Category: Biology

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We decided to forego the traditional seeing in the New Year for 2019* and had an early night instead so that we could get up to head north for New Year’s Day. By north I mean Norfolk and RSPBs Titchwell and Snettisham, specifically. Arrived at Titchwell at about 10am, lots of the usual garden birds on the feeders at the visitor centre, Water Rail in the ditch, Ring-tailed Hen Harrier along the west marsh and Long-tailed and Eider ducks not too far from the shore.

Apparently, there was a competition underway for someone to tick 100 birds on the reserve, the wardens got to about 72 different species, by the end of our visit we’d clocked a mere 54 or so different species and probably a couple more we simply didn’t recognise, in no particular order:

1. Hen Harrier “ringtailed” meaning plumage ambiguous, female or juv.
2. Bar-tailed Godwit
3. Black-tailed Godwit
4. Teal
5. Redshank
6. Oystercatcher
7. Cormorant
8. Grey Plover
9. Brent Goose
10. Greylag Goose
11. Mallard
12. Wigeon
13. Pochard
14. Shelduck
15. Blackbird
16. Chaffinch
17. Water Rail
18. Goldfinch
19. Greenfinch
20. Wren
21. Little Grebe
22. Blue Tit
23. Great Tit
24. Coal Tit
25. Long-tailed Tit
26. Robin
27. Starling
28. Marsh Harrier
29. Buzzard
30. Dunnock
31. Reed Bunting
32. Lesser Black-backed gull
33. Black-headed Gull
34. Sanderling
35. Long-tailed duck
36. Eider
37. Dunlin
38. Turnstone
39. Lapwing
40. Avocet
41. Curlew
42. Wood Pigeon
43. Knott
44. Stock Dove
45. Little Egret
46. Grey Heron
47. Tufted Duck
48. Ruff
49. Moorhen
50. Pheasant
51. Gadwall
52. White-throated Diver
53. Herring Gull
54. Magpie

Also so Stonechat at Snettisham later in the day having watched huge flocks of Golden Plover (1000s), Lapwing and Oystercatcher (100s) and 1000s of Knott doing their high-tide flocking.