Category: Birds

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Just a few shots of the juvenile startling starlings fighting for fatballs. The adults have fledged about eight noisy juveniles into our garden so far, I estimate.

Random selection of Curlew photos I’ve taken over the years, none of them anywhere near Barnard Castle, but some on the coast in the North East, others in Norfolk and Suffolk.

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

People often tell me they don’t know what that bird is they can hear singing or calling but cannot see. There’s an international crowd-sourced project called Xeno Canto that has the calls and songs of almost every bird around the world. But, for local friends and family who might want to know what they can hear in the gardens, here’s a small selection of some of the more likely in England:

Chaffinch

Greenfinch

Robin

Blackbird

Great Tit

Blue Tit

Dunnock

Wood Pigeon

Collared Dove

Starling

House Sparrow

Most of these birds will have a song and a call, some of them seem to improvise or do abbreviated versions of their songs and calls. The sound files you can listen to above are just a starting point for learning how to identify birds you might hear in your garden and then associate them with a visual ID.

As regular Sciencebase readers will be well aware, I often work from my laptop in the garden in the summer time, when the weather is fine…I reach right up and grab a camera sometimes…

Showing well today, a rather bold Wren, Troglodytes troglodytes, munching on grubs and caterpillars from various bushes and not worrying too much about my presence. I’ve been making efforts to let the garden go a bit wild, without it simply turning into a couch grass, thistle, and nestle patch. Lots of wildflower seeds are in, the pond is buzzing. Red Valerian and Green Alkanet are thriving, foxgloves are about to burst into bloom (hopefully). There are bird seed (mixed, sunflower, nyjer) and fat (suet) feeders aplenty.