Category: Birds

TL:DR – The national bird of Ukraine is the White Stork (Ciconia ciconia), we occasionally see them in the local fenland. Often they are ringed birds or birds that have escaped into the wild from collections.

I went looking for a White Stork (Ciconia ciconia) that had been seen at the marina in the nearby village Earith this morning. I was lucky enough to catch sight of it on the wing circling with numerous gulls and several Grey Herons before it headed upstream and out of sight along the Great River Ouse.

As many readers will know, the White Stork is the national bird of Ukraine, feels rather poignant to have seen one today. Birdwatcher Oleksandr Ruchko writing in The Guardian from Lviv had this to say on seeing the birds return to his homeland:

The stork is very sacred to Ukrainians, a symbol of spring, of babies, and of peace. They are believed to be a kind of amulet, and protect your house against evil. Nobody here ever kills storks to eat, not even in the worst times

The White Stork is widespread on the continent and a bird of fable and legend even to this day in the British Isles despite our having driven it to extinction in the middle ages. Last nesting pair was observed in Edinburgh in 1416. Today, there are a couple of dozen seen sporadically in the UK, some will have come from collections. The one I saw today was unringed but well have been released from a breeding program or other place. Equally, it may well have arrived from continental Europe…perhaps even Ukraine, itself, no way to know for certain.

Meanwhile, I also went back for another look at the Garganey and female Blue-winged Teal on the flood. I caught the Garganey in flight and was rather hoping that I’d inadvertently caught the female Blue-winged Teal in flight too. But, it his looks like a female Garganey chasing a drake Garganey. Funnily enough, the drake has quite a reputation having mated on several occasions over the last few weeks…with the female Blue-winged Teal. So maybe the female Garganey has taken umbrage…hah!

The Garganeys are thought to have headed north from Spain when it got too dry for them there early in the year. There have been lots of reported sightings of this bird in the UK in the last few weeks. The Blue-winged Teal dropped in not long after a Green-winged Teal had already been sighted. Those are both American birds that should really be heading south for Texas not Cambridgeshire, but presumably chose the wrong line of latitude when they set off from The Arctic earlier in the year.

After the garganeys, I spent some time watching Whitethroats, tried to get a photo of one of the Cetti’s Warblers, snapped a Sedge Warbler, and spotted my first Orange Tip butterfly of the year.

I’ve been a bit under the weather with something other than covid but it’s had me stuck indoors for a few days nevertheless. I stoked myself up on some appropriate medication and ventured out to see the Black Redstarts, the Garganey, and the Blue-winged Teal that have all turned up on a fairly local patch (a fenland village currently with a lot of flooding).

There were lots of birders around with big scopes and a few toggers. Some of the birders is toggers too (to paraphrase Ice-T). Speaking of which, one of the birders that you can’t see in the photo told us he had covid, although thought he was probably past being infectious, I kept well away from him, the silly boy!

I latched on to one birder whom I recognised, he was well away from the crowd and had been there for about 5 hours, I asked him for guidance as to the whereabouts of the Garganeys and the Blue-winged Teal.

The Garganeys, which seem to have turned up in the British Isles in fairly large numbers from Spain recently, perhaps because of unusually dry weather there, were fairly static, but feeding and dabbling at a distance from the footpath of about 250 metres. More intriguingly a Garganey drake (Spatula querquedula) was on the far bank, roosting on a log, and right next to it the American vagrant. A female Blue-winged Teal.

The Blue-winged Teal (Spatula discors) is a duck that you normally only see in North America, Central America and the very northerly parts of South America. Intriguingly though our friend the Garganey drake, which is in the same genus as the blue-wing had been observed mating with this female earlier in the week. And, according to the expert was spending a lot of time with her. Another of the Garganey drakes, or maybe the same one, had also been seen mating a female another species in the same genus, a Northern Shoveller (Spatula clypeata).

As to the Black Redstarts, apparently, there was only one around, but I caught sight of it as it popped up to catching a flying invertebrate from the distant roof of a house beyond the village marina. No photo though. Sometimes just a birder and not so much a togger.

What do Peregrine Falcons eat? It might be easier to ask what don’t they eat? Here’s a list of kills reported based on avian remains and feathers at the foot of the tall buildings frequented by the Cambridge Peregrines:

Bar-tailed Godwit, Blackbird, Black-tailed Godwit, Carrion Crow, Collared Dove, Feral Pigeon (Stock Dove), Fieldfare, Golden Plover, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Great Tit, Grey Partridge, House Sparrow, Moorhen, Redwing, Robin, Shoveller Duck, Starling, Teal, Woodcock.

The Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) is the world’s fastest animal. It stoops on its prey from way above and has been recorded as reaching speeds of an incredible 300 kilometres per hour. It basically slams into its prey to kill it and carries it off to a perch where it will pluck the bird before eating. It will also cache chunks of prey on tall buildings around its territory to eat later or for feeding nesting partner, and later chicks.

UPDATE: Breeding season 2023. In 2022, I mentioned the hope and possibility of Glossies breeding in the UK. This happened in 2023.

I’ve mentioned the Glossy Ibis many times before, there are still several in and around our local patch and almost 200 estimated to be across the British Isles. There were just four at a place where I’ve seen seven recently, but that’s fine. Four is better than zero.

They were all looking rather glossy, which is presumably in time for the breeding season. Whether or not these birds actually breed here is another matter. There is a breeding colony in Spain, but this African/Mediterranean species has been extending its range and hanging around the British Isles recently, but no reports of breeding or attempts at breeding just yet.

Maybe 2022 could be the year for it! Certainly, other recent acquisitions like Cattle, Great White, and Little Egret are in on the act.

I’ve talked about the Common, or Eurasian, Crane on the Sciencebase site before, there are increasing numbers of this bird to be seen on our East Anglian patch, and that’s a very positive, natural thing.

There is something quite primaeval about the species. Snapped here with a 600mm Sigma zoom on 2/3 crop sensor Canon 7Dii from about 370 metres. I didn’t know ahead of the visit that they were even there and snapped them when I saw them and left them to their own devices.

Aperture f/8 shutter speed 1/1579s, ISO 1000. RAW image imported with Rawtherapee, denoised and sharpened in Topaz DeNoize AI, and final output tweaked with PaintShop Pro. Cropped to 40% original pixel-width.

UPDATE: October 2023. Despite recent heavy rains the patch of farmland, on which birders (Ian and Brendan) had ticked 160+ species, has remained unflooded so far this season. I suspect the drainage along the fields and/or the adjacent travellers’ site have been fixed. So, it was fun while it lasted and maybe it will happen again, but it seems that for the timebeing we are not going to have quite the birding on that patch as we did last winter and the previous couple of seasons, unfortunately. So much for creating a protected birdlife area.

Over the last year or more (2020-2022), a patch of farmland known, as Bullock’s Haste, which lies on the outskirts of our village has been perpetually flooded. Incredibly, over two winters it has attracted a greater and greater diversity of bird species who have spent time there feeding, preening, and roosting.

Two friends dedicated to the citizen science cause of birding (Brendan Doe and Ian Ellis) have observed and catalogued (on eBird) more than 150 species there in that time. I cannot claim to have seen even a fraction of that number there, although I have seen a good many of the “ticked” species in various other places and several of them at this site. There are a few other named spotters on the list who have ticked several species, but Doe and Ellis have done the bulk of this excellent work.

Here’s the list as it stands, in alphabetical order. I have removed terms such as Eurasian, European, Northern, and Western from these vernacular names to simplify things. You can visit the eBird list to get alternative formats. As you will see, there are a few fairly rare and unusual visitors on the list:

Arctic Tern
Barn Owl
Barn Swallow
Bewick’s Swan
Blackbird
Blackcap
Black-headed Gull
Black-tailed Godwit
Blue Tit
Brambling
Bullfinch
Buzzard
Canada Goose
Carrion Crow
Caspian Gull
Cetti’s Warbler
Chaffinch
Chiffchaff
Coal Tit
Collared Dove
Coot
Corn Bunting
Cuckoo
Curlew
Curlew Sandpiper
Dunlin
Dunnock
Egyptian Goose
Fieldfare
Gadwall
Garden Warbler
Garganey
Glossy Ibis
Goldcrest
Golden Plover
Goldfinch
Goosander
Great Black-backed Gull
Great Cormorant
Great Crested Grebe
Great Spotted Woodpecker
Great Tit
Great White Egret
Green Sandpiper
Green Woodpecker
Greenfinch
Greenshank
Green-winged Teal
Grey Heron
Grey Partridge
Grey Plover
Grey Wagtail
Greylag Goose
Greylag Goose (Domestic type) x Canada Goose (hybrid)
Greylag x Canada Goose (hybrid)
Hawfinch
Hen Harrier
Herring Gull
Hobby
House Martin
House Sparrow
Iceland Gull
Jack Snipe
Jackdaw
Jay
Kestrel
Kingfisher
Lapwing
Lesser Black-backed Gull
Lesser Redpoll
Lesser Whitethroat
Linnet
Little Egret
Little Grebe
Little Owl
Little Ringed Plover
Little Stint
Long-tailed Tit
Magpie
Mallard
Marsh Harrier
Meadow Pipit
Mediterranean Gull
Merlin
Mistle Thrush
Moorhen
Mute Swan
Nuthatch
Oystercatcher
Pectoral Sandpiper
Peregrine Falcon
Pheasant
Pied Avocet
Pied Flycatcher
Pied Wagtail/White Wagtail
Pink-footed Goose
Pintail
Pochard
Raven
Red Kite
Red-crested Pochard
Red-legged Partridge
Redshank
Redwing
Reed Bunting
Reed Warbler
Ringed Plover
Robin
Rock Dove
Rock Pipit
Rook
Ruff
Sand tin
Sanderling
Sandpiper
Sedge Warbler
Shelduck
Shoveler
Siskin
Skylark
Snipe
Song Thrush
Sparrowhawk
Spoonbill
Spotted Flycatcher
Spotted Redshank
Starling
Stock Dove
Stonechat
Swift
Tawny Owl
Temminck’s Stint
Tern
Tree Pipit
Tufted Duck
Turtle Dove
Water Rail
Wheatear
Whimbrel
Whinchat
Whitethroat
Whooper Swan
Wigeon
Willow Warbler
Wood Sandpiper
Woodcock
Woodpigeon
Wren
Yellow Wagtail
Yellowhammer
Yellow-legged Gull

UPDATE: 11 April 2022 – Little Gull has turned up

We ate the Spoonbill to extinction in the British Isles in the 17thC. But re-creating lost habitat, conservation work, and a reintroduction scheme is seeing their numbers crawling back.

North Norfolk is a good place to see them these days, but they’re also spreading their wings. Four have been present on one of our fenland nature reserves for weeks now, we saw them on a dull day back in the middle of winter. Kingfisher’s Bridge Nature Reserve.

Out of covid isolation at last, I thought I’d pay them another visit and was told by a birder (might have been a warden) that they weren’t around right now. Ten minutes later, two flew off the main lake and right over my head.

We do like to be beside the seaside, especially the North Norfolk seaside. We took the opportunity for a couple of days of long walks there. Sad that our pooch is no longer with us, but it meant we managed almost 20 miles of tramping over two days.

We did attempt to spot the juvenile White-tailed (Sea) Eagle that is jaunting between Cley and Stiffkey at the moment. It is a released bird from the Isle of Wight reintroduction scheme.

Regular readers will know I’ve mentioned the Glossy Ibises that have seemingly taken up residence on our patch during the last year or more. There were three on the flooded farmland adjacent to Earith roundabout for a long time last winter. These are African/Mediterranean birds that seem to be spreading their wings more and more (see also Great White Egret, Little Egret, Cattle Egret). The Glossies we’re seeing here may well be hopping across from a breeding colony in Southern Spain, while the GWEs may be feeding on red crayfish in the lakes of northern France and then hopping across The Channel.

Anyway, there are now seven Glossies feeding and preening at RSPB Berry Fen just up the road from Earith. Happily, they were “showing well” from the footpaths in the sunshine today.

A pair successfully bred in Cambridgeshire in 2022 raising a single chick. This was a first for Britain and is almost an open secret among the local birders. Sadly, as far as I know, they didn’t breed in 2023 nor 2024.