Category: Biology

I bought a sack of black sunflower hearts to restock the garden bird feeders instead of that wasteful mixed seed most of which the small birds discard and the Woodpigeons and our labrador hoover up. It seems the Great Tit (Parus major) and the Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) are quite partial to these. They need some degree of patience to eat them given that the tasty seed is contained within an edible husk. This deters some less patient birds. I’ve not seen Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) tucking into these seeds on the feeders, for instance. They much prefer to snaffle suet balls and mixed dehusked seed mix.

Eating such seeds comes with the risk of greater exposure to predator threat while the bird cracks the seed open. The Great Tits seem to quickly duck in and out, grabbing a seed and then darting back into the foliage to presumably break it open and eat it. A female Greenfinch (Chloris chloris) didn’t seem perturbed, standing her ground (well, her perch) while she opened it to eat.

A few snaps from a recent, short, but sweet, and hot, camping trip to North Norfolk. Several Turtle Doves, one Cuckoo, lots of Whitethroat, Linnets, Swallows, Swifts, House Martins, several Sedge Warblers, Pied Wagtail, Wren, Common Tern, Dunlin, Knot, the usual gulls (Lesser Black-backed, Black-headed), Mallards, Moorhens, Coots, Avocet, Shelduck, Skylark, Kestrel, Greenfinch, Goldfinch, various geese (Canada, Egyptian, Greylag), Black-tailed Godwit (just one, overhead), and nesting Common Ringed Plover and Oystercatchers.

Common Ringed Plover Sedge Warbler “singing” Juvenile Coot stepping out

Turtle Dover turring up the Wi-Fi
Mallard making a run for it

Last Cuckoo of the Snettisham Summer?

Oystercatcher

Knot

Whitethroat

Avocet

Turtle Dove in a tree

UPDATE: April 2022 A Chiffchaff is currently using the pond. Our full garden ticklist can be found in a more recent article about garden birdwatching here.

UPDATE: Mid-January 2019, we’d been away and the house next door was temporarily empty. We got out of the car, there’s a Goldcrest tweeting away from a bush adjacent to the front garden fence. A first for our garden.

It’s like SpringWatch in our garden sometimes…full birding list for garden can be found here.

Non-avian vertebrates: Common frog, squirrel (grey and black), hedgehog, “pipistrelle” bat, cat, dog.

Apologies if I didn’t tag everyone…

Bird photos here: https://imagingstorm.co.uk/british-birds

UPDATE: Lee Evans (not that one) told me via the UK Bird ID Facebook group that it is likely this is the same GRW that has been sighted a few times over the last few years. According to CamBirds blog there was one at Paxton Pits in 2016, one at Eldernell (RSPB Nene Washes) in 2014. Life expectancy for this species is 1-5 years. So it could be the same male.

If you’re a birder in or around Cambridge, you will know via CamBirds, social media, word-of-mouth and other information routes that there is a vagrant in our midst. He’s been here since about the 15th June and is still posturing and shouting just outside the village of Fen Drayton. We have to assume he’s lost, as he is usually only to be found on mainland Europe and Asia and spends his winters swanning around sub-Saharan Africa. That said, climate change, changes in farming practices, and other environmental concerns are already disrupting bird behaviour, so who knows?

He is a Great Reed Warbler and has been showing well on the southern edge reed beds of Elney Lake at RSPB Fen Drayton.

Acrocephalus arundinaceus to give him his scientific name is the biggest of the diffuse group of birds we call the European warblers. His calling and posturing for a mate are most likely to be entirely in vain as it is very unlikely that a female will have accidentally ended up here too. Anyway, his presence is cause for celebration among local birders who have been out in force since mid-June to catch a glimpse of him and to hear his syrinx in action.

I got some distant shots of him through the summer haze, but it was too warm for that kind of zoom photography. Still, it’s a record shot. Much better is the shot I got of a few of the birders standing patiently gazing through scopes and bins.

I ended up wending my way to the Reedbed Trail at RSPB Ouse Fen again (Over side, as opposed to Needingworth). There were several birders there, monitoring Bittern behaviour and while I was speaking to fellow Geordie ex-pat Dave we saw four taking flight briefly from the reeds. He’d seen at least 7 already in the four hours he’d been watching. His dedication to the cause was echoed in his car registration which (almost) spelt out Bittern. Apparently, they were watching for females dancing chick-to-chick in the reeds as their offspring wander off and the mother attends to each one.

I, on the other hand, had a dog to walk, cattle to avoid and Marsh Harriers to photograph. There were Bearded Tits around making their unmistakable “pew pew” sound in one patch of reeds, but I didn’t see them, sadly. Still, lots of Marsh Harrier around, a couple of Kestrel and Buzzard, Goldfinch, Black-headed Gull, no Common Tern on this visit, Reed Warbler calling and darting about the reeds. A few Reed Bunt and an occasional Whitethroat. A flock of four Little Egret, and the usual Jackdaws, Rooks, Pigeons, Greylag Geese etc.

The Bittern photos didn’t come out well, the one above I snapped at RSPB Minsmere, so here’s a Kestrel instead.

If you live in the South East you are very unlikely to stumble across a Dipper (Cinclus cinclus) unless you venture further afield, heading north, west or into Wales. This bird spends its time on the rocks that litter clear mountain streams and broad rocky rivers rather than any of the deep and cloudy, fast-moving waterways of East Anglia and the counties that surround London. These shots are on the River Usk some way west of the town of Aberhonddu (Brecon), Powys, Wales,

Having not snapped any in Teesdale on another trip, where the upper Tees fits the Dipper’s requirements perfectly, I was pleased to at last photograph this bird, which bobs up and down on its perch, usually with its mouth full of insects, on the River Usk in the shadow of the Brecon Beacons National Park, Wales.

The Dipper has a white throat and breast which contrasts with dark body plumage and a ruddy belt.

On a recent trip, our hosts counted perhaps 35 bird species that I had seen; none of them except the Dipper, a lifer .Birds seen on two-day trip: Red Kite, Buzzard, Kestrel, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Song Thrush, Blackbird, Starling, Magpie, Rook, Jackdaw, Blue Tit, Wren, Robin, Treecreeper, Yellowhammer, Reed Bunting, Stonechat, Pied Wagtail, Meadow Pipit, Skylark, Goldfinch, Linnet, Willow Warbler, Chiffchaff, Wood Pigeon, Collared Dove, Heron, Lesser Black-backed Gull, House Martin, Barn Swallow, Swift, Dunnock, House Sparrow, Dipper. A couple of others as yet identified from photos. Tawny Owl heard several times, long before dark.

UPDATE: Rose-coloured Starlings have apparently turned up at The Genome Campus, Hinxton, near Cambridge. It’s private land, so don’t go looking on the site as you’re liable to be arrested. The birds are flocking to and from the village itself and there is a neighbouring paddock they seem to be favouring.

—

According to BirdGuides.com: “2018 is poised to produce a huge invasion of Rosy Starlings to the UK”

Many have been seen in record-breaking numbers in recent days across continental Europe with flocks appearing as close as France, says the site. 500 were recorded in Marseille and some in Spain. Fewer than 20 have been reported in the UK so far but that’s more than normal numbers in a seven-day period. The site suggests they could be “harbingers of a much larger arrival”. Sightings have been made in Dorset, Cornwall, Kent, Anglesey, Hampshire, Northamptonshire, Norfolk, East Yorkshire, and the Isle of Skye.

Although it is nominally a starling, the rosy starling (Pastor roseus) or rose-coloured pastor is now classed in its own monotype genus as “Pastor” rather than bunched with the starling family, Sturnidae. The split is based on genetics and it is not yet known whether there are other members of the genus yet to be revealed.

The genus name Pastor and its old English name come from the Latin word pastor, meaning “shepherd” (as in pastoral, but also as in a priest). Roseus is Latin for “rose-coloured”, as you probably guessed. You can see from Veronesi’s below why they’re called pastors, it’s nothing to do with looking like a priest, it’s that they look like they’re wearing a sheep’s fleece as a shepherd would.

Not my photo, but if I see one, I will endeavour to snap it: