Category: Science

In Stephen Rutt’s second book, Wintering, we follow him on a journey around the British Isles to find the elusive species and sub-species of what might at first light seem a rather dull and innocuous class of birds, the geese. The geese, you say? As in “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander”? What could be more interesting?

Well, hang fire, Rutt’s tale takes back through mediaeval droves to the ancient Greeks and the ancient Egyptians even, by way of the marshlands and reedy wetlands of Suffolk, Northumberland, and the wide rivers of the Scottish borderlands. It also takes us back and forth across oceans to Scandinavia for the geese have been with us a long, long time and are an integral part of British history in ways you cannot imagine, they are in historical festive diet, and embedded in our folklore.

Rutt’s poetic prose tells tale of Beans and Barnacles, of Canada, and Brent and Brant. He talks of Pink-foots of Greylags, and White-fronts. He writes with an empathy and an enthusiasm that has grown in him and grows in us the reader with each waft of the figurative quill. It’s a tale of chasing, of tracking, of falling in love with place and nature. A tale of missed opportunity and the luckiest of finds.

One evening in late November, I was once again, hoping to catch sight of the Starling murmurations that occur over the Broad Lane balancing pond. As mentioned in a previous, issue the local Starlings and their continental counterparts will often roost in the reed bed there, last winter there were literally thousands. At the time of writing, just a few hundred are roosting, but that can change on a wind as arrivals from Europe turn up when the weather changes. Anyway, reader Alison waved as she passed the pond on her dog walk. I later heard that she’d seen a scuffle between a Kestrel and a Barn Owl close to the Fen Bridge. Typical, I thought, for me to miss the avian action.

Barn Owl over a barn at Rampton

Anyway, there are quite a few barn owls to be seen on the outskirts of the village. These dusk hunters of silent flight will range along the Cottenham Lode (a fenland drain), across rough fields, and alongside roads. Often you will see a ghostly Barn Owl sidle up alongside hoping to home in on voles and other small rodents turfed out of the undergrowth by the rumbling of tires, even on the fresh tarmac of Beach Road.

There are other owls around; while videoing a starling murmuration over Rampton, I could see a Barn Owl in the field, but could hear a little owl in the hedge in which the starlings were hoping to roost. There was little chance that they would settle until the owls had departed, which eventually they did. The whole point of the murmuration, aside from the socialising, is to reduce the risk to the individual bird of being picked off by a bird of prey, such as a peregrine falcon, or perhaps an owl. The Little Owl is not a native species, it was introduced to the British Isles in the nineteenth century.

Rescued Tawny Owl at Fen Edge Festival 2019

Meanwhile, there are places around the village, such as The Green where there are tawny owls to be heard, and if you’re very lucky and keen-eyed, perhaps even seen. Like the Barn Owl the Tawny Owl has very dark eyes, which help it see even in low light, and coupled with its excellent directional hearing make it a mean night hunter. Tawnies pair up from about the age of one year and stick together, monogamously. Famously, their call – the stereotypical “too-wit, woo-ooh” is two birds calling almost in the style of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. The female calls “too-wit” and the male responds by wooing her.

There are a few Long-eared Owls across East Anglia and the East Midlands although numbers are greater further north. Some readers may have been lucky to catch a glimpse of a vagrant Snowy Owl on the north Norfolk coast at RSPB Snettisham in March 2018. You have a greater chance of seeing the Short-eared Owl, however. This migratory species flies in from Scandinavia, Russia, Iceland, and we are lucky enough to have a patch of land not too far away where they can be seen hunting at dusk. Last winter, half a dozen or so “shorties” were often seen hunting at NT Burwell Fen and Tubney Fen, which are accessible by road from Burwell or on foot or cycling from Wicken Fen.

One of last winter’s shorties suffered a wing injury, and spent the summer on the Fen; it can still fly well, but presumably it felt that a trip back to the Steppes was not on the cards. As I write, this I have visited the fen twice this winter to see the shorties and reckon that there are four or so present. The numbers may have risen by the time you read this in early February. But, if you are reading it later in the year, beyond March, early April, you will have probably missed the chance to see them until next winter. Birding is very much about chance, timing, weather, and plain-old luck.

TL:DR – In the late autumn, Short-eared Owls often migrate from regions far to the north and reach sites, such as NT Burwell Fen in Cambridgeshire where they will spend the winter, hunting small mammals in scrubby fenland.

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Here’s looking at youA frosty start to the day, clear skies, little wind, would that be perfect weather for hunting Short-eared Owls at NT Burwell Fen, I wondered. Did a few chores, made a coffee, drove the bumpy ride to the reach bridge parking at the back of the fen. Another quick snap of the 2D sculpture there that looks like a rendition of the weirdest “distracted boyfriend” meme ever.

Too early for Shorties at the time I arrived so a short walk along the bank top that parallels Reach Lode. Lots of waterfowl and water birds and the water, as you’d expect (Mallard, Shoveller, Coot, Wigeon, Shelduck, Black-headed Gull, Cormorants, usual feathery fodder). A few large flocks spooked every now and then by a couple Marsh Harriers.

A tramp back to the bridge and then a walk across to our usual owl-spotting spot in the middle of the Fen. Hard-standing fossil of an old farm, with a drainage ditch and fencing to hem in the cattle and the Konik ponies, the deer don’t care about fences, of course.

Chatted to a couple who put me to shame with their endurance, my having arrived at about 12h15, they’d already been there more than four hours. They’d seen a single Barn Owl but no early morning shorties. The misidentified some Stonechats as Reed Bunts and endless contradicted by spartan field knowledge of the Shorties that spend the winters on this Fen. I told them that they’d be “up” no sooner than about an hour before sunset, they were insistent that people “on Facebook” had photographed them for weeks at all times of day. It wasn’t to be. So, with ever-patient labrador in tow, we all of us ended up snapping the cattle to pass the time.

I also got a bizarre shot of some ghost Mallard where I’d accidentally put my camera into HDR mode, which never works well with moving subjects as the camera is programmed to take three bracketed shots quickly, but not instantaneously. One is exposed for the blacks, one the highlights, and one for the mid-tones. The camera combines all three and discards areas that are over or underexposed to create the high dynamic range of the final photo, usually.

The quality of light was lovely, the only “clouds” in tke sky were the loop-de-loop smoke trails of a wannabe Biggles, the only sound aside from his propellor a distant pheasant shoot I’d passed on the bumpy ride in that was still ongoing. Fowl play, you might say.

No Shorties yet, but lots of cameras on tripods pointed at the scrub expectantly. Word on the Fen was that there were five over-wintering here. We’d seen three, possibly four, on our last visit, but the light had been low and the photo quality similar. Today it would be different, just needed the owls to show.

Fairly sure I was first to spot the first, at 15h08, which true to my prediction was an hour before sunset, give or take ten minutes. So, here it is, first of probably five individual Short-eared Owls that I’d seen on the Fen by the time I left, just after sunset.

There are five on the Fen, I cannot be sure if I saw all five, maybe just four of them, but definitely four. Two tussled with a Marsh Harrier and I saw a final one as I headed for the Sun.

The sun had almost gone when I looked back over the Fen after a chat with an old birder who didn’t seem to need binoculars nor ‘scope, and definitely didn’t have a camera. The light was fading fast and the resulting photo was at high ISO and so is very noisy, but it’s a record, so there.

 

Second trip of the year to the North Norfolk coast. A much brisker, sunnier day than our New Year’s Day trip to RSPB Titchwell. Hoped to see Shorelarks, but apparently there are only five around the beach at Holkham at the moment and even the hardiest of birders who spent all day waiting yesterday saw none. We did, however, see 60 or so Snow Buntings, Plectrophenax nivalis.

The Snow Bunting is a relatively chunky bunting and in winter has what can only be described as a snowy kind of winter camouflage plumage. It takes on a sandy/buff appearance with more mottling of the males’ upperparts than its black and white of summer.

The “Snow Bunt” breeds in the Arctic regions from Scandinavia to Alaska, Canada, and Greenland and heads south in winter. They are an Amber species in the UK as they are quite scarce here in terms of breeding. So, very nice to see a relatively large number of 60 or so picking over the scrub on Holkham Beach.

Sighted today: Black-headed Gull, Brent Goose, Common Buzzard, Common Gull, Common Scoter, Cormorant, Grey Heron, Greylag Goose, Herring Gull, Kestrel, Lapwing, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Linnet, Mallard, Meadow Pipit, Oystercatcher, Peregrine, Pied Wagtail, Red Kite, Redshank, Robin, Rock Pipit, Sanderling, Stock Dove, Stonechat, Velvet Scoter, Wigeon, Wood Pigeon, Snow Bunting…

Once again, we partied afternoon and early evening on New Year’s Eve 2019 and avoided the midnight shenanigans and so we were sufficiently compos mentis to drive to RSPB Titchwell in North Norfolk for the second year running. Last year, we ticked 54 bird species, although the rangers reported 103. This year we ticked 64, and the rangers saw 90-something.

Avocet, Blackbird, Black-headed Gull, Bar-tailed Godwit, Black-tailed Godwit, Blue Tit, Brent Goose, Buzzard, Chaffinch, Coal Tit, Collared Dove, Coot, Cormorant, Carrion Crow, Dunlin, Dunnock, Gadwall, Golden Plover, Great Black-backed Gull, Great Tit, Great-crested Grebe, Greenfinch, Greenshank, Grey Heron, Grey Plover, Greylag Goose, Herring Gull, Jackdaw, Kestrel, Knot, Lapwing, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Little Egret, Little Grebe, Long-tailed Tit, Magpie, Mallard, Marsh Harrier, Meadow Pipit, Moorhen, Mute Swan, Oystercatcher, Pheasant, Pink-footed Goose, Pintail, Redshank, Ringed Plover, Robin, Rook, Sanderling, Scoter, Shelduck, Shoveller, Sparrowhawk, Spotted Redshank, Starling, Stock Dove, Teal, Tufted Duck, Turnstone, Water Rail, Wigeon, Wood Pigeon, Wren.