It seemed like a slow start to the year. Usually expect to see some of the emerging hibernators and over-winterers in later February. However, my first UK butterfly of the year wasn’t until 5th March, a Brimstone. My first Orange Tip last year was 17th March, and apparently it was the first UK record for 2024. I will update this article as the year progresses and the butterflies appear. UPDATE: It turned cold after writing this, not seen another butterfly since 9th.
Brimstone – 5th March, Cottenham
Brimstone
Comma x3 – 8th March, Cottenham
Comma
Peacock x2, Small Tortoiseshell x1 – RSPB Ouse Washes – 9th March
European PeacockSmall Tortoiseshell
Footnote
We were in Tenerife in early February, we saw several butterfly species: Monarch, Canarian Cleopatra (F), Small Tortoiseshell, Large White, Red Admiral
UPDATE: Larval hatchlings by 20th March or thereabouts, and gills and mouth obvious in the tadpoles just under a week later.
Reluctantly, but for safety reasons, I drained and filled our old pond in March 1998 and relocated dozens and dozens of frogs. Luckily, some of the neighbours at the time had ponds. We’d had spawn that year and that was also sent to a friend’s pond elsewhere in the village, hopefully without transferring any problems. It’s generally not advisable to move anything from one pond to another as there are invasive species and pathogens that might be transferred, but I didn’t really know about ponds back in 1998!
The first frogspawn of 2025, 6th March
In the years after, we’d have an occasional frog in the garden, usually in a wet patch behind the water butts, but sometimes hopping about the garden on sultry summer nights.
I redug the pond in May 2019. Hooray! I made it just half the original water surface area and it was not quite as deep as the old pond. However, I made sure it had terracing within and double lined it. I planted some native aquatic plants. We saw numerous frogs in lockdown year 2020 and the two species of snail present thrived. I did several music sessions live on Facebook as #PondWatch that spring and summer with thousands of listeners at the peak!
The pond attracted and continues to attract several damselflies and dragonflies. The birds seem to use it actively too. Oh, Mrs Sciencebase has witnessed Grey Herons taking frogs from the pond on at least a couple of occasions.
Herpetologist friend tells me that it is possible to have newts and frogs in the same pond. Indeed, this is obvious when it comes to data from another friend’s pond. I had been warned that newts would eat frogspawn, but seemingly it’s more likely that the frogs would predate the newts.
Also of note in the summer of 2024 we had our first sighting of a couple of newts in the garden, on the patio on different wet nights, if memory serves.
Voles are rodents related to lemmings and hamsters, but are generally stouter of body and have a longer, hairy tail, smaller ears too. They are sometimes known as meadow mice or field mice. Etymologically speaking, they were generically “field mice”, vole from Old Norse völlr, and related to wold/weald as parts of English place names.
Bank Vole, at the water’s edge, Earith car park, RSPB Ouse Fen
Here, we have three species of what we call voles:
Microtus agrestis – the Field, or Short-tailed, Vole, there are an estimated 75 million
Myodes glareolus – the Bank Vole, estimated, 25 million
Arvicola amphibius – European Water Vole, sometimes incorrectly known as the water rat, it is not a rat, despite being called Ratty in The Wind in the Willows. Endangered species. Estimated 100000 individuals.
And, of course, there’s Microtus arvalis – Common Vole, present as a sub-species on Orkney (M. a. orcadensis) and in the Channel Islands, but not in England or Wales.
Distinguishing between the Water Vole and the three meadow voles is relatively easy. Separating Bank from Field is harder unless you can see the tail. The tail of the Field Vole is about 30% the length of its body, whereas that Bank Vole’s tail is much longer, about 50% the length of its body. If you can’t see the tail, there are other indicators, although none seem perfect.
The Bank Vole has a warmer, more rusty, colouration compared to the grey-brown of the Field Vole. The fur of the Field Vole is not quite so smooth and neat as that of the Bank Vole and also largely covers ears and nose, less so in Field Vole. All such indicators can be confused in the field especially when there are variants such as lighter, gingery Field Voles.
Habitat is not a good indicator either, as Field and Bank may well favour similar habitat despite their names. As with many vernacular species names, they can be spurious and based on folklore, pre-scientific observations, and whimsy.
I asked friends on BlueSky to weigh in on the photo above. Terry O’Connor sided with Bank Vole, which was my first thought on seeing it yesterday: “Chestnut with grey underfur looks right and its ears are on the big side for Field Vole.”
One of my biggest missed opportunities photographically speaking was to capture a shot of a Grey Heron gulping down a Water Vole while standing on the roadside verge along a local road bridge over one of our lodes.
I did get photos of a Bank Vole that was swimming across the river in front of the Earith car park at RSPB Ouse Fen. It was my definitely-amateur, but professional-seeming, togger friend Andy who first spotted it. It seemed to disappear at the water’s edge, but I spotted it again, sitting stock still in the water and we both got a few snapshots.
There was almost no photographic light left in the sky after sunet last night, but a Barn Owl flew past and I really just had to grab a shot even though I was just about to head home. My Canon R7 set to auto-ISO jumped to 20000, which is very high so the photo was very noisy/grainy. I usually denoise my images with DxO PureRaw 4 and for this one it had to be done. PureRaw drops the ISO by about three stops, so that’s as if the camera had been shooting at ISO 2500.
Barn Owl, image denoised with DxO PureRaw 4 and then gently edited in PaintShopPro
For those interested in such things, ISO ain’t what it used to be as I mentioned before. For film cameras, ISO was a measure of the sensitivity of the film. You used to use a higher ISO if you were shooting in lower light conditions.
For a digital camera, there’s no way to change the sensitivity of the sensor. So, adjusting the ISO does nothing more than turn up the brightness of the image you’ve captured and this brightness control is then embedded into the photo you download from the camera.
At lower light levels, your camera needs to turn up the brightness for the same shutter speed and aperture (f-stop) to get the exposure level you want. This means the noise is turned up brighter too, commonly seen as a purple speckles throughout the darker areas of the photo, but also impinging to different degrees across the whole image.
Now, the noise in a film photo is often referred to as grain (because it’s associated with the grain size of the particles of light-sensitive silver compounds in the film itself) It’s often seen as moody, romantic, and evocative, especially in noir Hollywood photos or the celebrity portrait work of David Bailey etc et cetera. It can be pleasing, just like the crackles and pops of classic vinyl…ish.
But, for digital photos, noise is just noise. It’s not grain, it’s not really romantic, nor evocative, it detracts and distorts the detail in your photo. So anything you can do to keep the ISO as low as possible and any processing that removes the noise without removing detail is, to my eye, a good thing. There are limits, but as regular viewers will know I almost always use DxO PureRaw to do the basic pre-edit processing of my photos. It essentially turns down the digital ISO control by three “stops” but without lowering the brightness.
The Barn Owl was shot at ISO 20000, so DxO is effectively bringing that down to ISO 2500, which is still way too high for a clean photo. But, it beats the RAW image straight out of the camera.
Incidentally, all this pre-processing and processing, is basically the digital equivalent of developing the film and printing from the negative as you would do with film. Some people imagine it’s somehow cheating because there are a lot more options allowing you to adjust levels and other stuff when you process digital negatives (the camera RAW) file, but it’s worth looking at the history of film photography to see how that nothing has changed fundamentally. Photography is not reality, it has always been about capturing a moment in time and developing it in such a way as to make that moment special after the event.
This is the Barn Owl as it looked after processing the RAW file with DxO but prior to adjust levels with PSPThis is the Barn Owl as it looked before processing the RAW file with DxOBarn Owl before and after DxO and PSP processing
In the 1990s, East Anglian birders seeing this species locally might have noted it as a mega because it was so rarely seen in the UK, but as with the Little Egret, and more recently the Great White Egret, this ostensibly African species, the Cattle Egret, has spread its wings and found a home here. There are other species, such as Glossy Ibis, that are doing the same to a lesser degree, but may well become as common as those African egrets, given time.
Fluffed up Cattle Egret in a field behind a horse
The latter frequents muddy fields inhabited by hooved mammals, the other two the waterways and flooded gravel pits. Part of their spread is down to habitat formation over here but also the shifts in climate that mean they found conditions acceptable as they extended their range northwards out of Africa and then the Mediterranean region.
Fluffed up Cattle Egret
The Cattle Egret is the archetypal avian shytkicker, it follows cattle, horses, and sheep as they munch their way around fields and picks off the invertebrate life disturbed by the hooves; just as they would’ve done among the wildebeest and zebra in their homeland. They will also eat mice and frogs given the chance. They’re often quite grubby given they’re usually pecking about the mud of livestock farms and paddocks, but as they come into mating plumage they take on some lovely peachy feather shades within their brilliant white plumage.
Two fluffed up Cattle Egret in a field behind a horse
Great White Egret has taken advantage of the crayfish in the lakes of Northern France. Having range extended to there several years ago, it’s not a big hop across La Manche to reach the Somerset Levels or East Anglian gravel pits.
Great White Egret
Cattle Egrets bred in Somerset in 2008, according to the BTO website, with two pairs nesting there. There have been numerous breeding attempts since and the species is slowly expanding in southern Britain. The BTO statistics seem rather out of date, suggesting just 66 wintering birds in the UK. But, there were reports of a couple of hundred on the Somerset Levels and we have seen groups of a couple of dozen in the nearby village of Swavesey. Others report 30-40 in that same village and in and around Fen Drayton Lakes and other local areas. I hope the BTO will be updated soon. Certainly, BirdGuides no longer considers a Cattle Egret sighting as a mega these days.
Our first ever week of winter sun and we headed for Los Gigantes, Tenerife, in the shadow of El Teide. A bit of walking, some birding, whale watching, and a sampling of sangria, paella and the local piscine delicacy, cherne. Oh, and there was music and cocktails (Mai Tai* for me).
Sunset over Mount Teide, TenerifeThe Atlantic, or Wild, Canary, Serinus canaria, is a finch commonly found on the Canary Islands, related to Serins and Siskins. Of course, its name comes from the islands not vice versa. The Romans named the islands “Canariae Insulae”, meaning “Islands of the Dogs” because of the abundant “sea dogs” on the beaches, these creatures were Monk Seals, Monachus monachusIt’s hard photographing Monarchs at the top of a palm treeEven harder catching them in flight. Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippusSouthern Tenerife Lizard, Gallotia galloti gallotiAnother Southern Tenerife LizardEurasian Whimbrel, Numenius phaeopus
We managed the boat trip to see dolphins and whales, not easy to get good shots from a moving boat. We were treated to Short-finned Pilot Wales (pod of 7 or 8 male Globicephala macrorhynchus, the big-nosed globe-head) that hunt for giant squid in the deep waters (600+ metres) between Tenerife and the neighbouring island of La Gomera (beyond it El Hierro). We also saw a pod of Atlantic Spotted Dolphin (Stenella frontalis, narrow-fronts). The swimming opportunity at Masca Bay was short as we’d apparently overstretched our time on the open water; neither of us felt like taking a dip, anyway, given our gastrointestinal status.
Atlantic Spotted Dolphin, Stenella frontalisShort-finned Pilot Whale, Globicephala macrorhynchusRed Rock Crab, Grapsus adscensionis, I prefer its other name: the East Atlantic Sally Lightfoot Crab
It was wonderful to have such long, sunny and warm days on Canary time. While sunrise was close to 8am, sunset was not until almost 7pm and the temperatures were in the low to mid-20s during daylight, so it was perfect in many ways. It’s certainly a tonic for one’s mental health to be able to bask in the sun at that time of the evening in swimming kit. Moreover, it is at a time of year just ahead of our birthdays when we might usually be braced against the Arctic northerlies on the Norfolk coast looking out for Snow Bunting and instead we were listening to Canary Island Chiffchaff and Atlantic Canary from our sun loungers while the countless Yellow-legged Gulls flew to roost among the 5-million-year old cliffs beyond the hotel.
Spectacled Warbler, Curruca conspicillata, on derelict banana plantationBertholet’s Pipit, Anthus berthelotii, saw on El Teide and then on derelict area along coastSpanish Sparrow, Passer hispaniolensis(Feral) Rock Dove, Columba liva, aka Common PigeonCanary Islands Chiffchaff, Phylloscopus canariensis
There was always a chance of seeing either a fishing Osprey or a Sea Eagle (White-tailed Eagle) off those same cliffs, but we never did catch sight of either of those sadly rare and endangered species. I had also hoped for the iconic Blue Chaffinch among the pine glades en route to Mt. Teide, but no luck with that species either. Also failed to see Common Hoopoe on any scrubby, ant-ridden patches of bare land, but we did tick several other species and sub-species and a couple that we hadn’t seen anywhere before.
Avian sightings
Atlantic Canary, Serinus canaria (numerous)
Atlantic Yellow-legged Gull, Larus michahellis atlantis (many)
Barn Swallow, Hirundo rustica (on journey to hotel?)
Bertholet’s Pipit, Anthus berthelotii (Mt. Teide and then on derelict area along coast)
Canarian Common Kestrel, Falco tinnunculus canariensis (Mt, Teide and then several on airport return journey or maybe Lesser Kestrel sometimes, Falco naumanni)
Canary Islands Chiffchaff, Phylloscopus canariensis (lots, loud)
Eleonora’s Falcon, Falco eleonorae (to hotel and then at Playa de la Arena)
Eurasian Collared Dove, Streptopelia decaocto (loads)
Eurasian Whimbrel, Numenius phaeopus (rocks before Playa de la Arena)
European Robin, Erithacus rubeculla (cafe with pines up to Mt. Teide)Feral Rock Dove, Columba livia (plentiful)
Lesser Black-backed Gull, Larus fuscus (according to ObsId)
Little Egret, Egretta garzetta (on rocks and once flying off Los Gigantes)
Pied Avocet, Recurvirostra avosetta, a pair, twice flying up the coast
Raven, Corvus corax 1x (cafe at bottom of Mt. Teide and 2x from bus back to airport)
Ruddy Turnstone, Arenaria interpres (rocky coast)
Spectacled Warbler, Curruca conspicillata (coastal derelict site)
Spanish Sparrow, Passer hispaniolensis (plentiful around hotel etc)
Sparrowhawk, Acipiter nisus, (possibly sub-species, from return bus)
White Wagtail, Motacilla alba (heard only, over hotel)
Atlantic Spotted Dolphin, Stenella frontalis
Short-finned Pilot Whale, Globicephala macrorhynchus
Mullet (fish)
Honey Bee feeding on palm trees
Emperor Dragonfly x2 (one at pine cafe one in Los Gigantes
Other dragonfly, brown, smaller darter type
Southern Tenerife Lizard, Gallotia galloti galloti (rocky wall after the arena and elsewhere)
Red Admiral x2 (pines cafe)
Female Canarian Cleopatra butterfly (above arena)
Small Tortoiseshell (hotel)
Some big-ish bees, honeybees, grey bees
Monarch, Danaus plexippus (Route 66 cafe near hotel)
Large White (en route back to airport)
That reference to gastrointestinal status? We’d had quite a grim start to our first ever winter sun holiday. I woke on flight day with what I assumed was food poisoning. I was pretty much over it by our first morning on Tenerife. But Mrs Sciencebase succumbed after a short walk to the harbour below the huge cliffs of Los Gigantes, so it wasn’t food poisoning, has to have been viral, whoops. We did our best with the trip, but Mrs Sb wasn’t up to much walking and had to miss out on the trip to the otherworldly volcanic peaks of El Teide.
*Mai Tai – White and dark rum, lime juice, orange liqueur, orgeat (almond syrup), Angostura bitters, ice, and a cinnamon stick.
This species, Panurus biarmicus, used to be known as the Bearded Tit, because of the black facial markings on the male and perhaps its resemblance to the Long-tailed Tit. But, it’s not closely related to and of the birds we call tits and is the only living (extant) species in the Panurus genus.
Male Bearded Reedling, Panurus biarmicus, feeding on seed head
It lives among the wetland reeds, feeding on their seeds and those of the reed mace/bulrushes. There are lots of them flocking about on our local converted gravel pits.
These days they’re more properly known as Bearded Reedlings, although if they’d wanted to correct the obvious error, they could’ve called them Moustached or Mutton Chop Reedlings. Either, they’re almost always known simply as Beardies among birders.
Male Bearded Reedling on seed head, tail pointing skyward
If you’re wandering about the reed beds of our local reserves, listen out for a pinging sound, that’s the bird’s contact call. You can almost imagine it as being the sound effect for a miniature sci-fi laser gun – peww, peww, peww…
Specific site they’ve been showing well recently is the Earith side of RSPB Ouse Fen (you may recall I’ve mentioned the patch before with reference to starling murmurations and various rarities, including Purple Heron. There are lots all over the fen, but they have been particularly visible, vocal, and close on the shortcut that cuts through the centre between Lockspit’s Mere and Crane’s Fen.
The male pictured above spent a good ten minutes right in front of us shredding and feasting on this seed head and in his messy haste helping spread the plant’s seed. Most of the seed heads nearby had been ravaged by the flock.
For anyone planning a visit. There are three places to park to visit RSPB Ouse Fen. Needingworth, Over, or Earith. The Needingworth end of the reserve is a long way from the reedbeds, so not the place for the Beardies. Over is accessible via a very rough largely unmade road. There are Beardies there among the reeds in the “canal”. But, Earith, which is disconnected from the other patches is the best place to see them at the moment. The main spot I mentioned earlier is across the middle of that area, but you might hear and see Beardies anywhere among the reeds there.
Best time to visit is when it’s sunny and not too windy. Beardies will hunker down in bad weather, but if it’s calm they will flit about between patches of reeds and hop up and down the steps to feed and drink and interact.
Incidentally, a Eurasian Penduline Tit, Remiz pendulinus, was present on the site recently, this too is also not a “tit”.
I’ve been using the Merlin bird ID app for several years and often recommend it to friends. It listens to the nature sounds around you and uses AI to identify the tweets, chirps, and whistles of the birds calling and singing. I have a garden ticklist to which I add the IDs the app records in a separate list. Merlin includes a bird photo ID component, which works a bit like iNaturalist’s Seek or Google Lens, but just for birds and better. The app works for birds anywhere in the world and is simple to use…but…
Goldcrest
Since the app’s last major redesign and update I’ve noticed it seems to ignore some birdsong even though I can very clearly hear them and later on the recording the app saves. So, that’s become rather annoying. I also find that if I let Merlin run past its usual 10 minutes, a much longer recording will usually crash the app when trying to load and analyse the sound file.
Great Tit
I’m not sure what’s going on, Cornell Uni, the creators of the app need to get these issues sorted. Until then, I have sought a replacement and found BirdUp. BirdUp does the same kind of sonogram analysis as Merlin, but seems to pick up more in the tests I’ve run this morning in the garden. Unlike Merlin, it lists in sequence what it hears and doesn’t collate the soundings into a shortlist, which makes the timeline seem fussy.
However, with each sound it picks up you get more immediate details (sound volume, likelihood of that bird being the one it reports, and also details about the sound itseld and the frequencies the birds call or sing at). Speaing of which, unlike Merlin, BirdUp defines the bird sound as call or song and in some cases even offers a description. On one of my long test recordings from a previous Merlin session, it was picking up Robins and labelled the first few sounds as the call, but then a subsequent sound was flagged as a Robin’s alarm call. It picked up the “ping” call of Chaffinch, the “wheezy song” of Greenfinch, and “rattle call” of Great Tit, as opposed to the other types of call and song these birds produce.
Nuthatch
Additionally, I’ve been able to run some of those over-long sound files from Merlin using BirdUp and getting a decent list of what was around at the time. Some of those files were from our biology field tripholiday to northern Greece and Lake Kerkini in 2024, so it’s nice to be able to pluck out the Cirl Bunting, Golden Oriole, and Nightingales from those files.
Jay
The bottom line is that Merlin doesn’t seem to work as well for me as it had over the years and while I still recommend it, I’m going to switch to BirdUp for regular use and check back in with Merlin periodically to see if there has been a major update to improve the issues I’m experiencing.
It’s quite some time since we last visited Paxton Pits Nature Reserve in Cambridgeshire, well before the covid pandemic, March 2019, in fact, if my photo archive dates are to be believed and before that January 2018. Tempus fugit, as they say. And, speaking of things that fly and sound a bit Latin, there were plenty of Regulus regulus among the fir trees not far from the site’s visitor centre.
Grumpy Goldcrest at Paxton Pits Nature Reserve
The nature reserve is, like so many of our local sites gravel pits that have been turned over in whole or in part to nature. It saves the aggregate companies having to back-fill once they have excavated all the millions of tons of sand and gravel they need and gives nature a chance to thrive in areas that would otherwise be turned back into unused flatland. The Paxton reserve was, until World War II, largely farmland on the edge of the village of Little Paxton. The gravel excavations were started during the war. There is still activity, but a large area is now lakes for wildlife, trails, and some lakes for fishing and boating activities.
Goldcrest taking flight
Not far from the visitor centre was the site of the former farmhouse. The historical sign there tells visitors about the farmhouse that once stood on this spot and about the provenance of the row of quite tall fir trees that stand in front of where the farmhouse once was. Apparently, they were Christmas trees! They have now grown so tall that you’d need the longest of long ladders to put the fairy on the top and hang your baubles.
Anyway, it was among these fir trees that numerous R. regulus were darting about. Readers that are regulus as clockwork will know that this species is the UK’s joint smallest bird, the Goldcrest, as I’ve mentioned it before. Its equally diminutive partner is the slightly less common but equally tiny Firecrest.
A fellow photographer, who turned out to be on the reserve’s bird-ringing team, pointed out that the Goldcrests we were photographing were probably winter visitors from Scandinavia enjoying the slightly warmer climate of East Anglia and the rich pickings to be had on a sunny January day among the fir trees. She wasn’t entirely certain, but seemed to imply that there aren’t usually any in this location during the summer months although she had witnessed nesting in one of the Xmas trees previously.
Goldcrest are so small, so fast moving, and often spend their time in the depths of the needles of fir trees, that it is commonly rather difficult to get a good snap in sunlight. If you’re hearing isn’t shot, you can usually pick up their very high-pitched hissy tweets. However, the Scandinavians were rather obliging today and at least I got a couple of nice shots of these delightful creatures with their golden crests.
A Kestrel for a Knave was a book by Barry Hines published in 1968. It was adapted for the Ken Loach film Kes.
The protagonist, Billy Casper, was played by actor David Bradley who later had to adopt the stage name Dai Bradley, because there was already an EQUITY member, the RSC actor David Bradley. You may know the latter from many a TV drama, as unintelligible Arthur Webley in Hot Fuzz, as Filch in the Harry Potter films, as the first Doctor in Doctor Who and as William Hartnell in An Adventure in Space and Time, and Walder Frey from Game of Thrones, etc…I met him once, I mentioned it before.
As for Dai Bradley, he was also in the film Zulu Dawn, a couple of other films and various TV parts.
When the book was reprinted after Kes the film, they used the infamous scene of Billy sticking two fingers up for the cover…I grew up with this book…I was infamous by proxy as a child.
