Twin Wheats

It was a waiting game this morning, hanging fire until the wind and rain stopped again. At 1 o'clock I set off for Pilling armed with a few spring traps, hoping that the rain had dropped a few Wheatears on the coast and better still, if any were about they might hang around when the sun came out. I found five together, 3 males and 2 females, plus several Meadow Pipits, so set a couple of traps with mealworms.

I thought luck had escaped me when first a Sparrowhawk scattered the birds, then two minutes later a Merlin came by. Eventually the Wheatears returned to the same sheltered sunny spot and I caught 2 females, both second calendar year birds I think. Female Wheatears aren’t terribly easy to age, especially when it’s during spring and autumn only when we see a few in the hand.

Wheatear
Wheatear
Wheatear

As I waited to catch, I watched 2 Kestrels and a Little Egret in the area of the wildfowler’s pools until the Wheatears moved along the sea wall and towards Lane Ends. I followed the Wheatears up to the edge of the plantation until they flew out to the marsh and probably north across to Heysham. On the pools Little Grebes called from the water's edge and a Chiffchaff sang from nearby trees.

Chiffchaff

All in all it proved a pleasant little interlude, and here’s hoping for a few more Wheatears fresh in from Africa to enliven spring ringing.

Rougher and Ruff

This week is payback time for the last four weeks of dry, calm, and settled if sometimes cold weather that at least allowed plenty of birding and ringing. Following a rained off ringing session on Tuesday the week went from bad to worse, with rain, gales and generally unfriendly spells blowing in from the Atlantic.

As I waited for this morning’s downpour to stop, peering from the kitchen window that looks west, the sight of 3 Siskin, 6 Goldfinch and 5 Greenfinch taking turns at the portholes of the garden feeders certainly cheered me up. After a while the rain stopped and I set off for a few hours at Pilling which turned out not too bad at all when I found a few spring migrants to jot in my notebook.

Lane Ends was first stop. On the flood opposite the car park entrance that often holds little of interest or nothing at all, I counted 2 pairs of Lapwing, 16 Teal, 2 Redshank and a single Ruff.

Ruff

The trees around the car park were fairly well sheltered from this morning’s wild wind, enough to hear 2 Willow Warblers and a Chiffchaff in song. On the pools were pairs of Little Grebe and Tufted Duck with a Little Egret stood alone and unmoving in a sheltered bay of the west pool.

Little Egret

The wind hit the moment I left the shelter of the Lane Ends trees to walk west along the sea wall, so I ducked seaward, seeing nothing until I got to Pilling Water apart from the Kestrel that breeds at Damside.

Spring Redshanks are coming through, numbers building, roosting as they always do out of sight on the wildfowler’s pools where I counted a flock of 95 'shanks today sharing the pools with 4 more Teal, a pair of Mute Swan and several Shelduck. Below the wall again I made my way towards Fluke Hall and Worm Pool with overhead displaying Oystercatchers, Lapwing and the occasional Skylark singing against the whistling wind.

The pool is too full of water for waders, with just a few more Teal and Shelduck, but small birds feeding around the midden, 8 Meadow Pipit, 6 Pied Wagtail, a Reed Bunting and a couple of Skylarks. I sat on the stile waiting for something to happen, trying for a few Skylark pictures, when the Merlin dashed through and scattered the pipits and wagtails, then as quick as it came it left: over the sea wall and out onto the marsh it disappeared, as did my moment of excitement.

Skylark

It was a rough old morning, not very spring like, but hey it’s only April the first and there’s lots more birds to come yet.

A Pipit Peak?

Last night’s weather forecast was sort of OK, and although there might be rain in south Lancashire, Dianne promised the Fylde coast a couple of dry hours and little or no wind. We speculated that birds might move north and ahead of the weather front so once again set off for Out Rawcliffe, where Craig also joined us today. Young Craig found out this morning he’d landed a job at a Swedish bird observatory for the summer months – well done Craig!

Our vista this morning was grey skies with an accompaniment of all-round mist and murk, but as promised by the BBC, no rain, at least for the time being. Then straight from the dawn start we knew it was to be a pipit morning as Meadow Pipits arrived immediately in small parties but larger than we had seen this spring. In all, approximately 250/300 Meadow Pipits moved through our area between 0700 and 1045 when we took nets down after rain eventually came in our direction from the south and put paid to our peak of pipits.

It was a strange sort of morning, as apart from the Meadow Pipits, the range of other species seen and heard was small, almost certainly due to the awful visibility. In all we caught 24 birds of 3 species, 18 Meadow Pipit, 5 Goldfinch and 1 Chaffinch. Two of the Goldfinches were recaptures, one from last year, one from this. We caught no Lesser Redpolls this morning, but at least 15 birds went over us, together with a single Siskin.

Otherwise, my notebook remained blank apart from resident Skylark, Corn Bunting and Great-spotted Woodpeckers drumming in nearby woods.

With such poor light my camera stayed in the bag today, so my pictures are of other sunnier days, and for comparison and variety’s sake I put in a few other pipits.

Meadow Pipit
Red-throated Pipit
Meadow Pipit
Red-throated Pipit

Driving off the moss through the rain I could see that even the Little Owl had no intention of sitting out in the rain but instead sought shelter on a ledge of the barn, so the camera came out briefly.

Little Owl

The Plans Of Mice And Men

This morning’s 0630 start for Will and I was similar to Saturday whereby from the off another cold easterly breeze looked likely to frustrate our hopes and schemes, despite the preparation of setting nets in the most sheltered westerly parts of the plantation.

We took another bash at catching finches and early season migrants but as we suspected the grey, overcast sky didn’t produce much in the way of new birds and a very slow session saw us catch 9 only, the saving grace being that all were target species: 3 Meadow Pipit, 2 Goldfinch, 2 Lesser Redpoll and 2 Chiffchaff, both of the latter birds males as might be expected on this still fairly early arrival date.

Chiffchaff

The Niger feeders put up here just a couple of weeks ago have now been responsible for a catch so far of 37 Goldfinch and 16 Lesser Redpoll, so that little strategy did the trick so far.

Lesser Redpoll
Lesser Redpoll
Goldfinch

Visible migration of passerines was almost non-existent this morning, with counts of approximately 30 Meadow Pipits, 1 Siskin and 2 Lesser Redpoll, a few of which may have been birds we caught.

“Other” birds consisted of 150+ Curlew on nearby fields, several probably local Linnets, 2 Great-spotted Woodpeckers drumming and 1 Fieldfare overhead.

At 10am we packed up the ringing gear and there followed the usual tortuous, bouncy drive off the rough farm track of the moss, avoiding the tractor made holes in the peaty soil. Fortunately the leisurely journey gave both time and opportunity to watch the 11+ Buzzards spiralling over nearby woods into the warming air: also 2 pairs of Grey Partridge, and several pairs of displaying Lapwings in residence, and yet again 2 pairs of Little Owl. Hopefully we’ll soon get to ring some little Little Owls and pint-sized peewits.

Grey Partridge
Lapwing

More dry days look possible for Monday and Tuesday before rain arrives later in the week. Let’s hope our next visit coincides with a change in wind direction to warm southerly winds carrying migrant birds from Africa, and then we’ll see what happens.

Blown Off Course

The forecast for ringing was “iffy” – a 9mph easterly that would potentially blow down from the fells, across the open mossland of Out Rawcliffe and then into our ringing spot, currently bare of leaf cover. But flushed with our recent successes Will and I decided to give it a start, and if all else failed, move to Plan B - management work in the plantation, topping up Niger feeders and erecting a nest box.

We started well enough with a number of Meadow Pipits dropping into the netting zone, Siskins and Lesser Redpolls flying over and a couple of birds, “mipit” and redpoll in the nets. More Meadow Pipits arrived, 40 or so, all from the south, as did a single high calling Fieldfare, but the wind quickly increased to a steady 20mph and billowed the nets too much for safety.

Meadow Pipit
Lesser Redpoll

We packed up, filled the Niger feeders that have caught us 35 Goldfinches so far this spring, spruced up a few netting locations and made a new net ride through a glade of silver birch.

Goldfinch

We then turned our attention to a second box for the first of the two pairs of nearby Little Owls. There is a box that we think they roost in, a nest box also used one year by Great Tits who made hundred trips to fill the cavernous hole with nesting material. But the owls have not used the box for nesting, so we put up a second and hopefully more suitable box on another tree, close to where we see the Little Owls.

Little Owl Nest Box
Will and Little Owl Nest Box

As we hauled the box up to the tree and fixed it in place we speculated where the owls were, all the time with the feeling that maybe they sat just out of sight but watched us with great interest.

Little Owl

Back home a Lesser Redpoll sat on my garden feeder for a second day, a new addition to my garden list yesterday. I wonder when Lesser Redpolls began to use garden feeders in the UK? The closely related Siskin is reported to have used garden feeders since the early 1970s but I suspect Lesser Redpolls are much later. Answers please to Another Bird Blog.

Lesser Redpoll

It’s The Unexpected

Another dawn, another morning’s ringing with Will at the farm site at Out Rawcliffe. It was also another misty, murky and slow start but as so often happens with birding, ringing or taking photographs, a couple of unforeseen or unanticipated birds turn a regular event into something a little more interesting, exciting and involving than the norm.

After the 6am start our total at 0830 was a dozen birds only, whereupon we hoped that with luck we might manage twenty by packing up time. But just like two days ago, as the sun rose and burnt off the haze, so birds arrived in more numbers with better variety.

By midday our total improved to 39 birds, 35 new and 4 recaptures, enlivened by a couple of surprises in the net. New birds: 13 Meadow Pipit, 11 Lesser Redpoll, 5 Goldfinch, 2 Chaffinch, 1 Wren, 1 female Yellowhammer, 1 Chiffchaff the first of the year, and 1 Kestrel. Recaptures; 2 Goldfinch, 1 Chaffinch and 1 male Yellowhammer, previously ringed on the farm on 23 October 2010. The Yellowhammers turned up in the net side by side.

Yellowhammer
Yellowhammer
Yellowhammer

There were more Meadow Pipits around this morning, both moving North and West, but also grounded in the farm fields, approximately 150 in total. Likewise Lesser Redpoll, with a minimum of 50 birds over between the first one at 0615 and the last at midday.

Lesser Redpoll

Other birds seen this morning: 3 Raven croaking together overhead, 13 Fieldfare heading west, a single Golden Plover heading west, 4 Siskin overhead and 4 Buzzard.

The lightning fast Kestrel drew blood from unwary fingers.

Kestrel
Kestrel

We watched a Chiffchaff arrive from the south east whereupon it found the net almost immediately. The bird showed signs of nectar feeding from wherever it had been in recent days.

Chiffchaff - signs of nectar at the base of the bill
Chiffchaff

We looked hard at the Meadow Pipits today, and whilst we found most were second calendar year (2CY)/juveniles, two at least were definitely adults. The adults still showed the uniform olive median and greater coverts typical of an autumn bird, whilst the 2CYs have contrast between last year’s pale median coverts with centre “teeth” that contrast with new adult type olive feathers gained from a partial moult.

Meadow Pipit - adult
Meadow Pipit - 2CY

I almost forgot to mention the Little Owls at dawn, posing in the half-light but not wanting to face me together. Like I said, it’s the unexpected!

Little Owl

A Misty March Morn

It was a bit of a pea-souper this morning, quite a thick mist and in fact more like a fog at 6am, but on the strength of the forecast for any poor visibility to improve early, Will and I went to Out Rawcliffe for a netting session. The murkiness took a while to clear with our normal optimism for catching or even seeing birds decidedly poor at even 0630, but as the sun rose so did our spirits, and gradually the bird numbers.

In fact we caught 21 birds, not bad for a ringing session in the middle of nowhere on a misty March morning. New birds, 7 Meadow Pipit, 7 Goldfinch, 2 Lesser Redpoll, 1 Siskin, 1 Chaffinch, 1 Long-tailed Tit and 1 Blue Tit. The single recapture was a Long-tailed Tit.

Lesser Redpoll
Goldfinch
Meadow Pipit

Meadow Pipits arrived slowly this morning, all from the south east and heading north and west, in small parties of up to 8 individuals; our 4 hours gave a total of c80.

Other “vis” came in the form of 6 Lesser Redpoll, 8 Siskin, 3 Fieldfare, 4 Alba Wagtail and 30 Curlew, with the normal residents of 2 Corn Bunting, 6 Linnet, 2 Reed Bunting, 4 Buzzard, 5 Roe Deer and good numbers of Brown Hare.

A visit to the farm really wouldn’t be complete without checking on the Little Owls at last year’s Kestrel nest where I thought the owls had possession of the hole, but today I found both a prospecting Kestrel and a loitering Stock Dove. A little more negotiation to take place I think.

Little Owl
Kestrel