On Wednesday morning the farmer was moving the cattle that graze the marshes at RSPB Saltholme from Paddy’s Pool over to the Saltholme Pools.
Saltholme Pools
Category: Birds
Cormorants, Crows and Coffee
Boathouse Cafe, Newmillerdam, 11.20am, hazy sky alto-stratus, a few small spots of drizzle in a coolish breeze
A gulls gets the better of a crow, which stops to preen on the ridge tiles of the boathouse roof.
A juvenile cormorant – brown with a light breast – splashes its wings as it makes its way down the lake in what I presume is some kind of preening routine. It then takes off, skimming low over the water to join seven adult cormorants on their favourite resting place, the boughs of a half-submerged fallen tree.
Mugged for a Mussel
The waters of Newmillerdam were rippling tranquilly in the autumnal morning light yesterday, so hypnotically that one toddler was standing transfixed.
‘He’s fascinated by the water,’ his mother explained to Barbara. The child, oriental and completely bald, like a young version of the Dalai Lama, who is traditionally chosen by senior monks who meditate at Lhamo La-Tso, an oracle lake in central Tibet.
Not so tranquil were the black-headed gulls mugging the tufted ducks to steal the freshwater mussels they were diving for. At first I saw a gull touch down on a duck’s back, swooping in from behind, but the duck immediately dived out of reach. Next two gulls were diving on a pair of tufted ducks which had just surface and I saw that one gulls managed to grab an acorn-sized object which was probably a small freshwater mussel.
Grandma’s Swan Prints
Back to a bit of tranquility: I spotted these Victorian chromolithographs at the Drift Cafe at Cresswell, Druridge Bay. They’re so like the pair that my Grandma Bell had hanging in her cottage, and later bungalow, at Sutton-cum-Lound that I feel they must be from the same edition. When grandma died in the late 1970s my cousin Janet took them, and grandma’s dark-wood dresser to her flat in Poplar, East London. It was strange to see them in their new surroundings.
The canal below Hartley Bank, with the birches coming into their autumn colours reminded me of the tranquil atmosphere of grandma’s pictures.
Harbour Gulls
A low tide had exposed all the mud in Bridlington Harbour, attracting turnstones and redshank. This adult herring gull was in streaky-headed non-breeding plumage but it had raised a chick during the summer, which was still following, hunching itself up as it begged, fairly continuously, for food.
The adult looked embarrassed by the attention but I didn’t see it offer the youngster any food.
Halfway Plumage
Up on the balcony at the Boathouse café with a panorama of the lower end of the lake at Newmillerdam on a fine autumn morning with black-headed gulls swooshing by was like being on a mini cruise, especially when accompanied by a pumpkin latte (well, you’ve got to try it once at this time of year).
There were 25 tufted ducks in a scattered group, mostly just resting, although I did see one tackling a medium-sized freshwater mussel.
Many of the gulls were in halfway, teenage, plumage with a shallow inverted ‘V’ on each wing.
The three cygnets of the resident mute swan family were at that halfway stage too, with bands of brown on wings and across the tail covets.
The lone great-crested grebe was probably one of this year’s young, or possibly an adult moulting into dull winter plumage.
Saltholme
We took a break at the RSPB Saltholme wetlands reserve on our way to, and back from, Northumberland last week. The panoramic windows of the first floor cafe look out over one of the lagoons, so we were watching dunlin, godwits and gadwall as we ate our lunch.
On the return journey the birding highlight was a pectoral sandpiper a migrant that was a long way off course as it headed south as it breeds in Arctic Canada.
To the south east Roseberry Topping makes a craggy a punctuation in the looming bulk of the North York Moors.
Roe Deer Rutting
On our way north along the M1 near Garforth we glimpsed two roe deer standing facing each other in a large stubble field. As we drove by they clashed antlers (10.20 a.m., 15 September).
Falconry at Brodsworth
Today Brodsworth Hall was the appropriate setting for a Victorian falconry (and hawking, there is a difference) display by Raphael Historic Falconry. Also featuring the equally impressive Cosmic the black Labrador, currently being trained as a falconry dog (falcons and hawks don’t have a sense of smell).
Link
Ducks and a Danish
Sketching the ducks, cormorant, Canada geese and in-between black-headed gulls, some juveniles, some adults beginning to lose their black heads. We were surprised how few – if any – there were at the black-headed gull colony at St Aidan’s last week. They’d been so noisy in the spring and early summer. Now I guess they’ve dispersed with a hundred or more – perhaps St Aidan’s birds – turning up at Newmillerdam, where they can perch on fallen willows on the quieter bank of the lake and keep an eye out for hand-outs on the war memorial side.
And yes, I might have drawn more of them if I hadn’t been sidetracked by a Danish cinnamon pastry at the Boathouse.
These coots have raised a brood at the nest site I drew last year near in the corner by the outlet of the lake.
Thanks to instant communication, I was able to message my photograph of the Danish pastry to the far end of the lake as a warning to Barbara that I’d got tied up on essential business, however I beat her and her brother back to the car park and had time to draw two of the chimney stacks of the Fox and Hounds, adding the colour later from a photograph.
Waterton at Flamborough
In May 1834 Charles Waterton had himself lowered by rope down the cliffs at Flamborough by two local egg-gatherers:
‘The sea was roaring at the base of this stupendous wall of rocks; thousands and tens of thousands of wild fowl were in an instant on the wing: the kittiwakes and jackdaws rose in circling flight; while most of the guillemots, razorbills, and puffins, left the ledges of the rocks, in a straight and downward line, with a peculiarly quick motion of the pinions, till they plunged into the ocean.’
Charles Waterton, ‘Essays on Natural History’ (1835-1857)
My version of this scene was based on this Victorian engraving, artist uncredited except for the initials in the bottom left hand corner, which could be those of the engraver.
Gull Feathers
Black-headed gull feathers from St Aidan’s and a seabird feather of some kind -possibly a kittiwake or a juvenile gannet? – from Bempton. Freshwater snail shell from St Aidan’s.