Fire Leap

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BLFffYy9x4

Bit more cycling around this week and plenty of bits and bob's to enjoy.  The best of the bunch being a migrant Firecrest at the end of the causeway  singing its heart out.  Often concealed and tricky to follow it did at times venture very close, at times ignoring the social distancing limits and coming within the 2 metre zone we have become very aware of.  A lovely couple of hours spent in a tiny dell by the roadside with this tiny firecracker, of course lots of pics.

Ely10birding · Firecrest

 

Ely10birding · Firecrest

 

 

Will Burdett had been enjoying some Grasshopper Warblers reeling on the edge of town so I rode by there the other day and enjoyed them too.

A Willow Warbler singing it's heart out is all too notable these days and it did well not to be drowned out by the cacophanous Cetti's Warblers which seem to be singing from every tangle and bramble patch, even alongside the railway station platform.
 

Ely10birding · Willow Warbler

Back on the Yorkshire patch of our youths Jono Leadley landed a truly fantastic find in the form of a superb Red-rumped Swallow.

http://birdingdad.blogspot.com/2020/04/lockdown-birding-red-rumped-swallow.html?m=1

Moving into May we can cross our fingers and hope the month of sunshine and high pressure continues to encourage migrants from southern climes to extend their journey northwards.  A Montagu's Harrier lingering across the fields would be pretty fine but going wild a Beeater would truly blow our minds.  Moving years worth of pictures off the laptop onto hard drives I stumbled upon these 2 pics of Ben's from our ash-cloud ridden Spanish odyssey and impromptu trans-europe road trip.

My Tit Box Is Bigger than Your Tit Box.

God knows where that fluorescent green fluff came from.

Can't touch this.

Repeat rouzel

Another week of spring, another week of lockdown. I say lockdown – I’m not particularly locked down, as we ecological consultants are apparently key workers of sorts, so I’m still able to complete fieldwork where safe to do so. This means weekday mornings largely spent away from my usual beat, so this weekend was my first chance in a while to head out locally. Saturday was grey and cold, far too cold for the Australian, who remained at home, and most birds along the Dyke were likewise keeping their heads down, although the wheatears on the hill seemed happy enough.

Sunday dawned grey once more, but this time the Australian decided to join me. The ranks of the wheatears appeared to have swelled somewhat overnight, and it was while striving to get an accurate count of the distant birds through the scope that a dark thrush shot through the view. Another ring ouzel? It certainly had that feel – just a little too dynamic for a blackbird, and in an open field with little cover. It steadfastly refuse to reappear, so I decided to head over there to confirm my suspicions.

The Australian, having neglected to bring a pair of gloves, was beginning to feel the cold by this stage, and elected to return home, apparently already blasé about the possibility of an ouzel after last week's male. Made of sterner stuff, I persevered, and was rewarded by the sun emerging from the clouds just as I arrived at the right spot to illuminate a somewhat dowdy but still highly satisfying female ouzel; unlike last week's male this bird justifying its appearance here by being just about within ten miles of the Cathedral. It was hanging out with a gang of fieldfares and the wheatears – six of them it turned out, once they could be persuaded to line up in an orderly fashion for a proper count.

Roll forward to this morning, and the wheatears had dwindled to four, while the fieldfares had departed, but the ring ouzel was still very much present.

Now, I’m off to watch a six-minute video of a patch of brambles. The things some people post to YouTube…

Thrushy

The Blackcap has suddenly become camera shy. The day after I recorded him singing in the brambles, he suddenly stopped. Only the odd few seconds of half volume song have trickled from the back hedge since. My attention was instead drawn to a Mistle Thrush who flew up into the Ash tree on Monday evening and sang insistently for a few minutes before dashing up the road and alighting on a TV aerial fr another performance. I hadn't been quick enough, so when I heard him again this evening, I rushed out to try to capture something. He was up in the Poplar across the road, and it was surprisingly hard to pin him down, especially since I'd left my bins indoors, but eventually- there he was singing gleefully in the sunlight, the spots drifting down his chest like the sprays of Poplar flowers. On a couple of occasions his song suddenly sped up, as though impersonating a whitethroat - so different from the mournful winter melancholy usually associated with this soberly dressed bird.

Everyday Feels Like Sunday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf6Xwb03jTE&app=desktop

In week 4 of lockdown it was my time to be off the rota at school.  To make this "holiday" feel a bit more like a holiday and not a continuation of the sessile new normal we decided to pitch a tent and have a bit of a camping break at home with some maghreb infusion.  The weather was certainly hot and I cooked a veggie tagine in the outdoor oven, Moroccan lamps festooned the pergola and fairy lights twinkled.

Star of the show though, on day 2, was the male Emperor Moth attracted to the pheromone lure I bought a week or two ago.  What a stunning creature.  

Increasingly longer walks out across the fields have been productive with Yellow Wagtails and Wheatears arriving in favored fields.  To add to these colorful migrants a  stunning male Marsh Harrier, seeming to hunt continuously to feed his harem of incubating females, Peregrines bringing in food and a pair of Grey Partridge nesting in the field behind the house.

Deer are also frequenting our fields with obiquitous Muntjac, ever increasing herds of Roe Deer and a reaquantance with the lone Chinese Water Deer that has been frequenting the ditches across Quanea for a couple of years now.

Rush Hour

I decided to record a taste of this season's Blackcap concert by sticking the camera on the ledge of the open window, and just letting it record the full ten minute capacity. yeah - I know ten minutes is a long time to watch a patch of bramble, but I just left the camera running in the hope that it would soak up the full morning soundscape. It had to point somewhere, so I thought it may as well point to where they nested last year. As the camera started rolling, the male had taken up a perch just out of shot, in the open, but obscured by intervening sprays of fresh oak greenery. You can hear him emitting a strange Magpie-like call that I'd not noticed before. I couldn't quite work out if it was an alarm (there was a squirel in the viscinity) or just a contact call to his mate - but after a minute or two, he darted into the bramble........

I really had no expectation of the birds appearing on camera, I just got lucky. A short while later, the male hopped back to the oak tree, and I managed to grab a short shot of him through the glass of the studio door. I really shouldn't complain when they come too close for the digiscope to get the whole bird in shot.

It was rush hour. But the garden was full of only birdsong and chatter. 

Filling the Silence

This recent spell of warm weather has brought the insects out in numbers. Butterflies bask in the sunlight, and a multitude of buzzing things hover amongst the succulent blossom. The Bee Fly has become a regular inhabitant in my garden in the past few years, now that my cowslips have established themselves in lemony patches across my wildflower patch, and they are always a joy to watch.

Migrant birds are busily filling in the gaps left between the winter regulars. last year my garden cut through two Blackcap territories, and the first of last year's males returned ten days ago, with the econd not long afterwards. It took six days before I glimpsed a female pottering around the bramble where last year's nest was, and hopefully this portends another busy Spring and Summer for them there. 

Just across the yard, in the copse, the regular Chiffchaff chortles every morning, and as I walk down to Thistle corner and up the lane towards the river, others punctuate the warm air with their joyful song and shy calls. There seem to be equal numbers of Chiffchaff and Blackcap, and the males of both species are bold in this early part of the season - perching in the open and allowing close approach. My fears about the management have proved, so far, to be not fully realised, as the creaky voices of Linnets are still carried across the remaining scrubbery, and a surprising shout from a Cetti's Warbler greeted me as I reached the beginning of the lane. Yellowhammers too are spread along the field edges, mostly in their heartland across the railway line. A couple of Common Whitethroats are making use of what's left of the flailed field edge, and hopefully there's still enough cover for them - but so far no Lesser 'throats and it seems just a bit too bare and open for their liking. The first Swallow belted across with intent, and soon their gargling voices will fill the quiet that recent weeks has given us.

Missing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAkY5m00rpY

So lockdown continues and the garden and it's immediate environs are the only place I'm able to get a nature fix but it still has the capacity to turn up surprises.  Having found a Cetti's Warbler volleying out it's song in a reedy ditch and bramble tangle a couple of fields downhill from home,  I decided to have a speculative vigil listening out from the front bedroom window where the traffic is now much calmer.  Quite a few years ago packing the car for a 3am start, heading for the airport and a Scandanavian adventure, yielded my only ever singing Nightingale from the garden.  The cold, still air and lack of traffic noise left it audible over perhaps a kilometre, I figured that the same could happen if a Cetti's had moved into the reedy fringes of the nearby reservoir.  It was a good hunch and within 20 minutes I heard the explosive song punctuate the night.  It wasn't to be my only garden tick this week as yesterday, in an unprepossessing northerly blow, an Osprey arced low around the horizon and seemed to head down towards Barway being mobbed by Rooks.

Despite these great highlights I have been dwelling on the Morrocan family holiday that we've missed.  I had to scratch the itch and remind myself what I was missing so rooted out the pictures from my last trip there with Mark Hawkes, Simon Patient and Ben.  What a brilliant country to watch fantastic birds in - hopefully it'll be possible to visit next spring but in the meantime I've enjoyed the cathartic process of re-living some of these memories.

Bald Ibis (pic -Simon Patient)

Lesser Crested Tern (pic Simon Patient)

Black-crowned Tchagra

Seebohm's Wheatear

Crimson-winged Finch (pic Simon Patient)

 Maghreb  Wheatear

 Cream-coloured Courser



Stone Curlew



 Temminck's Horned Lark

Thick-billed Lark

Thick-billed Lark (pic Simon Patient)

Hoopoe Lark (pic Simon Patient)

Red-rumped Wheatear (pic Simon Patient)

 Pharaoh Eagle Owl

Blue-cheeked Beeater

Atlas Flycatcher (pic Simon Patient)

Egyptian Nightjar

 Desert Sparrow (pic Simon Patient)

African Desert Warbler (pic Simon Patient)

Moussier's Redstart

 Tristram's Warbler

Weatern Orphean Warbler

Duponts Lark

 Lesser Kestrel

 Hawfinch

Red-knobbed Coot