Category: Biology

Bagged a few nice shots of birds new to my British birds gallery this weekend on a short trip to Brecon (Aberhonddu) in Wales (Cymru) including several shots of stonechats (Saxicola rubicola). The stonechat is a small passerine, perching, bird that was bizarrely considered a member of the thrush family (just as was the robin (Erithacus rubecula), neither have much in common with the Turdidae to my eye and genetic evidence puts them in a completely different family, Old World flycatchers, Muscicapidae.

It’s a common enough bird, the pied wagtail (Motacilla alba yarrellii), you can spot its characteristic bobbing tail almost anywhere in the UK at almost any time of year, although they tend to leave northern Scotland in the depths of winter. We took a stroll around the outskirts of the grounds of Ickworth House in Suffolk, this fellow was anything but shy sitting on fence posts about 20 feet from us and our dog and only flitting to the next one if we made a sudden move. I positioned myself on one post two away from the bird, using the post to support and steady the camera.

With a fast shutter, short depth of field, focusing on his eye. Everything else out of that plane pretty much blurred, the background becomes homegeneous, but what happened to the galvanised steel wires of the fence in the shot is nice. With everything closer than his eye and everything further away out of focus, the wires look almost like plucked strings or perhaps soundwaves. I snapped him half a dozen times but he cocked his head towards us, almost in defiance as the dog stepped forward before flying off.

Needless to say the pied wagtail is also now in my burgeoning gallery of British birds. For those looking at this bird and thinking…pied wagtail? Surely that’s a white wagtail. Well, this is a slightly darker subspecies found in Britain as opposed to the more widespread (Europe, Asia, Africa, even Alaska) Motacilla alba. The etymology of “pied” meaning to have black and white garb comes from the pyed freres monks who wore black and white clothing, hence magpie, The Pied Piper, piebald horses, pied tamarin etc.

Although slightly slower-moving than the orange tip I photographed and blogged recently, the European peacock (Aglais io) is just as tough to catch on a pitstop, luckily there are so many dandelions in bloom in the set aside fields and elsewhere that it’s now quite hard not to get a photo!

If I remember rightly, this species lays its eggs only on nettles (Urtica urens) and hops (Humulus lupulus), so definitely a reason to cultivate a nettle patch and grow some hops (perfect for nettle wine and beer after the season too).

Unless you’ve been ignoring me on here, on Facebook, Twitter, 500px and elsewhere, you probably noticed I’ve had a bit of an avian fixation recently. I’m writing about them, photographing them for a gallery of British Birds, and generally educating myself about our feathered friends. By sheer coincidence, my own book publisher (E&T) sent me a copy of a book about birdsong (A Sweet, Wild Note) by my nest-mate Richard Smyth, which I have mentioned elsewhere.

In it, Smyth discusses the nature and context of birdsong, what it means to us and our best guess as to what it means to birds. He talks of avian musicality and our own efforts to emulate birdsong and to be inspired by it in various ways. My current avian addiction, which probably stretches back to spotting my first kingfisher almost thirty years ago had me noddling about with some musical ideas. Not so much attempting to emulate birdsong, but feeling inspired by one of my favourites, the blue tit, which I’ve happily stalked around local woodland as the trees vernalise and the dapper little chaps pair up.

We were walking in the back woods of Ickworth House in Suffolk…hearing blackcaps (Sylvia atricapilla) and the almost ubiquitous blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) and hoping to spot at least one of the former, which seem a lot more elusive than robins (Erithacus rubecula) despite their song being turned up to 11, although the robins were scarce too.

I did, however, spot a tiny bird with a black cap flitting between a couple of trees and tried to get the camera on to it from about 30-40 feet away, quite hard…but eventually got a focus. And sure enough it had a black cap, but it wasn’t a blackcap. Looked like a tit of some kind (what Americans might know as a chickadee). No blue, no yellow so not C caeruleus and not big enough for a great tit (Parus major). Mrs Sciencebase ID’ed it in situ as a marsh tit or a willow tit. Definitely not a coal tit (Periparus ater) different family and no prominent white band down the back of its head.

The marsh and willow are very similar in appearance with only subtle differences and according to my bird books neither is particularly associated with willows or marshes any more than the other. Although the marsh tit seems to prefer woodland of broad-leafed trees while the willow tit prefers woodlands near marshes and peat bogs and such. Go figure. Writing in his latest book on birdsong (A Sweet, Wild Note), Richard Smyth quotes expert Graham Shortt as explain that a marsh tit’s plumage looks as if it’s going to work, whereas the willow looks like it’s just got back from a three-day rock festival.

Anyway, a quick bit of processing of the photos and a tight crop and a question on Facebook and Brian Stone confirmed it as a marsh tit (Poecile palustris) rather than its close cousin the willow tit (Poecile montanus).

Dusky rear cheeks, glossy crown, lack of clear pale panel in the wing, pale base to the cutting edge of the bill

So, another bird bagged for the British Birds gallery. There are a couple of other shots of the same bird on the Facebook page I linked above as well as an unprocessed, uncropped shot.

Ornithological escape to the coast. There’s a bird hide overlooking the marshes (RSPB North Warren) not 10 minutes walk from our erstwhile pitstop in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. It’s just up the Thorpe Road past the (in)famous Scallop sculpture on the shingle shore. Anyway, a dozen grey herons, same again little egrets on the water, a couple of shelduck (Tadorna tadorna, another tautonym), some wigeon (Anas penelope) and others waterfowl in the hazy distance, the inevitable black-headed gulls and a tiny murmuration of starlings. Much closer to the hide a male reed bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus) of which I got a quick, not-worth-publishing snap. There various warblers around, although one “warbler” turned out to be a female wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe) an early summer visitor to these shores. Here she is, feathers ruffled in the onshore breeze.

Heading back to the main road, spotted another bird I didn’t recognise, I think it’s a linnet (Linaria cannabina) corn bunting (Emberiza calandra) sat for a long time on a gorse perch glaring at me, while I slowly moved towards her with camera raised

Aegithalos caudatus, the long-tailed tit, undertaking aerobatic manouevres among the bursting buds of hawthorn, the claws of dog rose and bramble in a hedgerow full of avian life.

You wouldn’t have heard the plaintive and ubiquitous sound of an English summer, the incessant “coo-coo-coooh” of a collared dove (Streptopelia decaocto) here until 1953, when they first began to settle and breed.

According to Wikipedia:

The collared dove is not migratory, but is strongly dispersive. Over the last century, it has been one of the great colonisers of the bird world, travelling far beyond its native range to colonize colder countries, becoming naturalised in several. Its original range at the end of the 19th century was warm temperate and subtropical Asia from Turkey east to southern China and south through India to Sri Lanka. In 1838 it was reported in Bulgaria, but not until the 20th century did it expand across Europe, appearing in parts of the Balkans between 1900—1920, and then spreading rapidly northwest, reaching Germany in 1945, Great Britain by 1953 (breeding for the first time in 1956), Ireland in 1959, and the Faroe Islands in the early 1970s

Of course, they now feature in endless outdoor scenes in period dramas and films set well before 1953; you can think of them as avian continuity errors.

Seems that I have been prattling on about this for years. Just found an old archived blog entry from January 2005 that mentions the same continuity error!

Three birds in one: lapwing, peewit (pewit), green plover (Vanellus vanellus)…actually also known as a tuit (tew-it), so four birds in one. The fact that its scientific binomial (colloquially known as a species’ “Latin name” is in this species case a tautonym (both parts are the same word), this indicates that this species is the “type” for its family. Similarly, Rattus rattus (black rat), Bufo bufo (common toad), Carduelis carduelis (goldfinch), Gorilla gorilla gorilla (Western lowland gorilla, a tautonymic trinomial in this case), Bison bison (American bison), Coccothraustes coccothraustes (hawfinch), more tautonyms here.

But, back to the lapwing. Its peewit and tuit names are onomatopoeia for its call, it’s a plover and it’s green, hence green plover. Lapwing refers to the bird’s decoy strategy for feigning injury to lure predators away from its ground nest and thus its eggs or chicks.