Feathered friends in an English country garden

TL:DR – Birds you might see or here in an English country garden. My Cambridgeshire garden ticklist is below.


Some time ago, my dear friend and fellow bigMouth singer John Stanford asked me to put together an article for our village newsletter about the birds we are likely to see in our gardens here in South Cambridgeshire. Your mileage will vary depending on where you are in the country, what kind of habitat your garden offers, feeders you use or don’t (it’s not essential and not always recommended). But, I do have an article on how to attract more birds to your garden.

Robin
Robin

Of course, which of our feathered friends turns up in your garden is down to many different factors, the size and layout of your garden, tree and other plant species, the presence of cats, whereabouts you are relative to patches of woodland, farmland, and whether or not the visitors find a useful supply of food in the form of berries on your bushes, seed feeders and bird tables, coconut shells full of suet, and whatever else you might put out to attract them.

Dunnock
Dunnock

Some birds will arrive in great numbers to feast on fatballs for instance. Most of us have been perplexed to see expensive fatballs disappear in a matter of minutes when a flock of starlings turn up. Other food, such as nyjer seeds in a specialist feeder will draw in Goldfinches and occasionally for some Redpolls. Sunflowers seeds with the husk intact, sometimes referred to as black sunflower hearts, will keep Greenfinches, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Coal Tits, and Long-tailed Tits busy, and if the nyjer seeds run out the Goldfinches too.

Redwing
Redwing

Robins, Blackbirds, Wood Pigeons, Collared Doves, Dunnocks, will spend much of their time pecking around under the feeders, although the Blackbirds will join Mistle and Song Thrushes plucking insects from the lawn. And, Thrushes will famously grab snailshells and smash them on the ground to get at the occupant. If it’s very cold out on the farmland, the winter thrushes – the Fieldfares and Redwings – will come into the warmer more urban areas and attempt to snaffle berries from your bushes and trees much to the consternation of the Blackbirds who will attempt to make them flee.

Redpoll
Redpoll

You might also spot Bramblings during the winter. They are another finch resembling the Chaffinch but brighter and more orange colours. I have heard from people living on the edge of our village who see them in their gardens occasionally, but they are more likely to be elsewhere.

Blue Tit
Blue Tit

Unusual but increasingly common in the winter are Blackcaps, a type of warbler normally considered a summer visitor, but turning up in our gardens from Germany and Eastern Europe rather than heading to the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa. Speaking of summer, by the time you read this birds that you might see above your garden or heading into your eaves may have started to arrive: House Martins first, then the Swallows that don’t necessarily a summer make, and finally the Swifts. Listen out for Cuckoos too. Certainly, houses on the edge of our local village green backing on to farmland have regular cuckoos visiting for the breeding season.

If you have ants among your plants, you might see Green Woodpeckers, also known as Yaffles for their scoffing call in flight. Ants are the staple diet of yaffles, so hold off the powder if you want to see them pecking at the ground in your garden. And, speaking of woodpeckers, there are quite a few Great Spotted Woodpeckers around, which will often come to garden feeders. Of course, if you’re attracting lots of small songbirds to your garden you might also attract predators including Sparrowhawks and less obviously egg-eating Magpies, and chick-chomping Jays. Great Spotted Woodpeckers will also peck into birdboxes to eat baby Blue Tits and the like.

Here’s our garden ticklist of the 70 species we’ve noted sight or sound) during the last quarter of a century, in, over, or very close to our small, relatively “sub-rural” garden:

  1. Barn Owl (daytime between neighbouring houses 2 Jan 24, Merlin app app late Oct 23)
  2. Blackbird (Seen using the pond for drinking and/or bathing)
  3. Blackcap
  4. Black-headed Gull (overhead)
  5. Black Redstart (Merlin app early Jan 24)
  6. Blue Tit
  7. Brambling (Merlin app, late Oct 23)
  8. Buzzard (raiding Blackbird nest behind shed, 2000s)
  9. Chaffinch
  10. Chiffchaff (bathing in pond, 2022)
  11. Coal Tit
  12. Collared Dove (Seen using the pond for drinking and/or bathing)
  13. Cormorant (overhead)
  14. Dunnock (Seen using the pond for drinking and/or bathing)
  15. Fieldfare
  16. Goldcrest
  17. Golden Plover (overhead)
  18. Goldfinch (Seen using the pond for drinking and/or bathing)
  19. Goldcrest (first time 2019)
  20. Great Black-backed Gull (overhead)
  21. Great Tit
  22. Great Spotted Woodpecker (2023, possibly also late 90s)
  23. Green Sandpiper (heard)
  24. Green Woodpecker
  25. Greenfinch
  26. Grey Heron (taking frogs, 2021, but also seen since 2017)
  27. Grey Wagtail (Merlin app, late Oct 23)
  28. Hobby (overhead, 2x taking Swifts consecutive years, early 2000s?)
  29. House Martin (attempted nesting under rear gable early 2000s)
  30. House Sparrow (Seen using the pond for drinking and/or bathing)
  31. Jackdaw
  32. Jay
  33. Kestrel (overhead)
  34. Lapwing (overhead)
  35. Lesser Black-backed Gull (overhead)
  36. Linnet (overhead, mid-Sep 24)
  37. Little Egret (0verhead)
  38. Long-tailed Tit
  39. Magpie
  40. Marsh Harrier (Merlin app, early Nov 23)
  41. Meadow Pipit (Merlin app, early Nov 23)
  42. Mistle Thrush
  43. Oystercatcher (heard overhead and on Merlin night 28 Mar 24)
  44. Pheasant
  45. Pied Wagtail
  46. Prize Pigeon
  47. Raven (Merlin app, late Oct 23)
  48. Redpoll (once to new nyjer feeder)
  49. Redwing
  50. Red Kite (overhead)
  51. Redshank (heard overhead)
  52. Reed Bunting (Merlin app, early Nov 23)
  53. Ringed Plover (Merlin app, Oct 23, end of Pelham Way)
  54. Ring-necked Parakeet (Merlin app, 14 Jan 24)
  55. Robin (Seen using the pond for drinking and/or bathing)
  56. Rook
  57. Siskin (Merlin app, late Dec 23 and again Mar 24)
  58. Song Thrush
  59. Sparrowhawk
  60. Spoonbill (along Pelham Way just above roofline, Mar 23)
  61. Starling
  62. Stock Dove
  63. Stonechat (Merlin, mid-Nov 24)
  64. Swallow (overhead)
  65. Swift (overhead)
  66. Tawny Owl (heard in neighbour’s garden)
  67. Tree Sparrow (Merline app, early Feb 24)
  68. Waxwing (Merlin app, early Nov 23)
  69. Whitethroat (Tricia saw in pyracantha, autumn 23)
  70. Willow Warbler
  71. Wood Pigeon (Seen using the pond for drinking and/or bathing)
  72. Wren (Seen using the pond for drinking and/or bathing)
  73. Yellow-legged Gull (Merlin app, early Nov 23)
  74. Yellowhammer (Merlin, mid-Nov 24)

UPDATE: Early Feb 24 – Merlin picked up a Tree Sparrow and another Hawfinch. I can hear what sounds like the Tree Sparrow on the recording.

UPDATE: Early Jan 24 – Merlin app heard a Black Redstart and days later a Ring-necked Parakeet

UPDATE: Late Oct/Nov 2023 – Merlin app App picking up the sound of Grey Wagtail, Brambling, Ringed Plover, Raven, Waxwing, Marsh Harrier, Meadow Pipit, Barn Owl, Reed Bunting, and Yellow-legged Gull from the garden/house. 67 species.

UPDATE: 2 August 2023 – Mrs Sciencebase spotted a Whitethroat briefly touching down on the previously mentioned front garden firethorn. 57 species.

UPDATE: As of April 2023, 56 species, with a Spoonbill flying past the house quickly at 3-4m above the roofline at about 3pm on 18th. Very surprising!

Nuthatch
Nuthatch

I could add a lot of other birds to this list if I were to consider my village sightings rather than just my garden sightings: Little Owl, Great White Egret, Kingfisher, Little Stint, Little Ringed Plover, Teminck’s Stint, White Stork etc many of which on the Cottenham Lode or flooded areas of local farmland.

Waxwing
Waxwing

Check out my tongue-in-beak birding glossary here.

Female Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus)

I’d consider this a quite rare sighting over our usual Rampton (Cambridgeshire) stamping ground but we saw a large hawk flying over a sheep-laden field adjacent to the spinney. Looked like a big Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) and indeed that is what it is. Not a Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis), wrong underwing patterning, apparently.

Sparrowhawk

One of my RSPB bird books actually describes the Goshawk species as “essentially a giant version of the Sparrowhawk” but also points out that a large female Sparrowhawk would be about the same size as a small male Goshawk. Both birds are adapted for the same niche: hunting prey on the wing in woodland. So, not a new one for us, after all; we’ve had Sparrowhawks in the garden nomming on the tits).

Sparrowhawk

What does my name taste like?

TL:DR – Many people experience a condition known as synaesthesia where some of their sensese are mixed up and colours have smells, smells are associated with textures, and some words trigger a particular description.


Julie McDowall (@JulieAMcDowall) usually writes about nuclear war, in fact she’s got a book on that subject coming out soon. But, a few days ago she mentioned on Twitter that she has synaesthesia (the condition where the senses are “mixed up” so that a person with synaesthesia can smell music or see colours when they touch different textures). She said that to her different names conjure up different tastes. Needless to say, everyone who follows her on Twitter wants to know what their name tastes like.

The thread has gone viral, she has had 6 million twitter interactions as of 29th January. She has been truly overwhelmed by the response and the requests, thousands of them, and is now only offering her synaesthetic insight if a person with a name she hasn’t already tweeted about comes along and offers a donation to a worthy cause (her podcast).

Here’s a taste of the names and what they suggest tastewise to McDowall:

Aaron is a stale chocolate bar
Danielle is spaghetti hoops
Sam – tuna
Madison – earwax with chocolate
Jesus – Maltesers
Susan is a zip, but Susannah is a zippable banana
Hannah is a tasteless banana
Paddy is a fat, damp squishy notepad
Ross tastes like sausage rolls and rubber gloves
Simone is a slice of Spam
Shane is a mouthful of furniture polish
Nicky is a biscuit dipped in vinegar
Violet is a perfumed cream
John, is a leathery button on an old man’s cardigan

Apparently, it works for abstract concepts too, as well as personal names:

Brexit is a snapped KitKat
Remain is a Jammy Dodger

Now, this whole concept of synaesthesia? Perhaps you’re thinking how can such a phenomenon be real? Well, it most certainly is, as can those people with the condition attest and almost everyone who has tripped on LSD where such effects become part of the whole hallucinogenic experience. Fundamentally, of course, it’s obvious that it could arise. After all, our senses sample the “outside” world of tastes, sights, sounds, textures, smells, but the input to the brain from our sensors (tongue, eyes, ears, skin, nose) is nothing but an electrochemical signal transmitted along nerves. The brain has to somehow interpret the input as being different given the sensor that sent it the signal. If there’s crosstalk between the wiring or the brain’s circuitry doesn’t interpret the signal properly as arises on an LSD trip or in synaesthesia then the input from the tongue might be interpreted as a sound, a sight given a reference smell, or any combination of the senses and what they are supposed to be.

The infant brain receiving signals from all the different sensory organs is wired up as the baby develops, but prior to that it’s turmoil, the signals are crossed, the balance distorted, and some people deviate from the norm, even into adulthood.

One more point about sensory input and what the brain does about it. I wrote a piece for Discover magazine many years ago about a blind German who had a light sensor surgically connected to the nerves in part of his tongue. Eventually, with some training, his brain could eventually interpret a pattern of light hitting that sensor as something he could “see”. He had not been blind from birth, but it just shows that even if the brain “knows” which sensory organ is being stimulated it can work around that to interpret those electrochemical neuronal signals and a novel way.

I suspect we could learn a lot from synaesthesia and the people who have this remarkable condition.

Oh, by the way, McDowall thinks David/Dave has an amazing taste: “plastic spade dug into the damp sand on Blackpool beach”.

Also check out the twitter thread from a friend who is also a synaesthete, Alice Sheppard. She experiences sounds in colours, and so can give you a colour for your name. “People love to hear how synaesthetes experience their name,” she told me. I asked her to “do” my name:

“David: overall bright apple green, but with an orangey yellow stripe fairly early on, and a small white one a bit later. Bradley: strong bright mustard yellow, tapering off to soft greyish pale blue towards the end.”

Apparently, the jazz group California Guitar Trio have a taste/sound synaesthete friend who cooked them a meal based on the tastes of their album…

Lynford Arboretum – Where there are trees you’d hope to find birds

Several birders I’ve bumped into over the last couple of years have mentioned Lynford Arboretum in Norfolk as being a good place to see Hawfinches, Crossbills, Siskins, Firecrests, Bullfinches, and other bird species. We took a trip there on a very grey day (which means high ISO, noisy photos) and so quite a few bird species but no Firecrests, no Crossbills and no Hawfinches, unfortunately.

Young Brambling
Marsh Tit
Blue, Great, Long-tailed Tits
Long-tailed Tits
Coal Tit

On the list of 26 species we did see were, in no particular order:

1. Nuthatch
2. Marsh tit
3. Brambling
4. Chaffinch
5. Wood pigeon
6. Redwing
7. Rook
8. Fieldfare
9. Robin
10. Long-tailed tit
11. Blue tit
12. Great tit
13. Coal tit
14. Goldcrest
15. Siskin
16. Mute swan
17. Gadwall
18. Coot
19. Canada goose
20. Chicken
21. Moorhen
22. Mallard
23. Blackbird
24. Wren
25. Dunnock
26. Bullfinch

It’s honestly not worth my sharing the Goldcrest, Nuthatch, Siskin or any of the others, such a photon-compromised day.

Who’s the summer visitor in your winter garden?

UPDATE: He was showing well this morning, eating black honeysuckle berries, got a half-decent shot of him from the back bedroom window.

I have mentioned the Blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla) before. It’s a warbler and a summer migrant. We usually only expect to see them in the UK in the summer. But, those that spend their summers in Eastern Europe and Germany sometimes end up migrating, not to the Iberian Peninsula nor North Africa as we expect, but to the UK. Here, they will often find a decent food supply in feeders in the relative shelter of our gardens.

Above is pictured a male Blackcap (the females have a chestnut brown cap) taking flight the instant a Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) lands on the black sunflower seed feeder hanging in our apple tree.

Photographed from my office window on a very dull, grey day where light levels are treacherously low and the camera’s ISO disarmingly high.

You can read a little more about the scientific explanation as to why Blackcaps are over-wintering in the UK and not the Mediterranean as was once their wont:  2015 Dec;21(12):4353-63. DOI: 10.1111/gcb.13070. This is the takeaway from the paper:

“Increased availability of feeding resources, in the form of garden bird food, coupled with climatic amelioration, has enabled a successful new wintering population [of Blackcaps] to become established in Britain.”

What’s a warbler, anyway?

Blackbird feasting on the firethorn

When the so-called “Beast from the East” snowy cold-snap hit the UK in March 2018, there were a lot of Fieldfares and Redwings that came in from the cold fields and settled on our garden bushes. Regular readers will perhaps recall I shot some video of one chilly Fieldfare eating the berries from the firethorn bush in our front garden. Admittedly, I shot the video through the double-glazing from the comfort of our living room rather than venturing out into the cold (it would’ve spooked the bird, anyway, and that’s the excuse to which I’m sticking like glue).

Working on my laptop from that same spot, today I watched as one of our resident garden Blackbirds munched its way through a few of those berries. It’s cold outside, but no snow forecast. Here are a few snaps taken from the warmth of the sofa.

There’s not a lot of light out there, the bush is also quite shaded and the camera ISO had to be quite high to get anything out of the lack of photons, so the snaps are quite noisy.

Two Collared Doves

Some time ago, I wrote about the bird that is a common avian continuity error in period dramas set in Britain. The familiar “coo-coo-cooo” call of the Collared Dove (Streptopelia decaocto) would not have been heard in this green and pleasant land until well after the Second World War. The species had simply not spread its wings to settle on this sceptred isle from its native habitat of The Balkans. As such, you should not be able to hear its plaintive call while Mr Darcy steps sodden from that lake and sets Miss Bennett’s heart aflutter, nor in any film, TV programme, etc set before about 1950, to be frank.

Nancy Reynolds and Doves

Of course, no debunking of the deceived wisdom is ever entirely clearcut. Emily Brand shared on Twitter a painting that was up for auction at Sotheby’s. The painting most commonly known as Nancy Reynolds with Doves is by Sir Joshua Reynolds and dates to circa 1815. It sold for GBP 62,500.

In the painting, we see a winsome young woman holding what appears to be a gold-braided basket nestling a pair of what appear to be Collared Doves that are chattering to each other. Now, I was curious, this Eurasian species would have been known to Brits of that era through their Grand Tours of Europe etc. The allusions may be obvious, doves are a symbol of peace and love, although it is usually a white dove that we see in paintings. Perhaps the picturing of the Collared Dove, rather than the native (but migratory) Turtle Dove (Streptopelia turtur) as might have been more obvious, alludes to Nancy’s travels to the Mediterranean and the near-East, perhaps even further afield. Equally, it might be suggestive of the age of enlightenment and its debt to the classical era of the Mediterranean. It may well be that Nancy or Sir Joshua’s patron kept these birds as pets for any of a variety of reasons and the allusions to any and all of the above.

It is actually perhaps a little more likely that the birds in the picture are Barbary Doves (Streptopelia risoria), a domesticated strain of the African Collared Dove. They were brought to Europe in the 16th Century and were seen as an aristocratic fashion accessory in 18th Century England.

In terms of the Deceived Wisdom, if it were commonplace to keep this species as a pet in the aviary of one’s country pile, then there is the possibility that they would have been heard in some places well before the species invaded or irrupted the British Isles and made its home here.

The presence of this particular species in this painting also brings to mind the famous song, The Twelve Days of Christmas in which a gift receipt is offered along with the presents from the singer’s true love. In it, we hear of the donation of two Turtle Doves on the second day of Christmas. Of course, this particular migratory, rather than resident, species would be over-wintering at this time of year in the much balmier climes of Southern Africa, rather than shivering like the Robin, poor thing. Turtle Doves would have been as rare as hen’s teeth during Advent in Merry England, and so quite as difficult-to-come-by a Christmas present, as any of the other items in the song.

Thanks to the good people of the UK Bird Identification group on Facebook for their insights into the avians in this painting.

Juvenile Glaucous Gull, Larus hyperboreus

The Glaucous Gull (Larus hyperboreus) is the world’s second largest gull (largest is the Great Black-backed Gull (Larus marinus). It breeds in The Arctic but we do see them further south. My photograph is of a first winter youngster, juvenile gull. It is feeding on seal blubber on the beach way East of the beach carpark at Cley-next-the-Sea in North Norfolk (we saw a few dead seals on the beach on this visit perhaps battered in yesterday’s high winds and rough seas).

The word “glaucous” is descriptive of the adult bird’s colour. It simply means “dull bluish-green, gray,” but somehow that came from the Latin word glaucus meaning “bright, sparkling, gleaming,” but there’s also bluish-green,” from Greek glaukos. Homer used the term when describing the sea to simply mean “gleaming and silvery” with no suggestion of colour. It was later used to refer to “blue, gray” eyes. Indeed, the eye condition glaucoma is perhaps somehow connected with cataracts which lead the pupils of the eyes to take on this cast as the lenses become more and more opaque.

The first part of its scientific name, the Larus of Larus hyperboreus refers to the genus and its etymology is Latin for gull, or perhaps just a large seabird. The second part of the name, hyperboreus, means far north (boreus as in Aurora borealis, see also Ancient Greek for people from the far North, the Huperboreoi).

As Mrs Sciencebased pointed out, this immature Glaucous Gull does look rather like a juvenile Herring Gull (Larus argentatus), but there are distinguishing features: size, beak, and colouration.

Eurasian Treecreeper, Certhia familiaris

The Common, or Eurasian, Treecreeper, as its name might suggest, creeps up trees, often oaks and others with rough bark, plucking insects and other invertebrates from the niches. I specifically said up, because they never creep down the tree, always up and when they get to the top, they will fly off down to a lower region of the same or another tree.

This one spends its time on the oaks in Rampton Spinney, I’ve counted perhaps 8 or 9 in this woods over the last couple of years in a few different places, but I’ve only ever seen a maximum of four at a time. So, it’s hard to know how many live here in total. It could be three groups of 3 or 4 or just one larger group or even some other combination.

Why do female penguins get stranded?

Males dive deeper, but female Magellanic penguins swim further for food and get stranded as far away as the Brazilian coast, according to new research.

Magellanic penguins. (Credit: Takashi Yamamoto)

It seems that the males are larger, heavier, and stronger so can dive deeper for forward, the females have to migrate further to sate their appetites, travelling further from mating grounds simply means more exposure to risks on the outward and inward journeys. Science wasn’t aware of this sexual dimorphism in behaviour until this latest tracking experiment. It seems that it’s the juvenile females that get stranded more frequently than the adults.

Weather and human activity are mentioned as risk factors in the research paper itself.