Harried Again!

After the moss marathon yesterday it was almost a relief to return to normal today with breezy, cloudy south-easterly weather that dictated a Pilling walk rather than more ringing. It wasn’t much of a morning for the camera either so apologies in advance for mainly archive pictures today, but there are a few interesting sightings I hope.

Lane Ends car park was full of sportsmen looking longingly at approximately 350 Pink-footed Geese, newly arrived from Iceland. Already the pinkies are wary; as well they might be, but with experienced birds and Pilling regulars amongst the flocks they will hopefully have some success in staying away from the guns.

Pink-footed Goose

Two noisy Jays reminded me that it is September, the time of year when the coloured crows take up residence here in search of acorns from the small number of oak trees. On the pools I found the 2 Little Grebe again as a number of Swallows hawked around the water and grassy spots, but later in the morning I was to witness a sizeable movement of Swallows heading south-east.

Setting off to Pilling Water along the embankment I clocked 4 Little Egret, 55 Curlew, 2 grounded Meadow Pipits, 40 Goldfinch, 14 Linnet and 2 Skylark. It’s best to tread warily around the stile, not to peer over the fence too obviously because there may be a few bits and pieces on the pool if first there. I knew I was the first when 2 Green Sandpipers exploded noisily from the water’s edge, despite my careful approach. They flew off to the quiet of the wildfowler’s pools, with c 20 Teal only today after the recent increase in water levels. Below the sea wall were 2 White/Pied Wagtail with behind me somewhere the contact call of Reed Bunting, and then another, but I couldn’t see the birds and they may have been overflying.

Linnet

Near the Wheatear rocks I sat for a while on the damp grass but sadly there were no Wheatears to look at today, nor the Stoat.

Stoat
Stoat

The Peregrine stood out there on the marsh, in a direct line to Heysham Power Station, and easy to pick up again should I let my bins venture left or right. A Marsh Harrier came into view from the left, so far on the edge of the marsh that it was barely discernible with the naked eye when I lowered my bins. As the bird traveled east the views in slightly better light made me think it was the same bird from a week ago Friday 9th September, but I can’t be sure. When the harrier disappeared into the distance the Peregrine was still rooted to its same spot with nothing much to chase save for distant Curlew and Shelduck.

As the rain approached from the south I decided there was time for a quick look at Ridge Farm. It was here where Swallows were very visibly on the move, coming from the west and off the sands, then over the embankment and heading markedly into the south-easterly breeze. In an hour’s walk I counted more at least 130 Swallows doing exactly the same thing. There was nothing much else here except for a few Meadow Pipits, 18 Linnet, a single Siskin overhead, a handful of migrant Chaffinches “pink-pinking” from the hedgerow, and a Buzzard, a little inland and over towards Duck Lane, the way home.

Chaffinch

A Hundred Plus

Before this morning the last time Will and I managed a ringing session on Rawcliffe Moss was 4th September, the in-between time spent waiting for Irene and Katia to clear our shores. Today dawned cold but fine and bright and without the nagging, sometimes vicious wind of the previous ten days, so we hoped for lots of migrant birds previously held up by the bad weather.

The cold air gave us a fairly slow start which gathered momentum so quickly and successfully that by the end of the 6 hour session we had exceeded the magic one hundred by amassing a total of 122 birds of 12 species, 113 new and 9 recaptures, with the highpoint of the morning being the large number of two species in particular on the move south, Meadow Pipit and Chaffinch. New birds: 52 Meadow Pipit, 45 Chaffinch, 7 Goldfinch, and singles of Garden Warbler, Chiffchaff, Jay, Great-spotted Woodpecker, Sparrowhawk, Robin, Blue Tit, Great Tit and Coal Tit.

Our recaptures were 8 recently ringed Goldfinch, all returnees to the Niger feeders, and a Chiffchaff which has hung around the site whilst completing its adult moult.

Meadow Pipit - juvenile
Meadow Pipit- adult
Garden Warbler
Goldfinch

Whilst we caught both Chaffinches and Meadow Pipits steadily, the peak of catching Chaffinches proved to be between 9am and 10am. There was a noticeable spike in Meadow Pipits numbers between 10am and 11am, in both visual migration and in the numbers we caught which might suggest that the Meadow Pipits had travelled a greater distance or from a wider area than the Chaffinches. Here on the moss we find migrating Meadow Pipits to be more detectable than Chaffinches, and taking this into account the estimate of both species on the move south here this morning is approximately 400 Meadow Pipit and 500 Chaffinch. We noted other finches on the move this morning, mainly 40+ Siskin and 4 + Lesser Redpoll, with small numbers of locally feeding Linnet c30 and Goldfinch c100.

In their different ways a Jay, a Great-spotted Woodpecker or a Sparrowhawk are all capable of drawing a ringer’s blood.

Great-spotted Woodpecker
Great-spotted Woodpecker
Sparrowhawk – juvenile male
Sparrowhawk – juvenile male
Jay

Processing 120 plus birds limited our pure birding somewhat, but we also noted 6+ Reed Bunting, 1 Tree Pipit, 3 Snipe, 1 Yellow Wagtail, 2 Grey Wagtail, 2 Jay, 2 Sparrowhawk, 4 Buzzard and the return of 15 Pink-footed Goose.

The Whole Shebang

There was a bit of everything today, as might be expected after the wind and rain of recent days. Even well into Morecambe Bay at Lane Ends there were a few wind-blown seabirds, together with a good selection of waders and wildfowl, an unexpected owl and good views of an elusive mammal.

The morning started quiet enough at Lane Ends where a look on the pools didn’t produce stranded phalaropes or gulls, just 2 Little Grebe and a gang of Swallows feeding low over the pools and in the lee of the windswept trees. Many of the Swallows were also headed west, into the still strong westerly: during the next couple of hours I counted 80/100 flying steadily west. Just here I also found 6 Wheatears on the marsh, another migrant blown in from the west by the constant winds of the past week.

The tide wasn’t due for an hour or more so I walked to Fluke and Worm Pool then back to Pilling Water where I sat for a while. The Green Sandpiper of recent weeks was tucked into the edge of the pool again, with another 4 Wheatears along the wall in their usual spot, and 40 Goldfinch, 12 Linnet and a patrolling Kestrel. I’d seen a Stoat amongst the rocks too, and as I watched to see where the Stoat might pop up, a Wheatear landed on the rock furthest away. So I took pictures of both, although the Stoat wasn’t for allowing a full frame, and the Wheatear didn’t hang around just to finish up a as Stoat’s breakfast.

Stoat
Stoat
Wheatear

By now the tide was just about beginning to run, allowing a count of 6 Little Egret and 2 Grey Heron, with many Shelduck and Curlew arriving from the west. The Shelduck count came to 280 birds, a much higher count than recent ones, with the 170 Curlews about par.

Redshanks have been scarce in recent weeks and it is somewhat strange to report today’s 5 as a high count, but there was a single overflying Spotted Redshank that I tried to capture. More waders arrived with the tide, 4 Black-tailed Godwit, 18 Grey Plover, 1400 Knot, 35 Golden Plover, but only 18 Lapwing.

Spotted Redshank
Golden Plover

Perhaps the strangest sighting of the morning came at midday when calling Starlings alerted me to a Barn Owl flying over the rough pasture adjacent to the wildfowler’s pools. Maybe the rough weather of the past week stopped the owl from feeding as much as it should and it was simply taking advantage of a spot of sunshine? I walked back to Lane Ends, stopping here and there to count the wildfowl, 70 Pintail, 190 Teal, 40 Wigeon, 18 Cormorant and 2 Great-crested Grebe.

Cormorant

The well up tide revealed a few sea birds, 4 Gannet, 1 Sandwich Tern and a distant "Bonxie", a Great Skua chasing down a few gulls towards distant Cockerham.

Great Skua
So ended an eventful and bird filled morning.

Follow A Hobby?

I nearly didn’t get out birding this morning. On the strength of the BBC forecast for solid rain throughout the morning I lay in bed until 8am, but when I eventually did reach Pilling I had a great old morning.

Maybe it was the warm but stiff South-Easterly that kept the rain at bay, pushing the clouds out into the Irish Sea. Right from the off there was a pronounced movement of Swallows again, all flying east and south-east into the prevailing wind, difficult to count in the buffeting wind but probably 4-500 in a couple of hours.

Swallow

I sat in my usual spot watching 4 Wheatears, all probably different birds from yesterday since there has been a marked movement of the species in the Fylde all week. I found a single Meadow Pipit there this morning, but It’s slightly odd that we have yet to see any numbers of Meadow Pipits, a species that migrates from much the same locations and in similar calendar time as Wheatears. It is stranger still when at Spurn Point on the East coast on Thursday, 4000 mipits were counted on the move south, the difference probably explained by those being birds of a more easterly origin.

There was no doubting the Wheatear I caught this morning, a big, bright, juvenile male of the Greenland race, Oenanthe oenanthe leucorrhoa, wing length 110mm.

Wheatear
Wheatear
Wheatear

From the stile I could see other Wheatears taking an interest in the mealworms, but the slightly tired, end-of-season wrigglies obviously didn’t gyrate enough for a second catch. After a while the Wheatears flew together along the wall, heading for Fluke or the delights of Knott End, and I didn’t see them again, so I concentrated on the marsh and the sea wall.

It always happens the same way, out of the blue, unexpected, but in view of the Swallows, the muggy air and warming wind, perhaps not totally unpredictable was the appearance of a Hobby - Hobbies are said to follow migrating Swallows. I think it came across the marsh from the North but within a second or two of my spotting it the bird hugged the sea wall for a brief few seconds and then rose up for a fleeting spat with a hovering Kestrel, then dropped low again before continuing its path east. I lost the dark bird against the distant trees of Lane Ends.

It’s difficult to follow a Hobby (pun intended) and so flushed by the shooter’s tractor, even the sight of a Green Sandpiper couldn’t match a peerless Hobby. Other counts today: 3 Little Egret, 2 Grey Heron, 30 Shelduck, 220 Curlew, 75 Lapwing, 140 Teal, 4 Wigeon, 1 Peregrine, 70 Goldfinch, 8 Linnet and 2 Mute Swan.

Kestrel
Mute Swan
My pal in Maine USA said she would send us Katia, thanks a bunch Grace.

A Good Old Chat

I seem to see a lot of Marsh Harriers, a species which is also my photographer’s nemesis. Maybe it’ s just that I like to do my birding and ringing where Marsh Harriers occur, marshes naturally enough but here in the North West they like our extensive farmland, where tall crops and scattered trees make the landscape look remarkably like a marsh.

Today’s male was at Fluke Hall, where I’d sat down on the stile to shelter in the lee of a gatepost from yet another heavy shower when the harrier appeared from over the sea wall and briefly circled the field north of Fluke. There are a couple of atrocious record shots of the distant bogey bird but at the end of this post there are some images from later in the day of a dependable bird that always performs for the camera – Wheatear.

Marsh Harrier
Marsh Harrier

The light was so poor I couldn’t get a proper shot of the local Peregrine either. It appeared from behind me, took a passing dive at a Starling and then shot out over the marsh into the distance.

Those two birds had been the highlight of the mile or two long walk from Lane Ends, with fairly unimpressive counts of much else save for a steady passage south of 100+ Swallows heading into the drizzle and murk: Otherwise my figures were: 2 Little Egret, 1 Grey Heron, 30 Teal. 42 Lapwing, 1 Raven, 1 Stock Dove, 1 White Wagtail, 8 Linnet, 70 Goldfinch and a solitary Skylark.

Skylark

It was the Wheatears that brightened up the afternoon and saved the camera from having a blank day. There were five of them jumping about in the warm shelter of the boulders where the flies hang out. When the shutter clicked audibly, one or two stopped searching, and then perched up to alarm call, “chacking” loudly and then taking a better look at the intruder.

Wheatear
Wheatear
Wheatear
Wheatear
I hate to mention the dreaded "w" word but a spot or of decent stuff might lead to a little ringing soon.

A Strange Old Day

After more overnight strong winds and rain I went up to Knott End first thing on the off chance the weather had left a few bits and pieces behind. But there was nothing much out of the ordinary, just 3 Eider, 9 Cormorant, 2 Bar-tailed Godwit and neatly rounded approximates of 70 Oystercatcher, 1200 Knot, 700 Dunlin and 125 Ringed Plover.

The BBC promised an improving day, lessening wind and sunny intervals so I drove over to the feeding station for a look and to complete the chore of topping up the Niger feeders. I could see there were plenty of finches about; some on the feeders, but lots in the shooter’s unsprayed and full of weeds maize crop, 100+ Goldfinch, 100+ Linnet and 25+ Greenfinch. There’s those approximates again, but how does anyone accurately count mixed and highly mobile flocks of 200+ finches?

Goldfinch

Through the shower clouds I pretty soon spotted the elusive Marsh Harrier that’s been roaming far and wide for a few weeks now, from St Michaels and across to Pilling Moss, several miles of road for me but a flap and a farmland glide or two for Circus aeruginosus. I watched both a dive bombing Peregrine, then a Sparrowhawk and then a Kestrel have a go at the harrier, but the farmer in his combine harvester had the best view as the bird sped across towards Pilling Moss again. All I got was yet another distant shot.

Marsh Harrier

The wind and rain never did ease off properly, but then on my way home through Hambleton I got a phone call about a wind-blown manxie, and it’s a long time since I photographed a close-up manxie, Bardsey in fact. And I’m fairly certain I have never taken pictures of Manx Shearwater, Goldfinch and Marsh Harrier on the same strange day.

Manx Shearwater
Manx Shearwater

Chris in Iceland advises me that Meadow Pipits are poised for take-off. I’m ready for the off too Chris, all that’s required is a spot of half decent weather.

Mipits

Up here in Lancashire we seem stuck with the sting of Irene’s transatlantic tail, day after day of rain and wind plus more to come. So I’m sat at the PC this morning trying to fill a blog slot before all Another Bird Blog followers clear off to pastures new.

When the rain eventually stops and the winds subside the plan is to catch and ring Meadow Pipits, because the months of September and October are just when these small and highly active birds are at their most numerous around this part of the world. During September and October, “mipits” as most ringers call them, migrate in huge numbers, flying south from the edge of Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia and the Northern Isles, then along the coastline of the Irish Sea on their way to destinations close to the winter warmth of the Mediterranean Sea. What a brilliant idea, I wish I could tag along at this very moment.

Because Meadow Pipits are diurnal migrants we are able to catch them during the first few hours of the morning as they migrate on a route that takes them close to our ringing sites.

Meadow Pipit

Diurnal migrants travel mainly during daylight hours as opposed to the many bird species which migrate chiefly during the night (nocturnal migrants); migrating in the daytime allows a bird maximum feeding opportunities during those hours of daylight. Migrating during the day also means they are less likely to get lost on their journey if they don’t rely upon the moon and stars to navigate, as do birds that migrate during the night. Meadow Pipits have another advantage by eating a varied assortment of insect foods in a wide range of habitats, a strategy which gives them the advantage of being able to drop in almost anywhere at short notice where they will find food. This also allows them to quickly replace energy used up by their comparatively shorter daytime flights. This also explains why Meadow Pipits rarely carry any visible fat reserves.

Meadow Pipit

Because they are relatively numerous, lots of birders don’t bother looking at the slightly anonymous and unremarkable Meadow Pipit, but in my humble opinion they are just a superb bird. However I have been known to curse them when seemingly well caught individuals, enveloped in the pocket of a mist net, then proceed to climb out easily by using that elongated hind claw, and then fly off with a cheery “tseep tseep”. The long claw is actually an adaptation for perching on the ground as compared to the much shorter hind claw of the closely related Tree Pipit whose claw is adapted to allow the bird to grip onto all sizes of tree branches and twigs.

Meadow Pipit - hind claw
Meadow Pipit

During mid to late October the numbers of Meadow Pipits we see tails off because most of them will have reached their autumn journey's end, the South of France, Spain, Morocco and Algeria. They spend the winter there, freshen up their feathers, and then in February and March start the journey back to Northern Europe where during March and April they begin the cycle of life all over again.

Meadow Pipit

So there’s few weeks left to get to grips again with mipits, if only it stops raining.

Meadow Pipit