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Having bumped into friends while owl spotting in the fens, we pointed out a male Little Owl on a woodpile at Priory Farm near Burwell. After our friends had moved on, however, Mrs Sciencebase spotted a second owl (a female). The female is in the darker photo, on the higher perch (a bigger bird than the male as is usual with owls and raptors).
Male Little OwlFemale Little Owl
We didn’t see any Short-eared Owls on NT Burwell Fen nor Tubney Fen today, unfortunately, although one or two have been seen this winter there hunting in the early afternoon as opposed to the more likely hour or two before sunset.
There are it seems half a dozen Shorties hunting at Great Fen in Huntingdonshire. Interestingly, there are theories about the lack of Shorties when that happens. One suggests that the birds only head south from Scandinavia if the lemming populations up there are low. However, the half a dozen in Huntingdonshire suggests that more likely is that the presence of the Konik ponies on Burwell Fen over the summer has left the scrub grazed too heavily giving the owls no choice but to find an area with longer scrub in which to roost. Add to that the lack of hunting Kestrels there recently which suggests that the vole population has pulled back its breeding to reduce predation this summer, something that prey species are known to do as it then temporarily reduces breeding success of the predators giving the prey species a better chance in the next season. This seems to happen on a three-year cycle.
There were three confirmed male Hen Harriers that came into roost over Wicken Fen. I am not 100% sure that this photo I snapped isn’t a Marsh Harrier though.
We headed back to NT Wicken Fen visitor centre having been tipped off to a sunset roost of Hen Harriers (a couple of proper birders confirmed that some of the harriers we were watching were three male Hen Harriers quite a significant time before sunset, there were also several Marsh Harriers, and a couple of Barn Owls hunting over the reeds.
Barn Owl, it was almost dark, the camera and lens really couldn’t cope with so little light
UPDATE: Thursday, 7th Jan 2020, on a walk, we inadvertently flushed a Short-eared Owl from its scrubby roost in the nature reserve behind a research park north of Cambridge. It flew into an adjacent field to watch us for a few minutes before taking flight.
Short-eared Owl – third species of owl we saw within five days around Cambridgeshire
UPDATE: The news kept getting better and while things are not quite back to normal and never will be, all of those involved are in a much better place than they were at the beginning of October. This was originally posted on 10th of the month, but I’ve retagged it as New Year’s Eve 2020.
It has been a traumatic week an emotional rollercoaster to coin a cliche, you might say. There is a more positive outlook this week than there was this time last week, so I am now doing a little bit of a celebration of life with some of the interesting and intriguing species Mrs Sciencebase and I have seen this year on our rather lockdown-limited excursions.
Short-eared Owl, NT Burwell Fen – January 2020Pipistrelle Bat day-flying along the edge of Rampton Spinney, February 2020
Female Goosander on The River Tyne near Ryton, March 2020
Emperor Moth, Cottenham – April 2020Longhorn Moths, Rampton Spinney – April 2020Wren, Cottenham – April 2020Kingfisher, Wilburton – April 2020Common Frogs, Cottenham – May 2020Mimulus, Cottenham – May 2020Figure of Eighty moth, Cottenham – May 2020Curlew, Cley, Norfolk – May 2020Red Kite, Snettisham – June 2020Ringlet, Snettisham, Norfolk – June 2020Brassy Longhorn, Cottenham Lode – June 2020Corncockle, Cottenham – June 2020Female Red-footed Falcon, RSPB Fen Drayton – June 2020Pyramidal Orchid, Les King Wood, Cottenham – June 2020Sandwich Tern, Hunstanton – July 2020Fulmar, Hunstanton – July 2020Spreading Hedge Parsley, Cottenham – July 2020Silver-washed Fritillary, Hayley Woods, Cambridgeshire – July 2020Rather blurry shot of a Clouded Yellow at Hayley Woods – August 2020Bittern, RSPB Ouse Fen – August 2020Hare, Cottenham Allotments – August 2020Hobby, Wilburton – August 2020Dark Crimson Underwing, Cottenham – August 2020Osprey, Rutland Water – August 2020Gypsy Moth, Cottenham – August 2020Little Owl, Les King Wood, Cottenham – August 2020Clifden Nonpareil, Cottenham – September 2020Grounded Kestrel, Rampton Spinney – October 2020First Merveille du Jour of the year – October 2020
This post is an online version of my latest nature column, which I volunteered to write regularly for our bimonthly, printed village newsletter. the Xmas issue has an article about local starling murmurations, report 13 is for the next issue.
In the last Bird Report, I mentioned sightings around our local patch of some quite unusual birds, birds that are normally associated with sub-Saharan Africa, or at least the much warmer parts of Europe. There were two glossy ibis at RSPB Ouse Fen in November. Subsequently, there were sightings of more at RSPB Fen Drayton and close to Earith Sluice. It is likely there are about seven not too far from us.
I also mentioned Cattle Egrets in the last issue of which there were five or so on farmland on the edge of Fen Drayton and sometimes some seen in the nearby RSPB reserve roosting alongside the cormorants beneath skies filled with the shadowy forms of the starling murmurations. Now, many readers will know the little egret, the grey heron and perhaps the bittern, but the cattle egret is a less well-known member of the family.
3x Glossy Ibis at Earith Sluice
When I moved to Cambridge a little over thirty years ago, it seemed rare to spot a little egret, although grey herons definitely frequented the banks of The Cam not far from where I lived. Seeing a little egret on the Norfolk coast was an occasional treat, but now their numbers are up greatly, it seems. I’ve counted 30 or so at a time in fields at the edge of the Fen Drayton reserve. Also on the rise are great white egret numbers. They seemed to be a true rarity until very recently, now even the most novice birder will have “ticked” them several times on local reserves and I’ve seen them on several occasions feeding on the Cottenham Lode alongside grey heron and little egret. Those cattle egrets too, once a very rare sight, are seen more and more, with handfuls, trailing after any cattle they can find in our locale. On the Somerset Levels they are now reported in their hundreds.
Bittern
Climate change is no doubt playing a part in allowing these species to spread farther and farther north into the British Isles from their erstwhile homes in sub-Saharan Africa, to North Africa, The Mediterranean and beyond. The glossy ibis is found scattered around the warm regions of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Caribbean, for instance, but birds that are breeding in southern Spain seem to opt to spend the winter in The British Isles over the last decade or so. But there seems to be another force driving these egrets and other wading birds. The non-native and very edible red swamp crayfish has in recent years thrived in the lakes of northern France, for instance.
Cattle Egret
I say edible, this delicacy known stateside as the Louisiana crawfish or crawdaddy, is a native to northern Mexico and the southern USA, but has been introduced to Asia and Europe and has established itself invasively in southern Europe and more recently spread to those French lakes. This has apparently given the birds that enjoy a few crawdad themselves a stronger foothold further north. It was perhaps inevitable that those species would find ways to extend their range and feed on the native aquatic species found in our coastal, brackish, and inland water, especially the species with a migratory tendency. If the red swamp crayfish gains a clawhold in those waters, it will be bad news for some of our native species, such as the European crayfish, but good news for the feathered fishers.
Great White Egret
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Spottin’em in Cottenham: Recent sightings
Some interesting recent activity in and around Cottenham. One cold and foggy November night, wigeon were reported flying over the High Street and a Sunday morning soon after saw a couple of Egyptian geese over Broad Lane, a first sighting for one reader of that non-indigenous, but widespread, bird in Cottenham.
There have been a couple of waders, green sandpipers, specifically, sighted along Long Drove, they’re not uncommon in the fens, but always nice to see. Also, at the time of writing, around 60 whooper swans were on farmland at the Twentypence Marina end of the Cottenham Lode where it drains into the River Great Ouse, sometimes known as the Old Bedford River.
Also, way off its normal patch, a dusky warbler has been seen in Aldreth at the part of the village known as The Boot. A white stork (possibly an escapee from a collection) has been seen in Somersham.
Jupiter and Saturn will appear very close together in the night sky on 21st December in what astronomers refer to as a rare ‘Great Conjunction’. They are not literally close together, they will be millions of kilometres apart but as viewed from Earth they will appear to be separated by less than a fifth the diameter of the full moon as it appears in the sky. This is the closest they have been in conjunction, just 0.1 degrees of arc, since the seventeenth century (the year 1623), in a rare ‘Great Conjunction’. In that year, Wilhelm Schickard invented his Calculating Clock, a mechanical precursor of the pocket calculator.
When that last similar conjunction occurred the two planets were close to each other in the sky but also appeared close to the Sun so would’ve been difficult to observe. Prior to that, an observable conjunction occurred in 1226 long before the invention of the telescope in the year that Saint Francis of Assisi died, apparently.
Just to clarify, as planets orbit the Sun, they occasionally appear to be close to each other in the sky, it’s an optical illusion. On 21st December, Jupiter and Saturn will be almost 800 million kilometres apart in the solar system.
To see the conjunction, look low in the south-west after sunset. As the sky darkens, first Jupiter and then Saturn will become visible. Both planets are bright — in the case of Jupiter brighter than all the stars — so will be obvious in a clear sky. By 17h00 GMT both planets will be less than ten degrees above the horizon for UK observers, so it is important to find a line of sight without tall buildings or trees that will block the view.
They will be visible to the naked eye, but with a small telescope you will be able to see both planets in the same view and Jupiter’s cloud belts will be apparent as will Saturn’s rings. The peak of the conjunction is the 21st, but they will appear to move apart from each other only slowly in the days that follow. There is lots of musing as to whether such a conjunction in history was the origin of the myth of the Star of Bethlehem.
UPDATE: Night of 17th December, the Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn will form a pretty little triangle together in the night sky
I’ve mentioned local sightings of an ostensibly African/Mediterranean bird before, the Glossy Ibis, they have been spotted at various RSPB sites Ouse Fen, Fen Drayton, Ouse Washes, and elsewhere in the last month or so. I saw a couple of them at Ouse Fen not long after one was first sighted by the warden and others there. There is evidence of perhaps five or maybe seven locally. It is worth noting that over the last decade or so, some of these birds which have begun breeding in Southern Spain have opted to spend their winters in The British Isles.
Three have now taken to feeding on the southern end of the Ouse Washes.
Oh, and there’s a bird that’s usually found in Asia in our locale too, a Dusky Warbler, Phylloscopus fuscatus, seen for the first time in Cambridgeshire in December 2020 at “The Boot” in Aldreth. I took a detour on the way home from snapping the three Glossy Ibis to see it, there were lots of twitchers, birders, and toggers around, but none had seen it at the time and I didn’t catch sight of it either…
I have counted well over 300 species of moth in our garden this year(almost 9000 specimens), mostly at night, although there were one or two dayflyers (excluding butterflies, which are moths but are not usually listed as such). That is a small fraction of the total number of moth species listed in the British Isles which tallies at 2500 or thereabouts, 180,000 species of lepidoptera globally.
Of those 300 or so species about 30 were new to me having not ticked them in the garden before. Here’s a small selection starting with the rarest, the Clifden Nonpareil, a moth that was extinct in The British Isles by the middle of the twentieth century but is making a comeback.
Clifden NonpareilFigure of EightyGypsy MothPine Hawk-moth
Dark Crimson UnderwingThe LackeyScarce Bordered Straw
TL:DR – At the time of writing, vaccination of COVID-19 was getting underway. It is still highly recommended despite the disinformation, fake news, and conspiracy theories.
In a few month’s time, the first 10 million people will have been vaccinated against covid. Within two months, 4000 of those people will have a heart attack, 4000 will have a stroke, 10000 will be diagnosed with cancer, 14000 will die.
How many of those illnesses and deaths will be due to the vaccination? None of them.
But, the antivaxxers will start to claim some of those 4000 strokes, those 10000 cancers, those 14000 deaths as being caused by the vaccine. They will be wrong to do so. Why, because if we were to start counting 10 million people from today, none of them yet vaccinated against covid, within two months, 4000 of those people will have a heart attack, 4000 will have a stroke, 10000 will be diagnosed with cancer, 14000 will die.
If you know 100 people of all different ages and demographics, then one of them will have a heart attack within the next four years, one of them will have a stroke in that time, a couple of them will be diagnosed with cancer, and in those same four years, 2-3 will actually die. That’s the statistics. If you’re one of somebody else’s 100 friends, then you could be in any of those groups. This is the normal of life, disease, and death.
In the new-normal of the covid world, we need as many people as possible to be vaccinated to quash the spread of this new virus, otherwise there will be much bigger numbers to record in all of the above.
Drug discovery scientist Derek Lowe has much more to say on this topic having built on a twitter thread from Bob Wachter (Chair, University of California San Francisco Department of Medicine).
Of course, once we’re vaccinating millions of people, there will be some side effects and there will be some effects that arise that might be caused by the vaccine or just other random effects of the human condition. The fact is though, that the morbidity and mortality rates for covid will far outstrip any side effects of adverse reactions seen in the people who get the vaccine, this much is true from the trials of thousands of people who have been tested with the vaccine already.
The antivax movement will jump on every disease, every death gleefully proclaiming that the vaccine is to blame. But, 14000 in every ten million people would die in any random two month period before we’d even heard of covid. Now, that we have covid with us that is an extra cause of death to add to our terminal list. Vaccination will minimise those extra deaths, so that hopefully none of us will lose too many of our 100 friends to this dreadful disease.
Migratory geese in huge numbers arrive on our coasts in the winter heading in from Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia, and even Russia. Some of them end up further inland as did this small flock of White-fronted Geese, Anser albifrons (Russian sub-species), which I photographed on farmland adjacent to RSPB Ouse Fen in Cambridgeshire. Friend Steve Rutt, author of Wintering, tells me that there has been an influx of the Russian race of this species.
The bird is bigger than a mallard duck but smaller than a mute swan. The head of the adults has a large white patch. They also have bold black belly bars and orange legs. The Siberian sun-species, pictured here, has a pink bill whereas the bill is orange in the Greenland bird. We have something like 13000 of these geese that winter from Greenland in the British Isles, the Siberian race is less common.
I got a couple of snaps of the birds on the ground from several hundred metres away before the farmer’s cropsprayer spooked them and they took to the air and headed west towards the river that divides this reserve.
The RSPB warden who gave me the ID on the geese also said a Brent Goose had been seen on the reserve and a couple of Whooper Swans. He added that there are at least five Glossy Ibis in the area. Regular readers will know I saw a couple of those rare African visitors at Ouse Fen a couple of weeks ago. There are three on Swavesey Lake. See also Cattle Egret and Great White Egret for birds ostensibly of African origin that are increasinly common in The Fens.
Back in the early 1990s, Mrs Sciencebase and I visited Botswana and Zimbabwe. It was wonderful. The people, the landscapes, the wildlife. There were so many superb species around such as Golden Weaver Birds, Oxpeckers, Superb Starlings, various storks, ibis, vultures, Fish Eagles, Eagle Owl, and Little Egrets (probably Cattle Egrets too).
We were quite confused on our return on a visit to the North Norfolk coast (a place that would become a favourite haunt) that we saw a Little Egret there. Over the next three decades or so little egrets seem to have become increasingly common in East Anglia and although it’s still lovely to see them, they’re almost commonplace. Five years ago the same couldn’t be said of another type of egret. The Great White Egret, but that too is becoming more common. Similarly, Cattle Egret (Bubulcus ibis).
Is it simply an effect of climate change? These ostensibly African birds spreading their wings and thus their range and reaching farther north with each passing year? Well, climate change is definitely playing a role in species distribution when it comes to birds and many other forms of life. But, it’s more subtle than that. Deliberately or inadvertent introduction of the Red Swamp Crayfish (Procambarus clarkii) in freshwater lakes across Europe is providing egrets of all flavours as well as cormorants and other species with a ready, but unaccustomed food source and this is allowing them to expand their numbers and their range. (Barbaresi and Gherardi 2000, RodrÃguez et al. 2005)
The presence of the introduced North American crayfish, often known as the freshwater lobster, in the lakes of Northern France now means those egrets that were so rare this far north have but a short hop across the channel and upwards into East Anglia where they will find food and a foothold in small numbers.
It is perhaps only a matter of time before the red swamp crayfish becomes widespread in the freshwater lakes of The British Isles too and those egret numbers will rise still further.
We saw five Cattle Egrets in Fen Drayton this morning, feeding in between the hooves of a herd of cattle. Last winter we saw a flock of some 60 or so Little Egrets in the reserve that abuts the village and I have seen half a dozen Great White Egrets there (alongside lots of Little Egrets and lots of Grey Herons).
It’s possibly the same phenomenon leading to more frequent sightings of Glossy Ibis in East Anglia lately too.
Sunday morning was bright, cold, a few streaky clouds in the sky, but sun shining through. We were not quite up with the lark, but we got booted up and headed out for a brisk walk at one of our local patches where we often see Kingfishers and various other bird species. River Great Ouse running through farmland and along the bank top of one of the lodes that drain the fens, once around a fishing pond. Was expecting to see maybe a dozen bird species, but we counted all of these and maybe a couple more for which we didn’t get a positive identification, little brown jobs (LBJs), in other words.
Blackbird
Blackheaded Gull
Blue Tit
Bullfinch
Buzzard
Chaffinch
Collared Dove
Coot
Cormorant
Dunnock
Fieldfare
Goldfinch
Great Spotted Woodpecker
Great Tit
Grey Heron
Grey Wagtail
Kestrel
Kingfisher
Linnet
Little Grebe
Mallard
Mute Swan
Pied Wagtail
Redwing
Reed Bunting
Robin
Rook
Song Thrush
Whooper Swan
Wood Pigeon
Wren
2020-11-23 UPDATE: Today’s outing was to the village of Fen Drayton to see the five Cattle Egrets that have settled there temporarily. We saw those birds and quite a few more besides, venturing only a little way into the RSPB bird reserve that is adjacent to the village. Today’s list:
