One swallow doth not a summer make

One swallow doth not a summer make, but there are dozens to be seen around these parts now; have been for a couple of weeks at least. They’re relatively easy to photograph when they’re perched on a telegraph wire staring you out, but not so much when they’re flying over water hunting and drinking.

Barn Swallows (Hirundo rustica) at RSPB Ouse Washes 18th May 2019.

The Brood Parasite

The Brood Parasite…sounds like a schlock horror video nasty from the 1980s only available under the counter from your video shop on a dodgy, copied VHS (no Betamax). Of course, it’s a biological term to describe certain species that allow another species to raise their young as their own. For the duped species, this is a real-life horror story.

European Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus)
European Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus)

On the 18th May, 2019, Mrs Sciencebase and I once more visited RSPB Ouse Washes, near Manea, Cambridgeshire, and witnessed one such brood parasite, the European Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus), as it emerged from a reedbed where there were lots of Reed Warblers, Sedge Warblers, and Reed Buntings chattering and calling.

We can only assume this was a female, recently mated having arrived with the male cuckoos from Southern Africa in the last couple of weeks. As every schoolchild knows, the Cuckoo builds no nest, instead, it lays its eggs in the nests of other birds and then abandons them, leaving the hapless warblers to incubate the Cuckoo’s egg alongside their own. When the Cuckoo hatches it will commonly nudge out any warbler eggs in the nest and leave its tiny surrogate parents to run themselves ragged feeding it and raising it as their own.

Neither the surrogates, parasitised in the truest sense of that word nor the imprinted Cuckoo chick is aware that anything is wrong with this scenario…but we do…and it is horrific. I say the adult cuckoos are unaware…but if so, why do they look so guilty?

 

Hobbies at RSPB Ouse Fen

The Eurasian Hobby is back over RSPB Ouse Fen (May 2019), one of 6 or 7 seen hunting on the wing. The bird’s scientific name is Falco subbuteo means “falcon below the buzzard”. But, yes, that’s where the name of the football game – Subbuteo – comes from, the inventor wanted to call it “Hobby”, but the company said that couldn’t be trademarked, so he went all cod Latin.

As you can probably tell, they fit into a sequence of falcons found in the British Isles, from largest to smallest: Peregrine > Hobby > Kestrel > Merlin. Hobbies mainly eat dragonflies on the wing and you can see them clipping off the wings and discarding everything but the insects’ bodies as the bird flies over you. I have also seen them take swifts out of the air on a couple of occasions, both midsummer above our garden with the hobby flying out of the sun towards the screaming, circling swifts high above.

Taking photos of birds on the wing is difficult at the best of times, but photographic quality is also compromised at this time of year by atmospheric disturbance (you cannot filter out the heat haze, unfortunately).

Photos of local birds for local people

I say local…most of them are anything but local having winged their way back to Old Blighty from their winter homes in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere.

Common Whitethroat on Hawthorn along a Fenland drove

Our local bird world is awhirl right now, with lots of the summer migrants. Of course, the farmland residents, Meadow Pipits, Skylarks, Corn Buntings, Yellowhammers, are all very active too, and the countless Linnets and Goldfinches.

Corn Bunting among the rape on a Cambridgeshire farm

Cuckoo and Turtle Dove have been heard near our home, Swallows and Housemartins abound, Common Whitethroats and Lesser Whitethroats are along and around the local lodes and droves and there are Reed Warblers among our reedbeds.

Barn Swallow over fen farmland

Sporadic Swifts have been sighted around the wider area and not too far from our patch a migrant Montagu’s Harrier has been on the wing.

If one Swallow does not a summer make, then what about two…or more?

Montagu’s Harrier Circus pygargus

Rather pleasantly surprised to have seen a male Montagu’s Harrier, Circus pygargus recently on a day away from my desk. The bird’s altitude and the atmospheric conditions (heat haze) precluded clearer photos. It circled above me, climbing as it did so.

This is a +ID, confirmed by 2-3 other birders on Facebook from the snaps.

According to the RSPB website: The Monty is an extremely rare breeding bird in the British Isles. It is a Schedule 1 listed species and each pair has to be specially protected because its survival is precarious. A summer visitor (wintering in Africa), it seems that whereas like other Harriers, such as the Marsh Harrier it would favour marshes, over arable farmland is a more likely place to see them.

Cetti’s Warbler Calling at Wicken

The “song” of the Cetti’s Warbler (Cettia cetti) is anything but a warble, but what’s a warbler anyway? It’s a shockingly loud call for such a tiny bird; listen here. Been hearing a lot of them around RSPB Ouse Fen over the last few weeks and caught sight of a few. Also heard at least one or two during a walk around NT Wicken Fen on 26th April 2019, then heading back to the car via one of the hides thought we’d have a quick look to see if we could see the Reed Warblers (we could hear their raucous, but less tuneful calls from the reeds)…a Cetti’s called out and darted into the corner of the pond and scuttled around among the reeds search out titbits from the water.

After a couple of minutes, it grappled its way up a reed from water level, called again, and then darted out of sight. I fired off a couple of reels of film (actually 60 shots on a digital camera) in an attempt to get one of this furtive fellow feeding. The contact sheet did not look promising…

A closer inspection, cropping into the area where the warbler was, turned up a few almost shots…see above and below

My old cock linnet

Many readers will perhaps have heard the music hall song “My Old Man (Said Follow the Van)” by Fred W. Leigh and Charles Collins and made popular just after The Great War by singer Marie Lloyd (who never actually recorded it). The song contains the lyric:

I walked behind wiv me old cock linnet.

Cock linnet perched on a lichen-covered hawthorn branch showing the blush of his breast

The “cock linnet” mentioned is the male of the passerine bird species Linaria cannabina (previously known as Carduelis cannabina until DNA analysis separated it from the genus that carries the likes of the Goldfinch, Carduelis carduelis). Captive songbirds were a favourite of all classes for centuries and certainly at the time of the writing of this song may well have been a favoured pet of a Cockney housewife.

The male of the species takes on a rather suggestive blush to its breast when in its mating plumage at the height of spring. The allusion to the male member being rather obvious and commented upon in several sources including the excellent “The Red Canary: The Story of the First Genetically Engineered Animal” by Tim Birkhead:

Not much about

It’s always amusing to hear someone say “there’s not much about” when you’re working your way through a nature reserve. Depends on what you mean by not much…I only saw the following at RSPB Ouse Fen this morning:

Willow Warbler
Chiffchaff
White Throat
Blackcap, Swallow
Sandmartins
Chaffinch
House Sparrow
Rook
Carrion Crow

Greylag Geese and Goslings

Green Woodpecker
Buzzard
Marsh Harrier
Kestrel
Bittern
Great Black-backed Gull
Lesser Black-backed Gull
Black-headed Gull
Mallard

Male Marsh Harrier

Tufted Duck
Greylag Geese (and goslings)
Mute Swan
Grey Heron
Little Egret
Cormorant
Coot
Wigeon
Moorhen
Wood Pigeon
Stock Dove
Bearded Reedling
Reed Bunting
Linnet
Meadow Pipit
Snipe
Green Sandpiper
Skylark
Goldfinch
Sedge Warbler
Cetti’s Warbler

Small Tortoiseshell

Mayfly
Hoverfly
European Peacock
Small Tortoiseshell
Brimstone
Small White
Large White
Ladybird
Various Bumblebees, flies, and other flying insects

Male Bearded Reedling

I think that’s all…not much about at all. Admittedly, the person who said it was cycling…

The Phantom of the North

This blog post isn’t about some supernatural Geordie, rather a species of owl that haunts the northern parts of the Americas and Eurasia- the Great Grey Owl (Strix nebulosa). It’s the largest species of owl we have, by length, although ignore the feathers and it isn’t quite so impressive looking, but then which bird is? Also known as the cinereous owl, spectral owl, Lapland owl, spruce owl, bearded owl, and sooty owl.

The Phantom of the North, photo by dB/ at Linton Zoo, Cambs, 7 Apr 2016

The sub-species S. n. nebulosa flies from central Alaska eastward across Canada to south-western Quebec, and south to northern California, northern Idaho, western Montana, Wyoming and north-eastern Minnesota. S. n. lapponica can be found in Fennoscandia through Siberia to Sakhalin and Kamchatka Krai to Lithuania, Lake Baikal, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Manchuria and north-eastern China.

Strix nebulosa plumage
Cross section showing the extent of body plumage of S nebulosa

Your twitter friends’ Aussie ancestor

There are more than 11,000 extant species of bird around the world, they all evolved from the theropod dinosaurs of which Tyrannosaurus rex is perhgaps the most famous. They are a seemingly diverse bunch of animals from the tiny Firecrest and the Hummingbirds to the Emu and Ostrich by way of the Vultures and the Cockatoo.

Wheatear

There are 137 families of perching birds, the so-called passerine birds, which have three toes pointing forward and one pointing back. The Passeriformes account for almost two-thirds of all bird species and are found across the globe. The term passerine comes from the Latin word for that archetypal perching bird, the House Sparrow (Passer domesticus). Passero or passera is Italian for Sparrow.

Anyway, a new DNA analysis reveals that all of those thousands of species of Passeriformes have a common ancestor that lived 47 million years ago in Australia. Discussed in more detail by Eleanor Imster in EarthSky.

Meanwhile, a genetic analysis in Science this week, explains why that Australian resident, the Emu, and indeed Ostriches and other ratite birds cannot fly.