Noc Mig Redux

Months ago, at the beginning of lockdown 1.0 I think I mentioned nocmigging. It’s the nocturnal audio recording and analysis of overnight sounds that might include the calls of migrant birds flying overhead. In April, I set up a microphone and recording software and poked it out of my office window and left it running overnight. In the morning I checked to see what had recorded and sadly it seemed at the time that the software had failed and all I had was the first 20 minutes from when I set things running.

NocMig recording in Audacity Spectrogram view showing the rise of the dawn chorus, 2020-04-07

I had tried a few more times and had managed to record the dawn chorus once or twice, but I didn’t think I had captured a long period of nocturnal noises until I was scanning my hard drive with the aim of deleting unwanted large files to clear some space. I found a 6h45m 4.5 gigabyte audio file. Exciting stuff.

So, now processing with Audacity in spectrogram view with the aim of feeding the output into the nocmig software. Here’s how to configure audacity for a nocmig recording.

Turns out there’s very little to hear other than occasional motorbikes and cars, at least until the first Blackbird of the dawn chorus, followed by Robins, Dunnocks, Wrens, and Wood Pigeons. Nothing was apparent and high-pitched in the spectrogram during the preceding hours. And, an audio scan didn’t even give me muntjac, foxes, nor even cats in the night, possibly one very distant dog barking. It was all very quiet, sadly. Still, there’s always next year.

Natural Highlights of 2020

UPDATE: The news kept getting better and while things are not quite back to normal and never will be, all of those involved are in a much better place than they were at the beginning of October.

It has been a traumatic week an emotional rollercoaster to coin a cliche, you might say. There is a more positive outlook this week than there was this time last week, so I am now doing a little bit of a celebration of life with some of the interesting and intriguing species Mrs Sciencebase and I have seen this year on our rather lockdown-limited excursions.

Short-eared Owl, NT Burwell Fen – January 2020
Pipistrelle Bat day-flying along the edge of Rampton Spinney, February 2020

Female Goosander on The River Tyne near Ryton, March 2020

Emperor Moth, Cottenham – April 2020
Longhorn Moths, Rampton Spinney – April 2020
Wren, Cottenham – April 2020
Kingfisher, Wilburton – April 2020
Common Frogs, Cottenham – May 2020
Mimulus, Cottenham – May 2020
Figure of Eighty moth, Cottenham – May 2020
Curlew, Cley, Norfolk – May 2020
Red Kite, Snettisham – June 2020
Ringlet, Snettisham, Norfolk – June 2020
Brassy Longhorn, Cottenham Lode – June 2020
Corncockle, Cottenham – June 2020
Female Red-footed Falcon, RSPB Fen Drayton – June 2020
Pyramidal Orchid, Les King Wood, Cottenham – June 2020
Sandwich Tern, Hunstanton – July 2020
Fulmar, Hunstanton – July 2020
Spreading Hedge Parsley, Cottenham – July 2020
Silver-washed Fritillary, Hayley Woods, Cambridgeshire – July 2020
Rather blurry shot of a Clouded Yellow at Hayley Woods – August 2020
Bittern, RSPB Ouse Fen – August 2020
Hare, Cottenham Allotments – August 2020
Hobby, Wilburton – August 2020
Dark Crimson Underwing, Cottenham – August 2020
Osprey, Rutland Water – August 2020
Gypsy Moth, Cottenham – August 2020
Little Owl, Les King Wood, Cottenham – August 2020
Clifden Nonpareil, Cottenham – September 2020
Grounded Kestrel, Rampton Spinney – October 2020
First Merveille du Jour of the year - October 2020
First Merveille du Jour of the year – October 2020

Knots taking off and knots landing

As winter encroaches (it’s mid-September and we’re in the middle of an Indian Summer here in East Anglia, ahem), the (Red) Knot, Calidris canutus, start to flock on The Wash and their tidal activity can be seen as the waves break repeatedly and these waders take to to the air in their thousands, if not tens of thousands.

We were treated to a wader wonder on 17th September 2020, at Snettisham Beach on the North Norfolk coast. Patiently we watched the tide rise and the birds feeding and occasionally flocking. At the point there was essentially no visible mud flat remaining, the birds flock and make like a murmuration of starlings, whirling and cavorting in a seemingly coordinated way. Sometimes they head further out to sea, but occasionally a flock will fly overhead and head for the lagoons behind us. It is quite incredible, the sight and the sound.

Difficult to time it just right. It has to be the perfect tide, the right conditions, and you have to be lucky to be there.

Snettisham Sunset’s fine

RSPB Ouse Fen

I’ve mentioned RSPB Ouse Fen a lot over the last few years, it’s a lovely quiet patch of flooded gravel pits, with some woodland, and reedbeds etc, not far from where we live. There are two ways to get to it, one is a lot closer and takes you into the reedbed side of the reserve, the far side is a longer drive and takes you through the more wooded areas. Both are nice, but I tend to favour the reedbed side.

Once bittern – Mrs Sciencebase’s first sighting, about 400m distant

We visited again today, quite a lot of avian activity: Cormorant, Great White Egret, Mute Swan, various ducks and other waterfowl, Snipe (6x), Marsh Harrier (3x), Kestrel (2x), Reed Bunting, Whitethroat, Reed Warbler, Blue Tit, Common Buzzard, Goldfinch (20x), Linnet (10x), Housemartins (24+) and various waders we could hear but didn’t see.

Great White Egret, about 400 metres distant, calling

Highlight for Mrs Sciencebase was her spotting a Bittern, this is the first time she’s ticked that particular heron, I believe, and was quite pleased to have finally seen one, having heard the males calling several times over the years at this and other places. As with that other heron, the egret, there are several obvious puns to be made, which I’ve done to death over the years. I have no egrets and remember once bittern…etc…

Meanwhile, it’s almost the end of August, temperature has been dropping, winds and rain picking up, and yet still seeing swallows, warblers, housemartins, and even an occasional swift that haven’t yet headed south for the winter. And, of course, there are still Osprey chicks at Rutland Water as I reported last week.

The Rutland Water Ospreys

Rutland Water is a reservoir, an artificial lake in the English Midlands. Several years ago, they introduced Osprey chicks from Scotland in a conservation experiment to see whether this migratory raptor would breed in England again. The experiment was rather successful. You can read all the details on the Wildlife Trust’s site, save me repeating it here…

We’ve seen and photographed one of the Ospreys from the road that passes the reservoir having failed to see them from the northside reserve a couple of years ago. But on a visit in August 2020 we took to the hides on the southern shore…just as the rain came.

We saw four Ospreys coming and going, perching, flapping, feeding, flying, on the perches and on the nest. One adult delivered fish to a juvenile (the pair had three chicks this year, I believe and one of them has already headed south to Africa for the winter). We could even see one bathing on the opposite shore.

Unfortunately, taking photographs from 500 metres away through sheets of rain does not make for great wildlife photography. But, this is what I got, shooting with a Canon 7D mark ii fitted with a Sigma 150-600mm lens. All photos were developed in RAW Therapee and then processed and cropped in PaintShop Pro.

Also of note seen from the hides: Snipe, Green Sandpiper, Spotted Flycatcher, Grey Heron, Little Egret, Lapwing, Sedge Warbler, Stonechat, juvenile Common Tern, juvenile Blue Tit.

Hunstanton Fulmars

Recently, I mentioned the presence of an intriguing seabird spotted flying over our very land-locked Cambridgeshire village – the Northern Fulmar, Fulmarus glacialis. The nearest flock of nesting Fulmar is on the layered cliffs that back the North beach at Sunny Hunny, Hunstanton on the North Norfolk coast looking out across The Wash and beyond to St Botolph’s in in the Lincolnshire town of Boston.

Fulmars sit in the Petrels and Shearwaters group of birds, the Procellariiformes meaning the tubenoses. So-called because along the crest of their bill they have a tubular structure that encloses one or two nostrils. They might be confused with gulls but a closer view reveals them to be rather different and even at a distance their stiff-winged flight is a giveaway.

Fulmar flying off Hunstanton Cliffs
Sandwich Tern taking a dive at Hunstanton, one of dozens
In for the kill
Lots of Swifts over the cliffs, making flying pecks at the limestone
Hunstanton cliffs
Wreck of the trawler The Sheraton (launched 1907) at Hunstanton…the vessel was a WWII patrol vessel, ultimately wrecked in 1947.

Red-footed Falcon

The red-footed falcon, Falco vespertinus, is usually found in eastern Europe and Asia but its numbers are falling because of habitat loss (what a surprise) and hunting (ditto). It is usually migrates south to Africa in the Winter. Occasionally vagrants are seen in western Europe in the summer.

Interestingly, one has been hanging around this last week or so at RSPB Fen Drayton, which is close to a village not far from us here in Cottenham. It’s apparently a first-year female so obviously not the same bird that has been seen on the same patch in previous years. We paid a visit to the reserve today and although light levels were poor for photography and the bird was perching on fence posts about 400-500 metres away from the guided busway that runs through the site, we got a good view of her and a few photos for the gallery.

Female Red-footed Falcon at RSPB Fen Drayton, 12 Jun 2020
Even the hare was doing a bit of birding

The whole time we were watching a Cetti’s Warbler was calling noisily from the trees behind us and there was a cuckoo doing its cuckoo thing not much further along the trees parallel to the busway.

Once home again, I heard on the birding grapevine that a Fulmar (a seabird many kilometres away from its normal range, although they do breed in Hunstanton in North Norfolk, apparently) had been seen flying over the woodland that nestles in the farmland between us and our village neighbour. There is also a Marsh Warbler showing nicely at NT Wicken Fen. This species usually spends the summer in Continental Europe (not Iberia, France, nor Italy though) and is another interesting vagrant to this area. One has to wonder whether lockdown and our changing habits and reduced activity over the last few weeks is changing the habits of some of these avian species.

Birds to listen out for during your exercise allowance

While we’re still allowed out of our homes for a period of exercise each day, have a listen out for some of the birds that are singing and calling right now, various migrants and others you may not have noticed above traffic noise even in the countryside previously:

Swallow

Whitethroat

Buzzard

Reed Bunting

Yellowhammer

Kingfisher