Category: Birds

Blackbird Anting

blakbird5 p.m.: The workers of the ants’ nest under the paving slabs of our patio are getting rather excited but it’s not going to be perfect weather for the winged queens and males to take off on their nuptial flight as although it has been warm and humid we’re now getting flurries of breeze and fine, misty drizzle.

blackbirdAt first it was the song thrush that started anting – encouraging ants to run over its plumage – while the female blackbird hopped up the lawn and started pecking up the scurrying ants to eat them.

blackbirdNow she has taken to anting too, picking up the ants and letting them run about on her feathers. She does this at first from under the cover of the leaves of the peony that overhang the corner of the patio then comes out and continues by the bird bath.

sparrowThe sparrows are more interested in eating the ants. One male hops under the plastic bird bath which is supported by bricks, a space that the blackbird, which later reverts to simply eating the ants, cannot reach.

Summer Days

Cattle at Nostell Priory have created this browse line beneath a lime tree. This morning it served as an umbrella for them.
Cattle at Nostell Priory have created this browse line beneath this lime tree. This morning it serves as an umbrella for them.

house martin8.20 a.m.: A times the dull humid weather feels like a warm version of autumn but there are reminders that it really is still summer. House martins,  at least eight, probably twelve in total, are swooping around swiftsat rooftop level, six of them in loose formation: perhaps a family group. It’s been a good year for the martins nesting on neighbours’ houses. At a higher level, above the treetops, three swifts are soaring.

The rain wasn't putting off the bumble bees which were visiting the lime tree blossom in the walled garden at Nostell Priory.
Despite the rain, bumble bees are visiting blossom on the lime tree in the walled garden at Nostell.

In back gardens across the road a song thrush is going through what sounds like an improvised routine of varied thrice repeated phrases. We can probably thank the song thrush for the pristine state of the hosta by our front door; normally at this time of year it is looking very much the worse for wear with leaves stripped to skeletons by snails. A month ago when the song thrushes were feeding young in a nest in our beech hedge, there were broken snail shells scattered around the path, driveway and the flower bed over a period of several weeks. This must have taken a toll on the snail population.

Seabird Centre

craigneash

North Berwick Harbour
North Berwick Harbour

I draw Craigleith, the bird island three quarters of a mile to the north of North Berwick from the rocky promontory at the end of the harbour. I’m waiting for the catamaran to return from its lunchtime trip around the Bass Rock because on this morning’s trip I dropped my lens cap. Luckily when the boat returns, the crew have spotted it; they say that I’ll find it listed on eBay!

Bass Rock from the catamaranIn the Scottish Seabird Centre you can watch the seabirds by operating remote control webcams overlooking colonies on Craigleith, Fidra, the Bass Rock and the Isle of May.

plaiceI can’t see many fish in the large salt water aquarium in the Centre, not until it’s feeding time. Three plaice rise up from what looked like a vacant patch of sand; they’d been there in front of me for the last ten minutes and I’d never spotted them.

wrasseLike the freshwater stickleback, the male corkwing wrasse builds a nest, persuades the female to lay her eggs in it and then guards and tends the eggs until they hatch. In my sketch I’ve missed two key features of this wrasse: a dark patch behind the eye and a black spot on the tail.

scorpion fishThe long-spined stickleback or scorpion fish is well-camouflaged as it rests amongst rocks and seaweeds.

Link: Scottish Seabird Centre webcams

 

Bass Rock

  • Bass Rock

I go for the seat at the edge of the boat on our seabird cruise around the Bass Rock because I want to try out my new telephoto lens but as the catamaran picks up speed on the way there I have to hastily put my non-waterproof Olympus OM-D E-M10II under my coat and revert to the Olympus Tough, but all the sea birds were photographed with the Olympus, with its 40-150mm zoom lens.

Trying to catch gannets in flight was tricky with the limited field of view that you get with a telephoto especially as the boat was bobbing up and down but by cropping in to some of the photographs I’ve been able to get a few close ups. The built in five-way image stabilisation has worked well, even in these challenging conditions.

Little Egret

egret4.30 p.m.: A little egret flies up from the marsh on the Strands, a field between the river and the canal. It’s a bulkier bird than the black-headed gulls which are also flying over the marsh but its wingspan is about the same; the striking difference is that the egret is completely white: no black wing-tips, no grey back. It’s the first time that I’ve seen a little egret on my home patch in the valley.

Beyond the Edge

Birstall

Birstall Retail Park: Beyond the stores you glimpse belts of trees interspersed by hillside meadows. The nearby M62 is out of the sight, if not quite out of earshot. This is such a contrast to when we first came here (see link below), when old colliery spoil heaps to the east were being used as a municipal rubbish dump prior to landscaping the whole area.

Even the car park itself holds some attractions for the local birds. A magpie scouts around beneath a shrub, a sparrow closely inspects the links of a chain, a crow surveys the scene from a lamp-post, a wood pigeon flies over.

Trees behind the Home Sense store
Trees behind the Home Sense store.

Daisy, sowthistle, willowherb, creeping buttercup and black medick are in flower on the verges. Leafy backwaters aren’t far away beyond the stores.

With a hour to spare before the film, we take a walk around the Showcase cinema car park. Beyond the steep grass verge at the bottom end of the car park there’s a steep valley where alders, willows and giant hogweed grow beside a storm channel which is currently running dry.

A chiff chaff is singing and we hear another warbler – a bubbly song – which we identify as garden warbler. This deciduous woodland with dense undergrowth is the right habitat for it.

  • Looking east towards Bruntcliffe
lapwings
One of my early images for my online nature diary, drawn in pen but coloured on the computer in an early version of Photoshop in a limited palette to save bandwidth which was very limited in the days of dial-up connections.

Link: Lapwings over Ikea, my Wild West Yorkshire nature diary for Tuesday 1 December 1998.

Blackbird v. Song Thrush

snail shells1.30 p.m.: One of the song thrushes is bashing a snail against the concrete edging alongside the pavement. That corner of our garden should be a good hunting ground because last week, on a warm wet evening, I spotted a dozen garden snails nibbling the leaves of the hosta by the front door and I relocated them by chucking them diagonally across the lawn into the bottom of the beech hedge. Most likely they have slowly made their way back to the hosta.

garden snailbrown-lipped snailBut garden snails are getting on for twice the size of the other snail that we get in our garden, the brown-lipped,  Cepaea nemoralis, and, so far, the song thrush is going exclusively for the smaller snail.

Having extricated the snail, the thrush goes to one of the clumps of sedge we’ve planted and wipes its beak against it, probably to remove the slime. It then takes a look around, probably on the look out for more food items to take to its young in the beech hedge.

Worm Wars

blackbirdIt pounces on a large earthworm that it’s spotted beneath the rowan. It’s giving it a good tug when a blackbird flies in and there’s a head to head with lots of bluster and threat. At one stage the two birds are locked beak to beak in a tug of war with the unfortunate worm stretched between them.

worm wars

blackbirdBut despite the spirited defence put up by the song thrush, the larger blackbird takes possession of a three inch length of worm and flies off behind next door’s leylandii hedge, pursued by the thrush. The thrush now has back-up: it’s mate has appeared.

The thrush might have lost the battle but when it blackbirdreturns it picks up the remaining section of worm which is twice the length of the piece snatched by the blackbird. The song thrush is feasting on this when the blackbird returns and tries to grab it but the thrush retreats across the road and continues to wolf down the worm. This time the blackbird doesn’t get the chance to snatch it away.

Song Thrush

song thrushsong thrushThe song thrushes are now running a shuttle service feeding their young in the beech hedge behind the wheelie bins in our front garden. While one parent watches warily with a beak-full of food before flying down to the back of hedge the other is foraging for the next feed in the back garden, dealing with a small slug on the patio, leaving a sticky mess on the paving slab.

kestrelThe meadow, no longer grazed by a pony, is now a regular hunting ground for a kestrel, which hovers at forty or fifty feet and occasionally plunges down among the grasses.

Town Hall Pigeons

town pigeonpigeon9.20 a.m., Market Place, Ossett, 52°F, 13°C: A town pigeon perches on the antenna on the town hall roof then flies off in a stiff winged display flight. A stubble of rush-like spikes prevents these feral pigeons, descendants of the rock dove, from using sills, mouldings and cupolas as cliff ledges but the strings of Christmas lights still festooned across the facade provide an alternative perch. One has found a niche on a jutting corner.

elder on town hall roofpigeonIt’s not much more than a year since the building was given a major restoration but already two elders have sprouted and are blossoming in crevices in the stonework.

A black-headed gulls flies over and a swift soars around hawking for insects.

The Riverside Hide

juvenile siskinwoodpecker sketch12.28 p.m.: The male great spotted woodpecker arrives but he’s out of luck: five crows have just been down to the feeding station and they’ve knocked the fat ball feeder off the post.

A young siskin, so streaky that I wondered if it was a redpoll, joins the adult males on the niger feeder. In their bright, neat plumage the males look as if they’re in uniform and ready to be assertive, in contrast the juvenile fades into the background and appears innocuous and inoffensive. The wing stripes and a hint of green in the tail give a hint of the neater adult plumage to come.

Waterfall in Watercolour

oughtbeck2.20 – 4 p.m.: I finish the pen drawing and start adding watercolour to my drawing of the little waterfall where Oughtershaw Beck crosses and exposure of limestone. I start with the lightest colour which is the pale ochre grey of the limestone then I add the brighter yellow green of the moss before going on to the water, the face of the rock that is in the shade and the darker green patches of moss.

I try to give some impression of the solidity of the rock but realise that if I take things too far I will lose the sparkle of the water so on my third top left to bottom right progress across the drawing with my series of watercolour washes, I decide that is enough and anyway it’s time to go back to Nethergill for a pot of tea and some homemade flapjack. Wish I had more time for this kind of drawing!

The wood avens that I spotted the other day in the turf on the river bank at my feet as I sat in this same spot appears to have been washed away but birdsfoot trefoil is still in flower and there are leaves of lady’s mantle, also plantain and at least one species of sedge.

Walk to Swarthghyll

The late afternoon thunderstorm isn’t as heavy as those we’ve had on previous days so we take a walk across the moor to the next farm up the valley on a calm pearly evening. The buzzard sits calling on the same post that it was on the other day.

reed buntingIt’s impossible to do this walk without seeing several meadow pipits sitting on fence posts or on the power lines but it’s worth checking out every bird on a post. One of them turns out to be a male reed bunting, a new bird for our Nethergill list. I don’t remember seeing it in previous years.

curlewThe curlews are calling over the buttercup meadows by the beck. A pied wagtail perches on the power line at Swarthghyll. Northern marsh orchids are in fresh flower on the tree-lined track to the farm. There’s a reminder of more everyday scenes: wood pigeon and mallard in the field by the bird hide.