Plan B

It was yet another cold, dark-grey, full cloud morning and I didn’t fancy yet more photography at ISO800 or above so vowed to stay home, catch up with IPMR records and sort through other paperwork clogging up the desk. Then when we finally opened the bedroom curtains there seemed to be a number of Blackbirds in the back garden, just as there had been everywhere else in the last day or two. In fact there were 12 or more Blackbirds, 4 Fieldfares and a single Redwing.

I tried a couple of shots at ISO400 and 1/50 but quickly gave up in favour of Plan B, paperwork plus a bit of ringing. The Fieldfares seemed to have dropped their aggressive behaviour to each other and the Blackbirds as today they fed a decent distance apart without expending energy chasing off other birds.

I caught 7 Blackbirds, 1 Fieldfare, 3 Robin and 2 Coal Tit, the Fieldfare the first one caught in my garden. Within fifteen minutes of catching the Fieldfare it was back feeding on the windfall apples and learning from its experience, neatly avoided the net for the next hour or two.

Fieldfare
Fieldfare
Fieldfare
Blackbird
Blackbird

Robin
Coal Tit

It was very interesting that all of the Blackbirds carried visible fat reserves with their weights varying between 111 and 139 grams, each one of them heavier than the bigger, normally heavier, but today noticeably lighter Fieldfare of 105 grams.

So whilst I didn’t get far birding, Plan B generated valuable data, and fingers crossed I may have picked up a few Brownie points by staying home for once.

In The Beginning

After the excesses of the season I was ready to put 2010 behind me with a fresh air walk and my first birding of 2011, so set off from Nateby to cross Rawcliffe Moss. As I pulled out last year’s notebook I remembered that my pristine 2011 diary and notebook was back home in the “office” drawer, so I made a mental note that my car was to the north of the track, and not the usual spot a mile away to the south, just in case I forgot that too.

Away from the road and into the dark land-dip masses of Pink-footed Geese were coming into the fields to feed and although those on the ground were packed tight, the newcomers turned into the breeze, whiffled down, then found unclaimed spots in which to settle. I was 100 yards away; any closer and the wilder than wild geese would raise their heads as one, and then walk away before breaking into a short take–off and mass panicked flight. Even at that distance I could hear their chatter and murmurings, the volume so loud it was a sure sign of high numbers and several thousand birds. I carefully went on my way so as not to disturb them, a precise or even approximate count impossible unless the whole lot were to be disturbed for my benefit alone.

Pink-footed Geese
Pink-footed Geese

Perhaps attracted by the noise of the feeding geese, 4 Whooper Swans flew quickly over but veered off towards Pilling Moss where they would surely find wetter areas on which to feed. I jotted 3 overhead Lapwings in my notebook, a bird so scarce in recent weeks that even a handful of birds are noticeable. Towards the small copse of pines I found a single Mistle Thrush, and in the wood itself several Redwings mixed with 15 or so Fieldfares. Blackbirds were noticeable today, with not only paired up birds around the farm buildings that have early and secure nest sites, but better numbers than I have seen for a week or two. From my 2 hour walk I counted at least 35 individual Blackbirds and in various hedges and trees totted up 24 Redwings and 32 Fieldfare plus a circling Kestrel, and a rather distant Buzzard. Along the track a couple of Roe Deer heard me coming, one of them running off into the expanse of the moss as the other, a doe I think, watched me from a safe distance.

Roe Deer

I reached the fields and hedgerows where the small stuff hangs out and counted 8 Corn Bunting, 14 Reed Bunting, 7 Skylark, 8 Yellowhammer, 200+ Tree Sparrow, another Kestrel and 2 Grey Partridge, wild ones. It seems that in recent months a nearby farmer released a number of captive bred Grey Partridge, which explains my sighting of 18 birds around a Pheasant feeder weeks ago. At the time I didn’t enter those birds in my notebook, it just seemed a highly unlikely sighting until I could quiz the gamekeepers on the likely origin of the partridge. Not quite as unlikely was sight of 2 Little Owls and 2 Great-spotted Woodpeckers, all in clearly separated locations, but even at the beginning of the year worth noting territories.

Little Owl
Great-spotted Woodpecker

It was a highly enjoyable couple hours blowing away the Christmas cobwebs. Another year of birding was only just beginning.

The End Is Nigh

Some of my readers in the East will even now be shaking off the effects of over indulgence, reaching for the Alka Seltzer or the hair of the dog as they try to remember 2010 and stagger into 2011. Others across the Atlantic who lag Greenwich Mean Time will just now be donning fancy dress before they head off to Bargain Boozers en route to the evening's celebrations.

And what about me, with a few hours to go on New Year’s Eve? Here I am blogging about birds again. “For goodness sake man, get a life and hit a party or two”.“Later”, he said

You see Will and I had a bit of a party earlier in the day when we went up to our ringing site near Lancaster for the last leisurely session of the year hoping to catch a bird or two, to almost ring in the New Year so to speak, hoping that with luck we might end the old year on a bang. In the end it wasn’t so much an explosion but more of a steady fizz with a few colourful sparklers thrown in. We caught 21 birds of 8 species, 15 new and 6 recaptures. But anything we lacked in quantity we made up for in quality, new birds as follows: 8 Brambling, 3 Chaffinch, 2 Blackbirds and one each of Great Tit and Coal Tit. Recaptures were 2 Dunnock, 1 Robin and 2 Blackbirds. Just as yesterday, one of the Blackbirds fat scored at 40 and weighed in at 121 grams; maybe it’s just not humans that over indulge at this time of year?

Not for the first time this autumn, today’s catch of Bramblings exceeded Chaffinch captures. Today we counted approximately 45 Brambling in the woodland but less than 20 Chaffinch – most unusual.

Other birds seen this morning: 2 Jays, 4 + Bullfinch, 4 Nuthatch, 1 Great-spotted Woodpecker, 1 Sparrowhawk, 2 Woodcock, 1 Fieldfare, 10 Redwing and 20+ Blackbirds in addition to the 4 captured.

Blackbird

Apologies then for showing yet more pictures of Bramblings, but enjoy it while we can, it doesn’t happen too often.

Brambling
Brambling
Maybe the year should end with a seasonal Robin.

Robin

Have a happy, prosperous and bird-filled New Year everyone.

Where Did All The Bramblings Go?

It was the question that Will and I asked each other this morning after a ringing session in Will’s Garstang garden again. It was our first attempt to catch Bramblings there since December 15th when we caught 28 of them and estimated their number as over 200. In between we had two weeks of snow and ice that put paid to our eagerness to have another bash.

Although the ringing proved fairly quiet this morning, finches dominated the catch of 35 birds, 25 new birds and 10 recaptures. New birds: 11 Chaffinch, 4 Greenfinch, 2 Brambling - both females, 2 Blackbird, 3 Coal Tit, 2 Blue Tit and 1 Great Tit. Recaptures were 3 Great Tit, 3 Chaffinch, 3 Coal Tit and 1 Song Thrush.

Brambling 1
Brambling 2
Greenfinch

In contrast to our pretty average catch, there were quite a lot of finches around the area of the garden and the adjacent farmland this morning. We think that the mild weather of the last couple of days allowed birds to move out of the garden a little and become less dependent upon Will’s seed hand-outs. Our finch counts came to 25 Brambling, 120 Chaffinch, 15 Greenfinch, 4 Goldfinch and 18 Siskin. I changed the blog header yesterday in anticipation of the “Siskin season”, which runs from about now and into the new year until March, a time when their natural food depletes, birds begin to head back north and during when they rediscover garden nyjer seed. Whilst we didn’t catch any, they were both audible and visible around the trees and on a couple of the seed feeders.

Siskin

We caught a couple of thrushes today both retaining fat levels found during the cold spell, a Blackbird that weighed 128 grams and a Song Thrush tipping the scale at 100 grams – impressive fat deposition.

With the benefit of hindsight we now realise that the hundreds of Bramblings of two weeks ago were a temporary local phenomenon, just part of the mass movement of Bramblings noticed in many parts of the UK about that time. It’s also obvious that a number of Bramblings are still in the UK and also in our local area, but I hazard a guess that our Brambling catches in 2011 will remain much as today. We’ll see tomorrow when we try another site near Lancaster.

Other birds seen today included 1 Grey Wagtail, several Redwings, 1 Kestrel plus the usual savvy House Sparrows that avoided our nets.

The Bramblings may come and go but there’s one thing that’s a reliable fixture, and that’s the sustenance for hungry ringers provided by Sue.

Another Bacon Butty

Did You See The Fog?

The forecast of fog and more fog didn’t inspire me last night so it was quite a surprise to get up and see a sort of bright morning, greyish cloud, but definitely no fog. Good old BBC, nothing quite like keeping the licence payers guessing. So I set off for a quick tour of the spots I hadn’t visited for several days, Conder Green, Glasson Dock, Jeremy Lane and Bank End, all well-worn but often fruitful avenues for finding birds and a sure fire way of assessing the effect of the last few weeks.

At the just about thawed Conder Pool the birds had yet to return, with the wildfowl concentrated in the tidal channels: 45 Teal and 220 Wigeon, with 5 Little Grebe that are usually on the pool. There was a substantial movement of Pink-footed Geese going north to south this morning, and I counted over 200 overflying here then several hundred more in the course of the morning heading in the general direction of their favoured feeding areas around Pilling.

At Glasson Dock canal basin many Coot were not only literally skating on very thin ice, they were obviously very hungry, as 70 or 80 birds showed when they rushed towards breadless me as I got out of the car. In all I counted 135 Coot, 120 Tufted Duck and 4 Pochard here with 140+ Goldeneye and 2 Eider on the estuary as seen from the bowling green.

Coot
Tufted Duck

After four weeks of snow and ice covered fields any feeding waders this morning were hard to come by anywhere, and whereas a normal mild winter would produce many hundreds of Lapwing, Redshank, Golden Plover and Curlew, today the combined numbers of all four species on my entire circuit barely reached one hundred individuals.

Lapwing

There were plenty of both Redwings and Fieldfares along Jeremy Lane and up to Cockersands, where a couple of shore feeding Redwing flew into the more usual field situation on my approach and 20+ Linnets hung around the set-aside allotment. Along the roadside and even after their near starvation diet of the last few weeks the thrushes were their usual shy selves, fit and alert enough so as not to allow a close approach - unlike the Fieldfare in my garden last week.

Redwing
Well-fed Fieldfare
Hungry Fieldfare

I saw more thrushes down Bank Lane, perhaps 30 Fieldfares and similar Redwing, some flitting between the hawthorns and the shore with Starlings, Chaffinches and a single Pied Wagtail. I found a handful of Curlew, Lapwing and Redshank down here and most unusually, a Treecreeper moving along the hawthorns. A crappy shot I know, maybe the BBC fog spoiled the picture.

Treecreeper

At Lane Ends Whooper Swans were in all directions, out on the distant marsh, overflying and in the near fields of Backsands and Fluke, in all 80+, all in the clear light of a pleasant morning and still no fog.

Its Over…....

No, not the blog but the C word, thank goodness. Three days of immobility, no birding, no swimming with the pool full of seasonal grockles, no decent weather even in which to go for a bracing fresh air walk, plus the added imposition of an oversupply of well-meant but ultimately unhealthy food when doing the compulsory seasonal visits to friends and family.

Sue and I broke the turkey tedium today with a visit in the pouring rain to Pisces at Fleetwood , the best chippy in the world, where the deep fried haddock comes out Dulux brilliant white beneath the coating of crispy, russet batter, the fishy feast complemented by the red hot, light-as-a-feather chips that scald the inside of unprepared cheeks - a £5.99 “special” that includes tea, bread & butter and mushy peas? I’d say that is pretty special in rip-off Britain. So, instead of yet another bird list, why not start a foody list and tick this establishment next time you visit Fleetwood?

http://www.piscesfishandchips.co.uk/index.asp

The birding hasn’t been quite as special, and whilst we birders live in hope everlasting, a bit of good luck does help. You see on the way back home from Fleetwood at lunchtime, windscreen wipers set on on “fast-as-hell”, I seemingly drove past a tame or intoxicated Waxwing eating berries next to a bus stop whilst it waited for the C2 to Knott End.

Waxwing

Now if I had invested in a pager, switched my mobile on instead of wasting time in the company of my darling wife, been a proper birder or joined in frenzy birding and in the past showed enthusiasm for dropping everything for a year tick, I might just have found out earlier, like Sunday when there were a dozen or more at the same location. But, such is life for a dummie like me, and maybe in the New Year I should get my act together, become a real birder, start a list or two, buy an infernal buzzing machine and stop pratting about with a camera and a pair of ringer’s pliers.

Waxwing

Lost And Found

The temporary thaw may be here but it’s another very unpleasant day, not one for birding, ringing or even going out unless the rain and sleet ease off. It's an opportunity to sort through more pictures where I found previously unpublished ones, lost among the many thousands taken in the last twelve months. Not in any particular order, but here goes.

Below is how the year both began and is destined to end, Pink-footed Geese against the snowy backdrop of the distant Pennines. Next, in the garden is a single Fieldfare on Christmas Day standing guard over a pile of windfall apples that I stored in the freezer from August on the improbability that we might get two hard winters. I say single Fieldfare because two days later this bird still chases off all Redwings, Blackbirds and other Fieldfares, defending its hoard of apples. The only thing it gives way to is a Starling.

Pink-footed Goose
Fieldfare

The Corn Bunting is a worrying species, shy, hard to study and more difficult to track down as the population declines, but it is a stunning bird to see at close quarters, in the hand or to photograph, as here at Out Rawcliffe at a favoured farm in the early part of the year. Out Rawcliffe also has a good population of Little Owl and Brown Hare

Corn Bunting
Brown Hare
Little Owl

Another highlight of the year at Out Rawcliffe was when Will and I caught 9 Tree Pipits, one in spring and eight in autumn, and it was only a matter of time before we caught a Sparrowhawk or two, so regular were they in the area of our nets.

Tree Pipit
Sparrowhawk

Other ringing highlights were Kestrels and several Wheatears, the latter captures made more satisfying by being on my local patch at Pilling where unfortunately my first Redshank nest came to nothing when the bird laid eggs just a few yards below a public footpath.

Wheatear
Wheatear
Redshank nest
Redshank

Here are a couple of pictures from you know where again, Menorca; an Audouin’s Gull showing off its two tone bill, a stunning Hoopoe, Cattle Egret against Mediterranean Blue, and my lottery win dream home.

Audouin’s Gull
Cattle Egret
Hoopoe
Hoopoe
Menorca

Finally a couple of bird pictures from 2010 that I just like, for no particular reason. Closely followed by grandchildren Theo and Olivia getting into the festive spirit.

Swallow
Wood Pigeon
Happy New Year