Category: Birds

At this time of year, you might spot Snow Buntings pecking about the shingle and driftwood on a remote windswept beach, perhaps in north Norfolk or Dorset. One Studland birder tweeted earlier that this species has now reached their shores.

The birds are apparently on the beach edge just north of the nudist beach…

The twitter birder was at pains to point out to anyone who fancies seeing these birds that the nudist track is a “Wellies only track”.

It’s worth adding that there’s also at least one nudist beach where you might see Snow Bunts in north Norfolk. I have no idea whether Wellies are allowed there or not…but it’s less than 10 degrees Celsius up there and taking wind chill into account, I’m sure the local “club” won’t mind you carrying a muff, just in case it gets too nippy.

The Bearded Reedling, Panurus biarmicus, is the only known avian species in its genus. It was originally named the Bearded Tit because of its superficial resemblance to the Long-tailed Tit perhaps, but it is definitely not closely related to that bird nor any other tit.

The odd thing though is that the “bearded” part of its name refers to the facial markings of the males. They have long, droopy-looking black patches either side of their bills, whimsically resembling male facial hair but perhaps sideburns or moustaches rather than a beard. I’ve no idea why it wasn’t originally called the Moustached Tit. Either way, it’s not political correctness that is morphing the tit into the reedling it’s simply that it isn’t a tit, as mentioned.

The species is sexually dimorphic, the “clean-shaven” females lack the sideburns/moustaches/beard as well as differing in size and other aspects of their plumage. They’re often quite shy and tend not to show well when it’s windy. That said, you can commonly catch small groups and sometimes larger flocks darting back and forth making their characteristic “pinging”, or “pew-pewing” contact call as the fly. When they settle on a reed, they often shuffle from a lower portion up to the top of the stem. On other occasions, they will dance about the lower parts of the reeds almost at water level.

During the original covid lockdown in March-April of 2020, you may recall that I mentioned an activity known as noc migging. Essentially, it’s birding at night with a microphone and a sound recording device. You record the sounds of birds passing overhead, many birds migrate at night, and then process the recording to pluck out the sounds of our feathered friends for identification. Oh, by the way, here’s my garden birding tick list.

You can do the ID by ear or you can use software that analyses the sonogram and selects out the bird calls from the background noise of foxes and deer, motorbikes, cars, and other sounds of the night, and then passes it to ID software. Cornell University’s widely available birding app, Merlin, is a very useful introduction to NocMig and Audio Birding, in general.

Of course, there’s an app that can do the recording and the ID all-in-one, and has been for some time: the Merlin app from, Cornell University. Commonly, it’s used by birders and others when they hear a tweet or a chirp when they’re out and about to give them an ID for a sight unseen. The app records and analyses the avian sounds and gives you an ID for the species you’re hearing, usually within a split second. Actually, all that said, you can feed the app bird photos too, for a visual ID.

I’ve used Merlin sporadically for that purpose for quite some time. But, hearing lots of bird activity in the garden a few days ago I set my phone up with the app running, to hear what was around, even though I could ID most of them, hahah!

I wasn’t surprised by the majority of the IDs that popped up as I could hear the likes of Blackbird, Robin, Starling, Chaffinch, Dunnock, Carrion Crow, Goldfinch, Wren, Great Tit, Blue Tit, Long-tailed Tit, Collared Dove, Wood Pigeon, House Sparrow, Rook, Jackdaw, Pied Wagtail, and Magpie and identify them myself.

There were a few more obscure species that it identified that were a little surprising, Goldcrest, for instance. We have had that species in the garden before and I usually recognise their call but hadn’t noticed them toing and froing in our garden lately. The app also picked up a Redwing, one of the winter thrushes, which is likely to be arriving in our area at this time of year and was presumably flying overhead although I didn’t see it. There was an ID that the app labelled as uncertain – Brambling. I didn’t hear it, but it is nice to imagine that this species might be nearby. It also picked up Ringed Plover. Another I didn’t hear, but interesting to note.

Early morning of Sunday 29th October the app had red dots next to two birds it thinks it picked up – Raven and Barn Owl. Ravens are not commonly seen around here and while Barns Owls are not rare 7:30am over our house seems odd, but who knows? Spotted Flycatcher and Wood Warbler here, at the end of October? Almost certainly not.

I later fired up the app on a walk close to one of our local ponds and picked up a perhaps unsurprising Reed Bunting, confirming that I had indeed heard it. After dark that day I was also able to use the app to confirm a solitary Tawny Owl calling from a tree in a neighbour’s garden. Mrs Sciencebase recorded Greenfinch and Bullfinch as well as some others mentioned above on her expedition with friends. We’ve also now had Grey Wagtail over the house.

The app is yet to suggest an ID for anything that would be very unlikely around here. So, I’m taking it on trust that it’s giving me accurate data. The common birds above are definitely seen and heard in this area. The likes of Redwing and Brambling too. We’ve had Redwing in our garden in past winters, although not yet Brambling, just yet…

You can see my complete garden tick list for birds spotted and heard here.

UPDATE: Morning of 30th October 2023. I set up a studio condenser microphone and directed it to record from my office window. I recorded twenty minutes of sound from the mic, saved the file, and fed it to Merlin. It came back with some spurious IDs like Spotless Starling (Mediterranean bird), Verdin (a new world penduline tit), a laughingthrush (Asian/Indian species), Eastern Towhee, a New World sparrow, reported once or twice only on Shetland . But, there were a couple of species that we are likely to have locally that hadn’t been picked up when I was running Merlin with my phone’s mic on previous sessions: Fieldfare (one of our winter thrush visitors along with Redwing), Blackcap (presumably a wintering arrival from east Europe), Song Thrush (relatively common around here).

UPDATE: 30th October 2023 – RSPB Ouse Fen (Over) app and us picked up Bearded Reedling (formerly known as a Bearded Tit), which we saw a dozen of, Cetti’s Warbler (3-4x), Skylark, Meadow Pipit (half a dozen), Crossbill (possibly, we didn’t hear it though). 11th November: Common Redpoll, Siskin, very unlikely Hawfinch.

My good friend Keith W, a steel industry professional, responded to my social media post about audio birding. He reminisced about how, as a youngster, he used to set up his Pifco cassette recorder on the garage roof at home and head off to school. He would come home to find that the big cylinder batteries were completely run down in the recorder, but he’d have a tape full of bird calls and birdsong. He would then listen to the tape and compare what he heard with the recording on an LP of birdsong.

Food for the garden birds is rather pricey. Certainly not the tuppence-a-bag of the song from Mary Poppins. Admittedly, the bags you buy are a lot more heavily laden with various seeds and grains.

Anyway, discussion is ongoing in my Wild Fen Edge group about when to feed garden birds, so here are some thoughts.

Birds need to eat all year round. So, I put food out all the time – mixed seed peanuts, nyjer seeds, fat balls, flutter butter. Different places in the garden, different heights if possible, near obvious perching points, higher than cat access, some out in the open. Also, not too many feeders close together to avoid disease. Feeders should be emptied and cleaned thoroughly with detergent on a regular basis.

I also have a couple of bird baths of different sizes (one on the ground, one on a stand) and a pond for their drinking and bathing. Birdbath water needs to be changed frequently as the birds commonly add droppings.

I have written about attracting birds to your garden previously, so check out that for more tips and tricks. I’ve seen at least a couple of dozen species in our garden over the years, including the common birds, but also the likes of Grey Heron, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Fieldfare, Redwing, Chiffchaff etc.

An additional point about gardens, native wildflowers are great for insects and so the insectivorous birds. Leave your garden a bit scruffy. Let a few weeds sprout. Create some wild patches, don’t have gravel and lawn throughout and never, ever, ever put down astroturf, you Philistine! Let standing stems go to seed at the end of summer and don’t prune them back until they begin to rot or the birds have emptied them of seed. Stick to #NoMowMay and let it run into June. Also, do #NoPruneJune and basically avoid being overly tidy with your garden. The more scruffy bits, overgrown, weedy, diverse, the more chance of attracting and keeping invertebrates and birds. Let your bushes and ivy produce their berries, these will feed Blackbirds and the like in the winter. They might even attract Fieldfares and Redwings…maybe even Waxwings, if you Rowan (Mountain Ash).

The natural approach is perhaps best and maybe not even putting out food should be the way to go. But, there are two arguments about feeding garden birds one for and one against

The first says we shouldn’t really do it at all, as it brings birds together and can spread disease. Garden feeding can alter behaviour in terms of how birds feed so that some might become reliant on feeders rather than seeking out natural sources of food. There are also issues with the numbers of chicks Blue Tits and some other species are raising and out-competing other local species because they have adopted feeder feeding quite vigorously. Feeders are even thought to have altered migration patterns, viz the over-wintering Blackcaps we now commonly see in English gardens.

The second school of thought suggests that because we have removed the birds’ natural habitats and reduced greatly the numbers of insects on which they would feed through agriculture and development, we need to provide them with alternative habitation and food all year round. Our gardens can offer that.

So, personally, I feed all year round with a few caveats. Such as if I spot an obviously diseased or dead bird in the garden, I’ll remove all feeders, empty them into the bin and give them a good scrub in hot water with detergent. I’ll dry them and put them away for a couple of weeks, to dehabituate the birds to my garden for a while. It’s also a good idea to remove feeders if you see rats. Although rats are perhaps more attracted by bread and meat scraps or cheese. These are not the best choice for bird food anyway, so best not to put those out on bird tables or in feeders.

TL:DR – Record shots of the three Black Terns at a local RSPB reserve.

They say that one good tern deserves another, if you’re talking comic terns. So, when you go looking for one and three come along all at once it’s quite amusing.

As I mentioned in a previous post about processing low-light photos, we were camping, locally…so local in fact that when three Black Terns were mentioned as being present on Ferry Lagoon at RSPB Fen Drayton it was only a short hop from RSPB Ouse Fen where we were camping to get a view of them.

Of course the birds were fishing in the waters there at a distance from the closest viewpoint of between 250 and 300 metres. Quite a distance to look through even a 600mm zoom lens or binoculars, especially on a dull grey day. But, we saw them. regular readers might recall the American Black Tern we chased around Northumberland to see in 2022. The American is Chlidonias niger surinamensis and as far as I know there have not been any sightings of the sub-species in the UK this year. The Black Terns we were watching on Ferry Lagoon are the parent species Chlidonias niger.

As is the wont of vernacular names, there is often only an element of truth in them. Indeed, the Black Tern has a grey, if not blue appearance about its wings, a white rump and a sooty head and almost black bill, at least in its breeding plumage, it is perhaps blacker out of season.

The bird generally fishes on inland water in Europe, Western Asia, and North America. It has a couple of old names, “Blue Darr” (Blue Tern) and “Carr Swallow” (Lake Swallow). The genus name comes from the Ancient Greek, khelidonios, for swallow-like, while the species name, niger means shining black.

I had seen one once before, but briefly, perhaps summer of 2018, flying over the Reedbed Trail area of RSPB Ouse Fen. As I check Birdguides for sightings there are others present in ones twos, and threes all over England. The bird was once common in the Fens, but drainage led to its local extinction by about 1840. It’s wonderful to see it flying here where gravel pits have been morphed into nature reserves as with Ouse Fen and Fen Drayton.

TL:DR – Photos taken in very light with an old camera are never going to come up to snuff unless you use a denoise app like DxO’s PureRaw 3.

We were up early from our camp bed near Ouse Fen on Bank Holiday Monday. The aim was to get on to the RSPB reserve and observe at dawn. The Bitterns had boomed through the night and one or two were still calling when we timorously made our way through the chill (just after) dawn air, it was 5am.

Mrs Sciencebase spotted a solitary Bittern crossing from reedbed to reedbed, the wont of females I believe, homing in on the blown-bottle sound of the males cryptically tucked away among the reeds. So, here she is, the unprocessed shot on the left saved from RAW format from the camera and untouched.

To get the image on the right, I applied the denoising abilities of DxO PureRaw 3, which I think cuts about three “stops” of ISO. I exported it from that app as the portable RAW format known as DNG. This allowed me to open it as if it were a file straight from the camera in PaintShopPro and so start afresh with the denoised file.

PSP has a RAW importer that does what the likes of Lightroom do so you can rescue blownout areas in photos with that issue or correct overall exposure. In the case of the Bittern shot taken with very low light levels, it needed a maximum lift from the dark and dingy DNG file. Once in PSP, I did my usually tweaks, raising brightness a tad, adjusting shadows a little, a spot of highlight boost, a tiny bit of a vibrancy bump, a little application of an unsharp mask, and then a crop.

It’s not too bad a record shot. I have better images of Bitterns in flight taken on sunny day on this and other reserves.