More Spring

It was another cool and breezy morning but I went to Pilling armed with spring traps and mealworms. There was a little gang of 7 Wheatears this morning, more or less together in the usual spots, so I set about trying to catch a few. Just like Saturday, I caught two birds, but this time a male and a female, both juvenile, second calendar year birds.

Wheatear – male, second calendar year
Wheatear – female, second calendar year
Wheatear – female, second calendar year

I didn’t see much else along the sea wall, just the expected handful of Linnets, 2 Little Egret, 2 Kestrel, 55 Redshank and at Lane Ends itself, 3 Willow Warbler plus pairs of Tufted Duck and Little Grebe.

I left Pilling and made my way to Out Rawcliffe to perform a quick top up of the bird feeders. When the winds subside Will and I hope to get out ringing and catch up with more Lesser Redpolls, so we decided to maintain the nyger feeders a little longer for both Redpoll and Goldfinch still coming through the site. I topped up the feeders that swayed from branches in the stiff breeze whilst counting 10 Goldfinch, 4 Lesser Redpoll and a couple of ground feeding Chaffinch. In the plantation were at least 5 singing Willow Warblers and a single Chiffchaff, and as I drove off site, 3 Buzzards and the Little Owl sheltering from the threatening showers and the ever present wind of recent days.

Lesser Redpoll
Little Owl

Back at home the sun broke through, the wind dropped and the recently arrived House Martins circled above. I first saw them two days ago surveying their annual nest site at the big house on the corner- April 4th was a good early sighting for me, just a day behind Swallow on 3rd April.

House Martin

Who’s A Twitcher?

Throughout the winter I read Internet blogs and bird watching sites where the whole of the UK seemed to be Waxwing paradise. Too busy with other things, too tight to spend my meagre income on petrol money, or some might say holding vainglorious thoughts of moral superiority, I resisted the temptation to dash off and see the hordes of bohemian wanderers.

Bohemian Waxwing

Finally my wait was over, patience rewarded when 15 turned up in Hambleton village on April 2nd, a couple of miles away from home alongside a route I travel almost daily. “Definitely not twitching then” I reasoned, exempting myself with the excuse that I had spent the afternoon catching Wheatears on a local patch. The car found its own way to Hambleton, “Waxwing and Wheatear, a good April double” I fantasised.

It was late in the sunny day as the Waxwings sat in tall trees alongside the busy road, intermittently launching themselves into a dark garden on the opposite side of the road, where a single Cotoneaster sat close to the front door of the property. It was the same species of Cotoneaster I planted in profusion in my garden 10 years ago, the trees the Blackbirds strip bare by September, leaving no berries for Waxwings. But in Hambleton in the shady seclusion of someone else’s front garden, their Cotoneaster had lots of still red, edible berries.

Bohemian Waxwing
Bohemian Waxwing
Bohemian Waxwing
Bohemian Waxwing

The evening was clear; I think the Waxwings continued north that night as I readied my ringing gear for another early start.

Hawks At A Distance

Princeton University Press kindly sent a copy of Hawks At A Distance for review by Another Bird Blog, knowing that despite the UK based nature of the blog, it has followers in the North American continent.

Hawks At A Distance is a field guide for the North American bird watching fraternity, a book compiled by one Jerry Liguori, a birder and premier division hawk watcher with many years of raptor experience. Since 1984 he has conducted spring and autumn raptor migration counts at watch points such as Cape May, Sandy Hook, Derby Hill, Braddock Bay, Whitefish Point, Dinosaur Ridge, and many others. Needless to say, this superficially modest list conceals the many, many hours of sitting and studying, squinting and staring through binoculars, telescopes and cameras, a labour of love that gave birth to this, his latest book of excellence.

Hawks At A Distance

For me and many others, identifying raptors in flight is the birding challenge, especially hawks and eagles that fly at great heights. Migratory ones are even more difficult to identify as the average birder rarely gets the opportunity to study them closely or for long enough to learn their characteristics. So a concise and portable field guide that makes this identification process easier is to be welcomed as a timely addition to any bird library.

This slim guide manages to illustrate 29 species in a variety of lighting situations and settings, contains 558 colour photographs and 896 black & white images showing distant raptors at different angles of flight with all of the subtle variations of age and sex. A really useful section entitled “Shapes” at the end of the book displays the silhouettes formed by the different species of raptors from a variety of angles and at different heights.

Shapes

From my UK perspective I was particularly interested in the species which in one case cross UK and US Atlantic boundaries – Northern Harrier, then others which occur on both sides of the pond in much the same form – Northern Goshawk, Rough-legged Buzzard/Hawk, Gyr Falcon, Peregrine and Merlin. Interesting and informative then that Liguori’ s photos and narrative both show and tell us how to distinguish the three races of Merlin that occur in North America, Taiga Merlin i.e. our UK columbarius, Prairie Merlin, richardsonnii, and Black Merlin, suckleyi.

Northern Harrier

I found 42 photographs (in addition to the single beautiful photo that precedes the section) devoted to Rough-legged Buzzard/Hawk alone, that problematic bird of Birdguides and Rare Bird Alert notoriety. If only the 42 photos of the changeable hawk could be included into a new European guide, where the same pictures would surely feature next to a set of photos showing the various guises of Common Buzzard. Perhaps herein lies your next book Mr Liguori?

Rough-legged Hawk/Buzzard – Buteo lagopus

If I have one reservation about this guide it is that most if not all of the photographs used have been taken in good light and against a blue sky. This may be the norm for raptor watching in North America or even parts of the Mediterranean, but in practice in the UK at least, much raptor watching is against an overcast, grey sky. Notwithstanding this purely personal quibble I heartily recommend this book to North American raptor enthusiasts, but also to anyone with a general interest in raptors, but especially for birders planning a birding trip to North America where it will sit happily in a pocket or rucksack next to a less specific field guide.

Having praised the book I also add the caveat that it is a book very much for a niche market, for the person who is happy to sit at a watch point aiming to identify hawks from a distance, in flight, with binoculars and/or a telescope. Anyone not falling into that category will have limited use for this book and may well prefer a generalist but ultimately less detailed field guide.

Hawks At A Distance is available from Princeton University Press at $19.95 in the US or £13.95 in the UK, see here

Caught In A Weather Window

The promised window of weather this morning allowed Will and I a trip to Out Rawcliffe for the usual 0630 start. The BBC forecast was fairly accurate with the less than 10mph breeze that let us put a few nets up with distant rain showers passing over the flat Fylde several miles to the west. We caught reasonably well but maybe the rain to the south and west kept migrants down: if nothing else ringers can always come up with theories as to why a catch of birds is less than desired but actually perfectly typical of the prevailing conditions, be it the weather or the birds of the day.

Our total: 17 new birds with 2 recaptures. New birds: 10 Meadow Pipit, 2 Lesser Redpoll, 2 Linnet, 1 Goldfinch, 1 Chiffchaff and 1 Willow Warbler.

Linnet
Linnet
Willow Warbler

Our two recaptures were a Willow Warbler first ringed on 3rd August 2010 and a Goldfinch first ringed 22nd May 2010, neither of them caught again until today.

There was just a small movement of Meadow Pipits this morning, with perhaps 80-100 birds heading north throughout our 4 hour session: now into April the numbers left to head north will diminish greatly. Other than Meadow Pipits, visible migration was negligible with 10-12 chattering Redpoll, the most noticeable species again.

We captured a large and pale Meadow Pipit this morning, insipid and almost whitish underneath with a greyer head than normal and also cold greyer tones to the upperparts. Although the weight was normal at 16.9 grams the wing length was quite striking at 88mm. Whilst the bird was still of the nominate race pratensis, we thought it likely to be of more Northern European and possibly Scandinavian origin than any of the other 50 Meadow Pipits we have handled this year.

Meadow Pipit
Meadow Pipit

Other birds this morning, 4 Buzzard, 1 Swallow, 2 Sand Martin, 1 Sparrowhawk and 3 Black-tailed Godwits heading north.

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