Category: Biology

For me as a kid, you couldn’t beat a good space book, if it was stars and planets and the almost science fiction world of the Space Shuttle (in the early 1970s it was still a dream). I say that but a good shark book would come close, or better still one that had dolphins and whales too. Then again, one with magnets and motors, circuits and pulleys might occupy my time and at least in my pre-teens I had a chance of playing with magnets, but not swimming with dolphins. But, if I remember rightly, those subjects were not the top of the list. Dinosaur books were the top of the list.

Landing on my desk today is Steve Brusatte’s latest tome and it goes by the rather enticing title of “The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: The Untold Story of a Lost World“. What more could my pre-teen self want? Well, admittedly it is mostly words and far fewer pictures than I would’ve preferred at that age, but these days I can cope with lots of words. Brusatte is one of the world’s leading palaeontologists and he evolves the engrossing story of the rise and demise of the dinosaurs from the dominant place in life on earth to their end 66 million years ago.

Of course, Chapter 8 reminds us, to my delight and my current sciencey preoccupation, that the dinosaurs never really went away. Indeed, the descendants of the theropod dinosaurs of which Tyrannosaurus rex is perhaps the most famous and infamous example, are alive and well to this day and flapping their feathered wings all around the world. All ~10,500 species of them…the birds.

Brusatte has discovered and named 15 new species of dinosaur and led groundbreaking (literally?) studies of the rise and fall of these animals.

There were reports of a migrant Spoonbill on passage at RSPB Ouse Fen (Needingworth, Cambridgeshire). So, first day after the rains, I went looking. Didn’t see any Platalea leucorodia (had seen a pair at RSPB North Warren, Aldeburgh, in May 2017 though). However, the Whitethroats (Sylvia communis) were out in force (usually arrive 2-3 weeks after the other warblers) as were the European Green Woodpeckers (Picus viridis).

There were also lots of Chiffchaff, Blackcap, Willow Warbler (all seen and heard) and Reed and Garden Warblers (heard but not seen), a Wren, Jay, Little Grebe, Grey Heron, Robin, Long-tailed Tits, a couple of Buzzards (Buteo buteo).

I didn’t sight the Marsh Harrier one fellow walker had seen. But, there was also a Turtle Dove turring in a grove and a Cuckoo cuckooing somewhere on the patch. Saw neither. However, I did see a Cuckoo perched on an overhead wire on the drive home, just outside Rampton.

The Mute Swans and Coots are still on their nests, but the Canada and Greylag Geese are chugging around the lakes with goslings in their flotillas now. No terns, but several Swallows, a couple of Housemartins, and my first sighting of the year of a Swift (Apus apus)

Above photographs by David Bradley in order from top to bottom:

European Green Woodpecker
Chiffchaff
Canada Geese and goslings
Swift
Whitethroat
Coot
Mute Swan
Greylag Geese and goslings

A vast drinking water reservoir in the English county of Rutland, about half way between Peterborough and the home of the pork pie, Melton Mowbray, is home to the first Western Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) to breed in England for 150 years. A translocation programme means that these raptors are now breeding at Rutland Water having been settled there, migrated (naturally) to Africa (Senegal, the tracking devices show) and then returned in the spring.

In paying the birds a visit, we made the mistake of heading to the Wildlife Trust’s Rutland Water Nature Reserve in Egleton, near Oakham, paying our money (to a worthy cause, of course) to get on to the reserve only to be told that the nest site was way over the other side, a three-mile walk in fact. Well, we made the best of the visit and took in a short walk on the Reserve and could just about see the female on her nest from one of the hides, but she was far too far away and I was disappointed to not get a good shot even with a 600mm zoom.

Other visitors we spoke to during our walk though mentioned having “fallen for that” entry fee trick before (there is public access and public footpaths aplenty around the reservoir). They suggested heading back out on to the main road in the car and parking up near the railway viaduct at Manton. We did so and could see the male perched not far from the nest on a dead tree branch protruding from the water. He was still some distance away, so not a great shot, but half the distance at which I had attempted to photograph the nest from the Reserve itself. The female could be seen occasionally bobbing and turning her head on the nearby nest.

The project has a live webcam over the nest, so you can get a good close-up view of the birds, which at the time of writing are brooding three eggs, I believe. The female is called Maya and the male has the name 33. I just browsed to the webcam and saw the 33 arrived to relieve Maya from brooding duties, presumably so she could get some food and exercise, here’s a screen grab from the webcam

Looking something akin to a small, tree-surfing kingfisher or a tiny woodpecker, the acrobatic Nuthatch (Sitta europaea) will scoot up and down the bark head first, in a manner unlike any other bird. Certainly it doesn’t creep endlessly upwards like the Treecreeper.

The Nuthatch will pluck small insects and grubs from the bark of trees for food, but will also find seeds and kernels and wedge them in a crevice smashing them open with its beak, hence the hatching of nuts from whence its name originates. It has a variety of calls from a pew, pew, pew to a pwee pwee, by way of a ka-ka-ka.

You will see them on garden bird feeders and often hanging around the visitor centres of nature reserves, anywhere with an abundance of insect life, decent craggy-barked trees, and a seed supply.

UPDATE: Report of cuckoo in Cottenham, at Fen Drayton, and at Paxton Pits last day or two.

Cuckoos tracked by the BTO have returned to Old Blighty, a couple of days later than last year.

Mrs Sciencebase and I have seen several of the UK’s regular summer visitors during the last couple of weeks (Blackcaps, Martins [Sand and House], Swallow, Willow Warbler etc) but we have not heard nor seen any Cuckoos this year yet.

Listen out for this brood parasite with its unmistakeable call. We saw and photographed two males in May 2017. The mostly grey-coloured bird looks a bit hawkish but a lot smaller than most raptors. Also comes in a rufous coloured variety (caught sight of a rufous cuckoo on the North Norfolk coast in the summer of 2017.

Druridge Bay is a pristine stretch of golden sand in Northumberland nestled between the settlements of Cresswell at its south end and Amble to the north. Commonly, there are plenty of seabirds around, various gulls, Sanderlings, Dunlin, Oystercatcher, Cormorants and more. Among the dunes, you will see and hear Meadow Pipit, Reed Bunting, Skylark and more. But, head ever so slightly inland across the dunes and the main road and you will reach a watery wildlife reserve that was once an open-cast mine where there is now an abundance of waterfowl: Curlew, Black-tailed Godwit, Redshank, Lapwing, Grey Heron, Shoveler, Mallard, Avocet, and many others. On our visit (14th April 2018), there was also Ruff, Pintail, Red-breasted Merganser, and various others.

Hunting Heron (Ardea cinerea)

Red-breasted Merganser (f) splashing about (Mergus serrator)

Red-breasted Merganser pair

Ruff preening (Calidris pugnax)

Crowd of Curlew (Numenius arquata)

Black-tailed Godwit take fright and flight (Limosa limosa)

Bedraggled female Linnet (Carduelis cannabina); male Stonechat (Saxicola rubicola) behind

Skylark showing his crest well near Cresswell (Alauda arvensis)

When I was about 10 or 11 years old, I went with friends and their family to a free music festival at Druridge Bay in Northumberland. The event was organised as a protest against plans to build a nuclear power station at this site. 40+ years later, there is still just miles and miles of golden sands, dunlin and dunes, and crashing waves and over the road behind the shore a glorious nature reserve full of Black-tailed Godwit, Curlew, Redshank, Merganser, Pintail, Ruff, and countless other birds.

Druridge Defences

Barbed Comment

Beach caster

Give my love to the waves

Sanderling

Having already come unstuck in identifying a Redpoll that alighted on our nijer seed feeder within minutes of my hanging the feeder in our beech tree, I’ve now found another issue with this type of bird. It’s not necessarily well known that the Lesser Redpoll and the Common (Mealy) Redpoll and the Hoary Redpoll are actually the same species and that there are also sub-species and hybrids that are genetically the same as each other. Referring to one as a specific type is thus something of a taxonomic faux pas these days based on the DNA. That said, genomics has found differences in gene expression but no genetic divergence, this would suggest that there might be different plumage forms that are fairly recent, but they come from a single interbreeding lineage and do not represent distinct species.

Anyway, I wrote a brief blog about Redpolls in February 2018 and have since seen Redpolls in flocks on several reserves, but none have shown again in our garden.

Most recently, I was photographing the nuthatches, tits, and finches on feeders in the kitchen garden of friends’ smallholding, when what looked like a pair of Redpolls arrived. Except, they didn’t have the familiar red cap. They looked like Redpolls but with a golden cap. My first thought was that they were perhaps juvenile Redpolls or some kind of genetic mutation.

One contact thought, at first glance, that they were Snow Buntings. But, another Jim Welford on the British Facebook Birders group, suggested that red is not a natural colouration in Redpolls and that they can convert carotenoids in their diet to a pigment, but if they lack the appropriate carotenoids or are ill when their moult is underway, the red colouration will be absent or another colour will show. It also seems to be something that can happen with Linnets (Carduelis cannabina) which are also famously flushed red on their breast. Welford pointed me to a useful book by Tim Birkhead, The Red Canary, which apparently discusses the colouration issue.

Birder Andy Warr had this to say about the so-called Goldpoll some time ago:

First-winters and female Lesser, Mealy and Arctic Redpolls generally show a crimson cap, with varying degrees of brightness, though it is not uncommon for some to show orange, copper, yellow, even brownish caps, or any combination of the aforementioned.

Warr adds that a gold cap is quite regularly seen in first-winter birds and adult females.

It wasn’t the brightest of days to visit a nature reserve. In fact, it was grey and grim and pouring with rain. So, while the Pipits and Avocets were showing well, as were the Tree Sparrows and Stock Doves at the visitor centre feeders, we missed out on the Spoonbill that had been sighted. The wetlands of RSPB Saltholme is one of the foremost bird sanctuaries and observatory for migratory and wading birds in the UK. As you might guess from the name, it is was a source of salt for centuries and now sits nestled in the industrial area of Seaton Carew Rd, Stockton-on-Tees, near Middlesbrough (Grid ref NZ506231). It forms part of a wider site of special scientific interest called Seal Sands.

Commonly seen are Common Tern, Lapwing, Peregrine, Yellow Wagtail, Water Rail, none of which we saw on our visit, unfortunately.

Pictured above: Reedbeds in the shadow of the Tees Transporter Bridge. The bridge connects Middlesbrough, on the south bank, to Port Clarence, on the north bank. It is an unconventional bridge in that it has a travelling “gondola” suspended from the bridge, which can carry about 200 people and 9 cars across the river in 90 seconds.

Other birds that were not present included Rock Pipit and Water Pipit, but there were plenty of Meadow Pipits among the rocks and on the water’s edge

Avocets were showing well, sadly didn’t get a snap of anything in a beak other than water

There were a couple of Ringed Plover:

There were also cranes…but not the kind in which bird watchers are most interested.

Also visible from RSPB Saltholme even on a dull grey day is Temenos, a huge artwork by Anish Kapur, close to the Transporter, described as a 21st century landmark to honour region’s engineering and industrial heritage. Its name comes from the Greek “a piece of land assigned to a domain or dedicated to a god”. Looks more like a relativistic wormhole or a femidom:

Finally, back at the feeders, lots and lots of Tree Sparrows (not to be confused with the House Sparrows you’d most commonly see in your garden)

The Waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus) a crested and plump, winter visitor from Scandinavia, smaller than a Starling, with a distinctive yellow tip to the tail and red sealing wax colouration to the ends of its wing tips, hence the name. They will leave colder climes and head south when food is in short supply, in fact its a lack of a decent berry crop in their home territories that drives them south. It seems that they most commonly end up being spotted in flocks in supermarket carparks that happen to be lined with berry-bearing trees. Presumably, they follow the motorways, perhaps harnessing ancient instincts that would have had them following valleys and rivers to find decent berry bushes.

In 2017, I saw a flock of 20 or so at the Cambridge Science Park near the Guided Busway but I was too slow to get a photo before they’d been spooked by dogwalkers and darted off down Milton Road and out of sight.

Winter 2017-2018, I’ve kept track of sightings via the WaxwingsUK twitter feed and attempted to catch up with the birds in a couple of places that Mrs Sciencebase and I happened to be visiting, North Norfolk and elsewhere, although we failed to see them.

A trip to the town of my alma mater (Newcastle) to visit our daughter who was also studying there at the time, brought us our first decent sighting. The WaxwingsUK feed mentioned that a bus stop opposite St Bartholomew’s Church in Long Benton, on the outskirts of the city had been hosting a small flock.

By the time we arrived, I’d got wind of just two still being around but we saw only one on three successive days passing the spot. Passersby almost all seemed to know what I was attempting to photograph and almost all of them had a tale of flocks of twitchers and birders and toggers in previous days! One or two people knew there was a bird of interest but didn’t know specifically what it was.

I don’t think there was a particularly large irruption of this species into the UK that winter, although sporadic sightings of small flocks were noted around Scotland, in Newcastle (Benton), Lincolnshire, North Norfolk, Suffolk, Southend in Essex, Kent, and elsewhere. There are usually lots of notes of them in Scotland. Indeed, it’s worth seeing what level of activity is reported from Shetland as this is the first place that might get an irruption if there has been the opposite of a mast year further north in terms of berries.