Testing my new Browning Strike Force Pro XD trail cam yesterday in the back garden: at night in infrared mode on red fox and in daylight on grey squirrel, juvenile blackbird and dunnocks.
We think there may be two foxes; the first, with a bushy tail appears at 10.13 p.m., then ten minutes later there’s a similar-looking fox crossing the screen and finally, at 10.26, a fox with an apparently thinner tail with a lighter tip to it appears to notice the infrared light and it heads off.
The following night we recorded no fox activity, so I hope that we haven’t put them off with the infrared.
South Ossett: By mid-morning, the sun has melted away the frost and fog. A blackbird makes considered progress across the lawn, pausing every couple of inches to closely inspect the turf.
A wren perches on the fence, then flies down to a row of bricks to forage around.
At the foot of the old wall, beneath the twisting stems of the Russian vine, a dunnock hops along, pausing to probe the soil.
A wood pigeon takes a break in the top branches of a sycamore.
1.15 p.m., 49ºF, 9ºC, sun through high hazy cloud, cool breeze from north northwest: These weeds on the L-shaped bed are going to have to go soon as the weather has suddenly turned springlike, the vernal equinox is almost upon us and it’s time to start thinking about planting veg.
I draw red dead-nettle and a weed, a crucifer, which I wouldn’t attempt to identify before the seed-pods start showing, and by that time I should have weeded it out.
Our crops will need protection, not only from the wood pigeons but also from the possibility of next door’s hens coming over to scrat about. The little red hen has already made it through to us under the hedge and she must have liked what she found as our neighbour couldn’t entice her back and had to come around to retrieve her.
As I draw there’s a loud song from the hedge just a few yards from me but every time I turn around there’s no sign of the bird. Eventually its head pops up at the top of the hedge: it’s a dunnock. It’s song has more get-up-and-go than the comparatively relaxed, reflective phrases of the robin.
I can find a quality of wilderness in moss-covered rubble, flooded fields and tumbling willows, so I didn’t have far to go to find a subject this morning. These chunks of sandstone form a wall around the raised bed behind the pond. We used the soil that we excavated from the pond to make the raised bed.
It’s a still, sunny morning with a clear blue sky but although the temperature has risen to 50ºF, 10ºC, there’s still thin ice along one side of the pond.
There’s a jingly song from the next garden which I take to be a dunnock:
‘pwik – kiwik – pwik – chEE’
My bird book (Alan J Richards, British Birds, A Field Guide) describes the song as ‘a not unmusical jingle of notes, shorter in duration and less powerful than the Wren’s’. The wren belts out its song so emphatically that you know it means business.
3.15 p.m., 43ºF, 5ºc: As I draw these small tête-a-tête daffodils a dunnock hops about unconcernedly beneath the bird feeders just ten feet from me.
I’m pleased to see that the blue tit with the drooping wing can now fly. It’s spending less time on the ground and more time on the feeders.
It’s as well that it can fly. The large fluffy black and white cat that lords it over all the other cats on our street is on our front lawn, very interested in something but I can’t see what but at least there are no feathers lying around it.
3 p.m., 38ºF, 4ºC: This old ash tree grows by a gravelly section of Coxley Beck. It would be more usual to find a willow or an alder growing with its roots in the water but the stream may have changed course since this ash sprouted from an ash key, probably getting on for a hundred years ago.
A blackbird forages under hollies on the bank behind me; a wren investigates the undergrowth alongside the path; long-tailed tits and blue tits check out the tree canopy; and wood pigeons coo monotonously in the tree tops.
It’s a good time of year to start trying to learn bird songs and one that I always struggle with is the dunnock. It doesn’t belt out its song like the wren and it’s not as clear and wistful as the robin; it just hurries through a short jingle. I try to remember the song by sketching it as a series of notes.
Sketchy impression of the song of a dunnock.
‘a not unmusical hurried jingle of notes, shorter in duration and less powerful than the Wren’s.’
Alan J Richards, British Birds, A Field Guide
In the Complete Birds of Britain and Europe, Rob Hume describes the song as ‘quick, slightly flat, high-pitched, fast warble with little contrast or variation in pitch.’ That verdict sounds like a lukewarm put-down from one of the judges on a television talent contest.
Link:Sketch Bird Songs, a field session with John Muir Laws in the Sierra Nevadas
12.45 p.m.: WOOD PIGEONS clatter about and coo in a clump of trees and bushes by Coxley Dam. A Dunnock methodically pecks amongst the gravel, grasses and weeds at the edge of the parking area. Short heavy showers are interspersed with watery sun.
A Wren flits from the post to a clump of nettles, following the same route along this short stretch of woodland edge as the Dunnock but a foot or two higher, amongst the vegetation.
So that’s ground layer and herb layer that are being checked out for invertebrate prey. Up in the tree canopy, around fifteen feet above the ground, a Blue Tit is making an equally thorough investigation of the branches and foliage.
And of course there are those noisy Wood Pigeons too. They’re no doubt doing some feeding in the canopy while they’re there but I suspect most of their feeding is taking place in the surrounding arable fields and pastures, with frequent trips back to the cover of woodland when they’re disturbed.
