Category: Birds

Some birds have several names (think Peewit, Green Plover, and Northern Lapwing, all Vanellus vanellus). The scientific binomial is usually the definitive name, but even that can change especially in the age of DNA analysis. Either way, there are common names, colloquial names, and others that can add to the rich tapestry of birding life. I asked the members of the UK Bird Identification group on Facebook for a few of their favourite examples, having myself offered Bonxie (the Great Skua), Yaffle (Green Woodpecker), and Spuggie (House Sparrow), as some of my favourites.

Mick pointed out that his word for a Spuggie is a Spudge and Maggie added that spuggies thrive in Yorkshire as well as Geordieland (from whence I hail and from where Sarah’s family also hail and she calls House Sparrows spuggies too and knows someone who refers to Long-tailed Tits as “flying teaspoons”). Wendy added that an older bird-watching friend calls Great Tits (Parus major) Tomtits. Interesting because tomtit is also Petroica macrocephala, an Australian Robin, endemic to New Zealand. Wendy also revealed that she used to refer to Ring-necked Parakeets as “Marmite Parakeets”, presumably because you either love them or hate them (or maybe it was just the colour, although if your Marmite has turned green, it’s time to get a new jar.

Darryl added that another Yorkshire dialect name is Fleck-lenny for the Chaffinch and his mother called Starlings “Sheps”. While people in The Orkneys call puffins “Tammie Norries”.

Alex pointed out that Kestrels used to be known seemingly rather crudely as Windf*ckers, but, of course, in Old English that modern expletive perhaps meant “beater”. The same bird was also known as a Windhover.

Michael Murphy gave us Tystie, Butterbump, and Sprosser as all brilliant. A quick search on DuckDuckGo (obvs) confirmed those as: Black Guillemot, European Bittern, and Thrush Nightingale. Meanwhile, Lesley tells us that a Dabchick is a Little Grebe.

Stuart told the group that he had a parrot called Neil. I do wonder if that’s fakenews though…maybe not, I knew a black and white cat called Peter once. He adds that Toastie is another name for the Black Guillemot, apparently available in cheese and ham, similar to the aforementioned Tystie. Dave tells us a Stormcock is a Mistle Thrush and Chris says Throstle for Song Thrush. Bob also points out that in Leicester House Sparrows are also Spuggies and highlights Peewit for Lapwing too, although I had already mentioned that in the introduction to this post.

Other nicknames coming home to roost: Robin has Rosy Pastor (Rosy Starling) and Goatsucker (Nightjar), Ginny mentioned how Puffling – describes Puffin chicks perfectly. Les tells us that in Liverpool Woodpigeons are called Wood Micks but says he hasn’t a clue why; I think we might offer a good guess.

A blackwit is Black-tailed Godwit. A barwit a Bar-tailed-Godwit.

Gropper – Grasshopper Warbler.

Oh and for anyone wondering, yes it was Professor Yaffle who was the bookend Green Woodpecker in Bagpuss!

This post is essentially an appendix to my tongue-in-beak birding glossary.

LIFE ON THE FEN EDGE – WITH SIR DAVID ATTENBRADLEY

EPISODE 2: GOLDFINCH DYNASTY

from the BBC, the British Bradcasting Corporation

All the leaves may be brown but the sky certainly isn’t grey It’s early December in this Cottenham garden on the edge of the Cambridgeshire Fens. A family of Goldfinches are keeping the winter chills at bay by eating the abundance of high-energy nyjer seeds from a feeder hanging in the beech tree.

There is a definite avian hierarchy at play with the dominant members of the group perching in prime position to nibble at the tasty but tiny black seeds with their seed-crushing beaks.

As we can see, there is space on the feeder for four birds and yet those lower down the hierarchy seem keen to shuffle up and down nearby branches and make a play for an occupied perch only to be rebuffed by its resident with raucous calling and a great flapping of golden wings. Perhaps there is social climbing involved or maybe the birds simply perceive the occupied perches as being somehow better. After all, those higher up the family tree are feeding well on those. That said, it is rare to see all four perches occupied simultaneously and the sequence of perch occupation changes periodically.

Without extensive scientific analysis it would seem impossible to probe the minds of our feathered friends. But, more to the point, it’s getting rather cold in the garden and it’s time for my morning coffee.

LIFE ON THE FEN EDGE – WITH SIR DAVID ATTENBRADLEY

EPISODE 1: I Heard a Murmur
EPISODE 2: Goldfinch Dynasty
EPISODE 3: Young People’s Beat Combo
EPISODE 4: The Cumulus Dynasty

Ask anyone how long they imagine wild birds live, and the answer might be a 2-3 years, perhaps, or maybe a bit longer, certainly not as long as a cat or a dog. Well, the truth might surprise you. While it is true that some of the common garden species we know and love have quite short lifespans, there is evidence (from scientific ringing) that wading birds, like Oystercatchers and Woodcocks, can live for several decades.

One Oystercatcher, well known to birders, was first ringed by by Adrian Blackburn in on the Lincolnshire  coast (Eastern England) and was last logged just over 40 years later in 2010 in roughly the same part of the world. It might well still be alive today, we don’t know.

The website Wader Tales mentions that Oystercatcher and also points out that one Manx Shearwater was ringed and logged at the age of almost 51 years. A Pink-footed Goose of more than 38.5 years is on record and a Rook of almost 23. A Black-tailed Godwit was hatched in Iceland in 1977 and ringed in the October of that in Butley, Suffolk. It was caught and logged in 1993 on The Wash and again in 1996. Last time it was seen was 2001.

LIFE ON THE FEN EDGE – WITH SIR DAVID ATTENBRADLEY

EPISODE 1: I HEARD A MURMUR

from the BBC, the Bradley Broadcasting Corporation

Sunset is still a long way off. But, there’s a peace settling over the reed bed at the Broad Lane balancing pond in Cottenham. Nevertheless, it seems an unlikely place to spend the night. But, that’s exactly what several hundred local residents are planning to do. They’re just waiting for the sun to go down and in they’ll come to make their bed.

The time is drawing near, a few birds have come home to roost and are calling from the trees. Almost as soon as the sun dips below the horizon, the first of the overnighters arrive, winging their way in from the local fields and making a flap about who gets to sleep where. And, then the crowds begin to arrive, everyone jostling for pole position in the race to find the most comfortable and safest spot to bed down for the night.

The arrivals are, of course, starlings (Sturnus vulgaris), and this is murmuration time. We do not see quite the magnificent flocks of millions that appear over the African savannah nor even the multitude that murmurates along Brighton Pier. But, this is Cottenham on the edge of the Cambridgeshire Fens and we have to make do with a mere two or three thousand of these birds settling down each winter night. Wave after wave arrives to find a roosting place among the reeds.

And then, the stragglers, the less prompt late back from the fields. Thankfully, there’s always a snug bed among the reeds. And, there’s no panic about who gets the top or the bottom bunk. Every roost is the same and every roost is as safe as the next from night-hunting predators with a taste for our feathered friends. They just have to hope there are no pike in that balancing pond.

LIFE ON THE FEN EDGE – WITH SIR DAVID ATTENBRADLEY

EPISODE 1: I Heard a Murmur
EPISODE 2: Goldfinch Dynasty
EPISODE 3: Young People’s Beat Combo
EPISODE 4: The Cumulus Dynasty

Golden Plover (Pluvialis apricaria) at St Mary’s Island, Whitley Bay, Northumberland, turn of the high tide 15th November 2018.

St Mary’s Island, near Whitley Bay, is a great place to see a variety of bird species. Here are some of the species that you might see on a visit:

Common Eider (Somateria mollissima) – These large sea ducks are a common sight around St Mary’s Island. The males have striking black and white plumage with a lovely green patch on the back of their heads, while the females are speckled brown.

Eurasian Oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus) – These black and white wading birds are commonly seen along the shore, probing the sand and mud for their favourite food – bivalves such as mussels and cockles with their large orange bill.

Turnstone (Arenaria interpres) – These small, plump wading birds are easy to spot with their distinctive black and white plumage and mottled brown plumage. They get their name from their habit of turning over stones and pebbles to find food.

Ringed Plover (Charadrius hiaticula) – These small, sandy-coloured wading birds are often seen running along the shoreline, looking for insects and other small invertebrates. Look out for another similar species Little Ringed Plover (Charadrius dubius), distinguished by yellow ring around the eyes.

European Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) – These large, noisy gulls are a common sight around St Mary’s Island. They are opportunistic feeders and will eat a variety of food, including fish, insects, and even rubbish.

Great Black-backed Gull (Larus marinus) – These are the largest gulls in the world, and are often seen patrolling the coastline. They are powerful predators and will take a wide range of prey, including fish, seabirds, and even small mammals.

Common Tern (Sterna hirundo) – These graceful birds are summer visitors to the coast, arriving in April and leaving in September. They are often seen hovering over the water, looking for fish to dive down and catch.

Northern Fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis) – These grey and white seabirds resemble gulls but have a distinctive tube-like nostril on their beaks, they’re often referred to as tubenoses. They are often seen soaring along the cliffs and offshore islands, and are known for their ability to produce an oily substance which they spit at predators in defence. Their flight pattern is with stiff-winged flapping.

Common Guillemot (Uria aalge) – These black and white seabirds are part of the auk family and are often seen in large colonies on offshore islands.  Also known as the Common Murre. They have a distinctive high-pitched call and can often be seen diving underwater to catch fish.

Kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla) – These small gulls are easily recognizable by their black-tipped wings and bright yellow beaks. They are also known for their loud and distinctive “kitti-wake” call. Like other gulls, they are opportunistic feeders and will eat a variety of food including fish, invertebrates, and scraps of human food. They are known as Black-legged Kittiwakes outside the UK.

We’ve also seen Cormorant, Red Shank, Grey Heron, Dunlin, Sandpiper, Avocet, and several other species on the island. There is less chance of seeing Puffin, Shag, Gannet, but you never know…

The Long-eared Owl (Asio otus) is a typical owl, which means it is a member of the Strigidae family. On a flying visit to RSPB Saltolme on Teesside (a dry and winter sunny trip this second trip there for us), we headed over to the known roosting sites of the birds on the reserve. The noticeboards had said they were not “showing”. However, a warden was watching a tree intently and so we followed suit, but nothing came to sight.

Heading up the path, the warden spotted one in a dense woody thicket, it was only just visible with binoculars at about 15 metres distance and certainly you couldn’t see it without optical aids. He directed our sight to it, but Mrs Sciencebase spotted a second to its right and even more fiercely obscured by branches and foliage. I got a record shot of the first zoomed to 600 mm, f/6.7, t 1/2000s, ISO 12800.

It was dusky by now and very little light in the thicket. We needed to get back on the road, so couldn’t wait the hour or two before they took flight to begin hunting and had to leave before any significant Starling murmurations, although we did see a wonderful sunset of the chemical works! More of those in the next blog post.

Photographed at RSPB Saltholme

The Goldcrest (Regulus regulus) is the UK’s joint smallest bird (alongside the Firecrest, R. ignicapillus. They’re both usually about 90 millimetres long and weighing approximately 9 grams.

Both species favour pine trees, but you see them in other wooded areas and occasionally in gardens. I say “you see them”. But, they’re so small and flighty that it is quite hard to spot them and even harder to get decent photographs of them in their natural habitat.

They dart about in the darkest recesses of the woods, apparent only through their high-pitched whistling tweets and occasional flash of gold. So, I was quite pleased to catch one Goldcrest in the sunlight in one of our nearby woodlands, Rampton Spinney, about eight kilometres north of Cambridge.

The sunlight meant I could have a short shutter speed with the intention of freezing movement without the ISO being too high and the pictures noisy. These three shots were taken with a Canon 6D, with a Sigma 150-600mm zoom lens at full stretch, f/5.6, ISO 2500 and a shutter speed of 1/1500 second.

 

It’s a classic pub quiz question: “What’s the UK’s most common breeding bird?”. Many people might think of Woodpigeon or House Sparrow, Starling, perhaps, because we see so many in our gardens. Indeed, House Sparrow is the most common bird in our gardens, but that doesn’t take into account the millions of birds in the countryside (ignoring chickens which aren’t wild birds). The answer to the question is in fact the Wren (Troglodytes troglodytes). There are about 8,600,000 breeding pairs of Wren in the UK compared with just 5,300,000 pairs of House Sparrow.

Bizarrely, when I posted this fact on Facebook with the above photo of a Wren at RSPB Titchwell, one friend asked, quite innocently, which is the most abundant UK breeding bird by weight? I assumed he meant mass and so I looked up the numbers and the average mass of a few species and did some calculations, I may well have overlooked a bird that comes in heavier, but here’s my Top Ten UK breeding birds not by number but by national tonnage:

Woodpigeon 457 g – 5.4 million pairs –> 4940 tonnes
Blackbird 100 g – 7m pairs –> 1400 tonnes
Collared Dove 181 g – 990,000 pairs –> 360 tonnes
Greylag Goose 3.6 kg – 46000 pairs –> 331 tonnes
Starling 75 g – 1.8 million pairs –> 270 tonnes
House Sparrow 32 g – 5.3m pairs –> 169 tonnes
Wren 9 g – 8.6 million pairs –> 160 tonnes
Chaffinch 25 g – 6.2m pairs –> 155 tonnes
Mute Swan 10 kg – 6400 pairs –> 128 tonnes
Robin 19 g – 6.7 million pairs –> 127 tonnes

Just outside the top ten, we have:
Song Thrush 80 g – 1.2 million pairs –> 96 tonnes
Dunnock 20 g – 2.3 million pairs –> 46 tonnes
Blue Tit 11 g – 3.6 million pairs –> 39.6 tonnes

Knots Landing (and taking off) at RSPB Snettisham, on The Wash, North Norfolk. Evening High Tide 20th October 2018, with Mr and Mrs Sciencebase. Video and music by Dave Bradley.

Red Knot (Calidris canutus) – another bird with red in its name when it is so obviously orange. See my post on avian fake news.

This is a version of my bird report for our local village newsletter scheduled to appear in December.

At the time of writing, the summer visitors, such as the swifts, swallows, house martins, and various migratory warblers were all long gone. Indeed, it is still sunny and warm during the day, but the nights have turned decidedly damp and chilly and one friend reported early-morning frost on his car windscreen (it was 90 days until Christmas, at the time).

Well, speaking of Christmas for the birder can mean only one thing, and I don’t mean turkey, nor do I actually mean the winter visitors such as the fieldfare, redwing, hawfinch, waxwing, nor any of the other species that head south from Siberia and Scandinavia during the winter to pick the leftover fruit and berries from our season of mellow fruitfulness and find some degree of warmth even if there is another Beast from the East. No, I am talking about the Robin, Erithacus rubecula.

There is all sorts of folklore surrounding this old world flycatcher with its tremulous and flutingly melodic song and its famous breast plumage. But, its appearance on Christmas paraphernalia is somewhat puzzling given that the bird is a resident. It’s fake news that they make an appearance only at the festive end of the year and prefer snow to soil. The bird is here all year, unlike those swifts and swallows which swan off [pardon the pun] back to southern Africa as our days shorten and the temperatures fall. It never leaves.

If I remember rightly, the Robin was voted Britain’s favourite bird. Fair enough, it is a wonderful, bold species with a history of finding a home near human settlements where it will be forever watchful and dart in to catch dropped food and crumbs. They evolved alongside other foraging mammals, such as wild boar, and are quite happy to piggyback in that animal’s stamping grounds too. Despite their popularity and cute appearance they are actually rather aggressively territorial birds and quick to drive away or even attack intruders.

There is one thing about Robins that might have confused all but the most casual observer of their plumage. The species is commonly known as the robin redbreast. But, the feathers on its chest are anything but red. That “rubecula” in its scientific name is also fake news. The rubecula comes from the Latin “ruber” meaning red, same etymology as the precious stone the ruby. Same root as “rufous” meaning red. But, that redbreast is most definitely not red, it’s orange!

So, why isn’t the bird commonly known as a robin orangebreast? Well, you may well ask the same question of a host of other “reds” that are also orange, such as redshanks, red knot, red admirals, and redheads.

The answer lies in the fact that until the 1540s, English had no word for the colour orange. Anything of what we perceive as a red or orange hue was just fifty or so shades of red. It was very black and white, no grey. When the common names were given to various species and hair colouration, whether they were orange or red, it was all the same – red.

The word orange arrived on our shores with the fruit, around 1300, but was used only as the name of the fruit. The word having come from the old French “orange”, which in turn and rather indirectly comes from the Sanskrit word for an orange tree, “naranga”. It wasn’t until the 1540s that the fruity word started to be used for the colour. If there had been any usage of that hue, then in Middle English it was citrine or saffron. Robins were not even always called robins. They were officially known as redbreasts until 1971 and long before that ruddocks, with its allusion to their being ruddy. The bird name robin, of course, also screams red as in ruby, ruby, ruby, despite it coming from the forename.

At least the avian cousin of the robin, the bluethroat is a lot more obvious and trustworthy in its name. It’s a bird with a blue throat. Except of course, you do get ones with a white spot in that blue patch and others with a red spot just to add to the confusion and don’t get me started on pied, white, grey, and yellow wagtails.