Balaclava Days

Another starry, starry, Van Gogh sky last night and a morning frost meant donning my old woolly balaclava this morning for the 0630 start at Rawcliffe Moss. It was pitch-black when I drove past the open barn as the roosting Barn Owl made a ghostly exit through my headlights then waited on a post for Will to see when he drove past a few minutes later. Alright, the photograph isn’t the actual bird, but is as they say “One I did earlier” and taken in daylight.

Barn Owl

My trusty old Hooligan Hat kept ears and face warm from the chilled air as Will and I put up our usual quota of nets whilst listening to Redwings seeping over. Each time we’ve been to the moss in recent weeks we caught both Redwings and Fieldfares in the dark. This morning we caught 15 thrushes before 8am, 7 Redwings and 8 Fieldfares, a catch that kept us mobile for a while but stopped us grabbing a warming coffee. All the Redwings were juveniles this morning and one only of the Fieldfares an adult. As usual at least four Fieldfares escaped from our nets by virtue of their size and weight by having the knack of almost bouncing out of the pocket, especially where four or five are together in the same run of net.

Fieldfare
Fieldfare
Redwing
Redwing - juvenile

After yesterday’s total of 44 birds we caught another 36 new birds today of 7 species; the above 8 Fieldfare and 7 Redwing, plus 9 Reed Bunting, 6 Goldfinch, 4 Chaffinch, 1 Blue Tit and 1 Tree Sparrow. Needless to say, nil recaptures.

Reed Bunting – juvenile male
Goldfinch
Tree Sparrow

Unlike yesterday the visible migration was unremarkable with many birds arriving from a southerly direction, travelling into the wind, although most of the early thrushes came from the west or north west. In total we counted circa 235 Fieldfares, 100 Redwing and 10 or more Blackbirds, with one flock of Fieldfares numbering approximately 100 birds. Finch movement was also less noticeable with single figure numbers of Brambling, Siskin and Redpoll, but about 50 Chaffinch and 40 Goldfinch.

Apart from thrushes, the most numerous and obvious migrant was Reed Bunting again, and while we caught another 9 today, we estimated at least 45 birds moving through and over the site, some in small groups of fours and fives, with one party of seven individuals.

“Others” today: 2 Yellowhammer, 4 Tree Sparrow, 1 Sparrowhawk hunting thrushes at dawn, 1 Whooper Swan flying west, 20+ Snipe. 1 Stoat heading into the potato field via the ditch.

My old woolly balaclava is showing signs of ageing, wearing thin in the manner of fault bars on the tail of one of the Fieldfare we ringed, so a new warm woolly hat is on my Christmas wish list. This might just make a marginally better gift for me than the surprise the moss gamekeeper plans to present to his wife for Christmas - a new blade for her chainsaw! We still don’t know if he was joking but just in case I’m not calling by to watch her carve the Xmas turkey.

Wear and Tear - Fieldfare tail
Wear and Tear – Woolly Hat

Everyone A Winner

Will and I made the right decision last night by ignoring the BBC forecast of 10mph northerlies that might call off our planned ringing session at Rawcliffe Moss; with autumn leaves dropping fast from the trees it doesn’t take much of a wind to lessen the effectiveness of mist nets by making them visible when a breeze moves the netting around. There was no rain on the cards and our gamble paid off in full when just as we thought the isobars opened out overnight and left us with zero wind at 0615 right through until we left at 1130.

Last week we discussed how many more autumn ringing session we might get before the migration tailed off as winter set in and numbers of birds dwindled, the species became less diverse and the unexpected turned more predictable. Our decision was to keep working the site for as long as possible in catching migrant thrushes, finches and buntings before turning our attention to true winter sites in a week or two. In fact today’s session proved at least as good as any this autumn when we caught a terrific selection of 44 new birds of 10 species whilst at the same time seeing a decent amount of visible migration. Birds caught; 11 Goldfinch, 9 Reed Bunting, 7 Lesser Redpoll, 6 Chaffinch, 4 Fieldfare, 2 Redwing, 2 Blackbird, and one each of Siskin, Goldcrest and Meadow Pipit. No recaptures today, another sign of autumn birds.

We caught the Redwings and Fieldfares at first light and within the first hour during which approximately 150 Fieldfares and 30 Redwing moved through from north to south. Other visible migration was dominated by finches, especially Siskin and Lesser Redpoll with double figure counts of both, 25+ Siskin and 30+ Redpoll. Once again Chaffinch numbers were hard to estimate due to the height of those overflying, but we estimted at least 100 birds, with just a single Brambling heard early on. Both Meadow Pipit and Reed Bunting were evident this morning, with 30+ Reed Bunting and up to 50 Meadow Pipit.

Siskin - juvenile
Lesser Redpoll - adult female
Goldcrest - female
Blackbird - juvenile male
Goldfinch
Fieldfare

Other birds noted about the plantation and fields this morning, 45 local Goldfinch and 30 Skylark, with 3 Tree Sparrow and 1 Yellowhammer over, 1 Tawny Owl, 1 Sparrowhawk hunting at dawn, 1 Buzzard, 1 Kestrel, and 30+ Snipe in or around the wet potato field.

It looks a winning forecast for Sunday too. Here’s hoping.

Staying Positive

At the moment we are stuck in one of those peculiarly nasty spells of dull, wet, British weather that just goes on for ever; I can’t get out ringing, the leaden grey skies preclude any photography and the constant rain means any birding is cut short or restricted. Despite all those obstacles I did get out for an hour or two this morning but it ended when I had to come back home via a tortuous detour through the Lancaster City traffic when the powers that be closed the Cockerham Road for resurfacing. It never rains but it pours.

Wheel Lane at Pilling was partly flooded again this morning, but I drove through at 10mph so as not to create a wave of water that might flood through nearby front doors. The geese came and went from the stubble as noisily as ever, but I stopped only for the Whoopers, 125 of them. From Lane Ends I later saw another 20 or so birds far out on the marsh to bring my total to 145 Whooper Swans for the session. I was early enough for the Little Egret roost but they weren’t there, just 2 on the marsh, the remainder having spent last night at one of their other roosts at either Preesall or Cockerham or elsewhere.

I got to Conder Green because the road was open at that time, it was only later that I had to choose between a full day of the pleasures of Glasson Dock or a return via Lancaster.

I got nice views of 2 Goosander, the wariest of wildfowl, and whilst the light wasn’t wonderful, at ISO400 I managed a few distant shots as they sailed along the creek. Not so the Kingfisher, alert as ever as it shot off over the pool when a large wagon pulled into the parking spot. I think it was the same bird I saw a week ago, a female with quite extensive reddish parts of the lower mandible, rather than a male that has a blacker bill.

Goosander
Kingfisher

The tide began to run a little, enough to shift a Spotted Redshank, 2 Curlew and just 4 Redshank from the creek, whilst lots of the about 70 Teal floated into view. The pool was pretty much deserted apart from the regular 6 Little Grebe, 1 Wigeon, 1 Little Egret, and a couple of Shelduck that hove into view. Passerines registered as 1 Reed Bunting, 5 Meadow Pipit, and 2 Greenfinch plus the resident Robin that greets everyone from above the screen.

After my unscheduled visit to Lancaster I made my way down still accessible Hillam Lane to Bank End where the fairly high tide had pushed stuff closer, but by no means up to the road itself. From here I counted 145 Redshank, 38 Curlew, 40 Wigeon, 60 Dunlin, 22 Teal, 32 Shelduck, 1 Grey Heron and 9 Little Egret.

There was a flock of mainly Chaffinch along the hedgerow, with quite a lot of “pinking” and watchful birds in the tops of taller trees, and although I saw a Kestrel I don’t think it was that the 50+ Chaffinch worried about. Along here I also counted 11 Tree Sparrows, 4 Skylark, 2 Meadow Pipit, 1 Reed Bunting and 1 Pied Wagtail.

Chaffinch

It was quite a good couple of hours really, and just a pity about the ghastly weather. But I’m determined to enjoy what little birding there is at the moment, and as Betty Smith the American writer once advised on staying positive, with a particularly apt quote for birders and listers alike, “Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time”.

Early Doors

I got out briefly this morning but got rained off at 10am and at 3pm it’s still raining. So this is a very short update with maybe better birding and ringing luck soon, although the forecast for the next few days is less than inspiring.

I went to Knott End at first light because the tide would be running in and any disturbance at that early hour would be minimal. So it proved, with a good selection of waders on the beach although the light was so poor my photography was limited, but I counted 45 Bar-tailed Godwit, 2200 Oystercatcher, 125 Redshank, 3000 Knot, 8 Grey Plover, 110 Dunlin and 95 Dunlin before the tide pushed most of them off to leave just Oystercatchers, Black-headed Gulls and a few Shelduck.

Redshank

At the slipway I was surprised to see a Wheatear searching through the tideline debris because by 3rd November it should be well on the way to Africa. Not so the Twite, now here for the winter with 12 today around the top of the jetty but none at my nyjer seed drop at the Esplanade; instead there were 2 Pied Wagtails here, and a little further along a Rock Pipit.

Twite

Already the rain threatened so I made my way along Head Dyke Lane towards Pilling and Wheel Lane. It looks like many of the Whooper Swans have moved down to the Wildfowl Trust reserve at Martin Mere where a count of 400 birds there last week coincided with my Pilling Count of 210 on October 27th. Today the Whoopers were down to 35 individuals, sharing the flooded stubble with 40 Redshank, 240 uninspiring Greylag fairly close to the road, and further away about 1700 of the much wilder Pink-footed Goose. There were many more pinkies coming from and also going out to the marsh but today I didn’t get chance to look.

Whooper Swan
Whooper Swan

When I got to Lane Ends many of last night’s roosting Little Egret were still hanging about the island where I counted 28 birds, and as I did so some began to leave. I began the walk to Pilling Water, flushing a Snipe from the tide line, several Skylark from the grassy bank, and a Kestrel from a fence post, but from the west the rain returned with a vengeance.

I think it was in 1981 that I and many others twitched a Little Egret at Leighton Moss, a bird that created quite a stir at the time; now they are ten-a-penny and a twitcher’s pager no longer bleeps for Little Egrets.

Little Egret
Snipe

The Same But Different

After yesterday’s good catch and a promise of more ringer friendly weather Will and I met up at Rawcliffe Moss again with the same objectives - catch more migrant thrushes, finches and buntings. Of course it might be a similar routine, but at this time of year 99.9% of the birds we catch are new ones to us because of the constant, daily, even minute by minute throughput. So it was today, and although things were quieter than the rush of Sunday morning, we witnessed again how transient is the autumn population of moss land birds.

We caught another 31 birds of just 4 species today, 29 new and 2 recaptures. New birds; 8 Fieldfare, 10 Chaffinch, 1 Redwing and 10 Reed Bunting. Recaptures were 1 Chaffinch and 1 Reed Bunting. The Reed Bunting captures took our total of Reed Buntings caught in the plantation this year to 99 individuals, with 71 of those birds caught in October.

Interestingly the Reed Bunting recaptured today was first ringed here on 12 October 2008 but not recaptured on any intervening dates until today despite many ringing visits later in 2008, then the whole of 2009 and 2010.

It was this week that we began to notice bigger, longer winged Chaffinch appearing with today two adult males with wing lengths of 93mm each, and yesterday 2 birds at 90mm. Not conclusive of course that they are of more eastern European origin, but their appearance coincides with the mass arrival of both Bramblings and Waxwings in the UK. However unlike recent days and especially yesterday, this morning we didn’t see or hear a single Brambling amongst the 140 or so Chaffinch that passed through the site, either overhead or moving quickly through the trees.

The movement of thrushes both was very distinct and seemingly urgent this morning, occurring soon after dawn but lasting an hour only by which time we had counted 260 Fieldfares and less than 40 Redwings, a very similar ratio to yesterday, with all today’s thrushes caught before 8am.

Reed Bunting
Chaffinch
Fieldfare
Redwing
Fieldfare

Other visible migration seen and/or heard: 2+ Redpoll sp, 8+ Siskin, 12 Meadow Pipit, 2 Grey Wagtail, 1 Yellowhammer, 3 Blackbird, 7 Woodpigeon. Other birds seen were 14 Whooper Swan, 2000+ Pink-footed Goose, 2 Tawny Owl, and 45 Goldfinch.

Whooper Swan
Yet Another Fine Morning

He Who Dares

With ringing in mind it was a marginal, less than perfect weather forecast last night, a chance of rain and 10mph easterlies. Will persuaded me that we should go to Rawcliffe Moss and not for the first time, ignore the BBC’s prediction with their tendency to over-egg the pudding.

As I opened my back door the morning was dark with obvious cloud overhead and signs of recent rain but it stayed dry until I parked up on the moss when a few spits of rain hit the windscreen. As Will arrived the rain quickened a little and we debated the pros and cons of continuing with the possibility of erecting nets only to take them down almost immediately if rain proper started. Even as we put the first few nets up the spots of rain eased off, the Tawny Owl flew off ahead of us calling loudly as above us in the still black sky, Redwings and Fieldfares were on the move.

The rain stayed away and we experienced a very successful morning in catching 48 birds of 11 species, 46 new and 2 recaptures, with northern thrushes and Reed Buntings dominating the catch.

New birds: 12 Fieldfare, 1 Redwing, 1 Blackbird, 19 Reed Bunting, 9 Chaffinch, 1 Brambling, 1 Starling, 1 Blue Tit and 1 Great-spotted Woodpecker. Recaptures: 1 each of Wren and Robin.

Brambling
Brambling
Great-spotted Woodpecker
Redwing
Fieldfare
Reed Bunting

Once again we experienced a good catch of Reed Buntings with juvenile birds of the year outnumbering adults 17 to 2; We missed at least three Reed Buntings that escaped from the nets before we could reach them, and in total we think that up to 80 or 90 Reed Buntings must have moved through or over the site during the 5 hours we were there. In a similar manner 3 Blackbirds escaped whilst we took early morning Fieldfares from the nets, and there is no doubt that there were more Blackbirds about this morning than on recent visits. In total we counted approximately 275 Fieldfares overhead, but less than 50 Redwing, observations in line with sightings elsewhere that point to this being a Fieldfare rather than a Redwing autumn.

The finch movement was very pronounced this morning with many audible Bramblings amongst the Chaffinch, especially later in the morning. Our overhead/passing through counts came to 200 Chaffinch, 30 Brambling, 2 Greenfinch, 13 Siskin and 6 Goldfinch.

Other birds seen this morning included 8 Snipe, 1 Kestrel, 60 Skylark and several thousand Pink-footed Geese flying overhead from the Pilling direction and heading inland toward the St Michaels area.

The ‘X’ Factor

Let’s face it, most birds have it but some are that bit special, ones to see over and over again, always winners and never runners-up. The kingfisher family are one such example, wherever they might be in the world, Pied Kingfisher in Africa, Belted Kingfisher in the US or White-breasted Kingfisher in Asia, a few that spring to mind, but not forgetting our own UK Common Kingfisher.

There is an apocryphal story from years ago of a young twitcher who dashed about the Isles of Scilly one autumn ticking rare birds that arrived on the islands from all points of the globe north, south, east and west. At some time during the week he declared that despite all the new birds he had seen, he wanted to see a common or garden Kingfisher because he had never seen the everyday bird. His friends duly found him a Kingfisher and legend goes that he was so blown away by the bird that he devoted his time thereafter to a local patch back home and never went twitching again. If only this story were true.

I started with Kingfisher this morning at Conder Green when the hyperactive thing was on the outflow wall briefly; unfortunately the low sun was right opposite so I couldn’t capture get the full spectrum of colours on its back. Never mind I got a few pictures. The friendly Robin watched me this morning as I stood on the platform, looking and counting the few birds around; 1 Tufted Duck, 2 Goosander, 2 Cormorant, 2 Wigeon, 80 Teal and several Redshank. A Reed Bunting called from along the hedgerow and a single Fieldfare flew over, but otherwise I struggled to see much as I ducked behind the screen and waited for the Kingfisher to come back. It didn’t.

Kingfisher
Robin

From Lane Ends I saw the Pink-footed Geese were way out, either on the marsh or the more distant Preesall Sands this morning, and although some flew inland there were lots still half way to Heysham. Not so the Greylags and the Whooper Swans close to Fluke Hall, whereby I counted 110 swans and 255 Greylags. In amongst the Greylags hid an assortment of wildfowl, pure delight to recent connoisseurs of plastic ducks and geese; 2 Canada Geese, a pure white Greylag just aching to be a Snow Goose, then a strange Canada hybrid thing - all good harmless fun.

At least the Whoopers are for real, genuine ‘X’ Factor contestants as they whooped it up on the wet fields or flew back and forth out to the marsh. What a fantastic noise, Number 1 in my book.

Whooper Swan
Whooper Swan
Whooper Swan

I did a walk from Lane Ends to Pilling Water where the car park produced a Pied Wagtail, the singing Chiffchaff, 2 Brambling and half a dozen Chaffinch. Along the way I spied a Merlin, 1 Sparrowhawk, 12 Skylark, 1 Meadow Pipit and 5 Little Egret. At the wildfowler’s pools I waited as the quad went in with sacks of wheat which caused 80 or so Teal to vacate the ditches and fly out to the marsh where they joined most of the distant Pink-feet.

Pink-footed Goose