Picture Menorca

Another Bird Blog is still in Menorca. Here are more Menorca birds and Menorca scenes until I’m home.

Fornells - Menorca

Osprey

Audouin's Gull

Blue Rock Thrush

Spotted Flycatcher

Menorca sweets

Cap de Cavalerria

Hoopoe

Red-backed Shrike

Tawny Pipit

Menorca Donkeys

Booted Eagle

Woodchat Shrike

Stonechat

Menorca Farm

Sardinian Warbler

Menorca Sunset

Many Thanks for your visit and comments. I’ll catch up with you quite soon. 

Menorca Postcard

Another Bird Blog is in Menorca. So please excuse the brevity but here’s a picture postcard to be looking at until I’m home. 

Menorca view

Cattle Egret

Thekla Lark

 

Bee Eater

Rural Menorca

Turtle Dove

Hoopoe

Coffee time Menorca style

Ciutadella

Coot

Black-winged Stilt

Red Kite

Menorcan Panda

Tawny Pipit

 Goodnight from Menorca - Scops Owl

Many Thanks for your visit and comments. I’ll catch up with you quite soon.

Quicky Birding

It’s just a hurried post as Another Bird Blog has an appointment and then won’t be around for a day or two. 

This morning I met up at Pilling with Andy so that he could learn the whereabouts of the Skylark nest found on Monday and continue with nest recording in my absence. As there are a good number of Skylarks in the area we hoped we might be able to come across other breeding activity.

The Nest Record Scheme (NRS) gathers vital information on the breeding success of Britain's birds by asking volunteers to find and follow the progress of individual birds' nests. The two pictures below show the information recorded to date on the Skylark nest first found on Monday.

 Nest Record - Skylark

Nest Record - Skylark

 Skylark

To monitor some specially protected species, it's necessary to obtain a Schedule 1 permit in addition to registering as a nest recorder. As with all British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) surveys, the welfare of the birds comes first, and therefore all nest recorders follow the NRS Code of Conduct, a protocol designed to ensure that monitoring a nest does not influence its outcome. 

The data collected for NRS are used to produce trends in breeding performance, which helps to identify species that may be declining because of problems at the nesting stage. These trends are updated every year and published in the BirdTrends report. NRS data also allow measurement of the impacts of pressures such as climate change on bird productivity. 

Both Skylarks were still in the area of the nest, the male singing close by, the female not immediately obvious to us but we quickly looked into the nest and departed. 

Less than 75 yards away was another pair of Skylarks, a pair I’ve been aware of for a while. We watched the female taking nest lining material back to the nest where upon inspection we discovered a single egg, the beginning of nest laying and a reason to complete another nest record for the BTO. 

Nest Record - Skylark

Close by we found Lapwings with just one chick which we located for ringing. It is  one of the very few youngsters and nests to survive the intense farming activity of recent weeks. 

Lapwing chick

There was limited time for birding before heading our separate ways but in an hour so we managed to clock up 8+ singing Skylarks, 4+ “Greenland” Wheatears, 15 Linnet, 2 Kestrel, 1 Buzzard, 1 Whitethroat and 1 Little Owl. 

Little Owl

Another Bird Blog will be back soon from somewhere warm and sunny. Don’t miss it.

Staying Cool But A Nest Or Two

This morning was spent looking for migrant birds but some of those I found were not the normal species associated with late April. 

There was another frost and a layer of ice on the car, not ideal conditions for early morning warblers or little brown jobs so I decided to leave the bush bashing until the air warmed and motored to Conder Green instead. Later I learnt that snow fell in Blackburn, not a million miles from here.

The high tides of winter and spring have filled the pool again so that there’s still very little mud and too much water to attract any numbers of waders. So most if not all of the morning’s waders and wildfowl were in the tidal channels or on the marsh. 

There was a good selection without an enormous number by way of 4 Common Sandpiper, 2 Greenshank, 2 Snipe, 1 Spotted Redshank, 2 Teal, 1 Wigeon, 10 Tufted Duck and 1 Little Egret. Through April there has been something of a passage of Tufted Ducks at Conder Green but now many have departed until Autumn. 

Tufted Duck

At Fluke Hall car park were 3 Whitethroats, 2 males in song and a much quieter female, the female already the object of attention in being chased around the hedgerow by one the males. Just then a Corn Bunting called but when I looked across a party of Corn Buntings had sat up on bramble and tall grass stems. In fact there were 14 or 15 of them but within a few seconds they departed north over the sea wall and lost to view, an unusual bit of Corn Bunting migration so late in April. But then it has been a cool, slow and rather delayed start to summer with yet more wind and rain to come we are told. 

There was also a noticeable increase in Wood Pigeons compared to recent days, in particular a huge flock of about 550+ feeding enthusiastically in a few recently ploughed fields. When once or twice they all took flight the scene resembled one of wintertime and not Spring. Woodpigeons are known to move around in large flocks in winter in search of food and it’s probably fair to say that these were migrants of sorts but wherever they’re going they will be somewhat late in setting up home. 

Woodpigeon

The pair of Mistle Thrush at Fluke Hall have been around all winter but now I’ve found the nest - high on the bough of a beech tree where the female sits on the eggs while the male mostly keeps out of the way. 

Mistle Thrush

Also in or about the wood, 2 Blackcap, 2 Chiffchaff, 2 Greeenfinch, 2 Kestrel, 2 Buzzard, 2 Stock Dove, 1 Jay, 1 Great-spotted Woodpecker and lots of Blackbirds. Two Greylags continue to frequent the pool within the wood where they conduct themselves in a very quiet and unobtrusive manner, and I’m sure they are “at it”. 

Blackbird

A walk along the sea wall required a jacket in the cool, some might say cold westerly breeze, where a single Wheatear, a few Linnets and singing Skylarks proved to be the only passerines. I tracked down one of the pairs of Skylarks and found their nest of three eggs. 

Skylark

Skylark nest

There are more cool birds soon from Another Bird Blog. Don’t miss them.

Linking today to Stewart's World Bird Wednesday.

Bee Eaters And More

Following a lack of visits for 10 days or more I met up with Andy at Oakenclough this morning for a visit to our ringing site. Andy was in Gibraltar for a week whilst I’d stuck to birding around Pilling and so missed out on visiting Oakenclough. And all of this this during a period when a number of migratory arrivals were probable everywhere! Such are the choices of birders who cannot be in two places at once. 

I was looking forward to hearing about Andy’s ringing and birding trip to Gibraltar and to see his pictures of exotica like Bee Eater, Black Stork, Serin, Black Kite and Bonelli’s Warbler, to name but a few. After being suitably impressed with his bird portraits I could but hope that one day in the future I might see a Bee Eater in the hand. Maybe soon when I holiday in Menorca? 

Bee Eater

This morning lacked colourful Mediterranean birds but there were good numbers of the more mundane green/yellow Willow Warblers on view, some of which may well have seen Gibraltar en route to Lancashire. Andy did mention that in amongst the exciting species Willow Warblers had been the most numerous bird of the previous week! 

By the end of our short session the count was of a minimum of 15 singing males. Female Willow Warblers usually arrive a number of days after males and it is only from then onwards that the competition for mates and nesting sites turns more serious. We supposed that very few females were around due to the male songsters remaining high in the trees in the small piece of woodland already adopted by each one. We barely saw a Willow Warbler near the ground, the mandatory position for the mainly female construction of a nest. 

There was little else in the way of warbler activity this morning apart from a single Blackcap. The Blackcap found our nets as did 3 Lesser Redpolls and 3 Willow Warblers. One of the female redpolls had a distinctive brood patch which signified breeding condition and a probable nest nearby. 

 Willow Warbler

Blackcap

Lesser Redpoll

We received details of a Lesser Redpoll caught here at Oakenclough last month on 14th March, a bird bearing the ring D618555, so not a ring from our own stock. The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) tell us the bird was ringed in Market Drayton, Shropshire on 2nd February 2014, the previous winter to our own capture. This is a duration of 405 days and the distance between the two sites of 116 km. 

The details are rather inconclusive except that we caught D618555 during a period of Spring migration 2015 when Lesser Redpolls were heading north in good numbers. Whether numbers of Lesser Redpolls spend winters in Shropshire I do not know for sure, but suspect not. This individual may have been on migration from south of Shropshire in February 2014. 

“A” marks Oakenclough and “B” Market Drayton. 

Lesser Redpoll - Shropshire to Lancashire

Otherwise birding: 6+ Lesser Redpoll, 2 Grey Wagtail, 2 Common Sandpiper, 2 Pied Wagtail, 1 Great-spotted Woodpecker, 1 Swallow plus several each of Curlew, Oystercatcher and Lapwing. 

There’s more local birding soon from Another Bird Blog where anything is possible. Even Bee Eaters are not unheard of in Lancashire, so stay tuned.

Linking today to Anni's Birding Blog.

Better Late Than Never

Here’s the problem - if I don’t get out for local patch birding I get withdrawal symptoms. This morning I had to stay home to await a delivery and phone calls which didn’t arrive at the promised time. There followed a trip to the Post Office with a package to weigh and then post. Such time consuming non-essentials of life are specifically designed to frustrate and annoy the avid birder and prevent them from discovering the rare bird which will propel them to the summit of the Best Birders League instead of languishing in the lower divisions as I do. 

So Pilling it was, albeit late in the day. Some joy ensued with the first Lapwing chicks of the year, two bundles of fluff which escaped the plough of recent days. So fresh were the chicks they were too small for a ring and in any case the farmer was still busy nearby in churning up the remainder of the field and ploughing in unseen nests. I’ll go back in a day or two and hopefully relocate the two youngsters. Looking on the bright side, and also judging by the furrows, we are in for a crop of vegetables to eat rather than acres of silage. 

Lapwing

Pilling ploughed

On the unploughed bits of land remains a flock of 130+ Linnets as well as a number of Lapwings, Oystercatchers and Redshanks with breeding intent; to be fair the farmer is leaving a reasonable amount of uncultivated margin for both waders and Skylarks to nest. A single Golden Plover along the top of the furrows rather woke me up as it silently flew off but it turned out not to be a Dotterel.

The Stoat was around again, this time slinking along the margins of the same field I saw it in a few days ago and up to no good I’m sure when there are all those ground nesting birds and fresh eggs to take. 

Skylark

Oystercatcher

Four Whimbrel flew over calling and heading south - a strange direction for Iceland bound migrants. As of recent clear days the woodland was quietish, enlivened by 2 soaring Buzzards, 1 hovering Kestrel, 1 scratchy Whitethroat and 2 liquid Blackcap. 

I drove to Cockerham for a look at one of the very few Sand Martin colonies in this part of coastal Lancashire. Cockerham is a small village and civil parish a mile or so north of Pilling. The village (population c650) is located close to the River Cocker at the estuary of the River Lune. 

There have been a few pairs of Sand Martins on Chris and Margaret’s farm for a number of years, but following a period of gravel extraction about three years ago the colony of martins increased greatly. Today there was probably in excess of 40 Sand Martins with much activity around last year’s nest holes in the quarry face and pretty soon the newly arrived martins will be laying their first eggs. 

Sand Martin- Andy Morffew / Foter / CC BY-ND 

The gravel extraction left a good sized water area and associated margins where Lapwings and Oystercatchers breed, and in some years Little Ringed Plover. There were no tiny plovers today just 20 or so very noisy Oystercatcher, 8 Lapwing, 1 Canada Goose and 8/10 Pied Wagtails. A Wheatear took advantage of farm machinery as a lookout post, and along the same track were a good number of Linnets, Goldfinches and Tree Sparrows. 

Wheatear

It wasn’t a bad few hours after all, entertaining and productive, even for one who likes to be out at the crack of dawn, but I won’t make a habit of late starts.

Linking today to Eileen's Saturday Blog and Run-a-Roundranch.