Category Archives: Bird Watching

I Hear the Goldcrest Calling

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Goldcrest from Wikipedia

As I brushed my teeth this morning, I could hear a Goldcrest calling. It’s a high-pitched squeaky call, and not very attractive. It has the advantage of being easy to recognise, which is good for a partially deaf man with a poor ability to recognise bird song. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see it in the garden, but as we saw one several times yesterday it’s already recorded for the week.

I don’t have a photo of my own to use, as they flit about a lot and never seem to settle long enough to get more than a blur or a shaking twig. However, Wikipedia has come to the rescue.

For readers in the USA – the Golden Crowned Kinglet is very similar, possibly even the same species. No doubt a committee will one day sit and pontificate, and on deciding they are identical they will, as they have done so many times in recent years, rename our bird the Eurasian Golden Crowned Kinglet, because all European birds must, these days, be named in comparison to birds of the USA. If you think I bang on about the Cultural Imperialism of the USA in terms of spelling, just wait until I get going on bird names.

t was a good day for birds yesterday, with the Goldcrest, a Greenfinch, a Long-tailed Tit and a Wren. The Wren kept skittering along the fence, displaying its distinctive profile. After the breeding season birds tend to flock in mixed species groups. Scientists say it is mainly  about improved feeding efficiency ( as the birds share information of food sources) and protection against predators. The flock that visits us is 20-30 birds, which fills the garden, but is quite small in flock terms. It is mainly Blue Tits and Great Tits, with one or two others tagging along.

Goldfinches (adult and adolescent)

I didn’t have my camera and by the time I had gone to my study and returned with it, no birds. It’s always the way.

I tried the word study there, but I’m not sure it is quite right. It sounds too grand for a very small 3rd bedroom and implies a level of furnishing that I don’t have. I’m still sorting my newly assembled book cases and have a number of boxes piled on the floor. Office, writing room, spare bedroom (though that would be to confuse it with the real spare bedroom) or small room (which again, could be confusing to those using it as a euphemism for toilet). It is one of those unresolved issues. It could be a very small man cave, but it’s not really that exciting.  Any ideas?

I can’t remember what I meant to blog about, I just remember that it was going to start with the Goldcrest calling and then move on to something that seemed important. Then Julia called me through to breakfast, we started chatting about why you can get bread-makers, slow-cookers, rice boilers  and soup-makers but not porridge-makers, and gradually the thoughts dispersed and the birds replaced them.

 

Long[tailed Tits and Blue Tits at Budby Flash

I have also arranged my prescriptions with the local pharmacy and spoken to Rheumatology about moving to Peterborough so that’s a few things ticked off my list. (I add those bits as a piece of 21st Century lifestyle trivia to help the PhD student I imagine using this blog as source material in 2125). It’s going to be a funny old thesis that he writes – he’ll think we are all cyclists with bridge and bird fascinations, bibulous bibliophilic old buffers or grumpy old men, stretching from Aussie arctophiles in Ballarat to no-mates numismatists in Peterborough. If I’d moved a few more miles I’d be living in Bretton and that last sentence would have been much better. Or if I’d stayed in Nottingham.

Anyway, rambling over. I’ve just spent a couple of minutes trying to get rid of a phantom comma – turns out I need to clean the computer screen.

A Great Tit on the sunflower seed feeder – it only lasted six months before the squirrel managed to break it a variety of attacks.

 

 

Finches and Photographs

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Goldfinches on the feeder

It’s been a good week in the garden. We now have an established population of Goldfinches and when they aren’t on the feeders we can often hear them singing in the area. No wonder they were so popular as songbirds in Victorian times.

This morning we had a young one on the feeder, so they are even bringing the kids to meet us.  They are streaky and lack the facial markings of an adult.

Earlier in the week we had our first Greenfinch. They are grumpy-looking bird at the best of times and this one appeared to get even grumpier as it struggled to get out of the squirrel-proof feeder. They are bulkier than a Goldfinch and lack their dexterity. However, she (for I believe it is a female, judging by the plumage) seemed to get used to the feeder and was soon back in it.


Greenfinch struggling

Greenfinches have always been fairly common at previous feeding stations I have had but took a hit a few years ago after a virus swept through them.  That’s why we do a lot of feeder cleaning these days. Chaffinches were also affected, and despite them once being a very common bird we are yet to see one in the  garden.

I also had an acceptance. I had to wait a while for this one but it was worth it. I sent off nine submissions last month. All results are in now, seven successful, two not. Or, if you just count editors/magazines seven submissions and seven acceptances, as both the unsuccessful submissions were to magazines with editorial boards that accepted one of the forms I submitted but left another.

Even better,  two of the three haibun I had accepted had been rejected last month.  That’s what people say – rejection is only the opinion of one  editor on one particular day. However from seven out of nine to nought out of eight, is a very fine line. past performance is no guarantee of future success.

Greenfinch on the fence

I also got my new driving license today. The photograph takes years off me, as my beard is no longer white. It was definitely white when I took the picture. However, that’s the least of my worries, as I still look like a Balkan gangster. I wouldn’t mind if I looked like a high-level one, but I look like the sort of gangster who guards doors.

And finally, a Peacock butterfly sunning itself on the bungalow next door.

 

Citizen Science

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Green Woodpecker

Yes, it is rather a grand name for a process which involves staring out of my kitchen window and looking at the bird feeder. But it’s not a title I used so I thought I’d give it a go. Today’s entries for the BTO survey have hit a new low in terms of numbers and lack of variety, but they say all results are useful, even the things you don’t see.

We’ve had a good run recently with several new species and  several species we’d only seen before we started recording. None of them have been rare. During the week we saw goldfinches flying over, but they didn’t stop. Since moving in we’ve also seen a green woodpecker nearby (and know that Mum and dad had one in the garden when they lived here), parakeets and kites. We also know there’s been a sparrowhawk in the area. So there’s plenty of potential for future sightings, it’s just a case of keeping going and seeing what happens.

Male Reed Bunting

When we used to feed birds on the farm it took a while for the full variety to show, but once, for instance, we attracted Greater Spotted Woodpeckers, they seemed to become regulars quite quickly.

Part of the problem is the sparsity of habitat in the garden. There’s a lot more to do to the design as there’s only a narrow bed at the back and the shrubs in it overgrown. I want to do more with it, but I don’t want to disrupt their current habits all in one go.

I’ve already been looking at seed catalogues and I’m now going to have a look at books on plants for wildlife. Somewhere in the middle I’m sure we can find a balance. I’m aiming for wildlife friendly plants and a tropical field. With rhubarb. Rhubarb is sort of tropical, and it’s good to eat. I almost forgot that – the new garden design needs to be wildlife friendly, tropical themed, with fruit and veg. And it needs to be low maintenance. What could possibly go wrong with that plan?

Redpoll and Goldfinch on the Ecocentre feeder

Photos are from around the Ecocentre – as i say, we got a better variety of birds.

Ornithological Notes

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Bear with me, the chronology is a nightmare.

Last night I said – “Yesterday morning, I saw a Goldfinch on one of the feeders in the back garden. It’s quite a common bird – number 8 in last year’s RSPB Birdwatch, but we’ve only seen two since we moved in.

Goldfinch

We have also had no House Sparrows and no Starlings, (Number 1 and Number 3 in the list, and only seen Long Tailed Tit, another top ten birds a handful of times. The 20024 results were

  • House Sparrow
  • Blue Tit
  • Starling
  • Woodpigeon
  • Blackbird
  • Robin
  • Great Tit
  • Gold Finch
  • Magpie
  • Long Tailed Tit”

Then, tired, and conscious that I had a big day ahead of me, I went to bed.

We used to have goldfinches on the farm, and in the back garden in Nottingham, so I have been surprised at the lack of them in Peterborough, particularly as we are on the edge of an area I would deem ideal. In Nottingham we actually had them singing as they perched on TV aerials. Here – two in three months.

Red Kite

Anyway, it’s a start. We then went to Nottingham to carry on with the house clearance. On the way back we stopped at McDonalds at Colsterworth and were surprised to hear the call of a kite. It shares some of the buzzard’s mew, but with a plaintiff whistle in it.

We looked round and saw a kite perching in a tree that had recently had some bits lopped off it. We have seen kites from the car park before, but never this close. It seemed to be calling to a kite that was perching two trees along. They continued doing this, and because we had to get on, we went tom eat. Twenty minutes later, the calling kite was still there, but jackdaws were occupying the nearby trees. They ere gathering to fly off and roost rather than mobbing the kite, but the other bird had gone. I will be looking up kites and courtship later. It’s an area near woodland, so it’s looking good for more kite breeding.

If you don’t look up the Colsterworth link look up this one – unbelievable!

Finally, arriving home, we saw some starlings perching in a tree near the house. I said to Julia how strange it was to see them so close to us, but not to get them in the garden. Not that I want too many of them as they do tend to take over. When we had unloaded I looked at the feeders and there was a starling on the fat ball feeder. Maybe they are starting to move about for spring.

Starlings at Slaidburn

Also, a couple of nights ago Julia heard the blackcap (the “Northern Nightingale” singing. We are now worried he is getting ready to leave for home (assuming he is one of the winter migrants).

Kites in the Sun

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Dunnock

Two days ago I did a quick bird survey whilst drying the breakfast pots. It was the normal suspects – pigeon, magpie, blue tit, great tit, robin, dunnock. Julia had seen the blackcap and blackbird earlier on. It would have been a reasonable list for the survey at the weekend, so I was quite pleased with it, particularly as it was the result of about 20 minutes, rather than a full hour.

As I wiped, I saw a red kite approach.It was quite low and all the colours were clear in the sun. Yes, it was a sunny day today, and not too windy. It was a lovely thing to see, but for garden bird counts, not admissible. Of course, I didn’t have my camera with me to take a photo. Cameras and washing up don’t mix well.

I’m now signed up and ready for the BTO Birdwatch. It’s similar to the one we did at the weekend but it’s done every week. In order to be consistent I have decided that we will do it during breakfast – from preparation to washing up.  That means it will be every day at roughly the same time and for the same length of time. It is, they say, about the birds, and not about the amount of time you can spend watching.

Of course, we have also had squirrels on both mornings

This morning I did the same thing. This time the kite flew over pursued by a crow. It is the first time I have seen kites two days in a row over the garden, and the first time I have seen one being mobbed. I’ve seen buzzards and sparrowhawks being mobbed but never a kite. I suppose that’s because I see more buzzards and sparrowhawks than I do kites.

The rest of the bird count was an example of consistency, as we saw exactly the same species as we had done yesterday, though the numbers were a little higher. It’s going well so far and I have found a retirement activity that doesn’t involve starting at a screen in exasperation. Yes, the writing is going slowly. In fact I have just spent two hours trying to “improve” a poem. Turns out that not only can I not improve it, but it wasn’t actually that good in the first place. I like the central idea so I will give it a radical rewrite tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

Julia did have her camera this morning – this is her picture of one of the two kites.

Red Kite

Birdwatch and War with the Squirrels

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Long-tailed Tit

The results are in for my portion of the Big Garden Birdwatch. By the parameters used in the count (you enter the largest number of birds of a species seen at a time) I recorded 24 birds against a national average of 28. I probably undercounted the tits, because they will only visit the feeders in ones and twos, though there are others lurking in the bushes. However, I always feel it’s better to err on the conservative side.

Wood Pigeon

 

Here are the numbers.

Great Tit – 4
Wood Pigeon – 4
Long-tailed Tit – 3
Blackbird – 2
Robin – 2
Jackdaw – 2
Blue Tit – 2
Dunnock – 2
Magpie – 2
Blackcap – 1

Blackcap

The Blackcap is an “Unusual Bird Spot” as they ranked 31 out of 80 last year. It’s not a bad selection.  We have no House Sparrows, which are the Number One bird at the moment, and we have no Starlings, but I’m not complaining.  Sparrows tend to take over and Starlings just descend in large groups and force everything else away, so I’m not particularly bothered. I do, however, miss the goldfinches we used to get in profusion..

As it was, we had squirrel trouble for most of the last twenty minutes of the hour and they drove most of the birds away. My anti-squirrel campaign has been so successful that we now have two who visit together. They are interesting and acrobatic and this pair don’t do a lot of damage (as some of my previous squirrel adversaries have done), but they do need a lot of food compared to a bird and they do stop birds visiting.

Dunnock

We now have our peppermint oil, which we will be spraying round to deter rats, and will have to see if it deters squirrels too. If not, it looks like we will have to move on to chilli and more robust measures. Knocking on windows, sending Julia out and rearranging the feeders has, so far, failed to achieve any lasting deterrence.

Squirrels, Squirrels and more Squirrels . . .

Pictures are all from the Garden Birdwatch hour. The light wasn’t very good – the garden is much shadier than I realised and apart from that, my bird photography skills have deteriorated and they aren’t very good.

Great Tit

 

 

What is a Weekend?

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I’m reminded of Maggie Smith’s line in Downron Abbey – “What is a weekend?” For the upper classes and, it seems, retired people, the concept does not exist. Every day is a holiday and it is easy to lose track of the days, as I did this week. We were all geared up for our grocery delivery when I realised it was Friday, not Saturday. Part of the problem is the bin day – it has been Friday for the last 36 years in Nottingham, but here it is Thursday. At the back of my mind I am often a day out at the end of the week. Eventually, I suppose, I will get used to it.

It’s the Big Garden Birdwatch today.  It was also yesterday, but I always think of it as a weekend activity. Records of 350,000 birds have been submitted so far (10.30 Saturday) with the House Sparrow coming out on top with Blue Tit second and Starling 3rd. The Wood Pigeon has fallen to 4th, nudged out by Blue Tits overnight. In Cambridgeshire, the county I am in today, the order is currently Wood Pigeon, House Sparrow, Starling. We have had no House Sparrows since we moved in and very few Starlings, so we might be bucking the trend in this garden.

I am going to finish this post, have a late breakfast and spend an hour with a notebook, recording birds. It always seems better when you have something unusual to report, but even if you don’t, it’s all part of the process – even seeing no birds is some sort of result. When you see how some bird populations have declined over the years (and set this against the broader picture of a general decline in numbers) I wonder if there will be a year when that is the report I submit. It’s not a  good thought.

Poetry and Puffins

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Puffin at Bempton Cliffs

On a good day, when I’m concentrating and moderately free from distraction, I can do a couple of thousand words a day without thinking. Actually, if you’ve read the blog before, you will know that I don’t think.

Recently I have been having a problem trying to write some factual pieces about medallions and sweetheart brooches and that hasn’t been going so well. It takes a lot more planning and fact checking than just rattling off opinions, and I’ve been going very slowly.

Even writing poetry takes less effort than writing a short article. There is, after all, little fact checking to do when writing from imagination.

Strangely, I had a knock back recently from an editor who said something didn’t make logical sense to him. I’d referred to a fire, and also to something happening later, and he couldn’t square the two ideas as he thought the fire would have burnt out. To me, the two thoughts were not linked, and I wondered why a poem had to make logical sense. I’m not sure, for instance, that Dylan Thomas intended us to believe that his father could speak words that literally caused lightning flashes, or that he actually caught the sun in flight. Logically this is nonsense of a high degree. Not quite as nonsensical as Lear and his mimsy borogoves, but nonsense all the same.

Would the same editor, I wonder, have turned down Do not go gentle into that good night for being illogical, or Jabberwocky for not making sense?

You never know. A different editor making decisions and it’s possible that the poetry in the UK could have developed in a completely different way.

And there you go. Twenty minutes. A idea. And a distinct lack of heavyweight thinking. It will be 300 words by the time I have finished and there are plenty more where they came from.

Calling Puffin – Bempton Cliffs

In fact, have some more. Do you remember my trips to see Puffins? They rely on sand eels to feed their young. They are suffering from the lack of sand eels, as are Kittiwakes, and numbers of birds, already hit by bird flu, are falling seriously. Puffins and Kittiwakes are now on the Red List, which is a list of threatened species. They are classed as Vulnerable, due to rapid population decline. It’s not as bad as being Endangered, but it’s far from comfortable.

So to help them, the British Government has banned sand eel fishing in our waters in the North Sea, The EU and, particularly the Danes, have challenged this, It seems they don’t think we should be able to do what we like within out territorial waters. Despite the picture you may have of Danes, from listening to Sandi Toksvig on TV (and notice how she actually lives in the UK, not in Denmark), and all this talk of hygge, they aren’t as nice as they seem.

Puffin

I don’t just base this on their attitude to our territorial waters and their hatred of Puffins. They have had a poor attitude to our seas for over a thousand years, after all. Remember, today’s smiling Dane in a shell of knitwear is just a Viking in disguise. The sand eels that they catch end up in fish meal which is used in factory farming. I’m not necessarily against the Danes and their intensive pig production, as I do like a bacon sandwich, but it has to be said that the Danish bacon industry is morally ambiguous, as is my consumption of bacon sandwiches. However, I’m not intent on wiping out Puffins, and would give up bacon in an instant if I thought it would help.

That’s 600 words. Sometimes I surprise myself.

Puffins at Bempton

 

Variety of Weather

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Around lunchtime yesterday Julia remarked how nice the weather was compared to the forecast.

This morning at 5.20 it was lovely and bright, though I didn’t really appreciate it as I hobbled to the bathroom with half-closed eyes.

At 7.10, as I sat on the side of the bed wrestling with my socks, the rain was positively throwing itself at the bedroom windows.

First of the Marigolds

Then it brightened up a bit, then the hail started. It’s now 12.07. The sky is blue, the wind is cold and the weather is dry.

On the way home, after dropping Julia at work, I noticed that wind has stripped most of the magnolias, but a laburnum has started to blossom. it’s a bit early, but so were the magnolias.

It’s 12.14 now (I’m not writing slowly, I just got sidetracked reading about laburnums). They sky is grey, rain is tapping on the window, and only the cold wind remains constant.

Sorry, I took a bit of a diversion there. That’s the trouble with the internet. I’ve read a number of trivial news stories and noticed two more lots of rain. I’ve also made and eaten lunch.It’s now 14.14. That’s a coincidence, I just happened to look at the clock on the computer and thought it was worth mentioning. Or was it that I subconsciously saw that and decided to look. You never know, do you?

Red Kite

 

Here’s a view of Ospreys, and here are some Peregrine Falcons. The Ospreys are on Camera 2 and the Peregrines are still neat and tidy. As the season progresses they gradually amass a pile of dismembered pigeons and a variety of flies. I’d hate them outside my window. I’ve just been watching the raindrops on the Nottingham camera. Then I looked up to watch the raindrops on my windows. Amazing, isn’t it? All that awesome nature and technology and all I can do is discuss the weather.

Here are more Cathedral cameras if you want them.

Buzzard

Robins – Red in Tooth and Claw

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I had a post prepared for today, but it’s just 350 words banging on about the mechanics of making poetry submissions. It’s not, on re-reading it, particularly entertaining. It’s interesting to me, but that’s no excuse for inflicting it on other people.

Instead I’m going to talk about writing haiku in a foreign language. There are magazines which invite submissions in foreign languages and I have read some haiku in French. I may be missing some of the nuances but the remnants of my schoolboy French are generally up to the job with an occasional input from Google Translate. However, this will only do the words and not the layers of meaning which may be contained in them.

But it’s not French I want to speak about, it’s American.

1995 Robin stamp

I ran into a problem the other day. I was putting the finishing touches to some submissions when i realised that one of them wouldn’t do at all. It included the battle of Naseby, which, if Adlestrop is obscure, will be well beyond the comprehension of most Americans. This isn’t a criticism – I would flounder if I read a poem about Gettysburg.  We are separated by several centuries of diverging history, plus spelling and the use of words which have different meanings.

Then we come to nuance. I first ran into translation problems when submitting a poem that featured a goldcrest. They don’t have goldcrests in USA, but they do have kinglets, so I translated the bird to a kinglet. The poem was duly rejected but at least I made the effort. One problem with this is that I know about goldcrests, but I’m not quite sure if they behave in exactly the same way.

Robin at Rufford Abbey

This is a problem, as many birds come with meanings and mannerisms that may not be understood by people from other places. I was about to submit a poem that included a robin on Saturday when it occurred to me the image wouldn’t work in America. The American Robin is a thrush with a red breast.

For a full run-down of the various cheery robin stories, read this. It’s missing two important bits though. One is that the breast is supposed to be red because Christ bled on it when it plucked a thorn out of His brow on the cross. The other is that  they have a reputation for being aggressive. You probably don’t know this if you don’t live in a country with robins. I was using it as part of an image in a poem alluding to the war in Ukraine when I realised it wasn’t going to work in America. This is a problem as most of the magazines for haibun are American.

It’s just one more thing to consider.

Their goldfinches are different too. It’s all very confusing.