Bursting into song

It was cold, cloudy, windy and raining when I went out for a quick walk at lunchtime today. There wasn't a lot to see, but what struck me was the number of birds singing.

They were everywhere. By the swimming pool, a blackbird was atop a tree and in full song (though perhaps in need of a little practice). Robins lurked in every bush, and by standing in one spot, I could hear five different Great Tits singing. Further round the footpath, Coal Tits squeaked from the pine trees and Goldcrests wheezed away.

Which reminds me: as we left the house to go to Swiss Gardens for the Firecrest on the 6th, there was the distant rattle of a drumming Great Spotted Woodpecker from down the road. And when I stepped outside the office to fill up the bird feeder on Monday, I heard a shower of Nuthatch calls and the 'kick' of another Great Spot.

I can't wait for a few weeks' time when things are really getting going.

Swan update

Got back the details of the colour-ringed Mute Swan I saw at Harrold-Odell on 27th December.

Rather as I suspected, it was a case of:

Ringed: Harrold-Odell CP, 26 Apr 2003, adult male
Distance moved: 0km

Still, it was worth checking out. It must like it there to have spent the past five years in the same place.

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM

Great Spot

Terribly dark, but here's one of our regular garden visitors.

video taken with Nikon Coolpix 995 + Leica Apo Televid 77 with 20x eyepiece

Know your RSS from your elbow

Several times recently, I've been talking to people and they tell me they've added something to their blog. I say 'Yes, I saw, I've subscribed to your RSS feed' and they look at me blankly and say 'My what?'

This baffles me. These are people who write blogs, which have RSS feeds, but they don't use them and don't know what they are.

RSS feeds are great. They mean you don't have to keep checking to see if your favourite blog has been updated. Subscribe and you'll get a tip-off when there's something new.

To use RSS you need some kind of news reader (some software which receives the new stuff and then tells you about it). There are lots available; decent web browsers have them built-in. I use Google Reader, which is web-based, so I can pick up new stuff at home and work.

With Google Reader, all I have to do is click on the orange icon which appears in the address bar of Firefox. Then I can review all the new posts to my favourite blogs in a few seconds, without having to go looking for them (if I'm at work and not using Firefox, I can just tell Google Reader the address of the blog or page (BBC News also uses RSS, for example) and it will find the feed and subscribe to it).

Go on, start using RSS and you can spend more time in the field. Or in bed. Your call.

• I've just started 'sharing' my favourite blog posts in the panel on the right, headed 'good stuff', also using Google Reader.
  

• The BBC has a great page explaining RSS and news readers

Crest of fire

You know what it's like when your feet are really, really cold. You think they're almost numb but they're not, because they hurt. You long to get back in the car and put the heater on, and then get out of there.

That was me this morning at the Swiss Gardens, and we were on our way back to the car when suddenly it appeared by the bridge: a tiny eyestripe of a bird flying through the trees away from us. 'Got it!'

We then spent 15 minutes watching the Firecrest as it hovered around the ivy several metres off the ground, clung to tiny stems and darted from leaf to leaf (why does a small bird which must have to feed constantly bother to hover?). It wasn't close, but it was close enough.

Before, I'd been thinking that it didn't matter that we hadn't seen it, because I'd enjoyed the Siskins singing, and the flocks of Long-tailed Tits, and the flock of six Nuthatches bickering just in front of us anyway, so all was not lost. To see the Firecrest as well was merely the icing on the cake.

There's an owl at the bottom of my garden

It's just getting dark outside and I can hear an owl outside. It's not really that unusual here: Tawny Owls can be heard most nights, we've heard the occasional Little Owl, and listening to Barn Owls wheezing their way over the garden was a frequent occurrence in summer.

The sound of tonight's Tawny was particularly loud and clear, so I went to the window to have a look. And, lo and behold, there was an owl-shaped silhouette against the dark blue sky, in the ash tree at the bottom of our garden.

Got my binoculars and had a closer look, through the window glass. I couldn't discern any detail, but I watched the owl's head dip as it gave another hoot. I was just considering trying to digiscope it, but before I could, it flew round to the other side of the tree and had a look at the cavity in the tree that the Jackdaws nested in last year!

Owls nesting in the garden would be fun... They'll be settling down to breed soon, so we might not have long to wait to find out.

MicroGoose and Friends

Got to Grafham Water to see the dark-bellied Brent Goose which has been touring the district. As reported, it was at Marlowe car park, along with some beasts of dubious origin - Greylags, Swan Geese and colossal domestic geese. And a Greylag x Swan Goose hybrid.

I approached with caution in case it was a bit jumpy...

So far, so good. Could I get a bit closer?

Yep.


photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM

New Year's Day

Unfortunately, weather-wise, it's been one of these kinds of days:

Fen Drayton Lakes

Burdock

Rosehips

Reeds

Dog (OK, I was bored)

We've managed to clock up 80 species today, at Fen Drayton, Grafham, Warren Villas and Thurleigh - not too bad. Highlights were Hen Harrier, Barn and Short-eared Owls at the latter site, though the redhead Smew at FD were nice to get on 1 January, and the Woodcock that hurtled across in front of the car at Thurleigh was a surprise.

We didn't get Sparrowhawk, Linnet, Jay or Nuthatch, or the Scaup at WV, and the only bunting species was Reed.

Charlie Moores is (or was) in Japan today. He got better photos and some sunshine, but we saw more species...

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM

Norfolk

It was supposed to be sunny today, so we went to Norfolk. Started off in the Yare valley at Cantley, where plenty of White-fronted Geese were on the meadows with a sprinkling of Magic Bean Geese. The views of the Beans were much better than my last ones of this species - in pea-soup fog at the Nene Washes.

If there had been any daylight the photos might have been better, but the day had started well.

Next stop was Gunton Cliff for the Pallas's Warbler. Wasted a lot of time there - it wasn't seen at all. Tried Ness Point, Lowestoft, for Purple Sandpipers, but there were none to be seen. It was looking quite bleak.

(I feel sorry for Lowestoft - it used to be very prosperous with shipbuilding and fishing industries, which my ancestors were part of - but now it's a bit of a dump. Ness Point is the easternmost point of the British Isles, but they don't make much of it. The point sits next to an industrial estate, a gasworks, and a huge wind turbine under construction)

In the end we abandoned Suffolk and made for Norfolk, where we enjoyed the buntings - Snow and Lapland - at Salthouse. By the time we decided to try for the Ross's Geese at Holme, it was getting dark and the geese had cleared off.

Hmmmph. I hope 2008 will be better.

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM

• Geese, buntings and witches' knickers
  I visited Norfolk over the Christmas break. We watched geese grazing in the Yare valley, snow and Lapland buntings on the coast, and then what I thought were some witches' knickers by the road on the way home...
  Read the whole thing on Notes on Nature
  

Sparrowhawk

video taken with Nikon Coolpix 995 + Leica Apo Televid 77 with 20x eyepiece

Everyone else has video on their blog these days, so I thought I'd have a go. I was lucky that this Sparrowhawk perched on the garden fence after trying - and failing - to catch a Blackbird. It's a bit dark but it's not turned out too badly, considering it was digiscoped through a window, and the old Coolpix isn't really ideal for video...

Kestrel video

video taken with Nikon Coolpix 995 + Leica Apo Televid 77 with 20x eyepiece

Another bird of prey doing not very much, this time a Kestrel. They fly past quite often but I haven't seen one perching on the fence before. The Blue and Great Tits weren't very impressed.

Swan bling

Had a terrible day trudging round various bits of Bedfordshire. We dipped on everything - Cattle Egret (in Cambs), White-fronted Geese at Harrold, Short-eared Owl at Thurleigh.

While bored at Harrold, I spotted this ringed Mute Swan. It's always worth checking birds for colour rings. I expect it's moved a total of zero km since it was ringed, but I've sent my sighting in to www.ring.ac anyway.

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM

Red-capped Manakin

Sharp claws in fluffy slippers

Staring bleary-eyed out of the window this morning, something caught my attention. There was a bird on the garden fence. A closer look revealed it was a sparrowhawk, a young male.

There was something very odd about him. He appeared to be wearing slippers like one of my next-door neighbours used to wear in the '80s (you perhaps know the kind: black, fluffy and trimmed with feathers). Around each foot was a tangled mass of dark, downy feathers, and some bits of grass...

Read the whole post here

Listening To Birds

Listening To Birds: An Anthropological Approach to Bird Sounds

This sounds [pun not intended] like an interesting project:

'A two year project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council investigating how people perceive, identify and make sense of bird sounds.

What happens when we hear a bird? This is the question at the heart of this project and over the next two years we will be listening to birds with others and finding out how bird sounds become a part of people's lives.

We want to investigate how people listen to birds because we're fascinated by two subjects. First, we are interested in the relationships between humans and birds and the role that sound plays in this. We wish to understand how bird sounds become important and meaningful to people, for example as being evocative of time, place or season. Second, we want to explore hearing and to consider how people become skilled at differentiating what they hear.'

If you go down to the woods today

'Walking around The Lodge at lunchtime, there was a rustle and then the sound of powerfully whirring wings. A fat, brown bird flew from the crispy leaves in the sweet chestnut woodland and away up the hill from us. It made me jump! For a split second, I thought, 'what on earth was that?' but then it became obvious...'

Read the whole thing at Notes on Nature

Garden tick

Tree (left) and House Sparrows. Note how colossal the HS looks by comparison

Tree Sparrow!

Male House Sparrow

Exciting times in the garden over the past couple of days. Yesterday, D was at home feeling ill. He happened to glance out of the window and saw a Tree Sparrow sitting in the bush! That came as a bit of a shock as we didn't know of any others nearby.

We invited Mark round today to catch and ring a few garden birds, as there are quite a few around at the moment. He put up a single net between the bush and the two feeders and in a couple of hours we were quite successful: the expected Blue, Great and Coal Tits, Robins, Dunnocks, House Sparrows, Chaffinches and Greenfinches. Oh, and a Tree Sparrow!

We were probably unlucky not to get a woodpecker (one Green seen this morning, and three Great Spots all at once this afternoon), or a Sparrowhawk. I think the Jackdaws (which have been using both peanut and sunflower feeders) might be too canny to get caught. Perhaps we'll get them next time.

It will be really interesting to see whether the Tree Sparrow stays for the winter. Steve says it's typical for them to wander about at this time of year. This area has a number of features which should be good for them and we'll be getting some nestboxes in place for next spring.

Fingers crossed. Maybe this is the start of a new colony?

Totals:

• Blue Tit, 16
  
• Great Tit, 6
• Greenfinch, 6
• House Sparrow, 3
• Chaffinch, 2
• Dunnock, 2
• Coal Tit, 2
• Robin, 1
• Tree Sparrow, 1

photos taken with Nikon Coolpix 995

A warm, fuzzy feeling

A heavy frost had coated everything in crystals. It wasn't long after dawn and already, fluffy, hungry-looking birds were lurking in the bushes. The bird feeders were nearly empty!

Under normal circumstances, you could perhaps accuse me of being a little disorganised, but this morning I became a hyper-efficient bird-feeding machine...

Read the whole post at Notes on Nature

It's that time of year

Beech leaves, beechmast and wasp

Sweet Chestnut

Oak skeleton

Red Admiral

Oak

Brambles

Green Woodpecker hole

Leaf litter

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM

Inside story on the Sandringham harrier shootings

The RSPB's Investigations Officer, Mark Thomas, has written about his experience:

'I asked what was happening… He explained in a calm, yet clearly traumatised, voice that barely 20 minutes ago, together with two members of the public who he had taken specifically to look for roosting raptors, he had watched two female hen harriers being shot out of the sky.'

RSPB Investigations blog