Category: Birds

We’ve often put food out for the garden birds. Usually it’s starlings, house sparrows, and wood pigeons that attack the feeders, years ago we may have had one of the local black squirrels having a go. The dunnocks and our labrador hoover up the seeds that fall to the ground. I’d seen goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis, yet another tautonym meaning that this is the “type” of the family) flitting around the houses and occasionally landing on our TV aerial, but never landing on the feeders.

It seems the goldfinches are not so keen on sunflower seeds and other delicacies found in the generic 20 kg bags of wild-bird food one might pick up at a garden centre for a tenner, much preferring the floral embryos of the Ethiopian plant Guizotia abyssinica, commonly known as niger seeds and sometimes nyjer, ramtil, ramtilla, inga seed, and blackseed. There were a pair of goldfinches feeding either side of the niger seed feeder and I snapped them through glass. The seeds are botanically a form of fruit known as an achene. Another member of the Carduelinae, the greenfinch (Chloris chloris) also favours these seeds over the mixed bird food.

 

A meadow pipit (Anthus pratensis) being all pretentious and abandoning the fields in favour of a tree from which to view the photographer. There were at least three or four of them larking about on the lode about half a mile upstream from the Rampton bridge.

It is mainly a bird of open habitats, uncultivated or low-intensity agriculture, pasture, bogs, moorland, and presumably meadows. It can also be seen sometimes on arable cropland. In winter, it might retreat to saltmarshes and open woodlands although it may also migrate to Southern Europe and Africa. Well-grounded bird, always feeds on the ground, but will fly to elevated perches such as bushes, hedgerows, fences, or overhead cables to watch for predators and photographers.

The willow warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus) is common and widespread, breeding throughout northern and temperate Europe and Asia, from Ireland east to eastern Siberia. It is, however, strongly migratory and almost the whole population winters in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is greenish brown above and off-white to yellowish below; the wings are plain greenish-brown with no wingbars. Aside from its pale legs it looks almost identical to the chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita). However, if you think you’ve seen a willow warbler but it’s making an almost metronomically regular t’ss, t’ss, t’ss, t’ss… sound and has dark legs it’s a chiffchaff, the warbler has a much more warbling, melodious song. Here’s a recent photo and a snippet of his song that I recorded in late April 2017 in Rampton Spinney, South Cambs.

The meadow pipit (Anthus pratensis) is a small passerine (perching) bird that breeds across northwestern Eurasia, from southeastern Greenland and Iceland to beyond the Ural Mountains in Russia, from south to central France and Romania. It is generally migratory, spending its winters in Southern Europe, North Africa and Southwestern Asia, but is also resident year-round in Western Europe (heading off higher regions to the lowlands in winter). I photographed this bird on moorland close to the Brecon Beacons, Powys, Mid-Wales, April 2017. Now added to my growing gallery of British birds.

Redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus) is, according to the RSPB website, mainly found in the north and west of the UK, with the greatest concentrations in Wales (I photographed this bird on woody encircled moorland in the Brecon Beacons, Powys, towards the end of April 2017). The species particularly favours oak woodlands, hedgerows, alongside streams and parkland. They dine mainly on insects, spiders, worms, and berries and you will spot them from April to September. They are yet another species, like the robin, that were originally classified as thrush-type birds (Turdus) but have been proved genetically to be old world flycatchers, Muscicapidae.

UPDATE: The Red Kite is thriving here in Cottenham and spreading its wings far and wide from the original reintroduction strongholds further afield. We have a small colony (20 to 30 of them as of December 2022) on the outskirts of our village that roosts in the farmland hedgerows and scavenges on the rubbish/recycling tip along with thousands of gulls of various species. By 30th, my birding Brendan counted 40+ and estimated that the total might be around 50.

The beautiful red kite (Milvus milvus) was persecuted to near extinction two centuries ago because of the mistaken belief that they were a threat to livestock. A committee was formed in 1903 to protect nests and eggs from hunters and collectors. The name, incidentally, comes from the Old English word cyta, which is most likely onomatopoeic of its call and the toy kite is so-called after the bird.

In 1986, the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) and NCC (now Natural England and Scottish Natural Heritage), joined forces to tender the idea of reintroducing the red kite to England and Scotland. In 1989, six wild birds acquired from Sweden were released in northern Scotland and four Swedish and one Welsh bird were released in the county of Buckinghamshire. In total, almost 100 birds from Sweden and Spain were released at various sites in the early 1990s. Successful breeding populations established themselves quickly. There are feeding sites in various locations and also in Wales where dozens if not hundreds or birds turn up to take food.

The barn swallow (Hirundo rustica) is the “British” bird with which we most commonly associate a sighting as being the arrival of summer (cuckoos are not so often seen, but heard). Of course, one swallow does not a summer make, as Aristotle (384—322 BC) had it.

It is a distinctive passerine, perching, bird with glossy, dark blue-black upperparts, a ruddy throat, an off-white breast, and famously, a long, forked tail. Feeds on small invertebrates and is often seen swirling in flocks low over water to drink and eat, or gathering on overhead wires. The perching swallow pictured here was photographed on an April evening (very early summer) in Trallong, Powys, Mid-Wales and the pond-dipping swallow on the moor top a few miles from there.

One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy

Bagged a few nice shots of birds new to my British birds gallery this weekend on a short trip to Brecon (Aberhonddu) in Wales (Cymru) including several shots of stonechats (Saxicola rubicola). The stonechat is a small passerine, perching, bird that was bizarrely considered a member of the thrush family (just as was the robin (Erithacus rubecula), neither have much in common with the Turdidae to my eye and genetic evidence puts them in a completely different family, Old World flycatchers, Muscicapidae.

It’s a common enough bird, the pied wagtail (Motacilla alba yarrellii), you can spot its characteristic bobbing tail almost anywhere in the UK at almost any time of year, although they tend to leave northern Scotland in the depths of winter. We took a stroll around the outskirts of the grounds of Ickworth House in Suffolk, this fellow was anything but shy sitting on fence posts about 20 feet from us and our dog and only flitting to the next one if we made a sudden move. I positioned myself on one post two away from the bird, using the post to support and steady the camera.

With a fast shutter, short depth of field, focusing on his eye. Everything else out of that plane pretty much blurred, the background becomes homegeneous, but what happened to the galvanised steel wires of the fence in the shot is nice. With everything closer than his eye and everything further away out of focus, the wires look almost like plucked strings or perhaps soundwaves. I snapped him half a dozen times but he cocked his head towards us, almost in defiance as the dog stepped forward before flying off.

Needless to say the pied wagtail is also now in my burgeoning gallery of British birds. For those looking at this bird and thinking…pied wagtail? Surely that’s a white wagtail. Well, this is a slightly darker subspecies found in Britain as opposed to the more widespread (Europe, Asia, Africa, even Alaska) Motacilla alba. The etymology of “pied” meaning to have black and white garb comes from the pyed freres monks who wore black and white clothing, hence magpie, The Pied Piper, piebald horses, pied tamarin etc.

Although slightly slower-moving than the orange tip I photographed and blogged recently, the European peacock (Aglais io) is just as tough to catch on a pitstop, luckily there are so many dandelions in bloom in the set aside fields and elsewhere that it’s now quite hard not to get a photo!

If I remember rightly, this species lays its eggs only on nettles (Urtica urens) and hops (Humulus lupulus), so definitely a reason to cultivate a nettle patch and grow some hops (perfect for nettle wine and beer after the season too).