Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Latest trail cam shots from our back garden: pheasants, blackbird, a pair of robins and – what are you doing there?! – Butch (yes, he really is called Butch), next door’s Labrador but my favourite shot is the wood pigeon at dawn, looking hopefully up at the feeders.
Robins outnumbered any other bird at the start of our garden birdwatch this morning. A pair of robins were working their way around the border by the hedge, just a couple of yards away from a single robin on the patio. Robins defend winter territories so I’m surprised that they were tolerating each other. One great tit was on the sunflower feeders with two female pheasants foraging below.
Later two great tits were coming to the sunflower seed feeders, one with a kipper tie of a black breast-streak – the male – the other with a modest pencil tie – the female.
Our total bird count of 28 was close to the national average (27) and our number one bird was the house sparrow with 6 individuals but that was probably an underestimate as they were constantly to and fro from feeders to hawthorn hedge.
Two female sparrows were pecking at the mortar of next door’s conservatory wall. No structural damage evident so far.
By the way, during yesterday’s amber alert for Storm Éowyn, our strongest storm for 10 years, one of our roof tiles was dislodged. We got off lightly compared with Ireland, parts of Wales and Scotland where red ‘danger to life’ warnings were issued.
The teasel has collapsed under 2-3 inches of overnight snow.
Three female pheasants join the goldfinches, house sparrows, blue tits, great tits, blackbirds, nuthatch and robin at the bird feeders.
They appear to hear a noise and freeze in alert mode. They remain motionless for five minutes or more, gradually relaxing, as if it’s a pheasant meditation session – an ideal opportunity to draw them.
At 3.30 pm the pheasants head off towards the wood as the light fades.
The male couldn’t quite get past the female pheasant as they came down the garden path this morning.
He strikes out to treat her to his magnificent display as he struts across the frozen pond.
But as soon as he steps onto the ice he sinks into the icy water in a gap at the edge.
He recovers as best he can and careers onwards over the ice.
The femle seems inimpressed as she ambles across the frosted lawn towards the bird feeders.
Amongst the regular birds at the feeders late this afternoon, a female blackcap – with a reddish rather than a black cap like the male – which fended off the sparrows and blue tits from the sunflower hearts feeder but deferred to the robin.
It returned later and was the last bird at the feeders. By then the light had faded so much that we needed binoculars to pick out the colours.
Recent winds had resulted in the water level in the pond dropping. Yesterday’s rain topped it up to its fullest, overflowing level and last night’s frost froze it over.
Smithy Brook has spilt over onto the pastures a the lower end of Hostingley Lane by the Go Outdoors store. A dabchick divves amongst the beck-side trees.
At the far end of Low Lane, a male blackbird with white head and a small patch of white on the shoulder.
Yesterday morning: a buzzard on a fence post.
A bit of rivalry amongst ponies in a muddy pasture on Sandy Lane.
A young heron looking suitably bedraggled in the rain in Regent’s Park last month.
Redshank, black-tailed godwit and a flock of several hundred golden plovers at RSPB Saltholme.
We took a break at the reserve on our return journey from Northumberland too, when we also saw dunlin and marsh harrier.
A kestrel hovers over a rough marshy field by the canal at Calder Grove.
It swoops off low across the field and meets a second kestrel in a brief aerial skirmish.
The two rest for a while, perching on power-line cables.
Then there’s a second set-too and a chase away through a gap in the trees.
One bird, presumably the victor in this dispute, stops to perch further along the power line while the other disappears towards the British Oak viaduct.
Many birders these days go to the trouble of carrying a DSLR with a long lens to record any mystery bird. I’ve always got my iPhone with me but it’s not much good for birds any distance away so I’ll try to make some quick field notes, as I did with this winter plumage great crested grebe a few years ago.
The Victorian naturalists were meticulous with their records but the ultimate proof of identity for them was to shoot the bird itself. That was the fate of this winter-plumage great crested grebe which turned up at Bretton Lakes.
Mr Wilkinson, a painter and decorator for the Bretton Hall estate, who presented it to me in 1964, explained that the bird had turned up and no one knew what it was, so they shot it. There’s no label on the case, so I don’t know the date. Presumably late Victorian or Edwardian.