TL:DR – The Bearded Reedling, Panurus biarmicus, was formerly known as the Bearded Tit. It is not a type of tit, although it has a passing resemblance to the Long-tailed Tit. It is the only species in the genus Panurus.
Lots of Beardies, Bearded Reedlings, Panurus biarmicus, at the Earith side of RSPB Ouse Fen, the site represents a nicely growing colony of the species.
Bearded Reedlings
I counted at least a couple of dozen today. I’d first heard a lot of pew-pewing (or ping-pinging) in the reeds close to the car park. The sound is reminiscent of a low-power sci-fi B-movie laser gun or a twee little ringing bell. But, when there are lots firing off it once it’s quite wonderful, like a live-action video game in the reed beds.
Beardie is an affectionate nickname for the Bearded Reedling, formerly known as the Bearded Tit. It was misnamed on account of its passing resemblance in shape to the Long-tailed Tit, but the two species are not related. Indeed, the Bearded Reedling is doubly misnamed as those black markings on the male’s face might be, at a stretch, perceived as sideburns or moustaches, but definitely not a beard. But, while changing from tit to reedling is happening, it’s unlikely to lose its beard.
Meanwhile, taxonomically, the species (scientifically Panurus biarmicus) is the only one worldwide in the Panurus genus. A truly unique little bird living almost on our doorsteps…well…if your doorstep is lined with reeds, that is.
Mrs Sciencebase and myself were celebrating a significant wedding anniversary last week and so took a trip to Dorset. I didn’t carry a proper landscape lens with my birding camera, so these are just a load of highly processed phone snaps.
Britain’s most photographed pubView from North Hill, CorfeBankes Arms, Corfe Castle, less photographed, but just as goodView of Corfe from Corfe CastleThrough, the round, square, arched windowCorfe CastleCorfe Castle DragonCorfe CastleCorfe Castle StationSignals at Corfe Castle StationCorfe Castle StationCorfe Castle StationView of Corfe from North HillGolden Hour TreeThatched Cottage, Corfe CastleAnti-tank dragon’s teeth, StudlandDurdle DoorMan O’War BeachDurdle DoorFort Henry, StudlandOld Harry RocksOld Harry RocksPoole HarbourStatue of Robert Baden-Powell, Poole HarbourPub we didn’t visitBarber shop I didn’t useBuddhist shop we didn’t shop inPoole BoatPoole town centreView of Poole Harbour from RSPB ArneCliff carvings, Knoll Beach, StudlandSwanageChippy we didn’t use, SwanageSwanage PierSwanageDiesel locomotive, SwanageLocomotives, SwanageTravel inspiration, StudlandConvenient advice for gents
TL:DR – We finally caught up with White-tailed Eagles on a trip to Dorset in September 2022 after seeking them out in various places over the last couple of years.
We took another trip south in September. Stayed some way inland in the historic town of Corfe Castle but couldn’t keep away from the coast and visited RSPB Arne, RSPB Lodmoor, RSPB Radipole Pond, NT Studland, and took a boat trip in Poole Harbour up the Wareham Channel, and a train journey from Corfe to Swanage where we were plagued by Geography Fieldtrips measuring the groynes on the beach.
White-tailed Eagle
RSPB Arne is the English homeland of the Dartford Warbler and plenty of other wildlife, although we saw very little of it on our visit for some reason, apart from some “wild” pigs and distant waders. We also missed, by just a few minutes, a White-tailed Eagle fly-by and also failed to see an Osprey way over the moor towards Corfe itself. We didn’t see any Dartfords there either, that would wait until we got to the moors behind Knoll Beach at Studland.
Dartford Warblers
While at Arne, missing the Osprey and WTE, we spoke to various people one of whom recommended a visit to Lodmoor and Radipole Pond (spotted a Clouded Yellow butterfly there) and those sites were generally much busier in terms of birdlife, Great White Egret, Grey Heron, Oystercatcher (dozens), Avocet (hundreds), Curlew, Black-tailed Godwit, Great Crested Grebe etc.
We were lucky enough to see dozens and dozens of House Martins and Swallows when we climbed East Hill in Corfe. Seemingly, Monday the 19th September was a good day for seeing hundreds of departing migrants. Also towards the top of the hill, a couple of Clouded Yellow butterfly.
Osprey
The 2.5 hour boat-trip with the charity Birds of Poole Harbour was much more of a success than the trip to Arne. We had sightings of Shag and Sandwich Tern within minutes of setting sail and a large flock of Phalacrocorax carbo sinensis, the Chinese Cormorant sub-species, which is much more gregarious than its relative the Common Cormorant.
Phalacrocorax carbo sinensis, “Chinese” Cormorant
One of our incredibly well-informed guides (Paul) spotted an Osprey perched in a dead tree on the non-public edge of RSPB Arne, then the other equally well-informed guide (Liv) spotted a White-tailed Eagle (turned out to be the juvenile female with the radiotag ID G801). She was perched high in a pine tree a little further up the channel. It was hard to get clear photos through the heat haze and at a distance of several hundred metres, but worth a try. When the eagle took to the air, I got a reasonable shot at it before a second (a juvenile male) was sighted.
Dutch Spoonbills (some of 60+) and Oystercatchers (100s)
These eagles and the ospreys are both part of reintroduction programmes on the south coast to bring back raptors to this area that were persecuted to local extinction. Unfortunately, there are rich landowners with a vested interested in breeding and killing millions of game birds (pheasants, grouse etc) for a very lucrative sport. They claim the birds of prey are a threat to their industry. The birds are no threat to this vast industry given the huge numbers of game birds involved. The raptors may eat dead game birds, but the industry dumps most of the birds that are shot for sport. Farmers often protest that eagles could take valuable lambs and counter the awarding of reintroduction licenses, they know full well that this is an incredibly rare happening and it’s just an excuse to protect their game birding, which makes them thousands of pounds per person. Eagles will find plenty of carrion and smaller wild birds to eat without needing to tackle lambs.
Interestingly, the eagles, which we used to think needed high mountain and moor, seem quite happy to live in this coastal zone. So, ultimately, translocation schemes will hopefully be successful. We’re still hoping that the Wild Ken Hill licence will be allowed in North Norfolk.
Sika Deer
Meanwhile, back on the boat, we continued to add many more species of bird to the boat trip list (which ultimately amounted to 48 bird species) before heading back to the harbour and the lagoon on Brownsea Island where 60+ Spoonbills were feeding.
One of two Spoonbill at RSPB Lodmoor, NC4P, ringed in Netherlands in Jun 22
The Spoonbill is another growing success in England where once the bird was eaten to extinction in the 17th Century. There is a breeding colony in North Norfolk, but dozens are now seen in Dorset and Somerset. The flock we saw on Brownsea is mostly comprised of visitors from The Netherlands. Also had a flyover of Dunlin and sighting of at least one Curlew Sandpiper, Redshank, Greenshank and more. We have seen Spoonbill at various times over the years, but usually only one or two together and perhaps three; there were two at Lodmoor even.
We “twitched” the juvenile Red-backed Shrike and first-winter Citrine Wagtail mentioned in BirdGuides that and previous days. The Citrine made an appearance close to where birders told us it would be. There was some initial doubt that it might have been an Eastern Wagtail, but an expert who heard it call, pinned it down to Citrine.
Juvenile Citrine Wagtail
The juvenile Red-backed Shrike took a lot more hunting down as it was on what local birders know as the old dump, not the Lodmoor reserve itself. BirdGuides was pretty close with its grid reference from earlier in the day. There are usually only a couple of breeding pairs of RBS in the UK each year, and it is essentially extinct here. However, a couple of hundred migrants do skirt the east and south coast of the UK on passage. They’re often known as butcher birds because they hang their prey on thorns or even barbed wire to eat later.
By the end of the holiday, we’d almost forgotten about trying to spot Dartford Warbler (we had seen them at Dunwich Heath on a Suffolk trip earlier in the year). However, after visiting Old Harry Rocks, we headed through Studland and up on to the heather and gorse encrusted dunes behind Knoll Beach and saw perhaps half a dozen, as well as numerous Wheatear and Stonechat.
For those who like lists, these are the 74 or so bird species we saw* and noted during our September 2022 week of birding and sightseeing in Dorset:
There were probably a few other species we saw but didn’t note bringing the total for the week to at least 60. Oh, we also saw quite a few Sika Deer and I did a bit of mothing in Corfe with the LepiLED and added L-album Wainscot and Ruddy Streak (Tachystola acroxantha) to my moth life list.
The stunning L-album Wainscot, seen only on the south coast
TL:DR – There are 8 billion people alive on the planet, right now. Eight thousand million humans. That’s 8,000,000,000. It’s a big number.
Arthur C. Clarke famously wrote that “Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.” There have been at least 100 billion humans since the first of our ancestors made that one giant step down from the trees for mankind. However, look to the future now, we’ve only just begun…there will come a point, where total membership of the human race, living and dead, may well be numbered in the trillions.
So…
How special are you? Are you a member of the elite or just one of the great unwashed? If you’re reading this blog, it’s most likely that you’re just like me in many ways, nothing like one in a million, just one of several billion. An average Joe or Joanna Bloggs, as it were.
But, we feel special inside, don’t we? We feel that we’re important, at least to that inner self. We don’t want to be just a number and so we try to fill our lives with activity and stuff – family, friends, jobs, cars, houses, holidays, hobbies…we also grasp at the very few people we perceive as being a little bit more special than us, celebrities, perhaps, great musicians, sportspeople, medal winners, Nobel laureates, world leaders, religious leaders, monarchs even. Achievers.
We grasp at them and feel that we know them through their presence in our world, their place at the top of some great pile. We queue to buy tickets to watch their performances on the pitch and their pitch-perfect playing. We follow their every move and hang on their every word through the lens of media, both social and unsocial…antisocial. We study them and watch in awe as they do their thing, whether that’s shaking it or sharing it.
When they die we mourn them like close friends, like relatives. We feel the loss, we are bereft. Another one of us gone. One of the special ones. When once we queued to see them incarnate, in the living flesh, we might now queue in our thousands to seem them lying in state. We want to feel connected, we want some of their special to magically be infused into our being. We don’t want to be ordinary, we want to be extraordinary, like them.
TL:DR – I’ve been mothing since July 2018. In 2022, I recorded almost 50 new species in my garden. It was just 37 in 2021, and 30 in 2020.
As the year rolls by, the number of new moth species a novice moth-er with 3-4 years experience is likely to see on any given night declines with the arrival of autumn. All the moths I saw in my first season were pretty much new-for-me (NFM), about 127 species. In 2019, lighting up for a longer period, I recorded 125 NFM. 2020 wasn’t a great year not many moths at all after an unseasonably warm and sunny pre-Spring and I recorded just 30 NFM. Similarly, 37 NFM in 2021. However, despite odd weather again in 2022, I’ve recorded 49 NFM in the garden and a dozen with the LepiLED in the New Forest.
Among those NFM species was the fabulous and rather rare Convolvulus Hawk-moth. Several (perhaps 5) have turned up in our garden, perhaps drawn to the nectar of the tobacco plants we grew especially for them.
There are, of course, plenty of autumnal moths and maybe a clutch of those have not been ticked. Then, there are the recent additions to the British List, such as Clancy’s Rustic. Clancy’s Rustic Caradrina kadenii
(Freyer, [1836]) which was first reported by Sean Clancy in Kent in 2002.
One turned up in the garden last night, looking quite fresh. I thought I’d seen one before in 2020 but when I double-checked my records it turned out to have been the rather similar-looking Pale Mottled Willow, which is quite common in my garden. So, at last I can tick one of the rarest of the rare moths, Clancy’s Rustic as NFM.
There are so many “hairstreak” butterflies around the world, members of the Theclinae, with lots of tribes. Indeed, nobody knows for sure how many of these delightful little creatures adorn our world. In the UK, we have just five of them as native species, and they’re quite rare and tend to live and breed only in small pockets.
In 2021, I saw my first Green, Purple, and White-letter Hairstreaks with a little bit of guidance from some butterflyers I’ve mentioned before. In 2022, I made a concerted effort to try and find at least one of the two others that are not too far to drive from home – the Black Hairstreak. I may have glimpsed it in 2021, but I definitely saw and photographed it in a place called Monks Wood one of its rare habitats.
The fifth the Brown Hairstreak has a flying season August-September and we tried to spot it on our final day on the edge of the New Forest where there was plenty of fresh blackthorn (the larval foodplant) but with no luck. A possible trip to nearer Suffolk might have been productive, but it’s probably too late in the year for it now, so Brown HS is going to be a target there for me in 2023 instead.
In the meantime, you can catch up with some of the 50 butterflies and 460 moths I’ve photographed and videoed for Reels on the Sciencebase Instagram
UPDATE: A rather battered Connie turned up on the night of 8th September. That’s three nights we’ve seen the species in the garden, it’s possible there were two on the first occasion (27 August), but just one on 2nd September, and just one last night. Although there’s no way of knowing for sure, there may have been others on those nights and other nights, all may well have been attracted by the scent of the garden tobacco plants we grew specifically to attract this species. All were subsequently drawn to the UV lure.
Usually, one relies on Attenborough and his marvellous army of photographers and researchers to bring the dramatic natural world closer to home. At a push Spring Watch and its ilk can give you a slightly less educational fix with their low-level narrative and low-level cameras. But, nature impinges on even the most urbane of urban gardens at times.
Indeed, we see various butterflies in the garden on warm and sunny summer days – Comma, Painted Lady, Red Admiral, Peacock, Whites (Large and Small), Holly Blue, very occasionally Common Blue and Small Copper, even (once) Marbled White. Hummingbird Hawk-moths turn up during the day and with a little luring, Emperor Moth and various Clearwings. I’ve listed the birds elsewhere on Sciencebase.com, we’ve ticked 30 species in the garden or over it. At night, there are hedgehogs and the Common Frogs are active in and around the pond. Speaking of which various dragonflies and damselflies around the pond and their larvae in it. Also at night, Pipistrelle bats circulating, hunting for moths…oh…moths.
As regular readers will know, surely…I light up with an ultraviolet “lemp” to attract moths and record and photograph them. 459 species so far in four years of mothing. One of the most intriguing and, I feel, exciting visitors was the Convolvulus Hawk-moth. It nectared on Nicotiana (garden tobacco plants) planted specifically to give it something to eat should it turn up. As you know, it did and then again this evening. It’s a huge beast, three or four inches across, it makes a lot of noise whirring and whirling around the garden and clacking into walls and plant pots in between bouts of unfurling its enormous proboscis to feed.
A second, possibly third, one appeared to nectar and then was distracted by the lemp. I got some video of the Convolvulus Hawk-moth just before it dived into the trap. But, I couldn’t leave it there to fester overnight so I lifted the lid to let it out. It soured away into the night sky, like a whirring wraith in a pink and black stripey mohair rollneck. Who needs Sir David, when you’ve got plain David? Hah!
My very good friend Vicki who is a fellow birder, former moth-er, and archaeology enthusiast, suggested I write about photographing wildlife for my next column in our village newsletter. So, putting proverbial pen to paper while inspiration struck, here’s what I came up with in fifteen minutes…
What’s the one thing you definitely need to get a decent wildlife photograph? There are myriad answers that come to mind – an expensive camera, a big zoom lens, a portable hide and a Ghillie suit, a fancy tripod and a Bluetooth shutter release app? Those things might help and you could always put them on your Christmas wishlist, of course. But, probably the most important thing to have is a good supply of patience.
A chance encounter with Tarka
Now, I am not saying I’ve got plenty of that or even that I take decent wildlife photographs, but certainly you can have the most sophisticated (for which generally read: expensive) photographic equipment but if you don’t have a little patience, then it’ll be down to pure luck that you get the shot you hoped for, the one that might win prizes or find a place in a charity calendar, for instance.
Spoonbills – the bird that brings its own cutlery to tea
Occasionally, you might stumble across a sight for sore eyes, such as a kingfisher, a little egret, and a great white egret all feeding on the same patch of the Cottenham Lode, or a grey heron gulping down a whole water vole*, or an otter grooming itself on the bank of the Great River Ouse. You might spot a rare bird of prey, such as a Montagu’s Harrier quartering farmland or even stumble across a congregation of more than 80 common buzzards drawn to a field near Soham at the end of August when the farmer was moving haybails and disturbing countless tasty rodents. Such is life that to get those decent wildlife shots you need luck more than patience and to be in the right place, at the right time, as they say.
In-flight Kingfisher
So, this worrying concept of patience…is there an app for that? Unfortunately not. Aside from the lucky find, if you’re hoping for a decent or even just a half-decent wildlife photograph, you’re going to have to spend quite a bit of time in the great outdoors. Keeping a keen eye on every tree, every hedgerow, every stream, and always with a weather eye to the sky for the airborne wildlife.
But, as we perhaps all learned, time in the great outdoors is a precious commodity, it can’t be replaced with a virtual reality headset, you simply don’t get the sun on your face, the mud on your boots, nor the wind in your hair [present company excepted, Ed.] Regardless of what kit you’re carrying whether high-end smart phone, a professional digital SLR with all the trimmings, or a more cheap and cheerful device, take some time, look around, and get a bit snap happy with the wildlife that’s out there.
*Incidentally, I saw the heron eating the vole but I was nowhere near quick enough to get my camera pointed at the bird and its lunch before the unfortunate mammal was gone.
TL:DR – There was a sudden influx of more than 100 Common Buzzards (Buteo buteo) on farmland after the hay was cut and baled. This species is a type of hawk, not a vulture.
When you get wind of something unusual in the birding world, the temptation is often to head for the site as quickly as possible binoculars slung around your neck and camera in the rucksack on your back. It’s often not the best strategy, birds fly and even if you think you’re being quick off the mark, often the update you saw may be out of date within minutes or hours of it being posted.
Common Buzzard zoomed through the heathaze
So, when I heard there was a large number of Common Buzzard* (Buteo buteo) gathered in a field not 20 minutes’ drive from home, I didn’t jump into the car and slam the pedal to the metal. I waiting until the next update to see how things might be changing over the hours from the first sighting to the next.
The initial report had said there were some 56 Buzzards in a field where the farmer was moving hay bales. The rodent population would have been on the run and it was presumably this that drew the avian crowd, which was apparently joined by a Marsh Harrier, Kestrel, and several Grey Herons. There were several more Buzzards in the adjacent field, apparently. This is an unprecedented number of this species in Cambridgeshire, a county record. Usually, they seem quite solitary and might gather in thermal-circling groups of three or four.
Four of at least 100 Common Buzzards on local farmland
Most I’ve ever seen in one place was directly above our house when there were six riding ever upwards on the thermals. More than sixty in one place seemed bizarre…something you might see in some remote Eastern European valley or flying over Gibraltar Point, perhaps.
Anyway, I still didn’t dash. I was dithering. Worrying about the spiralling cost of diesel, for one thing, but also with the thought that by the time I get to this distant field, Sod’s law would dictate that they would have all departed. The next report came in and said there were perhaps eighty, the one after that told of at least 100 and maybe more in the trees and the fields beyond. So, with a rather pessimistic hat on and in no great rush, I made a coffee in a travel mug, grabbed my camera and binoculars, and headed for the fens.
I pulled up in a layby at the grid reference where all the reports said the Buzzards were to be seen. Pulling on the handbrake I glanced across the fields, they look bare but for grass slowly recovering after successive heatwaves. But for a Kestrel faffing with a vole and a couple of Black-headed Gulls, there seemed not to be much in what had temporarily been Buzzard country…
Not wanting to give in to the disappointment, I got out of the car and focused the binoculars into the middle distance, about 150 to 200 metres, I’d say. First one, then two, three, four Buzzards popped into existence, scattered randomly across the field. As my eyes shifted gear from fenland driving mode to birding mode, I scanned the field and started a more singular count…I got to 26. 26 Common Buzzards, more than I’d ever seen in one place before.
Not bad, a nice number. It was at this point that I trained the bins a little farther into the agricultural distance and realised the field behind and the one to the side had a lot more Buzzards than the nearest. I counted seventy for sure before a flock of them took to the air from the overhead wires, the trees and the hedgerows making a definitive total harder to count. It’s hard to know for sure, one report had indeed said there were 100+, I suspect I saw that many, maybe more this morning. On the other side of the road behind me the fields there had just two or three more Buzzards, another Kestrel, or perhaps the same one relocated, and a Red Kite overhead.
The Common Buzzard is, despite its name, is not particularly common, a few tens of thousands of breeding pairs in the UK. Much maligned and persecuted through ignorance like so many raptors (birds of prey) through the years, there was a time in recent history when you might live a country life and not see one. It’s a protected species now and no longer considered to be under any great threat from those that might have trapped and killed it in years past. The biggest threats today for the bird and pretty much every other species on earth is habitat loss, desertification, and climate change.
Anyway, I was glad a made the effort and used a splash of diesel to see this spectacle. I won’t reveal the location here for obvious reasons, but feel free to email me if you want to see them and wish the birds no harm. I cannot guarantee they’ll still be there by the time you read this, but you never know.
*American readers will be familiar with Buteo species but know them as hawks rather than buzzards. The term buzzard in American English is a colloquial term that oftens refers to the Turkey Vulture, Cathartes aura, which is related to the South American Condor rather than the vultures of Africa, or to the Black Vulture, Coragyps atratus.
Having written about one of the bigger moths we see in the UK, Connie, the migrant Convolvulus Hawk-moth, it only seems fair to give a mention to a micro, as opposed to macro moth. So, here’s the Garden Rose Tortrix.
Garden Rose Tortrix
Now, the macro versus micro label may well have been historically about size. The larger moths being macro, the smaller moths being micro, as you might imagine, but there are so many enormous micro moths and so many tiny macro moths in the world that this really doesn’t hold. In fact, the division is one of evolutionary history, the micro moths being a much older grouping.
The micro grouping includes all of the butterflies, which are essentially just a family of micro moths. The only physiological difference between what British English thinks of as butterflies and moths is that the butterflies cannot unhook their forewings from their hindwings. That’s it. Asking what’s the difference between a butterfly and a moth is like asking what’s the difference between a ladybird and a beetle, or a dog and a mammal…
Anyway, back to today’s micro. This tiny two-toned moth is known as a Garden Rose Tortrix, Acleris variegana. It is one of about 11000 worldwide moths that are members of the tortrix family, the Tortricidae. They’re so-called because their larvae roll themselves up in a leaf to pupate and metamorphose into the winged, adult. The word tortrix has the same etymology as the word torque, the word for a twisting force – torquere, meaning to twist.
