Birds on Film

Two fantastic pictures of birds in the Ely10 have been posted on the Cambridge Bird Club photo's page.

The first is of the recent Grey Phalarope at Burwell Fen by Neil Bramwell.

The second is of a Crane at the Ouse Washes by Garth Peacock.

Both are stunning and I hope I've caused no offence by snipping them to share here.

Grey havens

If Tolkien had populated the Elven kingdoms of Middle Earth with ducks, he would have used Pintail. Every year, after the Wigeon, Teal and Shoveler have joined the Mallard and Gadwall on the washes, I wait for the arrival of these graceful birds, who seem to rise above the frantic dabbling and bussling of the massed flocks, and instead cruise among the hoi polloi with all the aloofness of visiting royalty.

They are seen at their best in late winter, and the earliest arrivals appear incognito among the loafing crowds, eclipse plumage hiding the Art Deco patterns of chocolate and white. At Welney yesterday I was able to fully digest the sepia and grey barring and speckling of one confiding male as it basked in the warm sun. His head was straw coloured, but fine dark marks ghosted his breeding finery, subtly describing the tongue of white that laps up the side of the neck behind the ears. A few vermiculated feathers broke the scalloped pattern on his flanks, but there was no sign of the gold-edged lanceolate scapulars that will mirror the curve of the slender neck in a few weeks time.

Further down the reserve, the same grey, white and black colour scheme was to be found sported by some wagtails. They minced among the straw covered islets in the company of Meadow Pipits, while Swallows breezed overhead. Two of them had pale grey backs, inviting the thought of White Wagtail.

At the top end, all was quiet, until a flock of gulls drifted across from the fields and dropped in for a bathe. One starkly impressive Lesser Black-backed Gull stood proud, pale eye staring harshly as the Blackheaded Gulls bickered nearby.

Weekend in hand

My weekend was perhaps less poetic than Dunc's, but no less bird-filled. As the weak calls of Siskin and Meadow Pipit punctuated the warm sky, I joined Gary, Lou and Rich for some up-close ornithology, ringing birds at a couple of local sites. 

On Saturday morning we had nets up in Queen Adelaide, and caught a good haul of warblers- Chiffchaffs, Blackcaps and Whitethroats, and one Goldcrest. The site is a small area of scrub, and it's obviously a great place for birds to stock up on food as they make their way southward. It is easy to become so engrossed with what's in your hands that you miss what's happening further afield, but luckily I looked up in time to spot a Bittern flying across to Roswell Pits in the distance. I nearly didn't give the sight of a largish bird beyond the trees a second look, but somehow, my subconscious told me to raise my binoculars. The reward was a rare glimpse of the brown heron in unusual circumstance- fairly high up, it was moving between feeding sites, from the Beet factory across to Turbotsey pond, where it wiffled slightly as it dropped in.

In the afternoon we stopped in at Welney, and first off another unusual sight, three downy Barn owl chicks. It won't be long before they're quartering the drain banks, but even so, September is pretty late considering this is a first brood. Barn owls can be on eggs at the end of February, so why the delay for this family is a mystery.

After ringing the owls, we slipped onto the reserve itself for the main event, Swallow ringing. The nets were put up and before long they were full of hirundines. Fortunately there were enough hands on deck to process them quickly, and about eighty Swallows and one House Martin had their weights and measurements taken, and will hopefully one day be back at Welney, or turn up in a net in some exotic African location.

As if to extend the wandering theme, one bycatch of the Swallow nets was a Migrant Hawker. It became briefly tangled as it, and many others of its species zipped along the bank.

 Sunday morning, and another early start, and quick rewards. Siskins again passed overhead in ones and twos, but at ground level the nets revealed the "Shouter Invisible" - Cetti's Warbler. Three in total, plus more Blackcaps and Chiffchaffs, proof that they do sometimes leave cover and fly across the open. They are usually as skulky as the average Bittern, so it was very nice to see them up close for once in all their glory.
As the morning wore on, the temperature rose and more Migrant Hawkers flurried along the rides.
The weather didn't last of course, and Monday was dull and wet. Siskins were still moving however, and a couple landed in the birch tree in the corner of the garden. As I write this on Tuesday afternoon, there is still the odd "sweeoo" as the movement of these forest finches continues. How many have flown across the country over the past few days will never be known- not everything can be answered with a net and a set of scales.

Autumn Stone

A glorious weekend, autumnal sun, a glimpse of the Indian summer.  I would have loved it if Welney's Wryneck of Friday had been forthcoming or that Burwell's Grey Phalarope had stayed another day however their absence took little from the simple pleasures of early autumn at its best. 

Out on the Summerlands duck numbers are building on the few wet pools.  Ruff pick between cryptically plumaged Teal and sleepy Greylag.  A young Hobby shoots through and Kestrels, Sparrowhawks, Buzzards and Marsh Harriers dot the skies in every direction lifting on columns of spiralling air. 

A Tree Sparrow visited the feeders as I searched for the Wryneck, the first I've seen at this end of the Washes for many months and a raspberry dappled Redpoll rested in an Alder. 

It was in the garden though that I was able to get as heady as a wasp bingeing on fermenting apples.

The Blackcaps that have frequented the berry laden hawthorns have become bold and their numbers swollen. Six bathed together in the pond, balancing on lily pads and three more looked on.  Chiffchaffs abound throughout the hedgerows and bramble tangles with the air above alive with Starlings hawking flying ants, in all ways akin to a flock of Beeaters high in Mediterranean skies.  A freshly emerged Comma, incandescent, unfurls in the sun but flies before I can pin it with pixels.  A Red Admiral allows close approach along the roadside, fine art in macro.

 

As hirundines flock southwards Migrant Hawkers are amassing on their northward journey, patrolling field edge and wayside, twisting along every interface where branch presses sky, resting occasionally above the warming buzz of crickets.

 

 

To enjoy these moments now, before the cold breeze burns the vermillion, claret, lime and custard from the Sycamores, that will be my aim.  I know my mind will drift and the coast will call, to the tune of Siberian vagrants. The wetlands will host some trans-Atlantic wanderer and I will follow almost blindly. To remember to indulge myself in a morning walk across my closest homelands that will be the best way to feel the season ebb it's way towards the inevitability of winter.

Return from Paradise.

I’ve been away for a month in West Papua, a country whose birds, insects, plants, people, weather and landscapes defy description. The place is difficult to convey in words- metaphors are as ineffectual as an overused cliché, and similes flee in a tremble of weakness. It is a fantasy.

Now I have awoken from the dream and returned to normality; the familiar sights and sounds of a British autumn surround me like a warm blanket. A flash of coppery brown is a Whitethroat disappearing into the black juiciness of a bramble tangle. Two Chiffchaffs sing- “Come-on, Feed-up, Lets-go, hurry-up”, while a third bird calls from cover “Soon, Soon”. They chase the Migrant hawkers. Swallows stream southward under the cerulean sky, sunshine sylph-like, swerving, spread-tailed and silken winged.Two Reed Warblers fiddle among the rosehips, then up into the hawthorn, red berries gleaming ripely, to preen their plain plumage, demanding the attention that is rarely given to the dun, the tan, the buff- The ordinary.

                                     

Knock on Wood

Magical late afternoon walk across Burwell Fen.  Waders in abundance, often showing well and in great light.  At one point I counted 14 Wood Sandpipers and there were likely to have been more, 6 Green Sandpiper were outnumbered as was the lone, bobbing, Common Sandpiper.  A Spotted Redshank picked through the vegetation and 4 Whimbrel flew over agitating a rather panicky seven whistles as they travelled South.

 There were lots of Ringed Plover picking over the mud and Dunlin joined their feeding troop.  a smart juvenile Little Stint joined them and a party of Black Tailed Godwit flew over. 

Having filled my boots on waders I decided to look at the Lazy Otter floods to see if any gulls were visiting.  It turns out that they are not and the high water level, maintained through pumping, is not leaving much mud for waders either.  However 2 Wood Sands, a Ruff and a Dunlin squeezed themselves onto a metre of mud on the peninsular. 

As the sun dropped an pinked the sky, there was movement on the Old West River as a pair of Great Crested Grebes were feeding young, I guess from a second brood, and one was still catching a ride on it's parents back.

 

Fade Away

For one reason or another my time out in the Fen has been pretty limited this summer, I have been exceptionally fortunate in having the odd half hour here and there in different parts of the country to enjoy a smidgen of Purple Emperor , a smatter of Silver-spotted Skipper and an adulation of Adonis Blue.  I revelled in a protracted tussle between a Peregrine and a Goshawk across an indigo of heather and regiment of pine.  A lone Skua harried a Kittiwake as a 2 CY Med Gull looked on from the beach, non-plussed to know it had an age....

So within a tepid revelry, of sorts, I took another gifted hour in the wild at Welney where almost all was in slumber.   Ruff in an abandonment of definition gifted variety and over a hundred, far more than your average can of Heinz, picked around the slowly wetting lagoon.  The odd bird harked back with heckles raised to a time, on the tundra perhaps, where valour was all and all was to play for.

 

A similar aesthetic reduction has occurred to the Garganey, honourable raspberry blower of the Fen.  Long gone are the cascading pied and spring skied scapulars and the white browed on chocolate promise of May but here the rewards. Two of this years young with seemingly non-plussed parents, who still spring from the mire and flank the young when a harrier coasts by, mingle with the other moulting duck and dabble occasionally within the algae rich soup of the pool.

 

 

Another BBC NHU video beckons...but then again how is anyone going to drag you away from the Big Blue on TV....if you've not spent time on the sea off Monterey then, if you can, just go. 

 



 





Another Gull, Another Planet

There are a few flooded fields around the Chittering/Dimmock's Cote area at varying levels of saturation.  The tastiest looking flood is viewable from the riverside walk near the Lazy Otter Pub adjacent to the A10, wader wise it is starting to gather some momentum with 28 Ruff, 7 Dunlin (inc 1 fresh juv), 4 Green Sandpiper, Greenshank, 2 Ringed Plover and a Little Ringed Plover yesterday evening.  I didn't see the Wood Sandpiper of the past few days and I was also far too late to enjoy the previous evenings  moulting Black Tern.  What I did see was the makings of a Gull roost that unsurprisingly, given our location and the late summer build up of numbers, contained a reasonable proportion of Yellow-legged Gulls.  Below are some of the birds present amidst the Lesser-black Backs, always offering some level of challenge I have labelled these with what I think is within the gulls, you may not agree. 

With the lure of migrating waders and wetland birds and the chance to pick through Gulls too I shall be heading back here with some frequency as, I guess, will many others as it's probably the best bit of wader habitat in Cambs at the moment.

1 x ad YL Gull



1x 2CY and  1x 1CY YL Gull here I think

 

1x 1CY YL Gull

I'd rather be a Sparrow than a Snail....

The House Sparrows seem to be doing OK around Stuntney Heights and in addition to the 40 or so post breeding birds frequenting a nearby stretch of hedge we have 3 pairs preparing, or more accurately renovating, their nests beneath our eaves for a second round of breeding.  This has given me plenty of opportunity to say a cheery hello back to their chirruping and admire them in their varying states of  smart brownness.

More Crossbill Traffic

Four Crossbills flew North over the Village College in Soham, chipping away yesterday morning and 2 Siskins were vocally flying back t'other way.  A Kestrel had an accident and flew headlong into the window of a parked car and spent the rest of the day, forlorn and confused, stood on a beech stump on the lawn in front of the old school.  We checked that it was not in too bad shape and it didn't appear to have broken a wing so hopefully it made a recovery and not become Fox fodder, as it was not to be seen this morning.

Syncopated Chiffchaff

During the fantastic Ely Wildspace Bioblitz last weekend this Chiffchaff singing along Kiln Lane during the Saturday morning Dawn(ish) Chorus walk drew attention to itself.  Initially I thought it was two birds singing but I was able to confirm, from observation, that it is the song of just one bird.  The syncopation of the song is unusual, earlier in the season the exact same song posts were used by a standard singing bird, is it the same bird with a variation over time??

Return of the Whiff-whaff

For the third year in a row there is a Whiff-whaff - a bird singing a mixture of Willow Warbler (WILWA) and Chiffchaff (CHIFF) song - on St Edmund’s Fen at Wicken.  This bird seems to have gone unnoticed by the bold Fen ringers so we have no record of how it started out.  I first heard on 23-6-15, quite late in the season, but it was still singing heartily, switching readily between Willow Warbler and Chiffchaff, but usually giving at least a hint of the other in each song.

 

 

 

The first time I heard one at Wicken was when I was conducting a survey on St Edmund’s Fen back in 2013.  I marked it down as a Chiffchaff but kept a mental tag on it so as not to double count.  Suddenly it’s Chiffchaff-ing gave way to the liquid cascade of a Willow Warbler.  I followed that bird through the summer and gradually it introduced more Willow Warbler song, but still keeping plenty of Chiffchaff in its repertoire.  I captured a Willow Warbler in its territory and fitted it with a metal ring coloured red with a permanent marker pen.  After some hours mapping out its singing circuit I managed to see the bird and its red ring while it delivered a mixed song.  By an even greater stroke of luck I also stumbled upon its nest, which Carl Barrymore confirmed was of a Willow Warbler’s construction: this bird was a Willow Warbler and furthermore had been able to attract a mate despite its odd song.  Later that year it broadened its repertoire still further with tit-like phrases unlike either Willow Warbler or Chiffchaff.  Sadly, the nest was later predated.

 

    

 

The first Wicken Whiff-whaff

 

I picked up the second bird in May 2014.  Initially it sang plenty of standard Willow Warbler plus either chiff-chaff followed by a Willow Warbler’s cascade or a typical Willow Warbler finishing with a couple of chiff-chaff notes.  But again the song tended to become more elaborate starting with a crescendo-ing wee-wee-wee and ending with some chiff-chaffs.  I also recorded some repeated see-see-see notes (followed by chiff-chaffing) that were so far from a Phylloscopus that I can’t be sure it was coming from the same bird at all.  This bird did NOT wear a ring.

This year’s bird was, by comparison, quite conventional, as you can hear from the attached recordings.  In the first the bird is singing quite Willow Warbler-like with Chiffchaff inserts from the top of a birch tree; in the second, recorded a couple of minutes later, after the bird had dived into a willow thicket (bees and flies and leave rustle giving a lot of hiss) it proceeded to sing like a Chiffchaff, often after a very brief aborted snatch of WILWA song.  I can’t be certain whether this bird had a ring, but probably not.

 

There have been plenty of others: I recorded another in Witcham last year and almost everyone I speak to seems to have heard one.  Ben Green has even reported on from Ely this year.  It seems that this “mixed singing” has been noted for over 100 years.  British Birds had an article about it in 1940, there are notes on the phenomenon in BWP (vol 6, p657) and Gwentbirding blog wrote about it at length in April 2011.  It also appears that it is much more common and widespread than is generally realised. Those that have been identified with certainty have almost always turned out to be Willow Warblers.  At this point, when it is clear that this in not something exotic, too many birders lose interest.  But quirky phenomena such as this are of more than passing interest: anomalies can be useful in testing hypotheses.

So what is going on here?   Some common themes that emerge from the records:

(i) the Chiffchaff-like elements of their songs are usually delivered more rapidly and at a slightly higher pitch than a Chiffchaff;

(ii) the bird often starts with a predominantly Chiffchaff-like song but elaborate with much more Willow Warbler as the season progresses.  But is this progression an artifact of the fact that the mixed singing is what draws attention to the bird in the first place?  The Willow Warbler elements of its song may become more apparent later as the bird is followed.

    

It is unlikely that the Wicken birds were the same individual but perhaps they were related, raising the intriguing possibility that this type of singing is genetically inherited.  (Alternatively, sons may have learnt their aberrant song from their father.)  They may be imitating Chiffchaffs, though it is hard to explain why they all do it at too rapid a tempo and too high a pitch. All Willow Warblers do deliberately vary their song, one individual hardly repeating the same version twice.  (No two Chiffchaffs sing exactly the same song either.) It does appear that these “mixed singers” also vary their song more than most.  Whether that is because they are dunces who are not sure what they should sound like or superstars with a particularly varied repertoire is hard to tell.

     Contending theories include the following:

1. It’s neither a Chiffchaff nor a Willow Warbler

a)    Phylloscopus trochilus x collybita hybrid.

b)   Vagrant species.
[Hybrids and vagrants (P. tristis and P. ibericus) certainly occur but do not usually sound like Whiff-whaffs.]

2. Song mimicry, mixing or switching

a)    It’s learned the wrong song.
[If imprinted on the wrong species why do birds become worse at reproducing their model song as time passes?]

b)   It incorporates song elements from another species in order to augment its own song.
[If the purpose is ornamentation why do these birds, at least initially, often deliver such a simple chiff-chaffing song?]

c)    It copies song of another species in response to competition from that species.
[If singing is about real estate rather than sex, why doesn’t the female sing too? And why does the song become more WILWA-like as the season progresses, when mating is over and inter-specific competition relatively more important.]

3. No mimicry involved

a)    Unusual variant of normal song.
[While typical WILWA song is surprisingly varied, and often begins with a number of repeated syllables, rarely do they alternate two notes.]

b)   Primitive song produced by immature bird, perhaps one that has never heard a male Willow Warbler sing.
[Perhaps WILWA and CHIFF start with a similar primitive innate song that normally the WILWA elaborates in a process that fails or is retarded in Whiff-whaffs.]

 We need more observations to provide further clues.  I would be very interested to know if anyone else hears one, or has heard one recently.

Coturnix from slumber

Lights out last night and head to the pillow having read the introduction of whimsical lepidopterist Matthew Oates's In Pursuit of Butterflies.  I hadn't even started dreaming of iris and camilla, the Emperor and the Admiral, when the tri-syllabic whip of a Quail drifted through the open window from the field in front of the house.  This continued for some 5 minutes and I did fling the window wide to get a good earful of this summer treat. Whether he continued through the night I'm not sure but I'd love to have the pleasure of being lulled to sleep by Quail throughout the summer.

At the back of the house the Turtle Dove has become vocal again and doing some lovely display flights.  I presume this is in preparation for a second brood although I haven't seen any evidence that the first was successful as yet.

Piping hot

The Summer overlap has begun. Just as the weather has finally warmed up, and with migrants still arriving from further south, the first northern travelers are beginning to pass back through after their brief sojourn at the higher latitudes. The pool in front of the main observatory at Welney has shrunk, exposing a wide tract of mud on which the waders are feeding. Among the Lapwings and Avocets, a beautiful male Ruff probed along the shore, still wearing his ruff like a well worn Bedouin head scarf. Closer to me a collection of sandpipers fed and preened , and provided a perfect illustration of the similarities of three species.

The largest of the three is the redshank, and thanks to a very successful season there were plenty of fresh young birds, neatly fringed with green-gold, with legs that have not yet bloomed to full scarlet. 

Looking very similar, though much  smaller, a dainty Wood Sandpiper has returned from the breeding grounds in Scandinavia (or possibly Scotland even), a slender bird with spangled breeding plumage still evident. It's strong supercilium gives a slightly intense look to it as it pokes at the surface for small flies.

Two green sandpipers loafed on the muddy shore, before venturing out onto the water to feed. superficially like the Wood Sand, the Green lacks the obvious supercilium, and its spangling is not as bold. The dark underwings and broad tail bars are a real giveaway.

Summer terns up

I got a call from Bill this afternoon about the terns at Roswell Pits. He wanted to know exactly how many chicks there were, and I told him I thought I could see three on Friday, when I was leading a bunch of excitable school kids around the site, (and therefore not having my telescope to hand). 

Just to make sure, I thought I'd wander up and confirm this, and have a good look at them as well. At first I could only see two, but as the parents arrived with food, the third shuttled into view to join its screeking siblings. Their subtle plumage of powder grey and white, burnished on top with bronze and black-cap, was contrast to their raucous begging at the approach of fish, though there was not much squabbling between them. They're obviously well fed, and on this warm day they spent much of the time dozing, bills drooping on their chins.

Closer to me, a lone grebe bobbed gently on the sparkling water, preening as it turned in circles.

Near the bridge, three Chiffchaffs relentlessly sang , every few notes interspersed with a mid-summer stutter, and in the heat of the afternoon they perched high up- blending in with the Ash leaves, and not scuttling about as they do in Spring. Summer has finally settled, it seems, and only one short gust of wind arrived- a pleasant change as today the breeze was a salve rather than the bothersome interference of recent weeks. Down at the settling beds the dry song of Reed Warblers could be heard above the slight rustle of Phragmites, and three well grown Pochard ducklings dived constantly- emerging with silt-caked faces.