Frosty Start, Good Catch

After a few false dawns the weather came good this morning. I’d taken the precaution of throwing a lump of old carpet across the windscreen for the predicted frost and just as well because at 0730 the gauge showed −1 °. The first frost of the winter had arrived. 

I met Andy up at Oakenclough where after first topping up the feeding station we set about catching a few birds in the by now bright sunshine. It proved a busy session with barely time to grab a mug of coffee as we processed 73 birds of 12 species. There were 61 new birds plus 12 recaptures from recent weeks. 

61 New birds:- the main object of the exercise the finch family named first: 31 Goldfinch, 7 Chaffinch, 3 Greenfinch, 7 Long-tailed Tit, 2 Coal Tit, 1 Blue Tit, 2 Great Tit, 2 Goldcrest, 1 Dunnock, 2 Blackbird, 2 Robin, 1 Blackcap. 

12 Recaptures, and the Coal Tits keep coming back for more: 8 Coal Tit, 2 Blue Tit, 1 Great Tit, 1 Goldfinch. 

Robin

The Blackcap was something of a surprise as autumn migrants have long gone to be replaced now by small numbers of wintering birds, possibly from the Continent. Not unexpectedly upon examination our bird proved to be a first-winter male. 

Blackcap

When we set this project up little did we expect to be catching good numbers of Goldfinch here in December and at more than 200 metres above sea level. It will be interesting to see how many Goldfinch remain into the usually colder part of the new year. 

Goldfinch

Greenfinch

The two male Blackbirds caught both showed characteristics of Continental birds, the scalloped breast and throat feathers plus an all dark bill. 

Blackbird

During the busy four hour ringing session we managed to see a few other birds - Great-spotted Woodpecker, 2 Pied Wagtail, 1+ Siskin.

There's more soon from Another Bird Blog.

Sunday Survey

A sunny start was promised so I set off early for a run round the usual spots before heading into the hills. With Andy in Brum it was my turn to top up the feeding station in preparation for a much delayed ringing session now planned for Monday. 

Crossing the moss roads I noted a hovering Kestrel and then had tantalising views of a Barn Owl, the bird stopping briefly on a fence post before flying off towards the open-fronted barn where it spends the day. The weather has been very mild of late, so much so that Barn Owls don’t need to spend extra daylight hours hunting for food as they often do in cold and frosty conditions. There was little point in waiting for the owl to reappear so I headed north west towards the coast.  

Barn Owl

I made my way to Glasson Dock where the Kingfisher flew right to left across the dock. On quiet Sunday mornings the Kingfisher often spends time fishing from the ropes and moorings at the far end of the dock and away from the busy road bridge. All the sevens, 77 Tufted Duck was a good count on the yacht basin where 9 Cormorants lined the distant jetties but little else of note. 

 Glasson Dock

Kingfisher

A flying visit to Conder Green gave the customary teens of Little Grebe, 110 Teal, 1 Little Egret, 1 Red-breasted Merganser, 1 Spotted Redshank and 1 Common Sandpiper. Near the café - 1 Pied Wagtail, 1 Reed Bunting, 8 Goldfinch, 1 Meadow Pipit, 15 Chaffinch and 8 Linnet. 

Time waits for no man and now was time to motor into the hills and stock the birds’ pantry. Thirty minutes and a couple roadside Jays later I stopped to survey the feeding station. 

Oakenclough

As already indicated the weather of late is so mild that even up here on the fringes of the Pennines and the Bowland Hills the feeders are still dominated by two essentially lowland birds, Goldfinch and Greenfinch, with lesser numbers of Chaffinch, Coal Tit, Great Tit and Blue Tit. Singles of both Pied Wagtail and Grey Wagtail were close by but unlikely to find their way into the nets. 

 Blue Tit

On the nearby reservoir was a family party of 5 Whooper Swans, two adults and 3 still quite brownish juveniles. 

Whooper Swans

I hope they don’t hit the mist nets tomorrow or whenever we manage a ringing session.

Linking today to Run-A-Round Ranch and Stewart's World Bird Wednesday. 

Birding Black Friday

Thursday morning’s mizzle and drizzle put paid to the planned ringing session and made for a day indoors; the ringing is scheduled for Sunday now. 

Black Friday began more like Grey Friday with yet more dense clouds overhead. I set off birding on the usual circuit hoping to bag a bargain bird or two, spending time rather than money to find what I was looking for. 

I made for Damside, Pilling hoping for geese in the fields but there were none, just the male Kestrel sat at the top of the usual post. 

Kestrel

A stop at Braides Farm found 150 or more Curlews scattered across the several fields. There was a Kestrel here too, this one working the fields and then alongside the distant ditch a Little Egret. 

All seemed fairly quiet at Conder Green with the pools and creek giving the expected 95 Teal, 12 Little Grebe, 8 Wigeon and one each of Spotted Redshank, 1 Common Sandpiper, Little Egret and Grey Heron. Towards the car park I found the recently elusive flock of 30ish Chaffinches feeding on the tide wrack together with 2 Meadow Pipits and then very briefly 15 Linnets. As soon as a car drives along the road the birds scatter in all directions, the Chaffinch to the tree tops, the others back to the marsh. There was a Pied Wagtail and also a Grey Wagtail near the farm entrance. 

Meadow Pipit

Against the odds and the weather forecast the sun suddenly appeared so I went for a walk along the towpath at Glasson Dock. I don’t know the origin of the name Glasson but under certain light conditions the waters in both the yacht basin and the actual dock can be very glass like. 

Glasson Dock

Starling

I stopped near a couple of the local Mute Swans, one with a few battle scars on its bill; I wondered if it had been involved in a Black Friday fight for bargains at the local shops? Just then a Kingfisher sped past and I stopped daydreaming and watched the blue streak disappear towards the dock and out of sight. 

Mute Swan

Along the canal - several Blackbirds, 2 Reed Bunting, 3 Goldfinch, 1 Grey Heron and rather strangely I thought, a single Redwing. 

There was time for a look at Fluke Hall where wader numbers were somewhat reduced with just 220 Lapwing, 18 Redshank, 15 Oystercatcher and a Grey Heron. In the woodland - a Great-spotted Woodpecker and a Nuthatch, and then along the shore 4 Whooper Swans, 65 Shelduck, 4 Skylark and 5 Meadow Pipit. 

Back home it started raining again and after the excitement of Black Friday I’m hoping for a Sunny Weekend.

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

Grey Wednesday Birds

There was more rain and dreary skies today but by 11am the rain eased even though the grey was set in for the day. 

Determined to get some birding in I headed towards Pilling where the geese have been fairly obliging this week. At Damside and Backsands Lane there’s been anything up to 4500 Pink-footed Goose and where two days ago I spotted a lone Barnacle Goose amongst the legions of pinkies. 

Initially today I counted 250 geese, the Barnacle amongst them; when I looked an hour or two later the count had risen to about 2500 with the Barnacle still there. After “grilling” the geese for in total a couple of hours this week the Barnacle Goose is the only oddity discovered although a darvic marked pinkie proved too distant to read the inscription. Whilst the Pink-footed Goose is a very abundant winter visitor to this part of Lancashire, the Barnacle Goose occurs fairly commonly but in very small numbers only. 

Pink-footed Goose

Pink-footed Goose and Barnacle Goose

I set off for Fluke Hall on Monday only to discover the shoot day had changed and saw 4x4s littering the road alongside the flooded fields. Hi-Fly charge £500 for a full day’s shoot at three locations with breakfast, lunch and dinner included in the day’s entertainment. That’s the problem with us tight birders. Although we think nothing of spending four or five grand on camera gear and optics we expect the actual birding provided for free whereas other folk invest money in their chosen pursuit.

Today the same roadside fields were stacked with waders with a count of 650+ Lapwings, 130+ Redshank, 30 Oystercatcher, 14 Curlew and 2 Black-tailed Godwit. The unseen Whooper Swans out on the marsh were very vocal with I suspect many more than the seven I saw flying out that way. In the trees and at the car park - 1 Kestrel, 1 Buzzard, a single Jay and 40+ Twite. 

This autumn’s Twite seem to have split into three or four flocks, spending their time roaming the coast and likely to be encountered anywhere between Knott End and Pilling Lane Ends, a distance of three or four miles. Twite can be hard to locate just feeding quietly on the salt marsh and it’s often only as they fly off in a tight buzzing pack that they are noticed. 

Twite

I drove to Conder and Glasson for a check of the usual spots and to make sure I’d missed nothing in recent days. The Glasson ducks were distant across the basin requiring a scope whereby the apparent “lots” realised a good count of 72 Tufted Duck but only 2 Goldeneye, a single Little Grebe, 8 Cormorant and a lurking Grey Heron. 

Grey Heron

At Conder Green I found the regular Spotted Redshank, failed miserably with Common Sandpipers and a big fat zero but gained 8 Black-tailed Godwit and 25 + Curlew by way of fly arounds. 

Also, 2 Little Egret, 90+ Teal and a little flock of 25+ Chaffinch towards the car park. 

Tomorrow there’s a ringing session with Andy pencilled in for Oakenclough where up in the hills it can often be raining when down below all is fine. 

Fingers crossed for a bright day for a change. 

Barny Start, Busy Day

It was a pretty awful week of weather but maybe a good one to be laid low by a common cold. So apologies for a lack of posts blog readers but we’re back on track now. 

By Sunday morning I was bursting to go birding so set off in the usual direction north. I passed a couple of roadside Kestrels at Head Dyke Lane and Damside, two locations where the birds remain on their year round territories. It was far too dark to stop for a picture and anyway these adult birds are too wary to hang about for slowing vehicles. So I pulled into Braides Farm a mile up the road where there was yet another Kestrel and also a hunting Barn Owl. The light was really poor and I think the pictures below were shot on Auto ISO at 3200, hence the grainy finish

Barn Owl

Barn Owl

 

Barn Owl

The owl wasn’t having much luck hunting the long, wet grass and disappeared out of sight further along the main road. I’d stopped hoping to see the Buzzards and found one of them on a fence post a long way towards the sea wall. There was a Raven too, a couple of Little Egrets, a number of Curlews hidden in the longish grass and 15+ Meadow Pipits harassing the hovering Kestrel. 

At Conder Green I checked the pool, the creeks and “around the bend” - past the Stork and into the car park. Duckers and divers were represented by 105 Teal, 14 Little Grebe, 13 Wigeon, 4 Goldeneye, 2 Goosander, 1 Red-breasted Merganser and 2 Little Egret. 

As of November 23rd is it now autumn or winter? The 1 Common Sandpiper and 1 Spotted Redshank still present might suggest it is autumn so therefore interesting to see if both essentially migrant species overwinter here as they have in past years. Little Brown Jobs - 2 Meadow Pipits, 25+ Chaffinch and 2 Pied Wagtail. 

A peek at Glasson Dock revealed 55 Tufted Duck, 5 Goldeneye and 1 Little Grebe. There was a yacht circuiting the basin which caused a flurry of activity from the Goldeneye causing the 4 males and 1 female to fly out the safety of the estuary. It is wonderful to see this superb duck back for the winter months ahead.

Goldeneye

The light improved slowly so I gave Pilling a shot, stopping to scan through Pink-footed Geese along the busy thoroughfare that is the modern Backsands Lane. My rough and ready count was 2500 but with so many noisy and colourful passers-by I reckoned the geese would not be there long before they sought quieter parts. 

 Pink-footed Geese

Pink-footed Geese

Along the sea wall and the wet fields at Fluke Hall - 55 Whooper Swan, 11 Little Egret, 45+Redshank, 15 Oystercatcher, 9 Curlew, 45 Woodpigeon, 4 Stock Dove and 120 Lapwing. 

With Andy busy at a bird ringing demonstration at the Wildfowl Trust it was my turn to fill the feeders at the ringing station near Oakenclough. It’s been a surprise how many Goldfinch and Greenfinch there are up here in the hills, especially since Goldfinch are supposed to leave us for the winter months. 

There was a continuous flurry of 15-20 Goldfinches activity around the feeders with smaller numbers of Greenfinch, Chaffinch and the ever present Coal Tits. Two Fieldfare fed on the hawthorn berries adjacent to our net rides, so all looks good for a sunny, calm day and a spot of mid-week ringing. 

Goldfinch

Fieldfare

Join Another Bird Blog soon for more busy birding.

Linking today to Run-A-Round Ranch and Stewart's World Bird Wednesday.

Double Day Birds

I found a couple of hours to go birding on Tuesday morning before granddad duties called. There was even a little sun to help the walk along, and fingers crossed, we so far seem to lack the six weeks of promised wind and rain. 

As per last week a Song Thrush was in unseasonal good voice again from the trees at Fluke Hall. Otherwise it seemed pretty quiet apart from the resident and easily found Blackbirds, Great-spotted Woodpecker, Pied Wagtails and a couple of titmice flocks. 

There are some useful flashes of water on the fields adjoining Fluke Hall and it was here I counted a good mix of 35 Redshank, 40+ Lapwing, 45 Oystercatcher, 15 Curlew, 1 Snipe, 40+ Woodpigeon and hundreds of corvids. 

Redshank

Curlew

It’s often the case; the crows and Jackdaws drew my attention to a Sparrowhawk flying off along the sea wall, and although I followed along, there wasn’t much chance of getting close views of the shy raptor. There was a Rock Pipit feeding quietly along the tide wrack and then a little further along an equally quiet Skylark, and out on the marsh 10 Whooper Swans, 80 + Shelduck and 7 Little Egret. 

On and around the wildfowlers’ pools were still hundreds of “mallards”, dozens of Red-legged Partridge, 6 Teal, 3 or more Reed Bunting, 6 + Linnet. 

With a fine morning in prospect Andy and I pencilled in Wednesday for a ringing session near Oakenclough. The session didn’t disappoint with a catch of 35 birds, 23 new plus 12 recaptures from the last few weeks of ringing. 

The 23 new birds comprised of a good selection of species, finches named first: 5 Chaffinch, 5 Goldfinch, 3 Greenfinch, 1 Lesser Redpoll, 4 Blue Tit, 1 Robin, 1 Great Tit, 1 Treecreeper, 1 Goldcrest and 1 Robin. 

Greenfinch

 Chaffinch

Lesser Redpoll

Rather unusually every single recapture proved to be a Coal Tit. Anyone familiar with the feeding habits of Coal Tits will know how the species does not linger at bird tables and feeders but instead spends as little time as possible at a food source, quickly taking an item, flying off with it and then returning again and again. In can be quite exhausting simply watching this puzzling and apparently tiring ritual but it’s all to do with the Coal Tit’s strategy of taking food and storing it for later consumption. 

Coal Tit

Birding while ringing was quiet with the subdued calls of Bullfinch heard on a couple of occasions as well as the single unmistakeable nasal sound of a Brambling soon after first light. Otherwise we both enjoyed the steady session which allowed us time to study and enjoy in full the birds we caught. 

There’s more birding and ringing soon from Another Bird Blog, assuming of course I survive Thursday’s ‘flu jab.

Linking today to Anni's birding.

Friday/Saturday And A Fishy Tale

On Friday the rain didn’t stop until close on 1pm. That left just a couple of hours for birding because by 3pm and five weeks to mid-winter, the sun is well down in the sky. So I made it a short and familiar route along the sea wall at Pilling and then back via the trees at Fluke Hall. 

There was a Reed Bunting calling from the hedgerow and as I pulled on boots still damp from recent days I could hear a Song Thrush in full voice just along the lane. The sudden sun had given us both a lift and I set off with a spring in my step to view the wet fields. 

Reed Bunting

It was a good start with a useful selection of 44 Redshank, 65 Oystercatcher, 6 Curlew, 24 Lapwing, 1 Black-tailed Godwit, 4 Stock Dove and 1 Snipe. Along the sea wall - 8+ Little Egret, 18 Whooper Swan, 2 Mute Swan, 22 Shelduck and a Kestrel. 

I was drawn by intense activity on the distant shore and watched a Peregrine create the usual mass panic amongst the waders and wildfowl. In just a couple of passes the Peregrine had grabbed what looked from a distance to be a Redshank and then landed on the shore with the wader still flailing about. The Peregrine barely had chance to begin its meal before a Great Black-backed Gull arrived with the obvious intention of grabbing a piece of the action. Very quickly the Peregrine gave way to the threats and let the huge gull take over, but not without a protest as it took to the air and dive-bombed the robber several times in the hope the gull might relinquish the prize. No chance, the Black-back quickly swallowed the meal and left the Peregrine to find another. 

Peregrine

It’s almost impossible to follow such fantastic birding and what came next proved something of an anti-climax to a hunting Peregrine in full flow. Fluke Hall wood produced single Nuthatch, Great-spotted Woodpecker, Buzzard, Pied Wagtail and Song Thrush. 

Song Thrush

Saturday dawned with yet more cloud and a trip to Conder and Glasson Dock. 

At Braides Farm were the 2 regular Buzzards on the regular fence near the midden. These two really are the most consistent Buzzards I know of at the moment although it would be foolhardy to try and approach them for a closer picture; they would definitely fly off into the distance. Three or more hours later and on my way back from Conder Green the two were still fence sitting but if anything they were further away and the light worse. 

Buzzard

Conder Green gave a good selection of species on both the pool and the in the creeks. A Kingfisher obliged with a brief fly past as I watched 14 Little Grebe, 2 Goldeneye, 2 Goosander,1 Red-breasted Merganser, 1 Cormorant, 1 Great Crested Grebe and 1 Little Egret fish the pool. There’s obviously good feeding at the pool right now for species that dive for their fishy food. 

Red-breasted Merganser

In the creeks and at the roadside - 1 Ruff, 125 Teal, 15+ Redshank, 3 Pied Wagtail, 3 Goldfinch and 1 Rock Pipit.

Pied Wagtail

At Glasson Dock I was busy noting the 48 Tufted Duck, 4 Goldenye, 2 Grey Heron and a Kingfisher when I spotted an angler landing a Northern Pike or pike (Esox lucius).

I abandoned the birding to see the haul, an 8lb beauty. It proved more of a handful than weighing your average warbler. The chap was in fact a Water Bailiff on a sort of day off and he told me how there had been a lot of poaching in the area lately, especially by East European immigrants who have a taste for eating pike.

No thanks, I'll stick to Pilling Plaice and battered haddock.

 Weighing In

Pike at Glasson Dock

More tales and tails soon from Another Bird Blog. In the meantime linking to Anni's Blog and World Bird Wednesday.