Category: Birds

Blackbird Improvisations

blackbirdThe blackbird in our front garden has made an early start practising his dawn chorus; ‘How d’ya feel?’, a phrase that rises at the end leaving you waiting for the response, which is ‘It’s six-thirty.’

Not the most promising of material but this bird’s going for it anyway;

‘How d’ya feel?
It’s six-thirty.
How d’ya feel?
It’s six-thirty.
How d’ya feel?
How d’ya feel?’

Although it isn’t six-thirty, it’s still only quarter to five! Just to make it more interesting he tries adding a couple of quieter warbling notes in between; ‘Nearly finished’. But he hasn’t.

blackbirdHe tries rephrasing his material, something along the lines of; ‘How feel d’ya?’ or ‘It’s three-sixty.’ Philip Glass has nothing to worry about.

Luckily for us, after five or ten minutes blackbirdhe then flits off to another song post and we’re able to drift back to sleep.

First Warbler

cormorantChurch by Trinity Walk centrewarblerFollowing the Aire into Leeds, we walk through a snow shower but as it clears and the sun returns we see our first warbler (chiff chaff or willow), just flown in from Africa, checking out the branches and twigs of a riverside willow.

A cormorant laboriously takes off flying upstream, into the icy wind before veering around and heading off down the valley.

manThe goosanders are diving so close and in such a good light that we can see the bottle-green iridescence on the drake’s head.

One more colourful item bobbing along on the Aire; Barbara’s wooly hat which blows off as we come to a wind-gap between the riverside blocks of flats. It’s close to the bottom of the eight foot stone embankment but as the nearest available branch is just three feet long we have to leave it, blown downstream by the icy wind.goosanders

New Year’s Eve

meadowA couple  of days ago our barometer reached 1040 millibars, as high as I ever remember seeing it. Another 25 millibars and it would have gone off the scale. High pressure gives us settled weather, in this case cold days and even colder nights, so the inch of snow we had late on Boxing Day has lingered.

This morning ground frost on a section of pavement that I’d cleared resembled a thin coating of snow.

applesBefore the frost we harvested the last of the Howgate Wonder cookers and used them in apple bakewell tarts and a mini apple pie.

Emley Moor

On Christmas Eve, a coffee stop at Create cafe in the Wakefield One building gave me a brief pause to sketch the skyline to the southwest towards the Emley Moor transmitter.

Squabbling Squirrels

squirrels

But we did manage one trip further afield before Christmas. On the 17th we made a delivery to our book suppliers before Christmas, zipping down the motorway to Orgreave but coming back via the Peak District.

siskinAt the Riverlife cafe at Bamford in the High Peak, siskin and nuthatch were among the birds coming to the feeders with a couple of squirrels fighting it out for control of the squirrel feeder below. While their fight escalated into a chase, a third squirrel sneaked in and fed in peace. C’est la guerre!

head-butting sheep

There’s more fighting over food as we walk along the lane at Castleton. Two sheep are head-butting each other over the last scraps left in the feed bucket.

lane at Castleton

Sunflower Heart Feeders

My thanks to my friend David Stubbs for taking over the camera and filming these visitors to our bird feeders. Most birds dash quickly in and out but the nuthatch seems for confident and stays put for ten seconds or more, giving David more chance to focus on a particular perch.

I recorded a ‘wildtrack’ of ambient sound but the occasional clicking of the feeders and background bird calls didn’t really register. Thinking what kind of music might suit the continuous dipping and diving of visiting birds, I searched the YouTube music catalogue for a jig and came up with Spirited Jig NoMel-Ah 2 Music from the ‘Ah 2’ Filtered Music Catalog, so my thanks to the performers for making that available.

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Categorized as Birds

Gullscape

welbeckgulls at the bottom of Westgategull on playing fieldA hill across the Calder valley from Wakefield has been created by landfill, taking waste from across the district and beyond. I’ve seen huge flocks of gulls swirling over it but this afternoon they’re gathering in smaller groups on playing fields around the city and near Westgate Beck, which runs alongside the Dewsbury road into town.

As the sun sets, more gulls are making their way down the valley towards Pugneys country park lake, which has long been a gull roost.

The City and Moor

city and moorDistant moors are turning bronze-gold as the sun dips behind them. From Pinderfields, looking back to the city across twelve acres of open fields (now earmarked for residential development) you appreciate how Wakefield, a market town at least since early medieval times, fits into the landscape.

ochre hedgeMigrating birds travelling north or south across Yorkshire or from east and west across the Pennines, follow similar routes to the Roman roads, packhorse trails, inland navigation, rail routes and motorways that have played such a part in the development of the town.

A ragged row of trees by a car park on the edge of the city has now turned to full autumn ochre.

Windfalls

wrenheronA dull and dripping morning. A wren investigates the top of the beech hedge.

The heron is a regular morning visitor, perching halfway up one of the trees on a quiet bend of the beck.

blackbirdsAt this time of year we often have several blackbirds in the garden, most of them male. There’s an undercurrent of rivalry as two males strut around the lawn. Both have yellow bills but neither has developed a yellow eye-ring as yet.

blackbirdThere’s often a blackbird in the golden hornet feasting on the prolific crop of yellow crab apples.

blackbirdIt’s been our best year so far for Howgate Wonder cooking apples but unfortunately we haven’t had the time to do much with them. The blackbirds are enjoying the odd windfall but I must harvest the remaining apples before they get pecked and spoilt.

Peregrine

At last I’ve seen a peregrine in Wakefield!peregrine

As we came out of the Apple dealers at Trinity Walk I looked up at the blue sky and got a good view of it flying at just above rooftop level.

A few pigeons were disturbed as it disappeared in the direction of the cathedral and when we got to the precinct Barbara spotted it on a crocket – one of the decorative projecting stones – half way up the spire.

Ten Minute Goose

Canada gooseThe Thornes Park Canada geese are used to passing dogs but still a bit wary of them, timing their morning traipse from the duck pond to the adjacent football field until there’s a break between dog-walkers.

‘Come away!’ says one dog-walker, ‘not everybody likes dogs!’

Well, you’d have to be very anti-dog not to like this quiet, wide-eyed, little white terrier – looking freshly shampooed and as if it’s going to a fancy dress party as one of Bo-Peep’s little lambs. It doesn’t want to walk past without pausing to check what I’m up to. Not to fuss me, or to yap but just to take in what I’m up to as I sit on the park bench.

I assure Ms Bo-Peep that it depends on the dog and, to be honest, I would have done a quick sketch of it if I’d had time but it does illustrate why I find that I can be more productive heading for Old Moor bird reserve for the day. I can sit amongst the herbage and get absorbed in my work.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like breaking off to chat to passers-by but there are only so many hours in a day for drawing.

I was ten minutes early for an appointment and driving past the park and thought why not have a ten minute break at the duck pond rather than arriving early. So, I’ve only spent a single minute of my precious time chatting but scale that out across a day and I could happily while way 10 percent of the time available!

Pre-Dawn Chorus

pre-dawn3.45 a.m.; It’s too early for the dawn chorus proper but a song thrush is making up for it with a spirited and varied solo.

At first when I hear the disjointed snatches of song I wonder what the commotion is and I think that I pick up the brief ‘ki-wick, ki-wick, ki-wick!’ of a tawny owl.

song thrushSome parts of the song are rather more melodious so it crosses my mind that a nightingale might have returned to Coxley Valley for the first time in over a century. It’s early in the morning but even so I realise that this is unlikely and that only a song thrush could cobble together such a franticly varied stand-up routine as this.

There’s a sound-bite that reminds me of lapwing and a snatch of starling too. But it’s definitely song thrush because it keeps repeating most of its short phrases three times.

song thrushAnother song thrush is answering it from two hundred yards away near the quarry. No wonder when I hear the dawn chorus proper there’s a background of birdsong that I can never quite pick up. It never sings from the same song sheet often enough for me to spot the tune.

Comet Hunting

before dawnI’D HEARD that not much of Comet ISON had survived its close encounter with the sun but I took a quick look out of the studio window just before dawn just in case.

Even scanning with binoculars, I couldn’t see any traces but conditions weren’t ideal as there was a glow of streetlights over in the direction of Wakefield and a low bank of cloud was beginning to form in the east.

Juvenile Gull

herring juvenileAfter a couple of sessions sketching from hides I thought I’d take the opportunity to work in more detail from a photograph on my iPad as we sat in a waiting room yesterday, which probably explains why the proportion of head to body has gone awry. Colour added later.

The juvenile herring gull, photographed in September, was swimming along on Peasholm Park lake, Scarborough, looking rather worried as we passed by in our dragon-boat pedalo.

Herring gulls don’t moult into their full adult plumage until their fourth year.