Photos:
Juvenile Iceland Gull, Birchwood Pool, Moore NR
Tufted Ducks and Wigeon at HGF
Bizarre - flowering rape field near home in the middle of winter!
1st January
I woke up this morning to the sound of a male Song Thrush singing his heart out. Nice way to start the New Year. No birding though Treecreeper and Great Spotted Woodpecker picked up in Mark’s garden (well woodland really as he owns some).
2nd January
Nothing much at HGF except 20 Linnets perched in the south hedge. Rixton was also very, very quiet. At the feeding station were 44 Tree Sparrows which were joined briefly by 25 Redwings. The thrushes seemed interested in what the sparrows were feeding on and, having decided seeds were not for them, they moved on.
Late afternoon I went to Risley Moss were Brian and Peter were already present but not having seen much. A Sparrowhawk came over and then a Merlin appeared (probable female) and provided a spectacular show of dashing around the moss. Eventually it seemed to disappear only to suddenly reappear just off to our left and catch a small bird (probable Meadow Pipit) in mid air. The Merlin took its catch off to the usual perch to consume it and provided everyone (a few other birders had turned up) with good views. One of the newcomers has apparently been birding RM for 20+ years and is writing a book about it. Should be interesting. I also put my scope on Jupiter and everyone did a bit of stargazing!
As darkness fell, two, possibly three Short-eared Owls appeared and then Brian and Pete left. 7 Woodcock and 15 Snipe also appeared off the mosses.
3rd January
No birding again – back to work in Brum.
4th January
This morning started with a Heinz flock (57) of Goldfinches in the garden waiting for breakfast. 27 Tree Sparrows were feeding at the Waterworks Lane breakfast bar. The line up from an early morning visit to HGF was:
Coot 30
Great Crested Grebe 6
Kestrel 1
Lapwing 76
Little Grebe 1
Pochard 8
Tufted Duck 37
Wigeon 62
A lunch time visit to Rixton didn’t yield much though it was good to see a build up of Tufted Ducks on Moat Lane pool. 37 birds were present along with a Pochard, 4 Cormorants and 3 Mute Swans.
Later in the afternoon I managed a trip to Moore – it was windy, cold and raining by then. Quite a few gulls were coming down to the pool at Birchwood Hide but were flighty and didn’t stay long. There was a constant throughput though. I would guess around 3-4000 birds came for a visit during the 90 minutes or so I was there. One of the last to appear was a juvenile Iceland Gull. This was a largish bird, about the size of an average Herring Gull and had a bill with markings similar to a juvenile Glauc. Perhaps this was the bird that was reported as such recently?
5th January
The surprise today was a sudden build up of Tree Sparrows at the feeding station. There were 78 birds present plus 3 Yellowhammers. This is the first time I have seen good numbers since early November. This number was only seen late afternoon – several brief visits during the day had only produced much lower numbers. I have a theory though that when these birds are well fed, they don’t need to all be present all of the time and so I think the flock breaks up into subgroups with only one subgroup present at any time. This also tallies with observations from previous years.
The next logical step in this hypothesis is that the subgroups would be aligned depending on where they are travelling from. No colony in the area of this size exists and it is clear that the birds here are originating from a number of areas – when they fly off to roost the flock often splits up.
At HGF today there was a large gull build up. Few of the larger gulls (they seem to shun this place now that the pool has shrunk) but at least 720 Black-headed Gulls were floating on the water. They look quite impressive in these numbers. A thorough trawl through the flock again failed to produce anything more interesting.
A single Redwing stayed in the garden for most of today.
6th January
No birding today
I woke up this morning to the sound of a male Song Thrush singing his heart out. Nice way to start the New Year. No birding though Treecreeper and Great Spotted Woodpecker picked up in Mark’s garden (well woodland really as he owns some).
2nd January
Nothing much at HGF except 20 Linnets perched in the south hedge. Rixton was also very, very quiet. At the feeding station were 44 Tree Sparrows which were joined briefly by 25 Redwings. The thrushes seemed interested in what the sparrows were feeding on and, having decided seeds were not for them, they moved on.
Late afternoon I went to Risley Moss were Brian and Peter were already present but not having seen much. A Sparrowhawk came over and then a Merlin appeared (probable female) and provided a spectacular show of dashing around the moss. Eventually it seemed to disappear only to suddenly reappear just off to our left and catch a small bird (probable Meadow Pipit) in mid air. The Merlin took its catch off to the usual perch to consume it and provided everyone (a few other birders had turned up) with good views. One of the newcomers has apparently been birding RM for 20+ years and is writing a book about it. Should be interesting. I also put my scope on Jupiter and everyone did a bit of stargazing!
As darkness fell, two, possibly three Short-eared Owls appeared and then Brian and Pete left. 7 Woodcock and 15 Snipe also appeared off the mosses.
3rd January
No birding again – back to work in Brum.
4th January
This morning started with a Heinz flock (57) of Goldfinches in the garden waiting for breakfast. 27 Tree Sparrows were feeding at the Waterworks Lane breakfast bar. The line up from an early morning visit to HGF was:
Coot 30
Great Crested Grebe 6
Kestrel 1
Lapwing 76
Little Grebe 1
Pochard 8
Tufted Duck 37
Wigeon 62
A lunch time visit to Rixton didn’t yield much though it was good to see a build up of Tufted Ducks on Moat Lane pool. 37 birds were present along with a Pochard, 4 Cormorants and 3 Mute Swans.
Later in the afternoon I managed a trip to Moore – it was windy, cold and raining by then. Quite a few gulls were coming down to the pool at Birchwood Hide but were flighty and didn’t stay long. There was a constant throughput though. I would guess around 3-4000 birds came for a visit during the 90 minutes or so I was there. One of the last to appear was a juvenile Iceland Gull. This was a largish bird, about the size of an average Herring Gull and had a bill with markings similar to a juvenile Glauc. Perhaps this was the bird that was reported as such recently?
5th January
The surprise today was a sudden build up of Tree Sparrows at the feeding station. There were 78 birds present plus 3 Yellowhammers. This is the first time I have seen good numbers since early November. This number was only seen late afternoon – several brief visits during the day had only produced much lower numbers. I have a theory though that when these birds are well fed, they don’t need to all be present all of the time and so I think the flock breaks up into subgroups with only one subgroup present at any time. This also tallies with observations from previous years.
The next logical step in this hypothesis is that the subgroups would be aligned depending on where they are travelling from. No colony in the area of this size exists and it is clear that the birds here are originating from a number of areas – when they fly off to roost the flock often splits up.
At HGF today there was a large gull build up. Few of the larger gulls (they seem to shun this place now that the pool has shrunk) but at least 720 Black-headed Gulls were floating on the water. They look quite impressive in these numbers. A thorough trawl through the flock again failed to produce anything more interesting.
A single Redwing stayed in the garden for most of today.
6th January
No birding today
No comments:
Post a Comment