Category: Birds

Sandpiper

Oughtershaw BecksandpipersEvery time we drive over the cattle grid, a sandpiper pipes at us in obvious annoyance and arcs around in an ostentatiously level flight, flashing its wing-stripes. It’s on sentry duty again this afternoon as we walk down the track. It perches on a fence post to pipe at us until we leave its marshy patch but a little further along a pair of sandpipers fly up from the rushes alongside Oughtershaw Beck.

We find a spot downstream where we can sit at the beck-side, undisturbed by waders. The beck, which is rather low at present, plunges over a bed of limestone. The blocks and cracks remind me of the clints and grykes of the limestone pavement at Malham Cove.

Oughtershaw BeckWhen I’m drawing a subject like this which is almost abstract with its interlocked, repetitive shapes, I keep finding distinctive features to act as landmarks as I map out the adjacent sections of the formation, briefly giving them names so that I can plot a point as “level with ‘The Brow'” or “directly below ‘The Triangle'”.

I’m wishing that I had a length of string so that I could strap my spiral bound sketchbook around my neck. I really wouldn’t like it to drop in the beck.

As I look down I notice water avens growing from the turf that projects out over the water. Here, probably somewhat beyond easy reach for browsing sheep, there are probably half a dozen species within a square foot, including lady’s mantle, birdsfoot trefoil, plantain and a sedge.

Redstart and Redpoll

redstart6 p.m.: perching on a tree guard by the edge of the birch wood alongside Oughtershaw Beck, a male redstart sits preening. It occasionally darts up for insects.

redpollOnce again siskins outnumber other birds at the feeders. A more unusual visitor is a redpoll. It isn’t much bigger than the siskins and is considerably smaller than the occasional goldfinches and chaffinches which fly in to feed.

Tawny Owlet

tawny owl chick

owletThere’s a single tawny owl chick sitting in the morning sun perching on the lower section of the barn door. The owls have nested under the roof beam in the barn, stuffing sticks into the end of a piece of sacking that had been draped beneath.

The resident blackbird scolds it. This is the farmyard’s resident blackbird that, Fiona tells us, has been angry ever since it arrived.

Dales Birds

courtyardlittle owl1.45 p.m.: Getting myself in holiday mood, I sketch the view from the Courtyard Brasserie, near Settle, looking west over the grassy embankment of the Skipton/Settle railway. Swallows are nesting under the end of the roof on the gable end of the barn, perching and preening on the lines of bunting hanging over the courtyard.

2.30 p.m.: A little owl perches on a roadside fence post, in Horton in Ribblesdale.

siskins5.30 p.m., Nethergill Farm, Langstrothdale: With their characteristic single-mindedness, siskins are feeding on niger seed at the beck-side hide. The males are in such glowingly green plumage that they look as if they’ve been freshly painted.

A curlew probes the turf amongst the rushes by a bend in the beck.

curlew

Garden Warbler

gardenwarblerbubbling10.00 a.m.: There’s a song that we don’t recognise in a bushy woodland glade on the nature trail at the Caphouse Colliery National Museum of Coal Mining. I try to come up with a visual metaphor to help me remember the song and the best that I can do is a bottle of sparkling mineral water, shaken up and then bubbling when opened then subsiding as it uses up its fizz; not very long and not with much of a pattern to the song.

I do a field sketch (above, colour added later): the bird has no distinct features, so not a blackcap or a whitethroat, and not a wood warbler, which is my first guess. It sings from amongst the foliage near the top of a tree.

It’s a garden warbler, described on the RSPB website (see link below) as:

‘a  very plain warbler with no distinguishing features (a feature in itself!)’

The Collins Bird Guide describes the song as ‘beautiful, 3-8 seconds . . . not forming any clear melody but shuttling irresolutely up and down: it sounds like a rippling brook.’

So my metaphor of a bottle of sparkling mineral water bubbling up briefly and subsiding as it loses its fizz, works well as an aide-mémoire.

Seabird Cities

ledges

Guillemot
Guillemot

Quarter of a million seabirds nest at Bempton Cliffs RSPB reserve. Each species has a preference for a particular niche on the cliff.

The ledges are bedding planes in the chalk. Vertical joints break the cliff face up into blocky units. In my photograph (above) the block that the herring gull is nesting on looks as if it’s well on its way to becoming detached from the cliff face.

There’s an eye-wateringly stiff breeze this morning so this is a challenging place to try out my new telephoto lens. Although I’ve mounted the camera on a monopod/walking pole it’s still getting buffeted around so I leave the image stabilisation switched on.

Razorbills
Razorbills

Puffins

puffinsPuffins are  the stars of the show at the reserve but one of the wardens is having difficulty pointing them out as they keep flying off.

I get a distant view of a pair checking out a crevice at the top of the cliff. At Bempton puffins nest in crevices rather than in rabbit burrows.

puffin

Razorbills

razorbill

razorbillsAlso near the top of the cliff, this razorbill’s mate looks as if it too is considering nesting in a crevice but you’re more likely to see them nesting on the smaller upper ledges.

In an adaptation to nesting on cliff ledges, the razorbill’s egg is tapered at one end so that, if knocked, it will roll in a tight circle. The chicks are born with an innate fear of heights, so they don’t stray too near the edge.

razorbill with egg

Guillemots

guillemots

At Bempton the guillemots tend lower down the cliff, sometimes getting together in nesting colonies on the larger ledges.

Kittiwakes

kittiwakes

Kittiwakes can make use of the smallest ledges, building up a nest with seaweed and grass.

Gannets

gannetsgannetsI just miss the perfect photo opportunity: six or seven gannets have landed on the cliff top to gather beak-fulls of grass; they’re just  yards away from a group of birdwatchers but by the time I’ve set up my camera they’ve all flown off again.

Link: RSPB Bempton Cliffs reserve.

 

 

 

Motorway Services

buzzardrookA buzzard circles near Woolley Edge Services; by the picnic benches rooks gather crop-fulls of scraps.

Slip road at the services
Slip road at the services

Calling at a motorway services when we live just five miles away, I feel as if we shouldn’t really be here but we’re meeting with an old friend and her husband who are taking a break here on their journey north.

Bullcliffe Woods, Denby Dale Road.
Bullcliffe Woods, Denby Dale Road.

Driving along some roads in the district, I feel as if every last patch of ground is being built on but heading out this way, I’m astonished at how much countryside we’ve managed to hold on to and how beautiful it looks in the late afternoon sun as woods and hedges burst into fresh leaf and blossom.

Thrush’s Anvil

song thrush8.30 a.m.: Our revamped front garden got a vote of confidence at breakfast-time; five birds of four different species were using the bark chip mulched flower border which slopes down to the lawn from the pavement.

A song thrush was using the upended paving slab that edges the bed as an anvil, expertly bashing a snail against it until it had removed the shell completely. It then ate it, so it probably hasn’t got any young in the nest clamouring for food. A second song thrush looked on from the hedge.

brown lipped snail shellbrown lipped snail shellWhen we cleared this bed a month or two ago, I kept finding stripy brown-lipped snails amongst the ground covering ivy and rather than consign them to the compost bin, I gave them a second chance by tossing them into the bottom of the beech hedge.

At the time I thought that I would probably live to regret this as the snails will probably repay me by nibbling the flowers on the primroses that I was about to plant but I’m glad that they’re proving an attraction for our resident pair of thrushes. A few weeks ago they were taking nesting material into a thick leylandii hedge in next door’s front garden.

blackbirdA male blackbird hopped between the plants, pausing to pull back the bark chippings mulch with a swift backward hop. The bark chipping are steadily rolling down the slope towards the lawn leaving bare patches so I’ll rake them back into place next time I’m in the front garden.

robinThe other two species hopping about on the bark chip mulch were robin and house sparrow. I’m pleased with the way the new bed is shaping up and now that the miniature daffodils are fading away the next step is to add some ‘perfect for pollinators’ flowers to take us through the summer.

Return of the Martins

great spotted woodpeckerIt was good to see the great spotted woodpecker, a female (no red nape patch) on the feeders this morning, reaching the last sunflower hearts that even the nuthatch and the squirrel couldn’t quite get to. It’s such a muscular looking bird.

blackthorn blossomIt moved to the trunk of our crab apple and carefully investigated a spot on the bark, then made its way up the main stem before diverting to a side branch in the crown of the tree and making off with its trademark bouncing flight past the right hand end of the blackthorn blossom into the wood.

And, at 8.40 a.m., I saw a house martin swooping around the gable end of a house across the road. I’ve had distant views of martins or swallows over the meadow in the evening but this is the first time that I’ve seen one taking an interest in this regular nest site. It’s about a month since we saw our first swallow.

house martinI noticed two sparrows flew down under the eves as the martin circled. I wonder if they had their eyes on taking over an old martin’s nest?

Blackbird in the Bins

Not quite a blackthorn winter: a passing hail shower whitens the ground but as hail turns to sleet and rain it soon melts away.
Not quite a blackthorn winter: a passing hail shower whitens the ground but as hail turns to sleet and rain it soon melts away.

blackbird4.15 p.m., 43°F, 6°C: The blackbird loves what I’m doing with the compost bins. It wrecked the new heap that I was building up in neat layers sprinkled every few inches with Garotta compost activator by tugging out pieces of moss, which I guess it has been using for nest building. Now it’s getting into the bin with the old heap of well rotted compost which I’m in the process of spreading onto the onion bed. blackbirdIt’s scouring the bin for food items but it breaks off briefly to fly to the top of next door’s apple tree, bursting into melodious song in mid flight.

It's cool enough this afternoon for me to get out my silk gloves again!
It’s cool enough this afternoon for me to get out my silk gloves again!

sparrowMeanwhile the sparrows keep up a consistent chirping, a reassuring backing track to sketching in the garden.

wood pigeonA wood pigeon flies over, getting up enough speed on the downhill section of its flight to ‘freewheel’, stiff winged, up the apex of a neighbour’s roof. I’m not sure if the intention was to impress the wood pigeon sitting on the television aerial but they’re soon joined by a third pigeon and there’s a lot of bowing and cooing. So much pigeon courtship takes place on ridge tiles.

I like the 150 gsm cartridge paper in my new Collins & Davison A6 Travel Journal. It takes Noodler's Ink better than my previous pocket sketchbook.
I like the 150 gsm cartridge paper in my new Collins & Davison A6 Travel Journal. It takes Noodler’s Ink better than my previous pocket sketchbook.

Moor Birds

pipitpipit11.15 a.m., Peak District, South Yorkshire: A meadow pipit perches on one of the old walls at the ruined farm known as North America overlooking Langsett Reservoir.

wheatearbuzzardA wheatear, the first we’ve seen this spring, perches on a gate post nearby.

As we’re watching a buzzard cruising along down the valley over the reservoir, a red grouse hurries away further up onto the moor, flying almost directly over us. grouseIt’s this rapid, low flight away from perceived danger that makes them so popular as a game bird. I wouldn’t want to shoot them myself, but I realise how much work goes into ensuring that there’s always fresh heather shoots on the moor to bring up the numbers to make shooting viable.

sandpiper sandpiperAs we cross the dam wall a sandpiper touches down on the boulders at the waters edge.

Park Lake

gulls and tufted duckPeasholm Park, Scarborough, North Yorkshire, 12.25 p.m., 55°F, 13°C, 75% cumulus, breeze from north north-west: A pair of tufted ducks float by, ‘sleeping’ and preening.

A herring gull goes into its bathing routine: wings held out, it dips its head and spreads water over its back.

On the sunny side of the pagoda roof of the floating bandstand seventeen herring gulls are snoozing, all facing into the prevailing breeze.

High tide, North Bay, Scarborough.
High tide, North Bay, Scarborough.

Herring Gull Mating

  1. South Bay, near the lifeboat station, 3.30 p.m. (top of page, bottom right sketches): A herring gull is standing on the beach apparently just watching the world go by. It starts calling, the laughing cry that instantly conjures up a picture of a seaside town for me when I hear it in a radio play.gulls mating
  2. A   second gull flies down and the first calls at it as if in greeting, but perhaps with a degree of agitation – ‘and where have you been?!’. The second bird responds with a head nod.
  3. The pair see off a rival.
  4. There’s a mating, a successful mating, I guess. It’s the female who has been waiting on the beach.
  5. The female waggles her rear end. The male leaves first, then the female.

It reminds me of a 1980 book, The Golden Turkey Awards, featuring what were affectionately judged to be the worst ever movies. It included a close up of two sea gulls with the caption ‘One of the steamy love scenes from Jonathan Livingston Seagull.’