Category: Birds

If you walk the places I walk you will have passed noisy reed beds a lot recently. There are many birds that like to breed, nest, eat and play among the reeds. But, many of them are quite shy and don’t often show well.

Among them the summer visitors the Eurasian Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus scirpaceus) and the Whitethroat (Sylvia communis), the former is noisy and usually remains hidden the latter is also noisy but will perch prominently high too and can be found well away from those reedbeds, the former usually sticks close to the water. There are plenty of Reed Warblers and Whitethroats on my local patch. As I say, you might hear them even if you don’t see them, but a little patience and quiet and you should catch a glimpse too.

The Whitethroat has quite a raucous call too, not dissimilar to the Reed Warbler, have a listen:

Also very distinctive is the Bearded Reedling (Panurus biarmicus, formerly known as the Bearded Tit) but these are more prone to hiding away especially once they’re nesting. But if you hear a scattering of “pew-pew-pew” sounds among the reeds watch out for this unique species. Nearest place to my patch I know of where you might see Beardies is the Reedbed Trail at RSPB Ouse Fen, NT Wicken Fen also has a few. Bigger showings at RSPB Titchwell and RSPB Minsmere.

The pinging/pewing call of the Bearded Reedling

More likely to be out and about are the Reed Buntings, Emberiza schoeniclus, which birders like to call Reed Bunts, always with the abbreviating. A casual glance at a male Reed Bunt in summer plumage might put you in mind of a more elegant House Sparrow, but any more than a casual glance and you will realise it is quite different. The female is striking too, but the contrasts in her patterning of lower intensity than those of the males. Reed Bunts will perch on those reeds but also hang out in bushes and shrubs near the water or flee to adjacent fields if disturbed.

And, here’s how the Reed Bunt sounds:

A few more bird mnemonics for Sally

A famous one though is the Yellowhammer, whose wheezy call is “two slices of bread but not cheeeeese”

The Bittern sounds like someone blowing across a large bottle

The Beardies mentioned above sound like lots of little springs pinging, or to my ear cheap sci-fi laser guns being fired in a playground game, peww, pewww, pewww…

Goldfinch are very chatty and tweety in the treetops and flying over sort of sound like coins jangling in a pocket, as do Redpolls.

Linnets call “linnet linnet” as they fly over.

If it sounds like a Blackbird but repeats itself and is melodic it’s a Song Thrush, if it’s a more aggressive sounding Song Thrush, it’ll be a Mistle Thrush.

Chiff Chaff does what it says on the tin. Metronomic, tweet, twit, tweet, twit…or more to the point chiff chaff chiff chaff…etc

If it sounds like an asymmetric chiff chaff it’s probably a Great Tit.

Long-tailed Tits sound chirpy and busy, often calling tee-teet-tee in little triplets of notes.

Robin is a quiet blackbird playing a trilly woodwind

Blackcap is like an abbreviated smoother sounding but also ad libbing Blackbird

Wrens tick, tick, tick from the hedgerow but sing very loudly and melodically as does the Dunnock but to a different tune. Robin alarm calling is also a sharp tick sound, like a marble being tapped against a ball bearing.

I have mentioned the Eurasian Collared Dove, Streptopelia decaocto, previously on the blog, describing it as an avian continuity error. It’s a sweet bird, familiar for its “coo-cooh-coo” call, which people sometimes (quite bizarrely) mistake for the call of the cuckoo. We hear this species of dove all year round in the UK and have done for decades. But, that has only been the case since around the time of WWII and really mostly since the 1950s, hence the continuity error of period dramas set before that time.

It is a sweet bird, you wouldn’t think she, and all birds, are descended from dinosaurs of the Tyrannosaurus rex type, the theropods. That aside, the Collared Dove finds itself in essentially the same ecological niche and more that were occupied by the migratory, but native, European Turtle Dove, Streptopelia turtur, about which I have also written a few times here.

We have had the collared species nest in at least one of our garden bushes in years past. But, this year, a female has set up nest in the rather precarious creepers of one of our grapevines that grow beneath a lean-to area that abutts our downstairs bedroom. She seems very settled and is ever watchful when I head to the waterbutts that are housed in that area. Occasionally, she will de-nest and take flight, but never goes far, simply lands on the fence a few metres away. Once I’ve got the water I need for the wildflower patch, she’ll dart back in with barely a sound and nestle down. We are trying to avoid using this area of the garden and given that the waterbutts are now empty, I’ll have to get to the tap on the wall behind her nest to access water for the plants…

I hope the eggs she’s incubating hatch and that we see the fledgelings. We’ve had fledged Starlings, Blackbirds, Goldfinches, and Blue Tits in the garden so far this year, possibly Greenfinches too. All of those species will generally have a spring brood, but doves and pigeons can and do have more than a single brood through the season.

One swallow doth not a summer make, but there are dozens to be seen around these parts now; have been for a couple of weeks at least. They’re relatively easy to photograph when they’re perched on a telegraph wire staring you out, but not so much when they’re flying over water hunting and drinking.

Barn Swallows (Hirundo rustica) at RSPB Ouse Washes 18th May 2019.

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.

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).

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

Green Woodpecker
Buzzard
Marsh Harrier
Kestrel
Bittern
Great Black-backed Gull
Lesser Black-backed Gull
Black-headed Gull
Mallard

Tufted Duck
Greylag Geese (and goslings)
Mute Swan
Grey Heron
Little Egret
Cormorant
Coot
Wigeon
Moorhen
Wood Pigeon
Stock Dove
Bearded Reedling
Reed Bunting
Linnet
Meadow Pipit
Snipe
Green Sandpiper
Skylark
Goldfinch
Sedge Warbler
Cetti’s Warbler

Mayfly
Hoverfly
European Peacock
Small Tortoiseshell
Brimstone
Small White
Large White
Ladybird
Various Bumblebees, flies, and other flying insects

I think that’s all…not much about at all. Admittedly, the person who said it was cycling…