Never Say Die

It was meant to be a day off birding with bits of both dog and child minding, but as very birder knows, bird watching never really stops. In between pottering about, mainly sorting the lawnmower out after a winter’s torpor, I noticed several things happening in the garden; or as is more often the case, in next door’s garden, full of old apple and pear trees and untidy corners, a plot mostly neglected and annoyingly bigger than our postage stamp of green. Unlike us, our neighbour always gets a spring Chiffchaff, chiff-chaffing away for a day or two until the bird re-orientates and heads off again, so it was not a surprise to look over the fence and see one today; it even visited our budding damson trees for a minute or two.

Chiffchaff

The Greenfinches are back, the male singing away above to last year’s nest site, and the female close by, but I’ve yet to find the latest nest in the row of conifers.

Greenfinch

At weekend I even had a Siskin or two on my home made Niger feeder, but then who hasn’t had garden Siskins this winter? But I must say the Goldfinches don’t seem to have reappeared in any numbers yet with just 2 or 3 beating of them off the occasional Siskin, unlike the Garstang Siskins that monopolised the feeders there.

Siskin

None of that bothers the Blue or Coal Tits that come and go in an instant before scooting off to the fence with a beakful of best mixed seed.

Coal Tit
Blue Tit

It’s a great weather forecast for the remainder of the week and hopefully I’m back to normal tomorrow with both birding and ringing to look forward to.

Change Of Scene

After catching 150 birds in our two ringing sessions at Garstang prior to this morning’s foray, Will and I could be forgiven for thinking we deserved a rest, or at least a slower morning, but we decided on a change of scene, a variation to the target species and a visit to our farmland site.

Out on the moss this morning our efforts yielded just 13 birds, 12 new and one recapture; fairly predictable for a March morning when targeting Meadow Pipits and finches. But we always take the view, repeated here and elsewhere many times, “If you don’t go, you don’t know”, and anyway we are quite fortunate in knowing both how and when to catch Meadow Pipits. The trouble is the pipits themselves don’t always comply with our aspirations for them and climb out of the net, as a few did today.

We caught 6 Meadow Pipits, 5 Goldfinch and 1 Chaffinch, with the single recapture a recent Goldfinch.

Meadow Pipit
Meadow Pipit
Chaffinch

Although an apparently perfect morning for migration with just a light south easterly breeze and hardly any initial cloud cover, the visible migration was very slight. Meadow Pipits came over quite high in groups of less than six individuals with a maximum of 60 birds in four hours. We saw and heard up to 8 Siskins overhead, whilst the 25 Goldfinch, 8 Linnet and 15 Chaffinches we noted were almost certainly local birds only. With hindsight, and in view of the height of the overhead pipits and Siskins, maybe the morning was just a bit too clear and many birds were higher than we could see or hear.

Otherwise the birding was local fare in and about our plantation, 1 pair of Reed Bunting, 4 Blackbird, plus Long-tailed, Great and Blue Tit and 1 pair of Corn Bunting close by. On the fields; 4 tumbling, displaying Lapwings, 3 singing Skylark and the 90 or so Woodpigeon of late. After a cold start 3 Buzzards took to the air in the by now warming sun, as did one of the local Kestrels.

On the way home I checked the potential breeding owls and found both Tawny and Little Owls in their expected slots, and then near the River Wyre I slowed down to watch to watch yet another Buzzard as it soared over the road ahead then climbed unhurriedly into the morning blue.

Buzzard
They do say that a change is as good as a rest so maybe we achieved both today.

Brambling And Barm Cake

A busy couple of hours in Will’s Garstang garden gave us a catch of over 50 birds again, fifty-one in fact. 41 new birds were: 33 Siskin, 3 Chaffinch, 2 Great Tit, 1 Great-spotted Woodpecker, 1 Blue Tit, 1 Wren and 1 Brambling. Recaptures: 6 Siskin with 1 each of Tree Sparrow, Nuthatch, Great Tit and Wren – an interesting and worthwhile selection of species.

As normal the Siskins arrived early and noisily from the nearby roost, perhaps 125 individuals this morning, coming for a feed on the plentiful Niger. The 33 new ones trapped lifted our total of Siskin in the garden to 258 birds ringed this year, and we are fairly sure there are more to come, for a week or so at least. After our success here with Bramblings in December and January, the single juvenile male today was the first caught here since 16th February, and whilst there have been low numbers about, including 3 or 4 today, the one we caught may well be the last until autumn.

Brambling
Brambling
Siskin

So while the Siskins kept us busy, huge entertainment ensued for Will and Peter when the male Great-spotted Woodpecker gouged lumps from my finger and drew blood as I took a portrait of it; whoever said ringing birds was for softies? The recaptured Nuthatch was a male, probably the one that may stay to breed in the garden.

Great-spotted Woodpecker
Great-spotted Woodpecker
”peckered”
Nuthatch

Peter joined us today and enjoyed his encounter with lots of Siskins but found time to share in a compulsory Ringer’s Breakfast - bacon butties with tomato or HP.

Barm Cakes

For whatever reason, probably entirely accidental by mistakenly clicking incorrect buttons on their computers, this blog has a number of readers from the US who struggle somewhat with the strange colonial terminology occasionally found herein. So for their benefit I can translate the previous references to bacon butties as – “bacon sandwiches with ketchup or brown sauce”. The bread in question is often a barm cake as seen in the photograph.

“Barm cake is an unusual term with a surprising amount of meanings. In England, it is a term for a bread roll similar to a hamburger bun, often filled with French fries, sausage or more usually, crispy fried bacon. Barm cake has also come to use in slang, to refer to a stupid or idiotic person, as in “I’m such a barm cake when it comes to maths.” The slang use of barm cake is of uncertain origin, but likely is a reference to the blandness of the British roll. The simple plainness of barm cakes may relate to other British slang terms for stupidity, such as simpleton. In any case, this term is an excellent piece of obscure slang for those who enjoy insulting others in a way they likely will not understand”

Siskin

By 10am the scene quietened a little as the feasting Siskins moved on, so the breakfasting ringers packed their gear into the car boot for another day. "Don't you mean 'trunk'? you barm cake!”

First Wheatear

Another grey, cold morning saw me not too optimistic about seeing or hearing a few migrants but at Fluke Hall I found my first 2 Wheatears of the spring, in the guaranteed, sheltered and comparatively warm spot below the sea wall. In my enthusiasm I pulled out the tub of meal worms, for the next month or two a permanent addition to the already overcrowded car boot, and set a couple spring traps. The Wheatears got close a couple of times but the cold, immobile worms didn’t do the trick – this time.

Wheatear
Wheatear

Nothing lost I checked the rest of the sea wall and inland fields to find 5 Meadow Pipit feeding down on the puddles of Ridge Farm with just a couple more heading off over Morecambe Bay. In the Fluke Hall trees was a singing Chiffchaff and the loud pinging calls of Siskins. Just out of the wood the resident Kestrel flew ahead of the car along to each telegraph pole in turn, my third Kestrel of the morning, with others at Lambs Lane and Head Dyke Lane. It was there, at Lambs Lane at 9am I’d seen a hunting Barn Owl that circled the field a few times before it went off in the direction of Pilling village.

Barn Owl
Kestrel

I walked to Pilling Water my customary Wheatear spot, where they are eminently more catchable than the drawn-out boulder shore of Fluke Hall, but didn’t find any. Here were several more Meadow Pipits, 5 Teal and 3 Redshank on the pool and 3 Little Egret on the shore. At Lane Ends were a couple more Siskins, a single Alba Wagtail, and 7 Meadow Pipits. Six more Teal and a single handsome Shoveler on the flood of Backsands Lane where a plover flock held 80 Golden Plover and 60 Lapwing.

Shoveler

Will tells me there are still plenty of Siskins in his garden, so maybe we’ll do more finch ringing tomorrow and save the meal worms for the Wheatears on a warmer day.

Opening March

It was out to the moss today, the real beginning, the first of our spring ringing proper and a chance to weigh up if the Niger feeders put up two weeks ago had done the trick for small finches. It was a dull, grey start and nil wind, good for ringing but not necessarily for seeing March migrants but with luck in between ringing a few Goldfinch, Siskin and Redpolls we might see a few more species heading north.

The feeders had certainly worked because we caught 16 Goldfinch, 15 new plus a recapture from last week, a single new Great Tit and other recaptures of a Dunnock and Great Tit, but unfortunately no more variety than that.

Goldfinch
Great Tit

Besides approximately 30 Goldfinch seen the plantation was as quiet as we expect in early March, with other species limited to 3 Reed Bunting, 6 Chaffinch, 2 Wren, 2 Long-tailed Tit and a couple of Blackbirds.

The birding was reasonably interesting with a good SE to N passage of approximately 35 Meadow Pipits in mainly twos and threes, and singles of Siskin and Alba Wagtail. We also saw a flock of 40 Fieldfare come from the south west and fly strongly to the north east, calling as they went. A couple of flocks of Curlew also went north, 30 birds in total. “Usual” stuff around the fields comprised singing Skylark and Corn Bunting, still a flock of 90 Woodpigeon and just 2 Buzzards, neither of them venturing skywards on such a dull morning.

On the way off the moss I saw a pair of Grey Partridge and once again found the two pairs of Little Owls now well and truly “at it” in their respective territories and holey trees.

Grey Partridge
Little Owl

A respectable morning’s work for 16th March and from now on the days can only get busier.

One Hundred And One

No, it’s not the England cricket team’s latest effort but today’s ringing total from Will’s garden.

More hurried phone calls and weather watching this morning led to a drive up to the Garstang garden for 0800 where the overnight heavy rain was just about petering out, but leaving the paddock in a bit of a muddy mess. Undeterred we put up two nets and caught 101 new birds: 82 Siskin, 16 Chaffinch, 1 Goldfinch, 1 Blackbird and 1 Dunnock. Recaptures were 3 Siskin from recent weeks and 1 Chaffinch.

Siskin

Last week we thought the Siskin migration had dried up a little but this weekend saw a fresh surge of new birds to the garden area with Will's finch estimates of 200+ Siskin, 100+ Chaffinch, 6 Lesser Redpoll, 15 Goldfinch and 6 Greenfinch. After the morning’s hard graft and observations of birds arriving and leaving we thought today’s count was more like 300+ Siskin, 150+ Chaffinch, 4 Goldfinch, 2 Brambling, 3 Lesser Redpoll and 8 Greenfinch.

Today we looked for visible fat on each Siskin we caught, and a quick perusal of our field sheet shows that roughly 80% of them had fattened up ready for on-going migration. Individual weights varied between a standard and expected 11 grams but several birds tipped the scale at over 15 grams but one large male bounced the balance to 15.7 grams, more akin to the weight of a Goldfinch.

Siskin data
Siskin - adult male
Siskin - female
Siskin - female
Siskin- adult male
Siskin- juvenile male

Apologies then that today’s pictures are all Siskin. And now I really must sign off, I have over a hundred birds to enter into IPMR, the BTO ringer’s database.

Owls And Things

It was Out Rawcliffe this morning where as a change to my normal direction I first took a walk through the wood and headed for the big field. Lucky I did when I chanced upon a roosting Tawny Owl which obliged by not flying off.

Tawny Owl
Tawny Owl

The owl wasn’t the only thing in the wood, with a pair of Great-spotted Woodpeckers, 30+ Chaffinch, 5 Blackbirds and several Tree Sparrows chattering around the nest boxes. Along the big hedge were another 20 or so Tree Sparrows, 3 Reed Bunting, 2 Yellowhammer and 2 Corn Bunting, one in song. From the big field itself a group of 9 Stock Dove took off at my approach, then a little more distant, a gang of 40+ Lapwings.

It’s very exasperating at the moment with between 30 and 50 Siskins and lots of Chaffinch still in Will’s garden but a nagging wind that makes it a touch too blustery for a ringing session. Up on the moss, so open it’s guaranteed to catch any wind that’s in the offing, I discovered that the feeders put up last week had attracted a number of Goldfinch and 10 Chaffinch. Predictably the annoying gusts were there too, blowing through the still bare, leafless trees. 15 Lesser Redpolls were also in the wood, moving about quietly in the masses of alder trees, but unlike Siskins that readily take to artificial feeders, around here at least, Redpolls haven’t done so to the same extent. However perseverance is the name of the game and the feeders will stay up for a while, and there’s lots of Redpoll to come in the next few months.

My finch count didn’t include the odds and sods of 2 Reed Bunting, 2 Dunnocks, the Robins and titmice aplenty, which today included 4 Long-tailed Tits, all of which mooched around the food on offer. So I topped up the feeders with black magic and crossed everything available in the hope of calmer weather and a spot more ringing soon.

Long-tailed Tit

Apart from the nagging breeze it wasn’t a bad morning for birding, quiet enough and very cloudy, but no hint of the snow promised for Ireland to the west and The Lake District just 40 miles up the M6. The Buzzards were very active this morning, still resolving disputes, amongst themselves and with the Carrion Crows which harass them at every turn. I counted 7 Buzzards this morning.

Buzzard

On the way home I looked across to a distant tree that held last year’s Kestrel nest; no Kestrel there, but a pair of Stock Doves sat directly above the entrance hole. As I watched the doves moved from near the hole a Little Owl popped out of the cavity and just sat there in the entrance, perhaps to emphasize its occupation to the now departed doves. A poor picture I know, but that Little Owl’s dogged determination to hold on to that nesting spot just made me smile.

Little Owl