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)
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?
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).
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?
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.
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
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.
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:
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
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.
Cross section showing the extent of body plumage of S nebulosa
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.
I seem to have inadvertently duplicated this article and then edited it. The original with my garden “list” can be found here.
Reader John S asked me to put together a report on the topic of what birds we are likely to see in our gardens here in the village of Cottenham a few miles north of Cambridge. I suspect there are a few of you who will have spent an hour back in January counting species for the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch and so hopefully there are others would be interested to know what they might see.
Redpoll
Of course, which of our feathered friends turns up in your garden is down to many different factors, the size and layout of your garden, tree and other plant species, the presence of cats, whereabouts you are relative to patches of woodland, farmland, and whether or not the visitors find a useful supply of food in the form of berries on your bushes, seed feeders and bird tables, coconut shells full of suet, and whatever else you might put out to attract them.
Blue Tit
Some birds will arrive in great numbers to feast on fatballs for instance. Most of us have been perplexed to see expensive fatballs disappear in a matter of minutes when a flock of starlings turn up. Other food, such as nyjer seeds in a specialist feeder will draw in Goldfinches and occasionally for some Redpolls. Sunflowers seeds with the husk intact, sometimes referred to as black sunflower hearts, will keep Greenfinches, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Coal Tits, and Long-tailed Tits busy, and if the nyjer seeds run out the Goldfinches too.
Wren
Robins, Blackbirds, Wood Pigeons, Collared Doves, Dunnocks, will spend much of their time pecking around under the feeders, although the Blackbirds will join Mistle and Song Thrushes plucking insects from the lawn. And, Thrushes will famously grab snail shells and smash them on the ground to get at the occupant. If it’s very cold out on the farmland, the winter thrushes – the Fieldfares and Redwings – will come into the warmer more urban areas and attempt to snaffle berries from your bushes and trees much to the consternation of the Blackbirds who will attempt to make them flee.
You might also spot Bramblings during the winter. They are another finch resembling the Chaffinch but brighter and more orange colours. I have heard from people on Broad Lane who see them in their gardens occasionally, but they are more likely to be elsewhere.
Unusual but increasingly common in the winter are Blackcaps, a type of warbler normally considered a summer visitor, but turning up in our gardens from Germany and Eastern Europe rather than heading to the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa. Speaking of summer, by the time you read this birds that you might see above your garden or heading into your eaves may have started to arrive: House Martins first, then the Swallows that don’t necessarily a summer make, and finally the Swifts. Listen out for Cuckoos too. Certainly houses on The Green backing onto farmland have regular cuckoos visiting for the breeding season.
If you have ants among your plants, you might see Green Woodpeckers, also known as Yaffles for their scoffing call in flight. Ants are the Yaffle’s staple diet, so hold off the powder if you want to see them pecking at the ground in your garden. And, speaking of woodpeckers, there are quite a few Great Spotted Woodpeckers around, which will often come to garden feeders. Of course, if you’re attracting lots of small songbirds to your garden you might also attract predators including Sparrowhawks and less obviously egg-eating Magpies, and chick-chomping Jays. Great Spotted Woodpeckers will also peck into birdboxes to eat baby Blue Tits and the like.
Another reader, Diana S, also pointed out that she’d had Reed Buntings in her garden and had seen Little Grebe and Teal on the reedy pond at the back of her housing estate.
