Category: Nature

Categories
Nature

Code-switching warblers and birch sap bingers

It’s a lovely time of year to be out and about, now that the horrible weather has lifted: all the summer migrants are just arriving, some a bit late because of the weather, and the countryside is absolutely ful of birdsong: I went to the Lee Valley yesterday, and there seemed to be a whitethroat behind every leaf.

But for once I have a couple of natural history observations, rather than just a list of birds seen, both from Bookham Common a few days ago.

The first was birds feeding on birch sap. Birch trees sometimes produce enormous amounts of sap in spring; I was once in Richmond Park and was puzzled that I could apparently hear a tap dripping: it turned out to be a birch tree. Traditionally people used to collect the sap to make wine.

Anyway, at Bookham there was a silver birch with sap trickling down the trunk in various places where branches had broken off, and I saw first a male blackcap, then a blue tit, then a female blackcap, all coming to drink the sap. Which was neat.

It’s not a behaviour I can remember hearing about before, but it’s not surprising, really, birds are pretty adaptable. Google throws up a reference to it in British Birds from the 50s.

My other curious sighting was a warbler that was singing two songs, switching between chiffchaff and willow warbler.

Right at the beginning and the end (1.31) you can hear what it was doing when I first heard it, a combined song with a few notes of chiffchaff mixing straight into willow warbler; most of the rest is basic chiffchaff, with a burst of stand-alone willow warbler at 1.18.

This is apparently a reasonably common phenomenon, I found several discussions of it online: Birding Frontiers, Gwent Birding, and a whole thread on Surfbirds.

I did wonder if it was the result of hybridisation, but the general consensus seems to be that it is some kind of error or mimicry. I’m not sure if mine was a chiffy pretending to be a willow warbler or vice-versa, because I was focussed on trying to get a recording of it and TBH I’m not entirely confident of my ability to accurately split them by sight anyway.

Categories
Nature

Bird of the Year 2012

Starting with my garden, the most surprising record was a woodcock. Sadly not tickable, because it looked like this:

Presumably the fox got it. Which is a pity, although if it hadn’t I never would have known the woodcock had visited.

The other notable bird, also nocturnal and also slightly frustrating, was a little owl. I knew they were breeding nearby: I still haven’t seen one, but I did hear one calling when were eating in the garden this summer. So that’s one for the garden list.

Widening out a bit, I had my first local wheatear, in Crystal Palace Park, and great views of a firecrest in Dulwich Woods.

I suppose strictly speaking my ‘best’ London bird last year was probably a pair of common scoter, on the river at Rainham Marshes. Other nice London sightings: tawny owl in Kensington Gardens, a big flock of yellow wagtails at Barnes, green sandpiper at Crayford Marshes.

And, not-in-London-by-any-sensible-definition-but-within-the-London-Natural-History-Society-Recording-Area: I started off the year by finally managing to track down a lesser-spotted woodpecker at Bookham Common, after many attempts, and then a couple of weeks later also managed to see hawfinch there.

A fulmar at Oare Creek, brought down by bad weather, was an unexpected bonus.

My rarest bird of the year, and a spectacular species, was this:

IMG_1299

I know, isn’t that just the most amazing… oh hang on a minute, let me zoom that in a bit for you:

IMG_1299 2

 

It’s the one on the left, a red-breasted goose, one of the most beautiful birds in the world. And actually I had a better view of it than the photo would suggest: the iPhone/binocular combo doesn’t really do it justice.

But it’s not my bird of the year, because firstly, there’s every chance it’s not a wild bird; they are common in ornamental wildfowl collections so it’s possible it’s an escape. It was consorting with a huge flock of wild Brent Geese who had come in from Siberia, so that is in its favour, but who knows.

Also, because they are common in collections, I have seen many of them before, even if I haven’t seen wild ones. Also taken with my phone, no need for binoculars:

rbg

And I went to twitch it, which is never quite as exciting as finding something for yourself.

No, I think my bird of the year ought to be the one which I was actually most excited by, which was: turtle dove.

Turtle doves have been in horrendous decline, down over 95% in the UK since 1970, and when I found one at Oare I was just thrilled. It was just completely unexpected — although when I pointed it out to a local birder they were totally unimpressed, so perhaps I should have been expecting it. But that would have made it less fun.

5915466204_a7a2710743_o

And they are just lovely birds.

That’s not my picture, sadly; Tórtola común 30 de junio de 2011 is © Paco Gómez and used under a CC by-sa licence.

Categories
Nature

Bird of the Year 2012: best performances in a supporting role

I guess I should post this before the end of January. Not a lot of outstanding sightings to report, though.

Best Plant

I was quite tickled to see some Marsh Mallow plants down in Kent. Because, yes, they are the original stuff that marshmallows were made from.

Best Insect

IMG_1186

This Poplar Hawkmoth was a pleasing find, and my most unexpected sighting was probably a Marbled White just across the road — are they breeding somewhere nearby? was it lost? — but insect of the year might as well be Swollen-thighed Beetle, Oedemera nobilis:

IMG_1160

Because it’s a fun-looking thing, because it has a great name, and because I posted a picture of it on Twitter and the Natural History Museum popped up to tell me what it was. I took that picture when I was out birding, although I later found more of them in the garden, so its clearly a common enough critter. Fun though.

Best Reptile

I went on a twitch to see the Baillon’s Crake which was at Rainham Marshes for a few days. I didn’t see the crake, but while I sat for about three hours in a packed hide staring at the fringes of the water, I did at least see a grass snake. Which was a nice treat.

Best Mammal

There are various places I regularly go which supposedly have water voles, but you hardly ever actually see them; or if you do it’s just a brown nose swimming across a channel from one reedbed to another. But on the same abortive crake twitch, I did find a couple of voles, sitting calm as you like just about eight feet from the path, chewing away at some iris leaves.  In fact if I hadn’t stopped to watch them for a while, I might conceivably have seen the crake, which showed not long before I got there… but it was still nice to see the voles.

Best Invertebrate (other), Best Fish, Best Amphibian, Best Ecosystem

I got nothin’.

Categories
Nature

RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch 2013

This year’s list:

robin × 3
blackbird × 2
dunnock × 2

great tit × 2
blue tit × 4
coal tit

chaffinch × 3
siskin × 3

carrion crow

ring-necked parakeet × 2
starling × 2

pigeon × 4
woodpigeon

Which is pretty terrible, frankly. The siskins were a pleasant surprise, but I’m missing long-tailed tit, goldfinch, magpie, jay, song thrush, both woodpeckers, wren, nuthatch… even the numbers are a bit disappointing. But there you go.

Categories
Nature

Harry’s advent calendar of insects, day 24: Pyrops candelaria

I don’t make much attempt to theme these advent calendars around Christmas, but for the last entry I have, in the past, tried to get seasonal: the bird was a robin, the painting was a nativity.

But Christmas isn’t the insectiest time of the year up here in northern Europe, and I don’t have a ready cultural association to hand. So I picked Pyrops candelaria, a planthopper from southeast Asia, because it (sort of, if you squint a bit) looks like a Christmas tree:

123535856_9ee9083289_b

Happy Christmas everyone!

» ‘Mr Elephant’ is © Charles Lam and used under a CC by-sa licence.

Categories
Nature

Harry’s advent calendar of insects, day 23: Adela reaumurella

This is Adela reaumurella. Google suggests a couple of common names have been attached to it — Green Longhorn and Metallic Longhorn — but neither seems to have much traction. And actually, the fact that so many British moths have established English names is the exception rather than the rule; if you’re interested in insects, you’re going to have to tangle with Latin sooner or later.

5638441409_e0fe913c0c_o

Anyway, this is a species I saw in the local woods a couple of years ago. They’re pretty tiny, the wingspan is less than 2cm, and it would be easy to walk past without noticing them; but they are tiny peacocks. Only the males have those ludicrous antennae, and they are a direct equivalent of a peacock’s tail.

479568678_4f6bf67ceb_o

But it wasn’t the antennae that made me notice them; it was the dancing. There were perhaps a dozen in the group I saw, perched in a patch of sunlight, and they kept flying up couple of feet and then drifting back down to their leaf; and all the time they were in the air they held their antennae up above their heads in a V shape.

There’s a rather wobbly video of a much larger swarm here.

Adela_reaumurella-07

If they were birds, I would say they were lekking. A lek is where a group of males — grouse, birds of paradise, or whatever — gather in one place to perform next to each other, compete for the best display spots, and try to win the attention of females.

Seeing a longhorn moths doesn’t quite scratch my itch to go to New Guinea and see birds of paradise; but it’s still a fun thing to find.

» ‘Longhorn moth, Adela reaumurella’ is © nutmeg66 and used under a CC by-nc-nd licence. ‘longhorns’ is © Nigel Jones and used under a by-nc-nd licence. ‘Adela reaumurella-07’ is © IJmuiden and used under a by-sa licence.