roost.

Sparrowhawk - juvenile female
Sparrowhawk - juvenile female
Sparrowhawk - juvenile male
Sparrowhawk - juvenile male
Sparrowhawk - juvenile male

By now there were several thousand Swallows in the distance, as even those around us ignored our nets and headed off with some urgency towards the river and St Michaels where they joined the several thousand birds already in the air.

We did catch a single moulting adult Blackcap and 2 Swallows but the evening surprises left us with a couple of tasks: 1) plan a catch of Goldfinch for another evening, and 2) pinpoint the Swallow roost in the many acres of maize fields around St Michaels.

Swallow
Goldfinch

The evening hadn’t quite finished as from the direction of the massed Swallows a Marsh Harrier rose from the ground and gave us an evening fly past in the half light as it headed off north in the direction of Pilling Moss.

Marsh Harrier

That definitely beats staying in and watching telly.

Stopped For A Chat

The chat in question was a Whinchat, now as scarce in these parts as hen’s teeth. I was watching 3 Wheatears near my traps when a juvenile Whinchat popped up on the fence behind the United Utilities paraphernalia at Pilling Water. It’s now one of those birds that no one passes by anymore but instead stops to take a closer look. Apart from seeing several migrant Whinchats in Menorca in May it was my first Whinchat of the year, and I don’t expect to see many more this year because their population has suffered a dramatic drop in recent years.

Whinchat - courtesy of Jorg Hempel

I didn’t catch any of the Wheatears but they removed at least one meal worm without getting caught, then hung around for a time watching for more easy pickings, but stayed clear of the now reset spring traps. Birds are definitely cleverer than we humans give them credit for.

Wheatears

Apart from the pleasant Whinchat surprise things were much the same this morning with along the shore 5 Pied Wagtails, 4 Meadow Pipits and 15 Goldfinch but the reappearance of more than 30 Linnets. The wildfowler’s pools held a Green Sandpiper, 2 Greenshank, 1 Snipe and at least 200 Teal with 3 Blackbirds emerging from the maize cover and 2 Collared Doves diving in for a feed.

Blackbird
Pied Wagtail
Teal
Collared Dove

Along Broadfleet and the outflow I counted 2 Common Sandpipers, 1 Cormorant, 1 Grey Heron and 3 Little Egrets. Feeding along the ditch and adjacent fields were approximately 90 Swallows and 10 House Martin, at one point paying some attention to a spiralling Sparrowhawk that drifted over towards distant Fluke Hall into more hirundine aggro. It was about now that I heard the deep croaking of 2 Ravens as they passed quickly overhead heading south east.

Common Sandpiper
Cormorant

When I got back home staring at the blank sheet of the blog I wondered what on earth I could write as I had seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time watching Wheatears and the Whinchat. But then I looked at my notebook and realised the variety of birds I had actually logged whilst mainly stopping and staring. Maybe that old maxim about letting the birds come to you holds more than a grain of truth and that dashing around in pursuit of birds isn’t nearly as much fun or as rewarding?

Double Tops

It was a very quiet walk to Pilling Water, a blank page in my notebook apart from ever present Kestrel at the entrance to Lane Ends or the loud Chiffchaff calling in the eye level trees.

When I arrived birdless at the sluice gates at least there was a Kingfisher to look at when one sat on the parapet wall, but as usual it saw me before I could lay binoculars on it. Then what brilliant views I got in the early morning light as the bird flew out onto the marsh a little before circling then flying back over the sea wall and around the pool as it looked for somewhere to settle. It got better as a second Kingfisher joined in the pool circuit before they went separate ways, one along Broadfleet towards Pilling village, and the other towards the wildfowler’s pools. Out of the breeding season Kingfishers are solitary animals, defending a feeding territory and only occasionally sharing a location with another bird, so I can only think that in late August these two may be of the same family from this summer or I had just witnessed a territorial battle. Whatever the reason it’s not every day I see two Kingfishers careering round together, it was a cracking start to the morning and fears about a Kingfisher winter wipe-out may be unfounded.

Kingfisher
Kestrel

My meal worms arrived yesterday so this morning’s first task was to find the Wheatears that hung around Lane Ends all this week and catch one or two. Of course now I had the meal worms, no Wheatears. But while everyone likes seeing them as in the first picture below, ringers also think that as well as being nice to look at a highly migratory species like the Wheatear can provide lots of scientific information.

Wheatear
Wheatear

After Kingfishers most things are a bit of an anti-climax so despite a Greenshank, a couple of Little Egrets and a westerly movement of 30 or 40 Swallows, I struggled to find much to look at and headed north.

Along the shore I noticed a lot of Marsh Samphire - “The Poor Man’s Asparagus”, as it is known. I believe that samphire is now a very trendy vegetable that you'll have to pay good money for; in London no doubt. Samphire (or glasswort, as it's also known) isn't really sea-weed, but it grows in the tidal zone, on muddy, sandy flats, often around estuaries and tidal creeks.

Some years ago when Lane Ends was a ringing site, before the combined Wyre Borough and Environment Agency neglect cocked it up, there was an old chap who would come along in the autumn and head off up to Cockerham with a bag to harvest the shore where he said the best samphire was. But of course being an old Pilling sort he wasn’t for saying precisely where he got his free grub from, but there’s certainly plenty to go round at the moment.

Samphire

It was quiet too at Conder Green when I looked from the platform, with 2 Spotted Redshank, 2 Common Sandpiper, 2 Greenshank , 48 Lapwing, 2 Grey Heron, 1 Snipe, 3 Curlew and the Goldfinch flock of 10 or 12 alternating between the thistles and the hawthorns.

The Saturday morning road was getting busier so I sought solitude at Cockersands where I encountered what appeared to be a joint caravan and a dog rally, plus a guy having a wash in the front seat of his caravanette, parading his Y Fronts for all to see. Despite this revolting distraction I set to determinedly with a quick look and count. I watched the tide run in for a while, with 13 Eider, 130 Ringed Plover, 250+ Dunlin, 700+ Oystercatcher, 30 Redshank, 15 Curlew and the highlight, a single Whimbrel.

Goldfinch
Curlew

It was an early finish then but also the end of the ill-timed hosepipe ban and a chance to earn some brownie points with a bit of car washing. And it sure looks better than the other one I saw getting a spruce up.

Mini

Scarce Or What?

It was our first opportunity for ringing for a while at Out Rawcliffe and the mornings are a bit easier to bear now with a 0545 start for Will and me.

Just on the perimeter of the farm I was reacquainted with a Little Owl at a previously regular spot from which they disappeared during the severe winter weather and then to not show at all through the spring and summer. Perhaps it’s a new bird, a juvenile moved into a vacant territory or one of the old birds that has actually been around all the time? If we catch it we will know.

Little Owl
Little Owl

Walking through the plantation in the half-light with our gear produced a Tawny Owl which flew up the centre track and then out of sight to roost up elsewhere. We don’t catch many Tawnies unless we work winter roosts when the owls get active as soon as it’s dark. Our mist netting proved uneventful with not much evidence of many new birds on site or moving through as warbler migration dries up a little. We caught 14 birds of 9 species, 10 new and 4 recaptures.

New: 1 each of Blue Tit, Great Tit, Chaffinch, Blackbird, Whitethroat and Goldfinch, the latter a fairly recent probably second or even third brood juvenile; also 4 Willow Warblers.

Recaptures: 1 each of Whitethroat, Sedge Warbler, Willow Warbler and Chiffchaff, the latter two were both adults in heavy complete moult.

Whitethroat
Goldfinch
Birds in the plantation that we didn’t catch included a Jay, a couple of Chaffinch, several Goldfinches, plus a family party of late brood Whitethroats.

Whitethroat
Chaffinch

Birding was also pretty quiet, the rarest bird being Grey Partridge that called from the wheat crop. We had new sightings of a Marsh Harrier as it hunted distant fields, but this species is now almost more common in the last few years in the Fylde than the poor Grey Partridge, especially since the harrier moved from being a scarce visitor to the area 20 odd years ago to become nowadays a local breeding species. Here is yet another very poor photograph of a very distant harrier but from this morning.

Marsh Harrier

“Others” seen this morning were 2 Tree Sparrow, 2 Kestrel, 2 Buzzard, 50+ Swallows, 10 House Martin, 1 Skylark and 2 Reed Bunting.

Wheatears

I went to The Reptile Room this morning to buy some meal worms so that I could catch and ring some autumn Wheatears while the weather remains too windy for mist netting. The shop didn’t have any wrigglies left, even though they have a delivery every day. All I can say is there must be an awful lot of people with hungry exotic pets around here, let’s hope they don’t all escape at the same time (the pets that is).

So I set out hoping to photograph a few Wheatears instead while there are a few around. I think there were four different birds but I haven’t had time to examine each picture to see how many individuals I snapped.











Wheatear
I didn’t get much time for birding whilst sitting in the rocks but I did note 2 Green Sandpipers, 3 Greenshank, 2 Spotted Redshank, 1 Snipe and 130 Teal.

Teal

Action Packed

With a couple of hours to spare I ventured out from Fluke Hall. I wanted to check out the numbers of Teal and the Little Egrets as the wildfowlers had told me of good numbers of both, plus I could continue up to Pilling Water for a look see.

The Teal hide away in the maize crop and pool margins but luckily for me a wagon arrived to tip slurry near the side of Worm Pool, the smelly mess attractive to 3 Pied Wagtails, if not for me sat just downwind of it.

As the wagon tipped backwards, the noise and disturbance caused the Teal to erupt from the pool in a fabulous flying display to rival The Red Arrows. Counting birds is imprecise at the best of times but I reckon there were at least 400 Teal, not up to the wildfowler’s estimate of 500, but what’s a hundred or so ducks between friends? In the picture below I think there are about 130 Teal, please feel free to practice duck counting here. But it’s certainly a good count for mid-August and the numbers can only increase, especially with the daily sacks of wheat provided.

Teal
Teal

The flying Teal attracted in a Peregrine from out on the marsh which appeared to mean business as it circled then stooped a couple of times at the massed Teal but didn’t catch. It quickly tired of the pursuit and as quickly as it flew in, it soared back out to the marsh. Maybe the Sparrowhawk was watching the action because no sooner had the Peregrine disappeared than it too flew quickly across the pool and dead ahead of me before continuing up towards Pilling Water.

Peregrine
Peregrine
Sparrowhawk
Sparrowhawk

It wasn’t nearly as action packed at Pilling Water, just a single Common Sandpiper, a Green Sandpiper and a Greenshank with 11 Little Egrets along the tidal channel which disappear into the ditches of the marsh when anyone appears along the wall. Passerine numbers were low with 3 Wheatear, and in contrast with recent days, a handful each of Linnet and Goldfinch. About 60 Swallows fed low across the fields and the dyke with very few House Martins today. I’m sure it was yesterday’s Kestrel hanging about the fence posts again, maybe it hasn’t learnt to hover yet as all it seems to do is sit around waiting for an easy meal or someone to come along with a camera.

Little Egret
Kestrel

A Sunny Day

It was a bright sunny day so although I did some birding, I concentrated on getting a few pictures while the light was helpful.

At Lane Ends I heard at least two Willow Warblers calling from the trees below the car park, but there is so much cover at this time of year I can’t imagine those two are the only ones there. I also heard a Kingfisher call once from the pool that no one can see thanks to Wyre Borough and The Environment Agency failure to maintain the place; a single call means a fly past usually. All was not lost as when I walked to the east pool the Kingfisher sat on the fence in the nearest corner, but flew back to no man’s land as soon as it spotted me. There seemed to be a movement of both Swallows and House Martins as small parties arrived from the marsh, fed for a few minutes then moved on. The now resident Kestrel was pretty obliging today so I took a few shots whilst it fence hopped. The Woodpigeons here get used to the comings and goings of cars so I stopped to get one in the half sunlight as it preened the mass of feathers.

Kestrel
Kestrel
Woodpigeon

At Pilling Water the wildfowler’s pool held 200 Teal, flushed by the chap on the quad bike with his sack of duck grub; the Teal fly off to the shore, the Mallards will find how the free grub system works in two weeks’ time. The Green Sandpiper also came off the pools and settled briefly on the near pool before it skittered off with its weird melody and not a hope of a photo.

I sat on the stile and watched a couple of Little Egrets along the ditch when one decided to fly towards the wildfowler’s pools, not knowing quad man was there. The egret circled back in mid-air and re-joined the other one, so Little Egret picture number 140 coming up. There was a single Wheatear again today, which could be the one that has been around for a few days considering how it avoided me. Wheatears are harder to come by, less predictable in both numbers and dates in autumn than spring. April and May will see a rush of birds with falls on the west coast of small groups, tens and twenties, sometimes many dozens but in contrast the autumn passage is more protracted through July, August, September and October. I did catch up with the Wheatear for a fresh picture, where else but the wheatear rocks? I also snapped a Brown Hare, muddied fresh from a run through the saltmarsh.

Little Egret
Wheatear
Brown Hare

I counted more Linnets this morning, with 30 or more here and a similar number of Goldfinch. Like at Lane Ends there were parties of both Swallow, about 30 with similar numbers of House Martins.

On my way to Bank End, where I had a single Greenshank and nothing else, I called in at Hillam where I found a flock of 80 Linnets, 2 Grey Heron, 2 Buzzard, 40 House Sparrow, 9 Goldfinch, 2 Pied Wagtail, 25 House Martin and 20 Swalllow.

House Martin
House Martin

That was a nice morning, with a few pictures in the bank too.