Category: Birds

Yesterday, I spotted a Sandwich Tern, Thalasseus sandvicensis, colloquially known as a Sarnie, patrolling the open river lock at Brownshill Staunch on the Great River Ouse. It flew back and forth over a stretch of about 200 metres for 20 minutes or so before heading off downstream.

The river cuts through the RSPB Ouse Fen nature reserve (I’d walked in from the Over end rather than Needingworth). The lock is currently open to allow flood water to run to the sea, although it’s not flowing as violently as it was about a month ago.

Anyway, I’ve seen several Common Terns fishing on this reserve and a Black Tern fly through one pre-covid summer. But, a Sandwich seemed unusual so I posted my spot to the local patch’s birding social media group when I first saw it. There was a flurry of interest and one member, Richard Thomas, keen to see the bird, headed to the Staunch. Unfortunately, for him the bird had moved on by the time he arrived, and I hadn’t checked back in on the group after my initial update to let them know. He dipped out. My bad.

I later spoke to Richard about the presence of the Sandwich Tern. I had assumed it wasn’t a so-called mega rarity, but still its presence was rather unusual. He told me he thinks they’re almost annual in this area despite their being so obviously coastal feeders and breeders.

“Sandwich Terns are just about annual locally – I’ve seen them on six occasions in 20 years and missed them more times than that,” Richard told me. “They are an absolute pain in the neck because they rarely stay more than a few minutes. I’ve been lucky on four occasions with “fly throughs” (including a flock of seven at the Brownshill Staunch).” He added that they’re annual at Grafham Water reservoir, which isn’t far from here either and a nice birding spot, but again, he says, they were almost invariably fly throughs.

There was a subsequent flurry of activity in the social media group, my having alerted the birders to the presence of the species, and it was quickly tracked down to yet another patch of old gravel pits turned nature reserve, RSPB Fen Drayton. Several birders were excited to know it was there and surprised that it had roosted rather than flying through.

The River Great Ouse empties into The Wash on the north Norfolk coast. It’s worth noting that Brownshill Staunch, which lies on the Greenwich Meridian, is the last stretch of the river that still feels the effects of the tide. In recent weeks, my fellow togger friend Andy Hoy saw a seal sunning itself on the riverbank at this point. It had presumably swum upstream from the coast. Seals are not uncommon on the river, although they’re usually seen further downstream. In the summer of 2023, a female dolphin and two offspring were seen on this stretch of river too.

Richard has the last word in adding that one good tern deserves another, he suggests that Caspian Tern or Roseate Tern would be firsts for the patch should they turn up…

Latest intel on the Sarnie is that it’s feeding on the river near Ferry Lagoon at RSPB Fen Drayton 18h00 on the 18th April. On the 17th it roosted on the islands in the Lagoon.

Having spent a couple of evenings watching Starling murmurations with hundreds of thousands of birds, it was time to seek out some Aves in smaller numbers. I had a quick look in at RSPB Ouse Fen (Earith) as it was bright and sunny on Saturday morning. I was hoping to that there would be a chance that the Cranes would be showing. They weren’t but there was a Great White Egret, as ever, and a Chinese Water Deer, I had only fleeting, distant views of a solitary Marsh Harrier. I headed out to Chain Corner to check on the Whooper Swans, a few on the water and one that flew right over me.

Next on to a patch of flooded farmland, often used for fen skating historically, it had lots of waterfowl, but no Glossy Ibis there this year, despite their having bred not far from here in 2023. Then on to RSPB Berry Fen, which is just a short hop further up the road. Chiffchaff calling, lots of Widgeon whistling but no Black-tailed Godwit, there were several hundred earlier last week, apparently.

There was also a distant piping Redshank and the Merlin app picked up the sound of a Green-winged Teal (it’s perhaps the same American vagrant we’ve seen here over the last two or three years; previously, there has also been a Blue-winged Teal). There had also been Dunlin and similar species there but I couldn’t see them. There was a Sparrowhawk, known affectionately as a Sprawk to birders, that flew right over me and away with its familiar flap-flap-glide flight pattern.

Further round, the flood, a group of Greylag Geese hanging out with some Russian visitors – three White-fronted Geese. This species, Anser albifrons, might better be known as “white-faced” as you can see from the photos. But as is often the wont of naturalists names sometimes don’t quite match the species description.

According to the BTO website: Two races of White-fronted Goose occur in the UK. A. albifrons (the European WfG) breeds in western Russia and is usually about 1000 to 2000 of them are found in the south and east of England in the winter. A. flavirostris breeds in western Greenland (the Greenland WfG) and about 10000-12000 of this subspecies usually spend the winter in the north and west of Britain and Ireland.

UPDATE: I mentioned the murmurations to a choir friend, Sara, and bumped into her and her husband on the Fen. I warned them that, because it was very windy, we might not get such good murmurations as I’d mentioned before. But amazingly, as dusk rolled on, even though it wasn’t a bright sunset, we got some wonderful activity from approximately two-hundred thousand Starlings.

The main activity was very much over the reedbeds among which we stood rather than being half a mile away as occurred on my previous two visits.  This made it hard to get the full murmuration in the camera frame at the level of zoom I had with me. So, the above video was done on my phone as a record.

The birds would whoosh over out heads at about 50 metres altitude. I warned the people around me not to look up with their mouths open and within a few minutes, my choir friend had undergone a full birding initiation with three deposits from above in quick succession. Amazing that I didn’t get splashed as I was standing only a metre or two away from her.

Anyway, the birds gathered in a very dense flock at about 17h50 and bedded down into the vast reedbed in front of the entrance to the reserve. There were undulations for a good ten minutes as it got darker and darker. At one point, a Merlin was reported to have caught one Starling on the wing. The other 199,999 were fine and had roosted down among the reeds by the time we departed.

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At the end of February, I got wind of there being very large numbers of Common Starling murmurating at a local nature reserve – RSPB Ouse Fen (Earith). I got a few photos on an evening visit. There were probably half a million birds, it was quite astonishing. I based my estimate on counts I’ve done of photographs of smaller flocks and extrapolating to the huge patches of sky that were covered with birds on the evening.

I got some nice photos at sunset but my phone video was very smeary and low-res. So, a second visit was essential. Unfortunately, rumour had it that the numbers the next night were smaller, that some of the birds had moved to roosting over the Over side of RSPB Ouse Fen…nevertheless, Mrs Sciencebase and myself headed over to Earith on 3rd March.

It was a much better evening and definitey fewer Starlings, but still many tens of thousands. This time I got some decent video footage of the murmurations.

We also ticked three Short-eared Owls, half a dozen Chinese Water Deer, heard numerous Cetti’s Warbler and saw just one, saw Great White Egret and Grey Heron, heard a couple of Bearded Reedling, and heard one or two booming Bitterns, lots of Geese, Cormorants, Reed Bunting, Widgeon calling, Little Grebe, Water Rail etc. The Cranes that had been displaying south of the car park on the gravel works land flew in to roost about a quarter of a mile in front of us as we watched the starling murmurations. It was a wonderful evening of nature watching.

I played my video to the Merlin app, although we all knew what birds we could hear, but it came back with Coot, Greylag Goose, Canada Goose, Cetti’s Warbler, Ring-necked Pheasant. It didn’t pick up Wigeon, Little Grebe, Reed Bunting, Bearded Reedling, which we had heard.

I opened up one of my stills with a huge flock across it and enlarged it on my laptop screen. I drew a square around a patch that I estimated had 100 birds in it. Double-checked and adjusted the size of the square to make sure it was very close to 100. I measured the square in pixels and then worked out how many such squares would fill the area of the photo filled with birds. It came to about 75000 birds. This assumes average density across the photo. There were probably areas outside the area of the photo that would be around 25000 birds. So, the biggest flock would be around 100000, there were probably about half the same number of birds in the air elsewhere. The previous evening of murmurations I’d have said there were 5-6 such flocks, so guesstimating at least half a million birds going to roost on this patch of the reserve.

I’ve mentioned seeing an unringed White Stork, Ciconia ciconia, in our neighbourhood previously. It is probably a collection escapee and perhaps the same unringed bird that has in previous years been seen in Kent, Essex, and then a couple of years ago in a marina in a village not far from here called Earith and most recently near the flooded farmland on Smithy Fen in Cottenham.

Today, a friend reported that it was on a flood alongside Twentypence Road. Incidentally, it seems unlikely that this bird is a vagrant from continental Europe, but you never know. Some cynical birders would refer to an escapee as a plastic bird.

I headed out on my bike to try and catch sight of it, but it was no longer in the reported field. If only I’d checked my messages before I left, as another friend had sent me a photo from the “new” village ponds where he’d seen it and wanted to know what sort of bird it was. Anyway, Mrs Sciencebase having caught me up on Twentypence Road headed back towards home along the Cottenham Lode and spotted the bird in yet another flooded field. She called me to report in and I cycled up to see it. The sun was out for 20 minutes, so got some reasonable views of the bird standing on a mound of earth behind the old stud and stables.

At this point, we messaged some other friends who we thought might be interested and they headed in and got good views too.

You may have noticed the White Stork’s scientific binomial uses the same word for genus and species, Ciconia ciconia. The word comes from the Latin for stork, so this bird is a Stork stork, you might say. Such a repeat in a name, a tautonym, indicates that this species is the type, or archetype, of the genus. See also: Cygnus cygnus (Whooper Swan), Bufo bufo (Common Toad), Buteo buteo (Common Buzzard), Carduelis carduelis, (European Goldfinch) and, of course, Gorilla gorilla gorilla (Western Lowland Gorilla).

The White Stork was still in the same field this morning although perhaps 200 metres away, hence the lower-quality photo. But, I’m sharing it to give you a sense of size of the stork relative to the Little Egret.

 

In our pursuit of nature’s wonders, we do sometimes leave the county of Cambridgeshire and head into Norfolk, that’s our usual modus operandi. Occasionally though we head east into Suffolk instead. One of the closest nature destinations in that county is the SWT site of Lackford Lakes not far from Bury St Edmunds.

I should point out that we’re quite lucky living near Cambridge. We have some decent wildlife spots close by, we’re centrally placed almost with various reserves within a 20-minute drive. We’re quite central to many others that are no more than 40-50 minutes drive away. We can even get to the Norfolk or Suffolk coast in not much more than an hour if the traffic’s not too heavy.

Anyway, we don’t get to Lackford Lakes as often as we should, but that said it then means that any trip is quite special when we do. And, while I don’t think we’ve seen any bird or insect species there that we haven’t seen in other places over the years, it’s always fun to visit just for those species that we don’t see commonly on our local patch, such as Siskin.

We also saw rabbit and muntjac deer, but here’s a list of the bird species we saw, in a vaguely sorted order. There may have been one or two other gull species:

First Waxwings of the New Year.

There is an ongoing Bohemian Waxwing irruption in the UK with hundreds, if not thousands, of this most northerly species of bird having headed south in search of food over the last couple of months. I heard some flying over our house in November, but finally saw a tiny flock of four feeding on rowan trees outside somebody’s house opposite the primary school in the Cambridgeshire village of Coton. I got some nice photos but it was a dull day, so it was lovely to have a sunny New Year’s Day and to know that some had arrived to feed on rowans next to the railway station in another nearby village, Great Shelford.

We’d actually tried to see them them week before and noted a flock of about 20 in flight heading away from the station. But, on New Year’s Day, there were 11 glowering from the tall trees next to the railway station. They were plucking ivy berries from the plants growing on those trees but because there were so many birders, twitchers, and toggers near their favoured rowans, the birds had to choose their moments carefully to fly in and snatch a few berries in very brief bursts of feeding activity.

Waxwings head south from Scandinavia when the food supply falls short, usually in large numbers when they’ve had a good breeding season, and there’s simply not enough berries to go round. Each bird can eat hundreds of berries each day. Hence the irruptions. I check BirdGuides most days and they are still present in our neck of the woods in good-sized flocks that come and go. Next decent sunny day, I will head out to track down the closest flock. It’d be wonderful if they turned up in our village again (there was one at the start of the year).

A few natural highlights from another year of trying to get a perfect wildlife snap! You can find the photos I took of these highlights littered around the Sciencebase website, in my Imaging Storm galleries, on my Instagram and Mastodon.

We started the year on the North Norfolk coast as usual, with Pink-footed Geese etc at Wells, and Shorelarks, Snow Buntings, and a White-tailed Eagle at Holkham, and various other sightings of avian life elsewhere on our walks.

Soon after we got home there was an alert for a relative rarity and so I saw a couple of Smew at Meadowlane Pits, St Ives. Later that month, Mrs Sciencebase and I went to NT Burwell Fen for the Short-eared Owls. I wrote about processing my SEO photo earlier in the year, you may recall. If I remember rightly there was just one at that time but at least a couple of Barn Owls. There were seven or so when I went back to Burwell Fen in November, also saw one of the pair of Little Owl, and on my way home, a Merlin flew across the footpath in front of me, calling all the while.

Lots of Red Kites still hanging around the A10 dump viewed from Long Drove, Cottenham. They peaked at between 40 and 50 at the end of 2022, although my record count of them among the Long Drove hedgerows and trees behind the dump was 26, which is still amazing for this part of the world and testament to how well this species, once extinct in the UK, is now doing. Last time I checked there were a dozen or so, early December.

Mrs Sciencebase and I had made another visit to Norfolk in February for an early-morning Wader Spectacular at RSPB Snettisham. It was dark and drizzly when we got up, but worth the effort to see the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Knot, countless Oystercatcher, lots of Avocet etc doing their thing as the high tide peaked. Spectacular.

Then, in March, I suffered an injury, which precluded any driving, cycling, or walking for several weeks. Moreover, that injury, coupled with bad weather, did nothing much for my getting outdoors and exploring nature. However, closer to home, our son counted 34 frogs in and around our pond one night and we had lots of frogspawn again this year. Plenty of damselflies used the pond over the summer and some dragonflies too. Incredibly, one morning, stuck in the house, I saw a Spoonbill fly up the street, which was quite astonishing. At the time, there had been reports of one south of us that ended up on a reserve north of us.

I got a decent shot of a Green Hairstreak at the local Les King Wood, which later in the year won me an award. We also had some butterfly species in the back garden that I’ve not seen in the garden before, notably Common Blue and Small Copper.

We saw our first Choughs on a trip to Anglesey in May as well as Guillemots, Fulmars, Kittiwakes, Razorbills, a couple of Puffins and an egg-stealing Raven.

The weather wasn’t great during the main butterfly season, but I still managed to catch sight of Black Hairstreak, Purple Hairstreak, and Purple Emperor again. Ticked just one new butterfly species this year, despite efforts to find one or two others off our local patch, that was Dingy Skipper at Devil’s Dyke, Newmarket. In the previous two butterflying seasons, I’d added 5 or 6 each year to my “tick list” and found new colonies, previously unreported, of a couple of hairstreak species. The White-letter and Purple were again present in Rampton Spinney too.

I headed to Magog Down nature reserve at what I hoped would be the height of the Small Blue butterfly season and saw dozens and dozens of these dainty little creatures. Many of them landed on camera and bag and coat and trousers while I was trying to photograph their activities among the wildflower meadows there! My one or two trips to Trumpington Meadows this year were relatively fruitless. See also the Edwards’ Wood in Dry Drayton, quite a few Marbled White there again this year though.

Mrs Sciencebase and I headed back to North Norfolk for a camping trip in Stiffkey where I did a bit of toilet-block mothing and saw my first Beautiful China-mark and Marbled Brown moths. We also camped much more locally near RSPB Ouse Fen this year and had early morning Bittern but little else. Cambridge Folk Festival this year had us camping under a Horse Chestnut tree and seeing dozens of Horse Chestnut Leaf-miner moth, which I’d seen in the garden once or twice this season.

While we were staying in Stiffkey we headed to Trimingham where Bee-eaters were attempting to nest and breed in a disused quarry. We had good views of them sporadically over the course of an hour or two.

First sighting of an Orange Conch micro moth at Les King Wood. Also saw Small Eggar larval nest, Brampton Wood. Brassy Longhorns once more on Cottenham Lode. It’s such a shame that even after my eco efforts the Environment Agency still feels the need to hack back the lode banks and destroy the flourishing wildflowers on the upper part of the slope so early in the season.

Another owl sighting was a Tawny Owl that flew out in front of us on the High Street in the village as we cycled home at dusk from choir rehearsal one evening. We heard Tawny Owls on the village green, but also in our neighbours’ gardens on several occasions in the late summer and into the autumn. Little Owl also heard occasionally somewhere on the village green after dark.

I took part in a mothing morning at Coton Orchard in the summer, which was very interesting. That did mean I missed out on a butterflying event at Chippenham Fen. So I headed there the day after and ticked Scarlet Tiger moth and Silver Barred (although I only have photographic evidence of the former).

2022 was an irruption year for Clouded Yellow but we had to go overseas, Cala’n Porter on Menorca specifically to see them this year. While we were there we also saw Cleopatra, Swallowtail, and possibly Two-tail Pasha, an African species of Blue butterfly in numbers. Also Pine Processionary moth after the rains of our final night in the hotel. A highlight was perhaps Booted Eagle flying low over our hotel, Egyptian Vultures at a beautiful cove we walked miles to and swam at. There were also lots of Pied Flycatcher, Shrike, and Black Redstart on an early morning walk, and numerous Blue Rock Thrush at the aforementioned cove.

Our next trip involved a short stop at rellies, who were not surprisingly incensed by an Indian Meal Moth infestation in their home. That stopover was on the way to Dorset and Corfe Castle. We saw Sika Deer again at RSPB Arne as well as Osprey, but no White-tailed Eagles there this year. We did catch sight of a lot of Red Squirrels and dozens of Spoonbill on Brownsea Island on a Poole Harbour trip. I also did a bit of mothing in the courtyard garden at our Corfe Castle holiday cottage and recorded my first Autumnal Rustic, Feathered Ranunculus, Heath Rustic, and Horse Chestnut moth there.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch. I’ve recorded well over 8000 moth specimens in our back garden in 2023 of 324 species. 44 of those were new for the garden this year and included some of the most wonderful vernacular names for micro and macro moths: Acer Sober, Alder Signal, Birch Conch, Blackthorn Slender, Breckland Plume, Brindled Shoot, Bud Moth, Bordered Carl, Common Cosmet, Common Slender, Corn Moth, Cypress Groundling, Dark-barred Twist, Dark Pin Knot-horn, Dusky Groundling, Early Oak-piercer, Ermine Knot-horn, Feathered Bright, Fruitlet Mining Tortrix, Fulvous Clothes Moth, Leopard Moth, Lesser Tawny Tubic, Little Grass-veneer, Horse Chestnut Leaf-miner, Mallow Groundling, Marbled Orchard Tortrix, Netted Argent, Northern Deep-brown Dart, Pale-backed Clothes Moth, Pale-streak Grass-veneer, Pine Leaf-mining Moth, Pine Marble, Pointed Groundling, Poplar Kitten, Red-brindled Dwarf, Red Chestnut, Ruddy Flat-body, Small Wainscot, Smoky-barred Marble, Spruce Knot-horn, Strawberry Tortrix, Thatch Groundling etc.

Late November, we knew there were a few Short-eared Owls (perhaps) five at NT Burwell Fen. It’s only 20 minutes drive from here, so we headed out on a Monday lumchtime with a picnic. Got there just after 1pm, 5 or 6 Shorties were up and at it by about 2:30pm. The light was pretty much gone by about 3:15pm. My usual feeling is that these birds seem to be most active about an hour before sunset, but it felt like sunset happened an hour early. The various photographers hanging around and complaining that there were too many people there reminded me of a comment someone made about how it’s “all the bloody tourists” that spoil it for them when they go travelling!

Towards the end of November, I was picking up the sound of an occasional Waxwing flying over the house (audio birding with the Merlin app) and at the same time, the birding reports were heralding the arrival of small flocks reaching England. As I update this, 24th December 2023, I can report that I’ve visited three local spots that have had reports of Waxwing and have seen four feeding on rowan trees opposite Coton primary school. Those flocks have moved on, but others seem to be coming in, there’s plenty of time this winter to catch sight of Waxwing again. I’ve written about the interesting places where you might see Waxwing before. In addition, I know there are lots in the North East, a very large flock of 150+ in Jesmond, numerous on the Norfolk coast, and at least one flock of 70+ in Norwich. There were early reports of flocks of 500+ in Scotland.

Anyway, I’m hoping for a better year in terms of improved mobility in 2024 and given better weather and the opportunity to make the most of the butterfly and birding seasons, I will hopefully have some new wildlife to show you this time next year!

I was chuffed to bits to catch up with these delightful winter visitors not 20 minutes from home. There were just 4 of the 20+ that had been showing an hour or so before I arrived #waxwings.

There are two four flocks local to Cambridge, possibly more. Their preference is for Rowan berries so anywhere you see those, you might see Waxwings. B&Q car parks, bus stations, hospitals etc etc. See my previous post on this specific topic.

Given that it seems we are definitely seeing an irruption winter with sightings all across the UK and some relatively large flocks showing up, chances of catching sight of them are fairly high.

They tend to gather at the tops of tall trees, occasionally calling “trrrreeee, trrrreee, trreeeee” and then dropping down to feast on the berries. They can quickly strip even the most fecund of Rowan trees before moving on, leaving little for the resident blackbirds or any incoming Fieldfares or Redwings (also winter visitors, but thrushes). In the photo below you can perhaps see that the bird’s tongue appears to be barbed. If it is, then that is presumably an adaptation for being able to grab these berries so efficiently. Not how many “ends” on those twigs are missing a berry!

I hadn’t had a chance to see any since early in 2017, which i think was the previous irruption year.

Word on the birding street is that this winter is going to be bright for lovers of one of our winter visitors – the Waxwing, Bombycilla garrulus. This bird is more formally known as the Bohemian Waxwing as opposed to the American bird, the Cedar Waxwing, B. cedrorum. There were quite a few sightings early on in Scotland as these birds that spend the summer much further north than that began to head south.

Sightings in England have been on the rise as of late November, early December 2023. The nearest relatively large flock for me is in Norwich. Too far for me to make that trip just for the birds. However, word went out that a solitary bird was in trees next to the recreation ground in a village just up the road, Stretham. Usually, the flocks tend to congregate in places with large plantings of berry-laden trees, like rowans, such as supermarket car parks, transport hubs and service stations, as I’ve mentioned before.

It wasn’t such a long twitch to head to Stretham from here to have a look for the bird. I scanned every tree in the vicinity, took a long walk around the village scouting out rowans and cherry trees to no avail.

I didn’t see the Waxwing. I dipped out, as birders say (check out my tongue-in-beak birding glossary for definitions of such terms).

However, I had the Merlin app running on my phone all the while for audio birding, you might say. There was the off-chance that it would pick up the Waxwing calling and I might be able to find it. But, unfortunately, I didn’t. I heard various birds as did the app: Carrion Crow, Collared Dove, Common Pheasant, Common Starling, Eurasian Blue Tit, Eurasian Jackdaw, Eurasian Skylark, European Greenfinch, European Robin, Great Tit, House Sparrow, Long-tailed Tit, Meadow Pipit, Redwing, Rook. All of these birds are quite likely in the area.

The app, however, also claimed to have heard a Hooded Crow, but they are rather rare this far south and I haven’t seen one mentioned in Cambridgeshire for several years. So, I suspect it was a misidentified Carrion Crow call.