Sunday Showers Birding

The weather lady promised there would be two or three hours of fine weather before the rain arrived on Sunday. She was right. By 11am I was back home and rained off. I’d managed a quick birding circuit at Conder and Glasson followed by a drive to Oakenclough to top up the feeding station.

Backsands Lane at Pilling and then Sand Villa at Cockerham produced three species of raptor, a Kestrel at the nest box, a fly by Sparrowhawk and then two Buzzards, one along the fence line and another distant on the sea wall. Hordes of Pink-footed Geese were flying from their salt marsh roost and dropping on Cockerham Moss Edge. Now the shooting season is over and in just a week or two the geese will become more tolerant of people who just want to enjoy them as a spectacle rather than as a shooting trophy or a meal.

Pink-footed Geese

The pool at Conder Green was pretty full following a series of very high tides whereby excess water from the Lune is diverted into the mere, so not too many muddy edges in evidence for waders. Four Lapwing loafed on the nearest island where a pair of Oystercatchers busily mated as a prelude to nesting there again, as they do in most years. Several Redshanks were dotted around the pool margins but today was mostly wildfowl with 2 Goldeneye, 2 Tufted Duck,2 Canada Goose, 2 Little Grebe, 22 Teal, 18 Wigeon, 6 Shelduck and 2 Cormorant. As usual more Teal dabbled in the shallow creeks to bring the total of this species to 70+.

 Canada Goose

Shelduck

I counted the Goldeneye and Tufted Duck at Glasson Dock at 45 and 42 respectively. It’s rare indeed to find that Goldeneyes outnumber Tufted Duck on this water although a few tufties are often hidden amongst the moored boats or the distant reeds. Male Goldeneyes look wholly black and white from a distance and it’s not always possible to see the glossy green head of this wary duck.

Goldeneye

Looking west I could see rain approaching but inland was still reasonably bright so I headed up to the feeding station where it was dry but very cloudy. There’s a clearance and replanting programme ongoing here following years of neglect when rhododendrons took over the woodland. The team have worked extremely hard with the result that in a few years’ time the place should be buzzing with birds, hopefully a few of the species in evidence fifteen or twenty years ago when I spent a good number of days here; Green Woodpecker, Tree Pipit, Bullfinch, Yellowhammer and good numbers of breeding Willow Warblers and Lesser Redpolls spring to mind.

Each stake represents a young native tree to be planted in the next week or two, each sapling a welcome addition to the rather sparse habitat left following the demise of the rhododendron.

Replanting

In the meantime Andy and I can monitor the changes through our ringing and birding here. Today showed evidence of both Goldfinch and Chaffinch returning following the cold spell, with good numbers about the feeders.

In or adjacent to the woodland - 1 Buzzard, 1 Jay, 4 Fieldfare, 9 Redwing, 14 Blackbird and a singing Mistle Thrush.

Goldfinch

In nearby fields and waters I counted 55 Lapwing, 45 Oystercatcher, 4 Greylag, 15 Mallard and 2 Gadwall.

That’s all for now, but be sure there’s more birding, ringing and photography soon on Another Bird Blog.

In the meantime I'm linking to Stewart's World Bird Wednesday.

Rainy Day Birding

Today is cloudy, rainy and breezy and I’m indoors. 

Yesterday there was time for a trip up to the feeding station armed with a bucket of nyjer seed and a bag of Bamford’s finest. On the 30 minutes drive up to Oakenclough I noted 5 roadside Kestrels at well scattered locations so figured that the moderately mild winter augured well for Kestrels and others in the coming weeks. 

 It was quite blowy with some action around the feeders but nothing out of the ordinary with good numbers of Chaffinch and Goldfinch, a couple of Lesser Redpolls, a Grey Wagtail and a pair of Mistle Thrush. 

Mistle Thrush

Kestrel

To fill today’s post there are a few leftovers from the recent holiday to Lanzarote. 

We like to spend a day in the old part of Puerto del Carmen, a town which has a busy working port and harbour, more than enough coffee stops, plus a spot of shopping for the grandkids’ presents. 

Puerto del Carmen, Lanzarote

Puerto del Carmen, Lanzarote

Lanzarote dolls

The Turnstones here appeared to be juveniles and will probably spend the summer in the locality as there is so much food to be found by hanging about the fishing boats. 

Turnstone

Turnstone

The Ruddy Turnstone Arenaria interpres is one of two species of turnstone in the genus Arenaria. It is a highly migratory bird, breeding in northern parts of Eurasia and North America and flying south to winter on coastlines almost worldwide. It is the only species of turnstone in much of its range and is often known simply as “Turnstone”. 

In the Americas, Turnstones winter on coastlines from Washington and Massachusetts southwards to the southern tip of South America. In Europe it winters in western regions from Iceland, Norway and Denmark southwards. In Africa, it is common all the way down to South Africa with good numbers on many offshore islands, including here in the Canaries. 

In Asia, it is widespread in the south with birds wintering as far north as southern China and Japan. It occurs south to Tasmania and New Zealand and is present on many Pacific islands. Yes, the Turnstone is some traveller, one that makes us appreciate the magic of bird migration. 

Turnstone

There’s a Little Egret here with a trick or two. The egret knew that if it waited around long enough someone would come along the jetty above with a handful of bread to feed the hordes of grey mullet in the clear shallow waters below. As the fish came steaming in for a free and easy meal, so did the egret. 

Little Egret

Little Egret

Let’s finish on a guy with attitude and hope the weather improves soon for Another Bird Blog 

Spanish Sparrow

Linking today to Anni's Birding Blog and Eileen's Saturday Blog.

Birding Monday p.m.

Andy’s off to Spain so there’s the feeding station to top up tomorrow and maybe a ringing session soon. In the meantime an afternoon birding Pilling sea wall was all I could manage today, a four hour walk which resulted in a good number of birds despite my February gloom. 

The notebook kicked off with 3 Whooper Swans feeding on the spuds leftover from the wildfowlers' Pink-footed Geese bait. The geese are feeding on fresh green shoots in the fields and the salt marshes now so the geese don’t need the potatoes, and in any case the shooting season is over for another year. Thank goodness for such mercies. 

Whooper Swan

There were 6 Little Egret, 2 Pied Wagtail and a couple of Skylarks between Fluke Hall and the wildfowlers' pools and when I got to the pools I took a rest on the stile hoping to find more birds. On the pools, still 27 Pintail, 2 Shoveler, 2 Teal and a good number of Mallards plus a Green Sandpiper, the latter a near certainty here every winter. Along Pilling Water a Kestrel and a then a Buzzard which came flying in via Pilling village pursued by the usual crows. Pintail look in especially fine shape at the moment. 

Pintail

The wet fields were simply buzzing with a great selection of feeding waders plus wildfowl. The combined counts of this initial walk and then afterwards the fields at Damside produced 195 Lapwing, 170 Redshank, 38 Oystercatcher, 26 Black-tailed Godwit, 95 Curlew, 4 Dunlin, 1 Snipe and 42 Shelduck. The fields are so wet at this time of year that the waders have no difficulty in probing the soil to find their food.

Oystercatcher

Black-tailed Godwits

At Fluke Hall itself - a Great-spotted Woodpecker doing Ginger Baker, a calling Nuthatch again, 2 Kestrel, 2 Pied Wagtail and 40+ Woodpigeon. The Woodpigeons exploded noisily from the trees when a Kestrel play acting as a Sparrowhawk flew quickly through the pigeon’s rest area. Woodpigeon’s don’t normally respond to the presence of a Kestrel but on this occasion the speed and agility of the Kestrel’s arrival sent all of the pigeons into panic mode. A female Sparrowhawk is more than capable of taking a Woodpigeon whereas a Kestrel would be unlikely to attack such large prey. 

Woodpigeon

Log in soon to Another Bird Blog for more birding news. But not tomorrow, a half-term day with Olivia and Isabella for Nana and Granddad. Rather be birding? No way.

Linking this post to Stewart's World Bird Wednesday.

Good Birding But A Pitiful Pom

It’s been a meagre sort of week for birding with lots of cloud and grey skies and the mid-February doldrums giving limited opportunities for finding new birds. A Wednesday ringing session proved quite productive and enjoyable, followed by a couple of duff days and then Saturday morning the first opportunity to try my luck birding. But I’m really looking forward to the migrants of Spring and there we go again - bird watchers wishing their lives away in seasonal yearnings. 

Some of the earliest singers Great Tit, Song Thrush, Dunnock and Robin are in full voice in the garden although a return to cold weather will surely make them place their refrains on hold. A pair of Buzzards is on territory down the lane towards the river and on my travels I’ve heard more than a few Great-spotted Woodpeckers beating out the rhythm on a drum. 

Great Tit

Just lately there’s been a juvenile Pomarine Skua along Pilling Way, an injured bird which although able to fly, had a droopy wing. The skua created a stir amongst birders for a week or two then disappeared off the radar after it was seen feeding mostly on carrion Pink-footed Geese. I found the skua again this morning at Fluke Hall but this time it wasn’t going anywhere as it was dead, probably as a result of its rather restricted diet and its injury. 

I brought it home, let it dry off and then cleaned it up for a picture or two. It’s not often one finds a Pomarine Skua, even less a tideline corpse. 

Pomarine Skua

Pomarine Skua

Fron Wiki. The word pomarine is from the French pomarin, a shortening of the scientific Latin pomatorhinus, ultimately from Greek, meaning "having a covered nose". This refers to the cere which the Pomarine Skua shares with the other skuas. 

Bill of Pomarine Skua

On the marsh I also found 33 Whooper Swan, 2 Little Egret, 60 Lapwing, 25 Redshank, 20 Shelduck and 2 Teal. In the stubble field and along the hedgerows were singing Greenfinch and Goldfinch plus a couple of Skylark and a single Stock Dove. Highlights of the woodland were Nuthatch and Tree Sparrows active around the nest boxes. 

At Braides Farm were 2 Buzzards, spaced out as it were, one along a fence line the other on a pile of farm debris 100 yards away from the first. Our local Buzzards aren’t ones that like posing for photographs and keep a good distance from man. Who can blame them? 

Buzzard

The usual species were at Conder Green, including the Spotted Redshank and Common Sandpiper, two normally migrant waders which have wintered here in the saline creeks. I noted a decrease in Teal numbers down to circa 50 but an increase in Oystercatchers to 16, with a few of them becoming rather noisy in anticipation of Spring. A few Shelduck have reappeared in the creeks after being mostly absent during recent months. 

On and around the pool an eclectic mix of 70 Curlew, 1 Black-tailed Godwit, 4 Snipe, 2 Tufted Duck, 2 Goldenye, 2 Cormorant and just 2 Little Grebe. 

Curlew

At Glasson Dock there was a Song Thrush in full voice and as I watched the thrush at the very top of a bare tree, a Raven flew over. The Raven was silent and flying strongly in a northerly direction over the river and towards Lancaster but it looked somehow odd. When I looked through binoculars the Raven's bill was stuffed with soft, nest lining material. As I watched the first Raven a second one came into sight, it too with a beak overflowing with nest lining material and this bird carried on in the same flight line as the first one.  Nest building fairly locally.

On the yacht basin I counted 22 Goldeneye and then 34 Tufted Duck. There’s a pair of Till Death Us Do Part Goldeneye sailing around the yacht basin, seemingly joined together by an invisible piece of string. The female is less wary than the male and she takes the lead in cruising to the favoured feeding spot before diving for food, quickly followed a few seconds later by the faithful male. 

Goldeneye

The Goldeneye breeding habitat is the boreal forest. They are found in the lakes and rivers of the taiga across Canada and the northern United States, Scandinavia and northern Russia. Goldeneyes are migratory with most wintering in sheltered coastal or open inland waters at more temperate latitudes. Goldeneyes nest in cavities in large trees and will readily use nest boxes, and this has enabled a healthy breeding population to establish in Scotland where they are slowly increasing and spreading, possibly into Ireland. 

This beautiful and harmless species makes a wonderful addition to the list of breeding British Birds but it is to our national shame that such a bird is on the list of allowed “quarry” for shooting. 

Goldeneye

Goldeneye

It was time to head home after an enjoyable morning’s birding that was rather spoiled by finding the dead “Pom”. Let's hope I can put the corpse to good use or quickly find someone who can. Sue isn't  too happy about it living in the freezer. 

There’s more birding another day with Another Bird Blog. Log in soon.

Linking this post to Anni's Birding Blog.

More Canaries

Rained off today so here are more news and views from our recent holiday to Lanzarote 18th January to 1st February 2015. 

It was fairly blowy on the day Sue and I set off south to the working salt pans, Salinas de Janubio and the little lunch-stop village of El Golfo. It is often breezy or even windy in the Canary Islands which lie in the Atlantic Ocean some 100 kms off the coast of Africa. During the times of the Spanish Empire the Canaries were the main stopover for Spanish galleons on their way to the Americas because of the prevailing winds from the northeast. There is compensation for the breezes in the islands’ subtropical climate with long warm summers and moderately warm winters. 

The Canary Islands

Not far from our base of Puerto Calero and just off the LZ2 we stopped off to look for Lesser Short-toed Lark and perhaps more Houbara Bustards in a location they are reputed to use. No luck with the bustards however we did see Lesser Short-toed Lark, Berthelot’s Pipit and Kestrel, as well as finding a good crop of huge watermelons and strawberries growing in a seemingly inhospitable but well irrigated place. 

The Lesser Short-toed Lark is a bird of dry open country which is fairly common in Lanzarote and breeds in Spain, North Africa and eastwards across the semi-deserts of central Asia to Mongolia and China. It prefers even drier and barer soils than its close relative the (Greater) Short-toed Lark. As far as I know the Short-toed Lark is but a scarce passage visitor to the Canaries, and a species I am familiar with in the Mediterranean. 

Lesser Short-toed Lark

Watermelon, Lanzarote

From the high approach road the salt pans down at sea level often appear tranquil enough. There can be a different story at ground level where the wind whips the water into a frenzy of white as a display of how the salt pans create their valuable product. 

Salinas de Janubio

Greenshank

Greenshank

Berthelot's Pipit

Black-winged Stilt

Black-winged Stilt

Turnstone

What with the wind and lack of places to approach birds, this is a difficult place in which to birdwatch and take photographs. Unfortunately I didn’t manage any pictures of the also-present Whimbrel, Kentish Plover, Grey Plover, Redshank, Little Stint, Curlew Sandpiper, Common Sandpiper or Black-necked Grebe but it was good to see so many species in this one place.

A short drive away from Janubio is the famed Green Lagoon, something of a tourist hot-spot and a destination for crowded buses. It is easy to see why and to join in the endless photography which takes place. 

The Green Lagoon, Lanzarote

The beach itself is of pebbles and the cliffs behind the lagoon equally dramatic, having been wind eroded into fantastic shapes over the course of the centuries. The scenery is further enhanced by the large finger of rock which sits just off the beach and causes the sea to crash around it. The landscape here is so wild filmmakers used it as the backdrop for Raquel Welch wearing her animal skin bikini in the classic movie One Million Years B.C. 

El Golfo, Lanzarote

The weathered cliffs extend all the way along the walkway which goes in the opposite direction to the village of El Golfo, revealing different bands of rock smoothed and shaped by the forces of nature. 

Just along from the Green Lagoon is the village of El Golfo which has possibly the highest concentration of fish restaurants on the island. The morning’s catch is gutted and cleaned on the beach to a watchful audience of many dozens of Yellow-legged Gulls and the inevitable Common Sandpiper scurrying through the rocky pools. 

El Golfo, Lanzarote

Yellow-legged Gull

Common Sandpiper

We stopped off in the pretty town of Yaiza before heading back to the Hotel Costa Calero and a pre-dinner glass of Cava. 

Yaiza, Lanzarote

 

Hotel Costa Calero

Another successful day of exploration in Lanzarote. Previous posts about our holiday to Lanzarote can be found at "A birding-day Lanzarote style" and at Birding Lanzarote.

More birds soon from Another Bird Blog.

Linking today to Skywatch Friday and Eileen's Saturday Blog.

 

A Few Frost-Free Finches

Exactly a week ago the ringing session up at Oakenclough proved rather quiet and uneventful, a result Andy and I assigned to the onset of frost with minus temperatures which caused regular birds to depart the site. This morning was warmer if more than a little on the dull and dreary side but following a week of  mornings without frost we enjoyed a much healthier sum of birds. Our four hours of work included a good selection of finches. 

We totalled 49 birds of 10 species, 34 new birds and 15 recaptures. New birds: 7 Chaffinch, 7 Goldfinch, 7 Blue Tit, 4 Coal Tit, 3 Great Tit and 2 Lesser Redpoll, plus one each of Blackbird, Siskin, Treecreeper and Robin. 

The Treecreeper is not a species one might associate with bird feeding stations but they do tend to join in with flocks of tits which very much frequent feeding stations.  

 

Treecreeper

Recaptures: 5 Goldfinch, 5 Coal Tit, 3 Great Tit plus one each of Blue Tit and Siskin. 

We are hoping that both Lesser Redpolls and Siskins will begin to appear in larger numbers once they begin their Spring push north through the UK in late February and into March. 

Lesser Redpoll

Lesser Redpoll

Today’s Siskins, a male and a female were caught at the same time and so released together. Recent BTO Garden BirdWatch data show that Siskin numbers usually start to increase in gardens by the end of the year, as the amount of natural food diminishes and the weather worsens. However initial results suggest that at the end of 2014, Garden BirdWatch saw the lowest proportion of gardens reporting Siskins since the survey began in 1995.

According to the Forestry Commission, 2014 looks like it was another good year for Sitka Spruce which, combined with a relatively mild and dry winter so far, could be why Siskins are missing from gardens this winter.

Siskin

Siskin

Chaffinch

The morning was so gloomy and overcast and the visibility so limited that birding was nigh on impossible, and therefore nothing to report in the way of other birds.

On the way home I did see 3 Kestrels with single birds at St Michael’s village, Out Rawcliffe and finally at Stalmine Moss. 

Kestrel

There are more birds in a little while from Another Bird Blog, including another instalment of Lanzarote birds. Don’t miss it and log in soon.