Category: Biology

Earlier in the year, I snapped and blogged about the great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) in local woodland. Recently, there has been a lot more activity and there are at least two pairs around. I suspected one pair was using a dead tree with lots of big holes in its trunk and by chance spotted one bird clambering up towards one of those holes before disappearing inside. It emerged a few seconds later after peering cautiously from the hole before darting across the field and beyond the tall hedgerow, presumably in search of more food for its chicks. Meanwhile parent two arrived a few moments later, at some times the pair were both in attendance.

A couple of weeks ago I spotted a pair of grey wagtails (Motacilla cinerea) feeding at Bottisham Lock on the river Cam at Waterbeach, a few miles north of Cambridge. I was rather pleased to have snapped them in the evening sun. Several weeks later I saw the female foraging a few hundred metres further down river at the pumping station that helps control the flow of water along the lode there to the village of Bottisham itself. She was flitting about on the accumulated debris at the smaller lock on to the lode where river plants and detritus at accumulated, snatching at invertebrates, flies, mayflies, beetles, crustacea, and molluscs. The male will also assist in caring for chicks, although I didn’t see him on this expedition. Interestingly, the female may also lay a second clutch, leaving the male to look after the first brood.

Presumably she has chicks to feed now and was hurriedly stuffing her beak ready to head back to her nest. The species always nests among stones and roots on the embankment of moving water, rivers, streams, but might also exploit man-made structures too, such as locks and canals.

I’m endessly amazed at just how many different birds there are around if you care to look and have the patience to prowl around woodland, fen, mountain and moor, and the coastal margins. Of course, there are endless sparrows and chaffinchs, starlings, blackbirds, thrushes, robins, goldfinches, collared doves, wood pigeons and the like in our gardens. But there also wheatears, meadow pippets, cormorants, swallows, house martins, sand martins, swifts, sparrowhawks, willow warblers, chiffchaffs, jays, whitethroats, kingfishers, turnstones, stonechats, redwings, fieldfares, wagtails (pied and yellow), redstarts, buzzards, red kites, kestrels, mistle thrushes, marsh harriers goldcrests, lapwings, dunnocks, swans (mute and whooper), mallards, pochards, jackdaws, rooks, egrets (great and little), reed buntings, linnets, grey herons, and so many more…

Check out my British Bird gallery here. I usually manage to add at least a couple of new species each week and if not new species then at least a new angle on an old favourite.

Pictured below is the second Garrulus glandarius I’ve snapped recently…jay 2 oh, you might say…

Most of these were photographed with a Canon 6D sporting a Sigma 150-600mm zoom lens. Some of the earlier ones were snapped with a Canon 20D with various slightly less prominent lenses.

On a visit to WWT Welney, Welney Wetland Centre, at the beginning of the year Mrs Sciencebase and I, we were introduced to a couple of new bird species by more experienced birders there: the reed bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus) and the bearded tit (Panurus biarmicus). I don’t think either of us had knowingly seen these species before. Picture directly below are a female (left) and a male (right) reed bunting. (July 2017 UPDATE: That said, there are reed buntings on the cornfields adjacent to where we often walk the dog, so we may have seen them over the last 10 years without really noticing them).

We were in a hide at the centre watching the reed buntings flitting about and I was trying to get a decent snap of both male and female, when a new entrant in the hide pointing out a male kestrel perched on a post outside the hide, said: “Oh, you want to get a shot of that one!” It was the bearded tit…also known as the bearded reedling, it was hard to home in on him, but after several attempts he stopped for a minute on his vertical asymmetric bars and let me get a few shots.

According to Wikipedia, the bearded reedling is a small, sexually dimorphic reed-bed passerine (perching) bird. It does have some resemblance to the long-tailed tit but its “bearded” is more like a pair of front-facing sideburns (mutton chops) rather than a beard as it doesn’t join under the birds beak. Oh, and it’s also sometimes called a bearded parrotbill.

July 2017 UPDATE: I’ve seen and photographed endless reed buntings over the last few weeks and months at various reserves and just in open countryside too (and in the marginal wooded area along the fen drains). Apparently, there are bearded tits at NT Wicken Fen, we’re yet to see any others than the ones we saw at the beginning of the year in WWT Welney.

UPDATE: 2019 discovered that quite a few Beardies at RSPB Ouse Fen (also known to be at RSPB Fen Drayton)

Sylvia isn’t a communist, as far as I know…she’s a wee bird…yes, I know another one. More to the point, this Sylvia is a male. Spotted him darting around the reeds on the Cottenham Lode. Made the dog sit still and then stalked him so I could get a better shot…several snaps, none great, one in flight then he was up a tree away from the reeds and wondering what on earth I was up to.

Medium-sized warbler, sam sort of size as a great tit (Parus major), summer visitor to the UK; spending the northern winter in sub-Saharan Africa. S communis avoids urban and mountainous areas (so unlikely to see it an a city of the Scottish highlands.

UPDATE: Seen several bullfinches in and around Rampton since spotting this one in May. Saw a pair flitting in and out of the trees along the Lode and on my return home saw one feeding on fluffy ragwort seeds; light was low, but I got a half-decent shot at him:

The male bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula) has an almost salmon-pink breast and cheeks, grey back, black cap and tail, and a bright white rump, a plaintive call and a shy demeanour. I’ve probably only ever seen this bird half a dozen times. I spotted this one about a week ago and got a very poor shot, I heard him before I got to his territory this time and crept up to where I imagined he’d be, he still darted away hiding among the rapidly obscuring leaves of the trees. Still got some. A security shot. Proof he was there.

RSPB suggests that you’re most likely to see bullfinches in Woodlands, orchard and hedgerows. Best looked for at woodland edges, as per this shot, although we did see one in our back garden many years ago.

We’ve often put food out for the garden birds. Usually it’s starlings, house sparrows, and wood pigeons that attack the feeders, years ago we may have had one of the local black squirrels having a go. The dunnocks and our labrador hoover up the seeds that fall to the ground. I’d seen goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis, yet another tautonym meaning that this is the “type” of the family) flitting around the houses and occasionally landing on our TV aerial, but never landing on the feeders.

It seems the goldfinches are not so keen on sunflower seeds and other delicacies found in the generic 20 kg bags of wild-bird food one might pick up at a garden centre for a tenner, much preferring the floral embryos of the Ethiopian plant Guizotia abyssinica, commonly known as niger seeds and sometimes nyjer, ramtil, ramtilla, inga seed, and blackseed. There were a pair of goldfinches feeding either side of the niger seed feeder and I snapped them through glass. The seeds are botanically a form of fruit known as an achene. Another member of the Carduelinae, the greenfinch (Chloris chloris) also favours these seeds over the mixed bird food.

 

A meadow pipit (Anthus pratensis) being all pretentious and abandoning the fields in favour of a tree from which to view the photographer. There were at least three or four of them larking about on the lode about half a mile upstream from the Rampton bridge.

It is mainly a bird of open habitats, uncultivated or low-intensity agriculture, pasture, bogs, moorland, and presumably meadows. It can also be seen sometimes on arable cropland. In winter, it might retreat to saltmarshes and open woodlands although it may also migrate to Southern Europe and Africa. Well-grounded bird, always feeds on the ground, but will fly to elevated perches such as bushes, hedgerows, fences, or overhead cables to watch for predators and photographers.

The willow warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus) is common and widespread, breeding throughout northern and temperate Europe and Asia, from Ireland east to eastern Siberia. It is, however, strongly migratory and almost the whole population winters in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is greenish brown above and off-white to yellowish below; the wings are plain greenish-brown with no wingbars. Aside from its pale legs it looks almost identical to the chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita). However, if you think you’ve seen a willow warbler but it’s making an almost metronomically regular t’ss, t’ss, t’ss, t’ss… sound and has dark legs it’s a chiffchaff, the warbler has a much more warbling, melodious song. Here’s a recent photo and a snippet of his song that I recorded in late April 2017 in Rampton Spinney, South Cambs.

The meadow pipit (Anthus pratensis) is a small passerine (perching) bird that breeds across northwestern Eurasia, from southeastern Greenland and Iceland to beyond the Ural Mountains in Russia, from south to central France and Romania. It is generally migratory, spending its winters in Southern Europe, North Africa and Southwestern Asia, but is also resident year-round in Western Europe (heading off higher regions to the lowlands in winter). I photographed this bird on moorland close to the Brecon Beacons, Powys, Mid-Wales, April 2017. Now added to my growing gallery of British birds.