Little Bit of twitching

Lakenheath Fen is a vast network of reedbeds and pools, and in the last few years it has attracted some real european reedbed specialists. Some announce their presence with great vigour, calling loudly or flying overhead skillfully catching insects, but the latest foreign visitor is a skulker– a gruff-voiced bird that is doing its best not to be there at all. It doesn’t even cause the reeds to move as it works it’s way through the dense phragmites forest. In over two hours I saw it once– for three seconds as it flew to a new clump of cover. The only way you could tell it was there was its constant calling, like a small terrier clearing its throat ,repeatedly trying to dislodge an irritating hair. A bizarre effect of it's “song” was to make the bird seem further away than it was. When I first arrived I could have sworn it was calling from across a fairly big pool, about a hundred metres away, whereas in reality it was no more than twenty feet from where I stood. What advantage this voice throwing gives the Little Bittern is anybody’s guess.  

Meanwhile the dry straw-stems frothed with activity. Reed Warblers emerged and disappeared, confronting rivals and snapping their bills, catching small flies and churring contentedly. On the drier banks Whitethroats scattered their discordant song, leaping into the air only to float down further along in a joyful warbling arc- begging for the attention that the Bittern was ungratefully receiving.

Owl Stretching Time

I've been busy this week painting a Barn Owl that's been perched unfinished on a canvas for the last couple of years. A friend of mine saw it and said she'd like it if I ever got round to completing it, and now the weather has turned nasty and I've got space in the studio, the last few days have seen a bit of progress. It's been hard work to get the right shape, as the painting started with a simple idea that was born from imagination rather than any actual sketches or proper reference. The proportions were all wrong, but there was something about the eyes that pleased me, and I felt it was important to keep the facial expression. As I shaped the bird with successive layers of acrylic, the picture got better- then worse and - hopefully better again, as each element had an effect on it's surroundings. Even very subtle changes had drastic consequences on the form as a whole, and at times it's felt like cat- herding, once one's in place, another runs off and has to be recaptured. Hopefully all the cats are in the box now, but I'm going to have to keep my eye on it for a few days to make sure they don't escape.

Wildrace

The Ely Wildspace Bird Race was blessed with some lovely bright weather and 4 teams headed out to see what they could see over the next three and a half hours.  Collectively there was over 70 species seen with highlights of a Red Kite (the first recorded on a birdrace), Grey Wagtail, Cetti's Warblers, close encounters with Marsh Harriers, Turtle Doves, Buzzards galore, Barn Owl, Little Egret and Little Ringed Plover.  Either side of the race the wader puddle produced Oystercatcher, Common Sandpiper and a preening Lapwing which all allowed me to keep working out the best combinations for the new digiscoping set up. 

 

Common Sandpiper have been easy to pick up this spring on the puddle

 

 

 

A pair of Oystercatcher frequented the river this morning

 

 

A male Reed Bunting sings his head off at the Water Meadows

 

 

A video grab of Bullfinch collecting nest material

 

 

Green Plover - Lovely

 

 

 

 

Birdrace at Roswell Pits

Our yearly birdrace around Roswell Pits is coming up on Sunday, and as usual we don't know quite what we will come across- but here's a small selection of paintings I've done over the past few years that have been inspired by the pits and watermeadows of Springs' gone by.

Everyone's welcome to join us as we stroll around for a few hours- it's about getting to know the area more than anything, so if you've never been, meet us at the top of Kiln Lane, near the EA building at 7:15am for some pleasant company and interesting birdlife.

 

Nice Tri

I have a vain tendency.

 

When it is suggested that I'd not been interested in, or quite in shape to meet, physical challenges my friends or family are putting themselves through I casually offer to join them.  As a result I have found myself cycling from Lands End to Ely, discovering a true love of  playing football, finding I can run 10K faster than my sibling - all very good and positive (save the sibling rivalry).  Now I have placed myself  "in training", with a fortnight lead up to a cross country Tri-athlon. Fool.

 

Or maybe not.  On Sunday I woke early and was out on a 30km bike ride across the fens to the south of Ely before 6.30, I was escorted along the river bank, wind in my hair, by 3 or more different Barn Owls.  Egrets and noisy Oystercatchers flew up and down the Great Ouse and heading across the fields Marsh Harrier beat their way to forage the ditches and headlands while Buzzards mewed territorially.  Into the old fen and reedbeds I diverted off road amidst rattles, explosions, melodic meanderings and arpeggios of birdsong.  Cetti's Warblers abounded and Lesser Whitethroat and Willow Warbler were sentinel.  Garden Warbler, Blackcap, Reed and Sedge Warbler created an aural backwash but no purr of the Dove was heard.  Later a Turtle Dove did parachute down in display into the Hawthorn snow and a Bearded Tit pinged out in the Phragmites. What blissful jungle this was and a Bittern boomed in agreement. Further out into the fen flooded pools held Gulls and Grebes, this little blighter was beautiful through the bins and a snapped shot shouldn't be too much of an identification challenge .

 

 

 

A Roe buck was pretty nonchalant as I rode past and along the lodeside where a pair of Whooper Swans, fully winged, unrung but seemingly feral, appeared to be on territory. 

 

 

 

 

 

A male Peregrine circling over farmland on the return leg continues to suggest we should be checking all towers and pylons in the vicinity, I did spend an hour at the Cathedral later in the day to no avail. So my training bike ride turned into a pretty fruitful early morning birding trip. On my return to Stuntney Heights I did manage to complete a 6K run on wobbly legs but complete it I did...now there's just an open water swim to factor in to the mix and I'll be half way ready.

 

It's spring up north

A real change of scenery this weekend- the Sheffield Ten if you like- and a more different birdwatching experience would be hard to find within a few hours drive of Ely. Subtle nuances exist of course, like the abundance of Willow Warblers and Chaffinches with northern accents, but there are a few species that thrive in the woods and dales of Yorkshire that, at home, are seen only fleetingly as they pass through. On last weekend's birdrace we found them all but impossible, but in the right place, at the right time....

Cheese (and the lost age of kodascoping)

Digiscoping still amazes me.  As a teen I bought some chunky adapter that allowed me to attach my even chunkier Zenit SLR to my treasured Bausch and Lomb Discovery Telescope.  I was chuffed to pieces to be able to take some shots of Osprey and Curlew Sandpiper, after painstaking stalking, which smudged onto Kodachrome celluloid to remind me in the depths of a Yorkshire winter that for a glorious fortnight during the summer, Stithians Reservoir in Cornwall had become my patch.

The sheer ease now of placing a cheap, palm sized camera up to the lens of your scope and being able to choose between grabbing a half decent record shot or  filming in HD video boggles and excites me in equal amounts.  I've not really looked after my last little Lumix snappy camera too well and somewhere along the line it got some watery residue on the internal lens system that could be seen as scratches on images and just wouldn't shift.  So I bought an new, older high spec Lumix on the web through Amazon but the blighter didn't turn up - my very first internet purchase sting.  Having been reimbursed I bought a new new one instead and it arrived in the post yesterday.  Keen to give it a whirl I popped down to the little wadery pool  opposite Cuckoo Bridge to see if the LRP would say cheese.  Which it did along with some not so Black-headed Gulls.

 

What is even more boggling to a semi-luddite such as I, is that you can use your mobile phone, where my first one looked like this (and I'm only on my 5th one now 17 years later)............

 



 

 

to take photo's down your scope of stunners like this.

 

 

 

Viva Technology..........

 



Smashing Plovers and Stonking Gulls

 

The Birdrace was a tiring but great treat.  Some good birding with good folk, highlights abound but there is little time to really drink in any of the exquisite birding scenes.  However in the Ely10 we had some memorable moments.  A Crane that glided in and around  one of our reedbed reserves lit brightly through cloud breaks to the south against a charcoal, brooding rainstorm sky was a vivid image to savour.  There were plenty of dramatic skyscapes during a very changeable day.

 

 

A late and exceptionally smart Caspian Gull near Pymoor was a true surprise and one of the best I've seen in the Ely10 (or anywhere else for that matter) Simon's pictures through the phone give an impression and certainly leave no doubt to the identity of this lovely Larid.  A Mediterranean Gull on territory just outside the Ely10 was equally smart. 

 

 

 

 

Isleham Water Meadows delivered a russet Black-tailed Godwit, a Dunlin with an ink dipped belly and a plum dappled male Ruff, along with the resident Avocets.  At the settling beds our only Little Ringed Plover of the day showed very well and the next day I had to return to watch it some more.  A couple of Common Sandpiper and a Little Egret have also taken up a residence on the small pool with some nice looking muddy edges, so nice that a spanking Dunlin dropped in for an hour or so on Wednesday evening, we can only hope and dream of a Stint doing the same in the weeks to come. 

 

Today I went to check the pool and the LRP started the cocked head, eyes to the sky flicker that suggests danger in the air.  I looked to the Black-headed Gulls who were giving subtler but similar signals.  Not one to ignore natures hints I popped my head out of the car to check the sky above and indeed a big old Peregrine was cruising over and took a leisurely foray into sweeping spirals above the dark fenland fields as it gained height. 

 

Perhaps it's time to give the Cathedral another check............     



The longest day

Last weekend most sensible birdwatchers took in their local patch or, like Will, stayed at home and enjoyed the fruits of Spring, just happy to have birds around them. Some of us had bigger fish to fry- and by fish I mean birds- and by fry, I mean see- and by bigger, I mean as many as we could in a twenty four hour period- some of us had as many birds to see as we could in a twenty four hour period. Within the county. This is their story.

Many years ago I joined Duncan, Mark, and Jono on a birdrace around the county. We set a new inland county record that was broken the following year. Now we wanted that record back. With Jono up north somewhere, the first thing to do was recruit a fourth member of the team. Simon stepped up to the plate. The four of us had already embarked on some great birding feats together- driving for a week across the land of the Midnight Sun in Norway and Finland, circumnavigating the Mahgrebian desert, attacking ships on fire at the tannhauser gate- no hang on – that last one’s from Bladerunner- did I dream about rescuing a couple of droids from the Empire……yes, I think that was a dream. I am still very tired.

What was not a dream was meeting up with the team at Woodwalton Fen at midnight on Saturday. Now, the first rule of birdrace is that you make sure you get enough rest beforehand. With this in mind I was up at 5:30 am, Saturday morning to do a bit of last minute reconnaissance. I fully intended to get some sleep in the afternoon, but the excitement was too much and I arrived at Woodwalton having had a total of one hour’s interrupted sleep in the last eighteen. This was a worry.

The weather report was unfavourable, but the night had yet to turn for the worse as we set off. We were soon surrounded by singing Sedge Warblers and Grasshopper Warblers, and deer rustled in the darkness ahead of us- but there were no Nightingales and no owls. In the past these species were a given here, but the lack of piercing melodies and squeaking gate calls cast an ominous pall over our carefully planned stratagem. Fearing that the weather would break soon we rushed over to the Nene Washes. A gentle breeze was blowing, but we heard Spotted Crake and Corncrake, and our confidence returned.

Dawn revealed to us that our new found confidence was maybe akin to that shown by a mouse who walks into a catshop after his friends have told him that if he holds his breath, the cats won’t see him. After twenty minutes it was obvious that the cats could see us. The washes were dry. There were no flocks of waders and waterfowl, no great masses of herons, no cranes. A Whooper Swan was there, and we foolishly took this as a sign of encouragement. Breakfast at McDonalds- felt dirty.

It started raining, and we started driving. I have no idea where we went- I was in the back of the car and I don’t know the west of the county that well anyway. We stopped at some kind of industrial complex and saw a Peregrine perched on a tall chimney. It took off almost immediately and was lost to view- we were lucky. Then we found ourselves at a lock looking for Grey Wagtail. We were not lucky. This could a problem. We needed the easy birds to be, well, easy. If they were going to play hard to get this whole record breaking attempt was going to be like trying to convince an American that intelligent life exists on all six of the other continents- difficult and ultimately futile. Somewhat tired now- eat some peanuts.

Things improved at Monk’s Wood, where, in the space of five minutes and standing in one place, we saw Nuthatch, Treecreeper and Marsh Tit- it was back on. If we kept this rate up we could smash the record in four hours! Bombay mix!

Four hours later we had not even come close to breaking the record. We’d be lucky to do it in four days if our luck didn’t change. Paxton gave us some hope, with a Great Northern Diver, Red Kite, Whimbrel and Bar-tailed Godwit encouraging highlights, but we began to fall into a trance every time we stood and scanned the scene before us through our telescopes. The car journeys between sites became quieter, and despite Dunc’s rousing call to arms- if you can call it that- it was more like a tired plea from an orange suited victim to stop the waterboarding- we were beginning to face up to the fact that we might well fall short. By mid afternoon we had still not seen a Sparrowhawk.

The odd good bird here and there kept us in the hunt but it wasn’t enough. A Mediterranean Gull at Needingworth, Hobbies at Ouse Fen, Wheatear at fen Drayton, good birds one and all and would have normally meant that a good day’s birdwatching was being had, but where were the kingfishers, the Turtle Doves and the Corn Buntings? Very tired now. Get the muffins out.

At Wicken we bumped into the Balmfords as they enjoyed a nice stroll round the fen, and I envied their unhurried afternoon birding. We had no time to stand and stare, and left having not seen the Black-necked Grebes. Only the day before I had arrived at the same spot and seen them immediately, and I quite reasonably assumed it was going to be simple to see them again, when it mattered. With time beginning to run out we had to start making difficult choices, and we couldn’t hang around looking for just one bird. As we drove away James Hanlon sent us a picture he had just taken- of a Black-necked Grebe.

I think it was that moment that finally broke us. We soldiered on to Isleham and then to Pymoor, dropping in to Tony Martin’s place on the way, and Ruff, Caspian Gull and Wigeon were added to the list. Very, very tired.

The birds had simply not been there. The migrants had not migrated and the residents were not at home. The Glossy Ibis had suddenly decided that after weeks of being at Fen Drayton it no longer liked the place. We could have carried on into the night, and bystanders would have seen four ghostly shapes haunting the edge of Cambridgeshire like zombies, listening for the wailing of Stone Curlew, crunching the last of the Bombay mix- but enough was enough and we resigned to our fate, retreating from the battlefield before total annihilation.

120  was the final score. It felt like a heavy loss and we couldn’t quite believe we had fallen so far short of the magic 136. Four days on and I still haven’t seen a Sparrowhawk. There was a Turtle Dove purring down at Roswell Pits this morning- where was that on Sunday?

Blackbird bonanza

Given its modest dimensions, it doesn't take much to dominate our garden, but, regardless, it has been well and truly dominated by Blackbirds of late. Regular, if not daily, visitors over the Winter months, they seemed to become permanent fixtures over the last 3 or 4 weeks. Then, a week ago, youngsters appeared; first one, quickly followed by two and finally, we realised, three. They tucked themselves away in Ceanothus and Winter Hyacinth but their presence was betrayed by frequent visits from their parents. Then one day they had vanished, only to all reappear the next day and this pattern continued, culminating in them sitting more openly in the Ceanothus yesterday, making a racket every time a parent appeared - which they did with astonishing regularity - just how do they find all that food, often without leaving the boundaries of our garden? So busy were the family that we postponed planned gardening tasks and left the garden to them. Today, nothing, save two quick glimpses of the male. At one stage general alarm caused me to look up and see a Sparrowhawk circling round. I found myself sparing a thought for 'our' birds and hoping they were safe. Perhaps they'll be back tomorrow, or perhaps it's already goodbye. Whichever, we're taking it as a sign of approval for all the work we've put into the garden over recent months and hope that Blackbirds continue to find it to their liking.

Seen-Unseen

 There are birds that are timid, and those that are more inquisitive, sometimes to the point of boldness. At Wicken this morning a Whitethroat flew along the ditch and landed in front of me, perching at the top of a small hawthorn. He sat for a few minutes rasping and twittering as if trying to attract my attention. Across the path, however a pair of Grey partridge seemed to think they could disappear from view if they just crouched down a little and stayed still and silent.

One bird managed to be noticed while still remain invisible. The churring could be heard from a distance, and I was able to work out exactly where the noise was coming from, but knowing and seeing are two different things.........