So I've been at Carsington a bit more often than normal, more Date With Nature days mainly. We're currently trying to make sure everyone has the opportunity to sign up to our Letter to the Future campaign, and let the politicians who can do so much to provide a healthy environment for future generations know just how much we all care about this stuff. If you haven't done it yet, follow this link which tells you all about it.
As ever the reservoir remains a brilliant place to be doing this work with some cracking sunsets lately and smattering of tasty birds. I regret I missed the recent Black Redstart (some small consolation that I saw the one last November) , but the Great Northern Diver is settling in now and easy to find most days. Another juvenile bird so bang goes any theory that we get the same birds returning each year, this isn't site fidelity, Carsington is just a natural magnet for any GNDs that end up this far inland. It'll be a sad winter when we don't have one.
And because these divers are such fantastic birds, check out these Youtube videos....
...Common Loon being the given North American name for the same species.
Then there are the surprises that happily occur while on site. Closing things up at the end of another DWN event I had a Barn Owl sail by the Wildlife Centre. In other areas of the reservoir you can expect them, especially the areas with unimproved grassland the STW rangers look after so well, so it was more than pleasant to see it comfortable enough to quarter the busier parts of the water's edge. If it weren't for the volunteering I'd never be up and out there so regularly and I'd miss so many of these things. The rewards they are manifold.
Had a trip down to London at the weekend as the girlfriend needed to visit the Chinese embassy (would you believe the big screen above the desk in the consulate showed pictures of a military parade - missiles, jet fighters, millions of soldiers - I'm not kidding). With the price of train tickets we drove half the way, stopping off at Rutland to break the journey up. Glad we did too, gathered two life birds I was hardly expecting. First was a snoozing Long-eared Owl (#224) by the path to one of the hides. Heard them plenty in Sherwood Forest, the squeaky gate call of the chicks around dusk, first time seeing one though. The other lifer was a Slavonian Grebe (#225), a full winter plumage bird easy to ID, and actually a nice comparison with a few Black-necked Grebes around. Winter ducks aplenty, some nice Golden Plover in the afternoon sun. Didn't have time to check out the assortment of divers off the dam wall. The Little Egret video comes from Rutland, watch out for a Hitchcokian cameo from a Shoveler near the end.
There was time in the day to take in the London parks when down there. The Grey Herons in Regent's Park always a treat, especially if you have a camera.
Also took in maiden ride on my new bicycle today. Went under a mass of Fieldfare, they sounded like a giant bag of marbles being shaken up.
Big day at Carsington this weekend. It began with a report of a Black Redstart (video above), by the end of it Great Northern Diver (mostly summer plumage), female Scaup and Common Scoter, and a Ring-billed Gull made for the best visit I can remember for a long time. First and last birds there lifers too (#222 & #223), and interesting birds. The RB Gull is a Carsi regular, turning up in the roost early each November staying for a few weeks and then it's off again. Must have its reasons I suppose. Bet it spends the summer somewhere like Scotland, can't really see a trans-Atlantic migration from its normal range being made every year. The Black Redstart was a second site record, the previous one a spring bird from as far back as 1996. Charming birds, a sort of smoky delicacy in the feathers, they've a definite touch of class about them. Ours spent a lot of time on the sailing club building, picking off flies warming themselves up on the sunny side of the roof.
To add to the impressive cast earlier in the week we had a Garganey of debatable age and even gender during the RSPB's A Date With Nature event. That's how it can be when you have eclipse males around, this ostensibly female-looking just too warm coloured to be a female. Might still be on the water now. The water is really really low on the reservoir meaning the acreage of exposed mud is enormous, good for the wintering Teal and surely alluring for any vagrant waders. Eyes peeled. The Garganey enjoys the mud too, but really ought to be in Africa already. Yellow-legged Gull, Ravens, Buzzards, Peregrines, Goldeneye, tonnes of Tufties, Wigeon, Pochard and Coot, Snipe and other regulars make it fairly easy to notch maybe 60 species in a day visit at the moment.
Also had good numbers of Pink-footed Geese overflying the few days. Nice to be under their direct flight path between their first port of call in Lancashire and their real destination in Norfolk.
Another video of the Black Redstart, it just misses a whopping big fly there...
Bad bird-blogger, I haven't updated for over a month. To keep it brief mid-October we had our first big trip to Spurn. Not a classic day despite a favourable easterly from the sea, a netted Radde's Warbler released as the Anchor pub car park made for a very cheap life tick (not sure it really counts for that matter), and I chalked of another long-term bogey with a Jack Snipe skulking around the pond at Canal Scrape or whatever it's called. Bar-tailed Godwit, loads of winter Thrushes, a Merlin and smattering other nice birds made it all enjoyable enough. Only bummer was another from the nets - a Red-flanked Bluetail - missed the release for that one and then the bird refused to pop out of the bush it dived into. Invairably whichever side we chose to look from the bugger would briefly show from the other. Grah! For a first experience of Spurn in autumn it was all right, and we'll return next year. The spectacle of dozens of birders and the near-miss car accidents when a report of a mega goes out is something altogether different to local patching.
More recently we dipped on a Cetti's Warbler at Potteric Carr (might it winter there?). We picked a day when it chose to keep schtum, the regulars told me the bird has days like that and then others when puts on a real performance. Ah well, loads of Cetti's around the region at the moment, we'll pick one up sooner or later. Superb views of Bittern (video above) made up for any disappointment and I'll agree that Potteric Carr is quickly becoming the best place in the region, some dare even say the country, to see the species. One bird resident, with five expected as winter takes hold. Slightly annoyed by some photographers camped in the hide near the Field Centre, the one with the feeders right infront. Giggling and saying 'poor thing' each time you scare off a GS Woodpecker with an assault of loud photo shutters, and would you believe a flashgun, isn't really on. Hardly what they call fieldcraft is it? Otherwise hugely impressed by the new hides, lots and lots of new hides, overlooking the lagoons where all the Golden Plover hang out. It was always a big nature reserve and now you can access the whole thing, brilliant.
Finally, had a day RSPBing at Carsington yesterday. More schoolkids, more exclamations of 'wicked' after first views of Lapwings through a telescope. Bird of the day was a rusty Garganey that looks more like a juv male than a female. Frustrating to lose the bird when a low-flying Spitfire put up probably every bird on the reservior. Later it was refound at the other end of the water, with a Great Northern Diver, yes - they're back, or at least one so far. Now if we're really talking about the best place in the country to see a particularly scarce bird, Carsi genuinely rates for its GNDs. The Carsington Kingfishers continue to put on good shows...
Last word, Lesser Redpoll in the garden, thats species #41 since January.
Did a new part of the Peak District for us at the weekend, across most of Derbyshire, beyond Buxton and to the border with Cheshire, where it's bleak and the birds are few - but what birds they are!
After all the driving we eventually found a pull in around Danebower and a path down into the valley and the old quarry. Best of the day was a late summer male Ring Ouzel quite close and quite apparently ticked off with us. This was a lifer so we were altogether happier about the encounter.
Other notables came when a Raven sailed by quite low and flushed up a couple of Red Grouse, the corvid even seemed to lunge for one of them. Better views of grouse came later but the girlfriend had used up her camera battery taking admittedly pleasant portraits of sheep.
Several Wheatears were a nice reminder of Scotland.
Earlier in the week we had a Tawny Owl when we went a short way to Norwood to find darker skies for viewing the Perseid meteor shower. Too cloudy to see many of them, the owl was a cracker though, drove right by it first but it was bold enough to let us reverse the car back to have a good look of it perched on a telegraph pole, headlights illuminating the whole bird. They look so big when you get that kind of view.
Willow Warbler in the garden today, our first since the spring.
Expectations had already been boosted on the long journey up there when a lay-by along Loch Awe produced a family group of Ospreys, a couple of adults and two or three fledglings. The skies were bucketing it down (too heavy to get out of the car even) so no pictures , just fantastic memories for us.
Onward to Mull we had booked one of the wildlife safaris you simply must go on when you make it to the island. There are seven currently running and we chose the Wild About Mull tour because it could pick us up from our campsite right on the tip of the Ross peninsula. Bryan, our guide, did us well with an Otter early on, a WT-Eagle in a tree across Loch Scridain and then Golden Eagles sailing across the highest ridges on the island. That's the big three ticked. The Goldie was a lifer for me (#218). Seals, Red Deer, Raven, Golden Plovers, Stonechat soon followed, with Red-throated Diver and Red-breasted Merganser coming earlier in the day, and all in all it was £37-each well spent. Like most visitors we did the tour at the beginning of the week so we'd have a handle on the place for the rest of our holiday.
We camped for the whole week at Fidden Farm just a mile or so south of the Fionnphort and the ferry for Iona. Like the wildlife tour, Iona really demands you devote a day to it, at least then you might stand a chance of actually spotting one of the many calling Corncrakes that excite, frustrate, but mostly excite, all around the enchanting isle (video). Not a bad island if you enjoy your history or you're in with Jesus either. We failed on seeing a CC, so to tick or not to tick? That is the question. A lot of people have been pondering that all over England during this good Quail summer, another noisy skulking bird. I'm still undecided.
Back on Mull, we connected with the WT-Eagles again a couple of times, once back at a nest site we'd seen on the tour. The one chick apparently fledged the day before (grah!), but the good news is they tend to go straight down into the nearby woodland and stay there for several days so you still get to see the parents bringing in food. Early mornings around Fidden did well for the holiday list, Dunlin, Ringed Plover, Snipe all in the brook beside the farm, and the buildings themselves housed a not unspectacular summer Starling roost with perhaps a 150 birds funneling during the evening. Wheatear everywhere, same with Oystercatcher, Redshank, Hooded Crow of course. Nice surprise one morning was a male Peregrine chasing away either another male or perhaps a youngster directly over head at about 40ft on my way to the camp toilets one morning. The screaming sure woke me up. Nearby the farm a dead end track leads off past Fidden to the scatterings of other farms on the south-west tip of the Ross to where we had some of our best birding of the holiday. Within a minute of each other we had a WT-Eagle sail in quite low from the west, and then sitting on a rocky pinnacle a Golden Eagle, which then took off to glide along the rolling ridges in the distance. Impressive! An impromptu visit to Tireragan nature reserve followed after we picked up a map leaflet from the farm at the end of the track. A warning to visitors, the paths may start easy, but they soon disappear into a dense jungle of bracken, so taking a compass and an OS map would probably be a good idea. Do go though, we had a family group of ring-tail Hen Harrier careering across the sky, looked like they were tossing each other around the sky actually. Close views of Ravens checking out us checking them out followed, and then the briefest view of an immaculate male Hen Harrier - which be honest are the ones we really want to see - frightening every Mippit and Stonechat in the area. Elsewhere along the Ross we very briefly had a single Twite, with reported flocks of up to 50 birds eluding us somehow.
Must briefly mention Carsaig bay, a short visit there discovered Spotted Flycatchers, they're always a pleasure.
Finally, for the girlfriend's birthday I promised we'd go find our own Otters, and this we did. I don't want to say quite where - somewhere west of Glen More will do - we found a mother and cub hunting on a rising tide. I say hunting, it really looks like play. Picked up a Merlin cruising across the shoreline here too. On the day we left for home, one more stop by the same area brought us a dog Otter and we had reasonable close views of him 'sprainting' a small rocky island in the loch. A charming, if poo-themed, way to end our holiday.
There's gotta be a next time when it comes to visiting the Isle of Mull.
White-tailed Eagle at something toward half a mile distance.
Given a special invite to the ladies loos in Bunessan to see these fledgling Swallows.
The plan was to scooch down to Rutland to finally bag one of the many Cattle Egrets in the country these days, by the end of a very long day we'd scored a list of 81 species and some memorable views - this despite missing out several hides and the Manton Bay area.
Big surprise was the new lagoon on the north side of Egleton Reserve, even googling after the visit I find very little online to cover quite what an interesting development it is. Being Rutland it's another big area of water with islands and scrapes that are an obvious magnet for all kinds of waders, and crowning glory of this achievement is an Osprey platform with attending bird. To give an idea of what it's already getting we saw Sanderling, Sandwich Tern and Avocet on or around that lagoon (gales over the last few days certainly helped with that). At one point the two Avocets mobbed the Osprey, which really underlines two of the big successes in British bird conservation over the last couple of decades. Who'd have imagined that even 15 years ago?
On other lagoons, three Black Terns, a pair of summer plumage Black-necked Grebes, and dozens of Hobbies hawking high and low, are all birds to make any day. Early evening a Cuckoo finally showed itself after teasing with distant calls all day long.
Shouldn't forget the reason we travelled in the first place, the Cattle Egret. Always kind of distant, invariably gorgeous, and yes it was among the cows (substituting for the elephants and rhinos of Africa).
An apparently plastic* Ruddy Shelduck hybrid raised and disappointed hopes, and yet what a richly coloured bird nonetheless.
Get thee to Rutland!Osprey nidifying...
...Hobby... flying.
Ruddy/Cape/Egyptian Goose/Shelduck thing
Cattle Egret
Plus, a bonus video, shot from a good distance...
*plastic - noun, slang: A wild bird of dubious origin, usually an escapee from an ornamental wildfowl collection.
(vid from the girlfriend, check out the birds at beginning and end with the dark bodies and white cheeks)
Birders nationwide will be aware of the big thing that hit us in Derbyshire at the weekend, 11 Whiskered Terns at Willington Gravel Pits (DWT) somewhere by the Trent just south of Derby. Eleven, that's a flock almost three times larger than the previous record and the first of the species for the county since, oh, only 1883! Their usual range dots pockets of south and east Europe, with the BBRC recording an average of something like 2-5 in most years since the 50's of this small elegant smoky coloured marsh tern with the attractive white cheek.
Terns on migration tend not to stick around so we zoomed straight from work down the A38 the day after their arrival when 8 were still knocking around, swooping and nipping insects in the distinctive bouyant flight these birds have. Being a county tick for all Derbys birders and a lifer for many of us in the midlands there was plenty of interest, all of us ever so polite to make sure everybody had time at the front of the small viewing platform and to discuss the unprecedented wow factor of the event. Imagine finding them, reporting them, swearing you've not been on the gin. They've mostly dispersed now, sightings as far and wide as Cleveland, Rutland and Cambridgeshire are probably our terns.
My confession is that I hadn't done Willington before which makes me a bad birdwatcher because it's quickly becoming the best site in Derbyshire. Equally I let the side down by putting work before these kinda birds, bad birding indeed.
Anyway, cracking site, amazing spectacle. Also had Little Egret, Lesser Whitethroat, first Swifts of the year and reeling Grasshopper Warbler for the evening.
Memorable stuff indeed. That Shrike has a challenger for best personal twitch status.
Back down to Earth there's a very industrious Coal Tit in my garden right now. Cool Tit more like it.
Was back at Carsington this week for the Tuesday ABB. Stunning weather, anybody who's been on holiday has got to have used up all their good luck for the year. 2 Great Northern Diver remain on the reservoir and look likely to tease us with mere hints of summer plumage before disappearing in the next week or so. The best of the rest were a couple of pristine White Wagtails. You can spend hours checking every Pied Wagtail umming and ahhing over their identity but when you actually find a White one you really know it. Shelduck was a nice record for Carsington, Little Ringed Plovers are around, plus the regular waders and warblers. Mallard ducklings are already out and about.
The House Martins have begun work on nest cups up around the visitor centre and the RSPB volunteers will spend a bit more time this year featuring them on event days, which ought to be lots of fun. Like all hirundine they're fascinating birds.
Happy surprise in the garden today, our first Blackcap, that's #32 on the garden bird list (since January when we moved in). You can tell the early ornithologists were all men, this being a female she clearly had a brown cap. The bird has feasted all day on ivy berries, nice to see it bathing too. In the last week a Willow Warbler passed through, which is a nice early date anywhere never mind in my garden, and a Peregrine has gone over again. I'm in the middle of a busy Easter stretch at work, so god only knows what I'm missing when I'm away from the house. Would have gone for some local Waxwings if I'd had the time, yes, they're still around!
Yum?
On the sightings pages I see Sandwich Tern, Cettis Warbler, Osprey in the county, birds like Redstart and Cuckoo arriving back too, it's getting bloody exciting out there. Had better find the time.
Nice bird in the village today, unusual this far east in Derbyshire, it's a Dipper, of course. Well worth all of that 5 minute walk down to the mill. Looked territorial too, so fingers crossed on that, even if it means a hard time for the regular Grey Wagtails. Technically a good county bird for Nottinghamshire listers when it flits onto the opposite bank of the Meden.
Also, while a Coal Tit calls outside my window, a couple of good birdy articles in the Independent this week, well, one good, one bad:
A shot of Redwings the girlfriend took last week on her way to work in Derbyshire. Won't be seeing these birds for too much longer now, not until the autumn anyway. She tells me in China they have a very similar bird the Eyebrowed Thrush, which is commonly sold as a sweet swinging cagebirds. I think we both prefer to see them in (or usually over) the fields.
In other news frogsprawn has appeared in our new garden pond. Can hardly describe how thrilled we are. It's the simple things when you're into nature, isn't it?
Little tardy updating here, the owl video is from a couple of weekends ago. The location is... somewhere... along the Trent near Hoveringham, South Notts. Between the large flooded gravel pits and the river that location is a real corridor for birdlife. To add to our Tawny Owl there, Egyptian Goose, Shelduck, Redshank, Goldeneye and Green Woodpecker were the best of a quiet visit. Come the Spring the place will be heaving with Common Terns and Yellow Wagtails.
As for any link between owl and river I think that is purely coincidental on this occasion, however Tawnies do apparently take fish. That said, it'd be one helluva reckless owl that took a dip in a river that large.
What you can see there is a Great White Egret, the ridiculous big yellow bill is the key feature from this view. It's been hanging around some small fishing lakes a bit SW of Derby for the last week or so, which continues the tour of the Midlands this bird has been on for months now, all of this a fair way off from the East Europe it really belongs in. Haven't my life list to hand, the GWE takes me up to #214 or something like that.
Rubbish view, cold day, stood at the roadside, great bird, and it's all worthwhile.
Oh, as I type there's a 1st-year male Reed Bunting feeding in the snow on my patio, three weeks in and that's #27 for the garden list.
It couldn't really happen, could it? There's no way I'd miss seeing Waxwings during their greatest irruption for some say 20 years. Well of course! The girlfriend and I finally connected with the Tibshelf massive which were hanging out in a school car park, up to nine birds while we were there but as many as 22 at other times. They were gorging on the fruiting trees, shared with not terrible hospitality with the local Mistle Thrushes and one Fieldfare.
Elsewhere in the county there are reports of more than 200 Waxwings in Ilkeston, which gives a handle on the kinds of numbers that have hit the UK this winter. Flocks of 1000+ in Scotland. The girlfriend thinks they're plumage recalls some kind of exotic foreign dress, not a million miles away from geisha costume. That's one description of them I can certainly abide with.
While I type a glance out of the patio window here at my parents' house and I see 11 Blackbirds which is a probable record for the half tennis court or so of garden out there. 4 inches of snow and they've downed all arms, as they should in winter, almost tolerating one another - save for one really pissed off territorial male.
Had planned to volunteer at the Carsington ABB tomorrow, doesn't look like the weather will allow this.
Here's a video of the Waxwings shot by the girlfriend...
Be sure to select the HQ option in the bottom right corner or it'll look like the bad bootleg copy of the original. Better yet, you can select a High Definition version here. Listen out for their call too.
Happy birdwatching everybody, it's back to flatpack furniture for me.
Had quite a bit on my plate of late so birding has taken rather back seat for the last few weeks. A spot of local patching today though, with an Egyptian Goose providing some interest at Sutton Lawn. GS Woodpecker, Goldfinch, L-T Tits, Sparrowhawk, etc, the usual suspects, but as yet no Brambling there this winter - usually the park is dependable for small numbers, but zip all as yet, not many Chaffinches either for that matter. What else? Oh dear reader, if you haven't seen a Waxwing yet this winter then that makes at least two of us. Seems everybody else has been enjoying their current irruption, so don't stop looking now!
Last video and final words on the Steppe Grey Shrike, as news came today of only feathers being found in the area the bird had been favouring. I saw a Merlin work the ditches myself while on site, Peregrine and Hen Harrier were around too, among commoner predators, so chances are it was snatched by a raptor. A sad demise for an amazing bird, but what a bird!
(By the way, that certainly wasn't me feeding the bird corned beef!)
No report of the bird today, although midweek birders may have been thin on the ground with the rainy forecast. One theory for why the bird looks so untidy goes that its native habitat are the arid plains of areas like Kazahkstan, leaving this bird naturally unaccustomed to hunting for prey in wet grass. As good a theory as any I suppose, particularly as I read in the Lincolnshire Bird Club forum a list of discoveries found in one of the shrike's pellets:
Remains of at least 11 Pterostichus melanarius (Carabidae – ground beetle family) Remains of at least 3 Pterostichus niger (Carabidae) Remains of 1 Ocypus olens (Devil’s coach horse beetle – Staphylinidae/rove beetles) One aedeagus (male sexual organ) of Catops tristis (Coleoptera – Leiodidae) Remains of unidentified species of beetle elytra (wing cases) Miscellaneous heads of non-Coleoptera invertebrates (possibly Diptera) Heads of two different species of possible Lepidoptera
So beetles basically, which makes sense for a bird smaller than our voracious Great Greys.
Broke my 50-mile local twitch limit yesterday, but surely worth it for one of the rarest and showiest birds to hit Britain all year. Over the last few years I've had maybe half a dozen Great Grey Shrike sightings, almost always at a range of 100 yards or so, try to comprehend therefore how it felt to have a Steppe Grey Shrike land on my head - I'm still trying myself. To briefly explain Steppe Grey Shrike is either a different species or different race (in taxonomy terms these birds are rather in the wild west*) to the very similar the Great Greys, just a touch paler in one of two places . We see perhaps 50-100 GGS during the winter in the UK, however the Steppes breed much further east than Greys - from N Iran across to Uzbekistan and should spend their winters in the tropics well east of us. Now human habitation is sparse in these areas so the Steppe Grey Shrike is a bird that should seldom come across mankind and therefore the birds seem to have developed no fear of us. Hence pictures of this one on people's scopes, cameras, cars, heads, etc. It's only the second or third record of Steppe Grey Shrike in the last ten years, and a real treat still drawing in good crowds into its third week of residence in the Lincs flatlands south of Grimsby. Likelihood is this is probably the most photographed bird.... ever.
In some birding circles concerns raised have been raised over birders and photographers chasing this bird which too high a vigour, but truly it is more a case of the bird following us - maybe it believes we'll stir up worms or beetles. The temptation therefore is to feed it, not something I'd personally want to do - I reason it's been there 3 weeks now and been seen to find its own food which is probably healthier all round than anything people could give it.
Hogging the eyepiece
Also picked up a Grey Pharalope at Covenham Reservoir on that long drive home, another highly confiding thoughie.
Rates as the best birding day the girlfriend and I have ever had. Peregrine, Merlin, tonnes of winter thrushes and Curlews, Brent Geese all fly-overs while we tried not to step on the Steppe, plus a Barn Owl near miss (phew!) on the way back. Videos to post soon.
*technically, the species we're dealing with here appears to be a Southern Grey Shrike
plus a Barn Owl near miss (phew!) on the way back. Videos to post soon.
