Category: Birds

One evening in late November, I was once again, hoping to catch sight of the Starling murmurations that occur over the Broad Lane balancing pond. As mentioned in a previous, issue the local Starlings and their continental counterparts will often roost in the reed bed there, last winter there were literally thousands. At the time of writing, just a few hundred are roosting, but that can change on a wind as arrivals from Europe turn up when the weather changes. Anyway, reader Alison waved as she passed the pond on her dog walk. I later heard that she’d seen a scuffle between a Kestrel and a Barn Owl close to the Fen Bridge. Typical, I thought, for me to miss the avian action.

Barn Owl over a barn at Rampton

Anyway, there are quite a few barn owls to be seen on the outskirts of the village. These dusk hunters of silent flight will range along the Cottenham Lode (a fenland drain), across rough fields, and alongside roads. Often you will see a ghostly Barn Owl sidle up alongside hoping to home in on voles and other small rodents turfed out of the undergrowth by the rumbling of tires, even on the fresh tarmac of Beach Road.

There are other owls around; while videoing a starling murmuration over Rampton, I could see a Barn Owl in the field, but could hear a little owl in the hedge in which the starlings were hoping to roost. There was little chance that they would settle until the owls had departed, which eventually they did. The whole point of the murmuration, aside from the socialising, is to reduce the risk to the individual bird of being picked off by a bird of prey, such as a peregrine falcon, or perhaps an owl. The Little Owl is not a native species, it was introduced to the British Isles in the nineteenth century.

Rescued Tawny Owl at Fen Edge Festival 2019

Meanwhile, there are places around the village, such as The Green where there are tawny owls to be heard, and if you’re very lucky and keen-eyed, perhaps even seen. Like the Barn Owl the Tawny Owl has very dark eyes, which help it see even in low light, and coupled with its excellent directional hearing make it a mean night hunter. Tawnies pair up from about the age of one year and stick together, monogamously. Famously, their call – the stereotypical “too-wit, woo-ooh” is two birds calling almost in the style of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. The female calls “too-wit” and the male responds by wooing her.

There are a few Long-eared Owls across East Anglia and the East Midlands although numbers are greater further north. Some readers may have been lucky to catch a glimpse of a vagrant Snowy Owl on the north Norfolk coast at RSPB Snettisham in March 2018. You have a greater chance of seeing the Short-eared Owl, however. This migratory species flies in from Scandinavia, Russia, Iceland, and we are lucky enough to have a patch of land not too far away where they can be seen hunting at dusk. Last winter, half a dozen or so “shorties” were often seen hunting at NT Burwell Fen and Tubney Fen, which are accessible by road from Burwell or on foot or cycling from Wicken Fen.

One of last winter’s shorties suffered a wing injury, and spent the summer on the Fen; it can still fly well, but presumably it felt that a trip back to the Steppes was not on the cards. As I write, this I have visited the fen twice this winter to see the shorties and reckon that there are four or so present. The numbers may have risen by the time you read this in early February. But, if you are reading it later in the year, beyond March, early April, you will have probably missed the chance to see them until next winter. Birding is very much about chance, timing, weather, and plain-old luck.

TL:DR – In the late autumn, Short-eared Owls often migrate from regions far to the north and reach sites, such as NT Burwell Fen in Cambridgeshire where they will spend the winter, hunting small mammals in scrubby fenland.

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Here’s looking at youA frosty start to the day, clear skies, little wind, would that be perfect weather for hunting Short-eared Owls at NT Burwell Fen, I wondered. Did a few chores, made a coffee, drove the bumpy ride to the reach bridge parking at the back of the fen. Another quick snap of the 2D sculpture there that looks like a rendition of the weirdest “distracted boyfriend” meme ever.

Too early for Shorties at the time I arrived so a short walk along the bank top that parallels Reach Lode. Lots of waterfowl and water birds and the water, as you’d expect (Mallard, Shoveller, Coot, Wigeon, Shelduck, Black-headed Gull, Cormorants, usual feathery fodder). A few large flocks spooked every now and then by a couple Marsh Harriers.

A tramp back to the bridge and then a walk across to our usual owl-spotting spot in the middle of the Fen. Hard-standing fossil of an old farm, with a drainage ditch and fencing to hem in the cattle and the Konik ponies, the deer don’t care about fences, of course.

Chatted to a couple who put me to shame with their endurance, my having arrived at about 12h15, they’d already been there more than four hours. They’d seen a single Barn Owl but no early morning shorties. The misidentified some Stonechats as Reed Bunts and endless contradicted by spartan field knowledge of the Shorties that spend the winters on this Fen. I told them that they’d be “up” no sooner than about an hour before sunset, they were insistent that people “on Facebook” had photographed them for weeks at all times of day. It wasn’t to be. So, with ever-patient labrador in tow, we all of us ended up snapping the cattle to pass the time.

I also got a bizarre shot of some ghost Mallard where I’d accidentally put my camera into HDR mode, which never works well with moving subjects as the camera is programmed to take three bracketed shots quickly, but not instantaneously. One is exposed for the blacks, one the highlights, and one for the mid-tones. The camera combines all three and discards areas that are over or underexposed to create the high dynamic range of the final photo, usually.

The quality of light was lovely, the only “clouds” in tke sky were the loop-de-loop smoke trails of a wannabe Biggles, the only sound aside from his propellor a distant pheasant shoot I’d passed on the bumpy ride in that was still ongoing. Fowl play, you might say.

No Shorties yet, but lots of cameras on tripods pointed at the scrub expectantly. Word on the Fen was that there were five over-wintering here. We’d seen three, possibly four, on our last visit, but the light had been low and the photo quality similar. Today it would be different, just needed the owls to show.

Fairly sure I was first to spot the first, at 15h08, which true to my prediction was an hour before sunset, give or take ten minutes. So, here it is, first of probably five individual Short-eared Owls that I’d seen on the Fen by the time I left, just after sunset.

There are five on the Fen, I cannot be sure if I saw all five, maybe just four of them, but definitely four. Two tussled with a Marsh Harrier and I saw a final one as I headed for the Sun.

The sun had almost gone when I looked back over the Fen after a chat with an old birder who didn’t seem to need binoculars nor ‘scope, and definitely didn’t have a camera. The light was fading fast and the resulting photo was at high ISO and so is very noisy, but it’s a record, so there.

 

Second trip of the year to the North Norfolk coast. A much brisker, sunnier day than our New Year’s Day trip to RSPB Titchwell. Hoped to see Shorelarks, but apparently there are only five around the beach at Holkham at the moment and even the hardiest of birders who spent all day waiting yesterday saw none. We did, however, see 60 or so Snow Buntings, Plectrophenax nivalis.

The Snow Bunting is a relatively chunky bunting and in winter has what can only be described as a snowy kind of winter camouflage plumage. It takes on a sandy/buff appearance with more mottling of the males’ upperparts than its black and white of summer.

The “Snow Bunt” breeds in the Arctic regions from Scandinavia to Alaska, Canada, and Greenland and heads south in winter. They are an Amber species in the UK as they are quite scarce here in terms of breeding. So, very nice to see a relatively large number of 60 or so picking over the scrub on Holkham Beach.

Sighted today: Black-headed Gull, Brent Goose, Common Buzzard, Common Gull, Common Scoter, Cormorant, Grey Heron, Greylag Goose, Herring Gull, Kestrel, Lapwing, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Linnet, Mallard, Meadow Pipit, Oystercatcher, Peregrine, Pied Wagtail, Red Kite, Redshank, Robin, Rock Pipit, Sanderling, Stock Dove, Stonechat, Velvet Scoter, Wigeon, Wood Pigeon, Snow Bunting…

Once again, we partied afternoon and early evening on New Year’s Eve 2019 and avoided the midnight shenanigans and so we were sufficiently compos mentis to drive to RSPB Titchwell in North Norfolk for the second year running. Last year, we ticked 54 bird species, although the rangers reported 103. This year we ticked 64, and the rangers saw 90-something.

Avocet, Blackbird, Black-headed Gull, Bar-tailed Godwit, Black-tailed Godwit, Blue Tit, Brent Goose, Buzzard, Chaffinch, Coal Tit, Collared Dove, Coot, Cormorant, Carrion Crow, Dunlin, Dunnock, Gadwall, Golden Plover, Great Black-backed Gull, Great Tit, Great-crested Grebe, Greenfinch, Greenshank, Grey Heron, Grey Plover, Greylag Goose, Herring Gull, Jackdaw, Kestrel, Knot, Lapwing, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Little Egret, Little Grebe, Long-tailed Tit, Magpie, Mallard, Marsh Harrier, Meadow Pipit, Moorhen, Mute Swan, Oystercatcher, Pheasant, Pink-footed Goose, Pintail, Redshank, Ringed Plover, Robin, Rook, Sanderling, Scoter, Shelduck, Shoveller, Sparrowhawk, Spotted Redshank, Starling, Stock Dove, Teal, Tufted Duck, Turnstone, Water Rail, Wigeon, Wood Pigeon, Wren.

Many people are well aware that the British Isles welcomes a lot of summer visitors – the cuckoos, swifts, swallows, house martins, and many other migratory species that head north in the spring from their season in the sub-Saharan sun. But, there are also visitors in the winter, birds that head south from the cold to catch a little of the warmth of the Gulf Stream. As far as we know many birds adopted migratory behaviour in response to the Ice Age and having evolved to cope with that are locked into that pattern, at least until climate changes in a significant way once more.

I wrote about a winter visitor that reaches our shores some time ago in this newsletter – the starlings. While we have lots of starlings all year round, those vast flocks we know as murmurations occur when the starling forces are bolstered by visitors. If you head out to the local nature reserves and even just the outskirts of the villages you are likely to see many other visitors among the flocks of gulls and crows, for instance. Among the grey and white clouds of the more well-known gulls, there might be something a little less common, an ivory gull for instance or perhaps even a glaucous gull and we did have a hooded crow on the outskirts of our village, Cottenham, last year.

Among the other winter visitors that turn up in greater numbers are a couple of thrush-type species, related to the blackbird and the song thrush, namely the fieldfare and the redwing. Both species will make a winter home on farmland and use the hedgerows and bordering trees and woodland. Both eat a lot of berries and will attempt to out-compete the resident blackbirds and thrushes for supplies. Should the weather turn foul, as happened when we had the so-called “Beast from the East”.

These birds headed for the relative shelter of our gardens and began stripping firethorn and rowan trees of any remaining berries. Another reason not to be too tidy in pruning back your bushes in the autumn. Incidentally, there were still fieldfares to be seen in the trees that border the allotments and the recreation ground as recently as April, despite most winter visitors having departed for their northern summer homes.

Of course, having some vast wet spaces and in being so close to Norfolk, we have plenty of waterfowl visitors in winter – geese, ducks, swans. These head south from Scandinavia and elsewhere to take advantage of the relative warmth here when the chills really do set in up north. Many readers will no doubt have visited WWT Welney to see the large numbers of Whooper and Bewick’s swans and other waterfowl that arrive each autumn there.

Among the less common birds you might see around the village and in local woodland that turn up for the winter are goldcrests. This species holds joint first place with the firecrest as our smallest bird species, far smaller than the resident wren, which is our most common resident. That said, you can see goldcrests and firecrests at any time of year.

Another relative rarity to watch out for, especially around trading estates and supermarket car parks where there are often lots of berry-laden trees is the waxwing. This elegant and bohemian species spends the summer in the far north, but is peripatetic, rather than migratory, in the winter, and often turns up unannounced in large flocks to those berry-rich sites when food is short in the north. Watch out for huddles of people in olive green and beige with thinly insulated hats hanging around The Beehive Centre or the guided busway parking areas with binoculars and ‘scopes pointing them hopefully at rowan trees and the like and you might just spot an elegant visitor.

Mistle Thrush (Turdus viscivorus) in our mistletoe-infected rowan tree. I was poking the camera out of the bedroom window hoping to catch sight of the Goldcrest (Regulus regulus) calling from our bushes when a male Blackbird and this Mistle Thrush had an altercation and the Thrush ended up perched in the tree right in front of me.

He’s been around for a couple of weeks now, but spends his time hiding in a neighbour’s tree which has lots of berries and lots more female mistletoe (with berries), our rowan has already had all of its offspring predated by birds and the mistletoe growing on our  tree, as you can presumably see, is male, so no berries.

We are assuming it’s the same Mistle Thrush that roosted in their tree last winter; life expectancy is three years, but can be much longer, and, of course, much shorter. They are a resident species and territorial they will scream their cackling call and fend off other thrush-type birds that try to feed on their berries. We hadn’t seen nor heard the bird since last winter, so presumably it was active elsewhere in the area through Spring and Summer and into the Autumn.

Aside from the more raucous call and song that sets it apart from the dulcet tones of the Song Thrush and even the Blackbird, the bold, brown spots on the cream breast of the Mistle Thrush do not have the “heart” or “arrow” shape of those on Song Thrush. The BTO has a nice video describing the distinctions between Song and Mistle.

For those of you intrigued by such things, you might like to know that the scale of the Starling flock murmurating into the reed bed at the Broad Lane balancing pond in Cottenham has increased by an order of magnitude since I last took a look.

On my first visit this year, I estimated 3-4 flocks of 200-300 birds. This evening just as the sunset, there were 3-4 much bigger flocks each of three times those number and several smaller flocks of 100+ thereafter. Estimate the total number of birds roosting there at 2000-3000 at the moment, which is about 1000-1500 fewer than the peak last winter. More will arrive from Europe as winter chills come on I suspect.

At the moment, they’re bedding down in quick succession. If there were raptors around, mainly Peregrine falcons or perhaps owls, they’d murmurate longer before going to roost to avoid being taken on the wing or caught just before hitting their reed bed.

We went looking for Short-eared Owls again at Burwell Fen having heard from a friend that there were “twitchers” huddled together spotting them earlier in the week. We have been to the Fen a few times this year, but not seen the owls since February. However, I learn from local birding expert Hedley Wright that one of last winter’s “flock” (we had more than six there last Winter) had spent its summer on the Fen too presumably having decided not to return to Scandinavia for the breeding season for some reason.

Anyway, we saw a Kingfisher dart back and forth along the almost dry ditch in the middle of the Fen and then Mrs Sciencebase was first to spot one in the distance close to the electric power installation on the edge of Burwell. And, then a second. There were several bird photographers around, but I wouldn’t describe any of them as “twitchers” and maybe not even “birders” as such, there is a distinction (see my birding glossary).

There have been sightings of more than one SEO since the end of October 2019, and yesterday (10th November), it seemed that there were perhaps three or maybe four. We never saw two at a time, but were aware of two in the air while another was out of sight in the scrub a few hundred metres in front of us.

Two of the owls were forced aloft by Rooks at different times. Rooks really don’t like raptors and owls in their territory and will harangue, harry, and harass them endlessly to get them to move on. One of the SEOs has a very apparent feather injury to one wing.

 

 

I’ve mentioned Burwell and Tubney Fens previously, depending how you approach them, they are the back end of the NT Wicken Fen area. The semi-feral Konik ponies (Equus ferus caballus) of Polish descent there along with longhorn cattle (Bos primigenius) and European roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), are natural managers of the scrub.

The area is almost perfect roosting and hunting for Short-eared Owls, which have once again returned from Scandinavia to the Fen for their winter break.

There were three to four showing quite well and being harried and harangued by Rooks on the wing high above the fen.

I don’t think any of the clutch of photographers (Homo sapiens phoographiensis) photographing the birds got any particularly close views, but there’s the rest of the winter to try before the birds fly back to their summer breeding grounds next March.

Pleasant enough evening and as we didn’t get to North Norfolk as originally planned to see the Red Knot on the high tide, I headed to our local housing estate balancing pond hoping to see a few Starlings bedding down at dusk in the reed beds there. And, they were, not quite murmuration numbers as there had been at this time last year, maybe half a dozen small flocks of 25-50 birds.