Category: Birds

Greater Black-backed Gull

reeds

10.30 a.m.: On North Ings, RSPB St Aidan’s, a greater black-backed gull is feeding on the carcass of a brown hare. Two crows and several magpies, dwarfed by the gull, have gathered around it, like vultures at a kill on the savannah, waiting their turn in the pecking order. As the gull tears at the carcass with its large bill, we glimpse the long back legs of the hare and the black and white markings on the tips of the hare’s long ears.

At the field centre, there’s speculation about who was responsible for the kill. One possibility is a peregrine. For a peregrine, St Aidan’s isn’t far from the nest site on the tower of Wakefield Cathedral.

Peregrine Pellets?

pellets and feathers
breast bone
Sternum, about 6 inches long.

A few days ago, we were looking at the remains of what looked like a duck or goose, perhaps even a cygnet. Pellets left by the scattered feathers and bones could have been those of a peregrine.

A short distance, perhaps twenty yards, along the track we saw a sternum, the breastbone of a bird, which we thought looked large enough to be a goose or swan. We can’t be sure that it was part of the same kill.

pellet
Pellet about an inch and a quarter long.

There were fox droppings nearby, so the red fox was our number one suspect, but, as far as I know, foxes, unlike birds of prey, crows and herons, don’t produce pellets of indigestible material. In my photograph you can see that the two small feathers appear to have been flattened and nipped off at the quill, rather than plucked, which to me suggests fox.

It’s unlikely that the brown hare that we saw the gull feasting on had been killed by a fox, as it was on a part of the reserve that is surrounded by what is intended to be a fox- and badger-proof fence.

When we walked back past the kill nearly an hour later, the gull had moved and three magpies were picking over the remnants.

Goldfinch Recovery

Goldfinch

“A goldfinch has just flown into the window,” Barbara tells me, “It’s lying there on the patio, its little beak trembling.”

goldfinch

I go out, prepared for the worst. It’s a juvenile, lying on its back, wings trembling, a startled expression in its eyes and, like Barbara said, its beak opening and closing, as if it’s gasping for breath. Ringers will keep a bird calm by consigning it to the darkness of a soft drawstring cloth bag. I would usually put a stunned bird in a cardboard box to recover but I haven’t got one to hand, so I pick it up and cup it in my hands.

goldfinch

I can feel its heart thumping. It begins to perk up. I part my fingers and it does seem to be sitting up and taking notice. It has a tiny mark on its head but no other sign of injury.

I take it down to the lawn by the bird feeder and gradually open my hands. It moves onto the grass then, after a second or two, it flies off, up over the hedge . . .

. . . and right into next door’s bedroom window!

Luckily this time it doesn’t stun itself and it sits on the windowsill as it recovers.

Goldfinches’ Nest

Drawn in Procreate on my iPad Pro.

One morning last week, after a wild and windy night, we found this nest, which I think was made by goldfinches, on the lawn at the foot of the rowan in the front garden. It’s just three inches (8 cm) across and very light. There were no signs of eggs or chicks in or around it, so I think that it had been dislodged by the wind, rather than raided by a predator, such as a magpie or cat.

goldfinch

It’s composed mainly of frizzy wool-like material, which might be dog hair, wool or even some manmade down. It is too long and curly to be thistle down. The nest is decorated with strands of moss around the outside with a few long threads curled around the inside of the cup, which are possibly horse hair but more likely textile thread. As I went out to measure it just now, a week after it fell, I noticed a tiny rove beetle amongst the fibres in the centre of the cup.

A month or more ago, a goldfinch was singing from the telephone cables near the rowan tree and sometimes there would be a pair of them perching there, so I wondered if they had a nest nearby.

It’s been a good year for goldfinches and garden birds in general, with young bullfinches, chaffinches, blackbirds, starlings, blue tits and great tits coming to our back garden bird feeders, but goldfinches are the most numerous. Yesterday a flock – a charm to use the collective noun – of goldfinches flew up from feeding on the fluffy seed-heads of creeping thistle in the meadow by the wood.

Duck Pond

duck pond sketches

The first of the month seems like a good time to try to get back to drawing from nature, even if that’s just fifteen minutes by the duck pond while Barbara, her sister and brother take a walk around the walled garden here in Thornes Park. When the resting Canada goose eventually got up, it limped along awkwardly, struggling to drag along its left leg. Even though it had stayed put as people walked within yards of it, it was continually looking around, so I found myself drawing its head from three different angles. As usual, adding a bit of watercolour helped bring things together as I picked out one of the outlines.

Adding the chocolate brown to the black-headed gull sketches also makes a difference, as did adding a wash of light grey – raw umber and french ultramarine – for its back.

2 p.m., Broad beans and rainbow chard are doing well in the bed at the back of the car park by the Cluntergate Community Centre, Horbury. The blue flowers of borage are attracting a hoverfly.

As I draw, I can hear the clack of heels in the centre as couples dance to what sounds like a karaoke version of ‘Putting on the Style’. As I sit on the corner of an old stone wall, I’m attracting attention because I’m NOT moving:

‘Are you all right?’ A woman asks me.

‘Fine, thank you.’ I reply, trying to work out if it’s someone that I know.

‘I was watching you and you weren’t moving’, she explains, ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

I’m so pleased with our potato patch. I usually try to cram in more than recommended to save space in the veg beds. This year I gave them the recommended space, which meant that I was able to earth them up when the first shoots appeared. I was expecting small new potatoes but two of these would be large enough to bake. As far as I remember, they’re a variety of Maris. They have red markings and the flesh is white and doesn’t fall in the water (i.e. start to disintegrate) when you boil them.

Another success that is that I’ve managed to grow a lot of Calendulas for free. There were perhaps two hundred little seedling clustered around where a single self-sown plant had grown last year. I grew them on by planting them in rows in the veg bed and I’ve since moved them on to any space that needs filling, in the border, the raised bed and even around the runner beans in the veg beds.

Thinking ahead to our apple crop, I’ve made a start on thinning out the little apples to just two per cluster. Both cordon apples – the golden spire and howgate wonder – suffered from leaf curl this spring but they seem to be recovering and hopefully we’ll have as good a crop as we had last year.

First Day of Spring

swan on nest
gadwall
chiff-chaff

It’s that time of year again, when there are still wintering wildfowl –gadwall, wigeon and tufted duck – on the lakes at Nostell but the summer migrants have already started to arrive. A chiff-chaff, just in from Africa, was singing from the top branches of a birch near the Cascade. It’s performance seemed a bit offhand. It doesn’t set itself up at a song post as a blackbird would, but just breaks off foraging along the branches and rattles off a few phrases wherever it happens to be:

“Chiff-chaff, chiff-chaff, chiff-chaff, chiff.”

mute swan
blue tit

As we arrive at the Adam Bridge at Nostell, a mute swan is chasing an intruder around the Lower Lake. After a few minutes the unwelcome visitor gets the message and flies off.

jackdaw

A blue tit takes nesting material into a cavity in a dead tree on the lake shore. I was pleased to see one taking a beak-full of moss into the nestbox in our rowan. The box has now been there a couple of years but has yet to be used.

Also carrying nesting material, a jackdaw perching on top of the high brick wall around the vegetable garden at Nostell. Its mate emerged and flew off and the jackdaw popped down inside.

The First Cut

The first day of spring and it’s the first cut for the lawn. I push the mower over three times, first on its highest setting to take the top off, then medium and finally – going at right-angles to my previous cuts – on the lowest.

I’ve got an electric strimmer, which might have been useful around the edges, but I prefer to use the hand mower because it’s quieter and I don’t feel the need to put on goggles and ear protectors. It’s a good work-out too.

Mailing List

My first Wild Yorkshire newsletter; I hope to continue with weekly updates.

The first day of spring also seemed like the perfect time to make a fresh start on my Wild Yorkshire mailing list. If you’d like a weekly update, please subscribe below. You can of course unsubscribe at any time.

De Atramentis Ink

tree
My first drawing with de Atramentis Document ink.
ink
De Atramentis ink bottle, original drawing 2.5 cm, one inch, across. Even enlarged, there’s no sign of the ink running into the watercolour wash.

De Atramentis Document Ink in my Lamy Vista fountain pen and so far it’s working perfectly, showing no hint of running when I add a watercolour wash. My thanks to dapplegrey for suggesting that I try it.

Link

Invisible Horse, blog by dapplegrey

Grebe Display

grebes

A pair of great-crested grebes were displaying at Newmillerdam this morning. Their face-to-face head-shaking display was interrupted by a third grebe which was soon chased off by the male. The male has more prominent cheek-ruffs and ear-tufts than the female.

A second bout of head-shaking was soon interrupted by the intruder and then all three birds dived out of sight for what seemed like a minute. Later we saw a single grebe diving near the war memorial, so perhaps this was the intruder who had decided to give the pair a break.

Birds in Rome

birds of Rome

We didn’t see a single carrion crow during our time in Rome, the hoodies seemed so at home in the city. I like the Italian name for the hooded crow: corvo incappuciato.

The herring gull gets the name gabbiano reale, which literally translates as the ‘real gull’. Perhaps that’s like us describing one of our species as the ‘common gull’. We also saw a few black-headed gulls – gabbiano con testa nera – congregating alongside the cormorants, comorano, on a mud-bank on the Tiber as we crossed the bridge at the Castel Sant’Angelo.

Tree Sparrow

Looking it up in my field guide, it seems that a female sparrow that we saw in the park near the Villa Medici would be the Italian sparrow, passero, although to us it looked identical to a female house sparrow. It was outnumbered by tree sparrows: ten of them were pecking amongst the gravel.

Also in the park we spotted a greyish bird, which looked smaller than a robin. It perched on the bark of a tree, then flitted off to perch on branches and on statues. We didn’t get a good enough look at it to identify it.

The Zen of Watching Wood Pigeons

Wood pigeons

Borrowing scenery is a theme in Japanese gardens, Monty Don explained in the second of two films on BBC2 yesterday. Because of the topography of the country, space is usually limited, so skilful planting and pruning can give the impression that a garden extends to the trees on the slope beyond. Presenting gardens as a work of art, the experience of strolling along paths through cloud-pruned shrubs or crossing stepping-stones might feel like browsing through a scroll painting of mountain, river and forest. Alternatively, a particular, carefully constructed view might be framed by the open wall of teahouse – a picture window on a grand scale – as if it were a single painting.

My niece Sarah and husband Will have managed something similar in their orangery extension on the back of the house. It’s been almost like summer today so we had the windows wide open with a view of three wood pigeons relaxing in the trees beyond the garden fence. Drawing them, with a pot of tea and a bacon sandwich to keep me going, thank you for that Sarah, as we caught up with my brother and his wife, made for a suitably English take on the Japanese zen garden ideal of contemplating nature from the calm surroundings of a teahouse. Calm because of I refused my great nephew Zach’s offer to act as goalie for him.

wood pigeons

The three wood pigeons didn’t seem to have any pressing business to attend to. I’d noticed a wood pigeon this morning twisting a twig from the top branches of a silver birch but these three weren’t in nest-building mode. One of them indulged in a relaxed preening routine the other two just sat hunched up close to each other, watching the world go by.

Bearded Tits

Bearded tits

A small group of birdwatchers have spotted a party of bearded tits by the path to the Reedbed Hide at RSPB Old Moor Reserve. At first I don’t spot them because I’m looking up amongst the seed-heads of the reeds, but they’re down on the ice at the the foot of the stems.

Soon they’re up feeding on the seeds and their colours harmonise perfectly. There are three males with moustachial stripes and three plainer-looking females, or possibly juveniles. I don’t hear any calls, but there’s a busy road not far away, so perhaps I missed the chirrs and pings that are usually the first sign that they’re around.

The lagoon that the Reedbed Hide overlooks is mainly ice-covered. Coot, dabchick, gadwall, mallard and a couple of female tufted ducks are making the most of the open water alongside the far edge. Shovellers are resting close to the reeds.

Ings hide

There’s an even greater expanse of ice over Wath Ings, alongside the River Dearne, with wildfowl confined to a small pool. On the river embankment, wigeon graze alongside Canada geese. A green woodpecker calls from the woods on the far side of the river.

Lesser Redpoll

redpoll
redpoll

The bearded tits were a new bird for me, I’ve looked for them before, but I don’t remember ever seeing them; I certainly haven’t seen them showing as well as they did today in the low winter sunlight. Lesser redpoll is also a new species for me – or at least it is under that name. It doesn’t appear in my older field guides because, when they were published, it was considered a subspecies of the North European common redpoll. It’s now a species in its own right and I like its Latin name, Carduelis cabaret: ‘cabaret’ is the French name for a kind of finch. The word cabaret also refers to a small chamber, so perhaps this was meant to refer to the kind of finch that was often kept as a caged bird at the time the German naturalist Müller gave it its name, in his translation, published in 1776, of  Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae.

Redpolls are happier in the tree-tops, nibbling at birch cones, as the three that we saw were doing today, next to the Visitor Centre at Old Moor, as we made our way out.

Wild Geese

wild geese

With wintery weather expected, we’re fitting all our errands in this morning. As we come down Daisy Hill into Dewsbury, a skein of grey geese is flying high over Batley. They must have some advance warning of the change in the weather and they’re heading in the direction of Martinmere or Morecambe Bay.

They don’t stick rigidly in formation and the pattern changes continuously, forming barbed arrowheads and an elongated stick-man. This makes them difficult to count. Barbara thinks about 200, I think probably 300 or more.

Winter Check

Harris Tweed

More chevrons on a grey ground: this is a swatch of 100% pure wool Harris Tweed in a design called Winter Check. We always find strolling around the Redbrick Mill, Batley, rather inspiring and I loved the variety of colours and textures in the fabric swatches, lined up in pigeon-holes, in Sofas & Stuff. Apparently turquoise and teal are popular colours at the moment, but for me these Harris Tweeds, in natural colours are timeless.

Link

Sofas & Stuff bespoke, British and handmade sofas and chairs

Redbrick Mill the North’s leading destination for interiors (and the tumeric scone with honey and Greek yogurt at Filmore & Union is pretty good too)