tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49066846868327079902024-03-13T01:38:32.445+00:00Natural RamblingsEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-87021024033992497552016-01-10T17:01:00.000+00:002016-01-10T17:08:37.558+00:00Harriers at the HavenHappy New Year! Normally it would be time for my new year's roundup but I admit I'm a bit behind on everything. It was a hectic last part of the year with nothing but job drama, then my housemate took the internet a while ago and I won't have it back till Tuesday. I'd like to say that was why I haven't written for a while but actually it's because I've been overwhelmed by everything I've seen and didn't know where to start. That combined with the job drama meant I didn't write. Now that I'm borrowing some wifi I'm going to put a hold on the new year's post until I'm reconnected and for now concentrate on my visit to Titchfield Haven yesterday!<br />
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I've been out of touch with bird news without internet but my mum happened to check Titchfield Haven's twitter feed and found out about the Penduline Tits. Three have been reported since mid-December, starting out at Titchfield Haven, moving to the IBM lake in Cosham, and have now returned to the Haven. Despite the blowy, rainy weather we made our way down there yesterday to find that they were currently at the Meadow Hide.<br />
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The hide was much more action-packed than usual, both with people (as we were expecting) and with birds. Later after visiting the Meon Shore Hide, which usually boasts the highest numbers of birds, we found that practically all the islands were underwater, possibly explaining why most of the birds were at the Meadow Hide. There were ducks, Canada Geese and Curlews feeding on the field, and a suspicious amount of fluff floating around a patch of bullrushes just in front of the window, even though it wasn't that windy at that point. The bullrush heads were mostly bare but there were a few that still had a good amount of their fluffy seeds on them, and some birdwatchers directed us to the source of the flying seed, the small bandit masked beauty that was the Penduline Tit!<br />
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I would judge it to be about the size of a Great Tit, with colouring that reminded me of a Red-Backed Shrike very much- the brown back, grey head and black mask are very similar and I think the Collins Bird Guide mentions this too. Looking at the picture in that book I think this was a female because it had a small mask, whereas the male has a larger one (which would probably make it less reminiscent of a shrike), and our bird seemed pale while the males are apparently brighter. I believe there are two females and a male about but the other two never showed. Not that anyone in the hide minded because this bird was showing fantastically well, it was no more than 10 metres away and was feeding right on top of the reed where everyone could see, pulling out clumps of the fluff to get at the seed. Cameras were clicking and I have no doubt they got some fantastic photos!<br />
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Meanwhile, the rest of the birds were putting on a show too. All the ducks were fully post-eclipse and the drakes were strikingly bright (I don't think I've visited wetland since the tail end of eclipse season where everyone's still looking a bit dingy). Not to mention the mild weather was definetly effecting them and courtship behaviour was breaking out everywhere. We spotted a pair of Gadwalls bobbing their heads up and down, mimicing each other. Clearly their courtship was at an advance stage already because they started to mate on the water, the male grasping the female on the back of the neck with his bill and pushing her under. He mated with her several times, allowing her head to come up to breath in between. Duck mating does tend to look brutal but this didn't seem as bad as what I've heard about Mallard mating (I've never seen it but birds have been seen to die during this spectacle). It was more like the Black Swans I saw at the Haven, written about<a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-mating-dance-of-non-native-species.html" target="_blank"> here.</a> Only no swan is going to have a problem with its head going under, and the courtship seemed much simpler with the Gadwalls.<br />
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I haven't extensively observed wildfowl courtship but it does seem like mimicry is common. I saw several pairs of Canada Geese doing this too, and noticed that there is quite a sexual size difference when you see two that are clearly male and female together, the male is definetly a size bigger. One pair had a very flirty male who in between mimicing would hopefully peck at the back of her neck, and I'm sure I know what that meant, but she didn't seem ready yet. Interestingly as well as mimicing each others movements, they would also take turns pecking at the other's feathers. Do geese ever preen each other for courtship, I wonder?<br />
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This was all very interesting but an even more interesting thing was about to happen. Suddenly the cry 'Marsh Harrier!' went up in the hide, and a large, familiar sillhouette started to glide over the reeds, followed by another and still another. I saw familiar not because Marsh Harriers are common at the Haven (far from it, I've only seen them there once before) but because I've watched them extensively when I lived in Kent, at reserves like Dungeness and Elmley Marshes, and their shape and flight style is very distinctive. They fly low over the marshes, wings in a shallow V, and you can see their head looking down below the level of their wings, looking for prey. On Kentish marshes a harrier's appearance will cause every bird to go up- wildfowl, waders and gulls- and some to mob the bird and try to drive it away. I've seen this many times, but I've never seen a Marsh Harrier actually make a kill. While they probably do sometimes kill small ducks and waders, usually you see them dropping into the reeds and not come back up, and it can be assumed that they caught a small mammal of some sort, or maybe a frog in the summer.<br />
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I say this to try and explain a weird thing that happened when the harriers came: despite there being three of them at once (actually four because an adult male appeared a little later on- we decided it was probably an adult male, an adult female, and their two youngsters), none of the wildfowl and waders on the water or the meadows flew up. It was really odd, as normally a bird of prey sillhouette unsettles smaller species whether or not they are actually likely to be caught by it. The four harriers spent a lot of time circling around and gliding slowly over the reeds (they seem to let the wind take them along before turning around and flying into the wind back over the area to carefully comb it for prey) and it caused practically no disruption, and also none of them were mobbed. Are these birds just not used to harriers, unlike the Kentish birds? The harriers certainly didn't breed in the area and probably didn't arrive that long ago so that was all I could think of to explain it.<br />
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The two young birds looked very similar to the adult female in plumage, but you could tell which was which by their behaviour. The adult female kept being harrassed by one of the youngsters while she quartered the marshes. Birds of prey seem to keep bothering their parents for food for a long time, which makes sense as hunting is so difficult and they have so much to learn, and I've seen other species do this with calls. For example a young Peregrine trying to get food from an adult is a sound impossible to miss, it's a continual shrieking that immediately alerts you to the presence of a put-upon adult bird being chased around the sky by an insistant and very noisy youngster! And I've seen a Kestrel being bothered by its youngster, which was the only time I've ever heard a Kestrel make a sound, it was a 'ke-ke-ke' kind of noise (possibly where the name Kestrel came from?) and it was also somehow doing the little begging wing-flutter young birds do while in a glide. (It didn't get any food and was in fact probably hindering the adult's hunting efforts!) The Marsh Harrier youngsters didn't seem to be making any noise, unless it was very quiet, but the one that was bothering the female kept flying just under her and swinging its talons upwards to almost connect with hers. I know that Marsh Harriers sometimes pass food to each other in this way during courtship (never seen it but I'd love to!) where its part courtship feeding and part showing off their flying skills and therefore strength, but it seems illogical that they'd waste energy feeding babies this way. However maybe the mimicing of food pass behaviour was supposed to be a way of showing the youngster wanted to be fed? Presumably it could see the female didn't actually have food in her talons right then, but this was a way of saying 'hey, hunt me something!'<br />
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I wondered if there was a bit of hunting teaching going on as well. At one point the female and one of the juveniles were on each side of a small flock of Mallards, floating just above them. The ducks seemed completely unbothered until the youngster made a small lunge towards them and they decided to swim away from the area quickly. There didn't seem to be much intent towards the lunge a far as I could tell, but who knows? I don't know how long Marsh Harriers stay with their parents, I'd love to find out more. They are lovely birds, some of my absolute favourites ever, great to watch and known to fly in almost all weathers. I hope they stick around Hampshire for a long, long time.<br />
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How was your 2015 everybody? Stay tuned for my look at my 2015!Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-19642819810910895342015-10-31T23:34:00.000+00:002015-10-31T23:34:41.603+00:00Top 5 scariest British wildlife sounds!It's Halloween, a holiday I don't celebrate but do generally appreciate, because it gives me a chance to talk about scary animal sounds! These mostly focus on ones I've personally experienced, so I have been able to judge for myself how horrifying they are rather than just hearing from others. That said, let's kick off with a species group I don't have that much experience with but cannot be forgotten:<br />
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<u>5. Owls</u><br />
I'm terrible at owl watching, and don't really have that much experience at owl listening either. When I first heard a Tawny Owl hoot I was 19 and sleeping in a tent, and it was right outside and sounded so much like sound effects on the radio and TV that I thought it was a trick, because I'd assumed the sound effects were exaggerated in some way. It's a weird, wavering hoot that most people in this country are familiar with even if they don't realise it because its used so much as a sound effect to indicate night time. The 'kew-weeeck!' sound most often uttered by a female Tawny (though sometimes a male I believe) is quite well known too, and is a very distinctive noise of the night that I always feel lucky to hear. I'm less familiar with the Barn Owl's screeching call, which I hear if unexpected can be a shock especially if combined with the ghostly pale bird. Also apparently the Long-eared Owl has a very eerie hoot, which I hope I might hear one day. But for me it's the Tawny Owl's hoot all the way. It's exactly what you don't want to hear just behind your tent in an icy cold campsite!<br />
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<u>4. Nightjar</u><br />
Another night bird, this one even got named after its weird sounds. On heathland in late Spring and early Summer evenings, a weird churring sound may start up, wavering up and down and altogether being creepy. It is far carrying and presumably calls the females in so they can watch the male do his display flight and show off the white patches on his plumage. But when dusk is falling and you're suddenly surrounded by creepy mechanical churring, would you guess that? A weird, weird sound. I've only heard it once (maybe twice?) but it was very memorable.<br />
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<u>3. Jay</u><br />
You can hear this one in the daytime. Jays are generally more shy than most corvids, but they certainly fit in with their family in having loud and abrasive call which they will to deter anything and everything they feel is a threat. This could be a roosting Tawny Owl in their tree, Magpies getting too near, or even poor old you going for a quiet walk in the woods. It sounds like an unearthly, never ending screeching. Jays have beautiful plumage but probably the ugliest call of any bird in this country. Keep an ear out and if you hear something utterly horrible in a wood or a field, it's probably this bird scolding something and it might be you.<br />
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<u>2. Fox</u><br />
This one's quite famous but it was only recently that I heard it for myself. It was early on Christmas morning a couple of years ago when I was staying at my Uncle's in London, which meant we were probably surrounded by urban foxes patrolling their territories that night. Even though I knew this, I was still shocked by this incredibly loud scream from outside. I'd never heard it before, only read descriptions, which couldn't get across the utter weirdness and scariness of it. No one wants to hear that sound when they're trying to get back to sleep! Apparently vixens usually make the call but sometimes dog foxes too.<br />
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<u>1. Marsh Frog</u><br />
This one might sound weird because how can a frog be scary, you might think. But I used to live in Kent, and when I went birdwatching I'd sometimes hear a weird laughing sound that seemed to be coming from very close by. I at first assumed it was a bird, but it baffled me because where was the bird hiding? The sound would be coming from the vegetation right in front of me, and would carry on even if I walked closer. Not to mention I couldn't think of a single species of bird that could be making this sound. I only found out what it was by accident, and it wasn't a bird at all. The Marsh Frog is an introduced species to Britain and the marshes of Kent are one of its strongholds, which was why I'd never heard it before. Its weird laughing call has added an extra dimension of eeriness to the already weird landscapes of Dungeness and the Sheppey Marshes. This isn't just a case of not knowing what it was making it creepy either, even now the sound still freaks me out. I hope you all get to hear it, if you haven't already, so you can see what I mean!<br />
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<u> </u><br />Thanks for reading my slightly rushed Halloween post! I'd love to hear about what other people would pick for their scariest sounds, either from Britain or from another country. Let me know!Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-60771453188477527482015-09-12T22:28:00.000+01:002015-09-12T22:28:59.641+01:00Moving house, and finding a new patchAs you might be able to tell from the title, I've now moved house! I'm only a little way away from where I used to be, and all my old sites are where they used to be, as reachable by public transport (or not, as the case may be) as ever. But ever since I made the decision to leave my old patch at the end of last year, I've been looking for a new one.<br />
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My mum tipped me off that you could easily walk to the Itchen Navigation from where I live now, so one day I set off to check it out. Only I didn't have a map and assumed this wouldn't be a problem. Of course I ended up in two dead ends, one in a quarry and one that ended in a playing field instead of an interesting walk. I was about to give up but decided to go just a little further, and had just gone past the sports centre the playing field belonged to when I suddenly had a flash of memory, like I'd been there before. I crossed the carpark, and at the other end was the start of a path to the navigation! I remembered, years and years ago, being invited to a bat walk there with a friend of mine who was about to go to uni to do environmental science. We were shown some pipistrelles in the hand by the leader of the tour who was licensed to handle them, and then as it got dark we used bat detectors to find pipistrelles (possibly both species? I don't remember) and Daubenton's bats, the latter of which were a new species for me and I learned often hunt over water.<br />
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It was a really great bat walk and also, for me, one of the only times I've ever been able to share my wildlife enthusiasm with a friend. It's hard to find people my age who are interested in wildlife. So it made me very happy to find that place again. I've walked there a couple of times now and it's a lovely walk. Currently there are tonnes of Swallows and House Martins everywhere, and I glimpsed a Sedge Warbler in some reeds- the summer visitors getting ready to go soon. I was struck by how enormous Long-tailed Tit flocks are at this time of year, their ranks swelled by this years youngsters that no longer look like youngsters, and I saw a few Goldcrests including a cute, scruffy youngster with no crest at all. The signs say there are Water Voles and Otters in the river, and though I know seeing Otters is unlikely I could still look out for their spraints and maybe even paw marks. I haven't seen a Water Vole for years but they certainly come out in the daytime and it seems to me that the more you visit a river, the better your chances. :) All those were wonderful things but my favourites are the Jays that are in one particular area, because they are so hilariously loud, mobbing Magpies and alarm calling crossly as I go past. I spotted one swallowing an acorn whole, something I knew they did but had never actually seen! Presumably it only goes down into the crop for safe keeping before it can be stashed somewhere, not into the stomach.<br />
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So that was local patch contender number one- a lovely stretch of river with all kinds of potential. My next idea was to try and get to this place I can see from the train when I commute into work. It's where the river runs through a big field surrounded by woods, with a small herd of horses roaming about on one side of the water and cows on the other. From the train it appeared to be just further along the navigation, meaning I'd get there if I followed the path I was already walking a bit further, but when I tried this I found that the path goes under the railway line and ends up at the wrong side. But I knew you could get to that field somehow as I'd seen people walking there. Yesterday I decided it was time to go and explore. But again, no map! So it was going to be a bit trial and error.<br />
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My first plan was to go to the sports centre again and walk on the other side of the water this time. But that path almost immediately came out into a suburb. I decided the thing to do would be to follow the main road and check all the cul-de-sacs on each side for a footpath entrance back to the river. I knew it had to be there somewhere as you could sometimes glimpse it through the houses. One block of flats even had signs up forbidding anyone other than residents to walk by one particular stretch of river or sit on the benches! I mean, come on.<br />
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After a few of these detours I still hadn't found anything. The road was starting to lead me out of the suburb again, but things were looking more promising as it went uphill, as I could see fields opening out to the left. Just beyond a quarry (that I didn't quite have the nerve to try wandering round) was a little gate leading into trees, labelled 'Water Vole way', which was a big hint that it might eventually lead to water. It seemed I was finally on the right track!<br />
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I followed the tree-covered path a little way and it opened up into the most gorgeous patch of woodland I've ever seen! I've been lucky enough to spend a lot of time in lovely Crab Wood, but this was different somehow. It was all on a slope, and the trees meant there was barely any sunlight under there at all. Very mysterious! I could hear what sounded like two Nuthatches making their incredibly loud car-alarm calls, and then the huge shape of a Buzzard suddenly lifted off from one of the trees and flapped away, after which they quietened down, their goal accomplished. I could hear the Buzzard mewing overhead, though I could no longer see it.<br />
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The trees were filled with Long-tailed Tits again, so many that it seemed like every tree was filled with them. There were also Chiffchaffs, Great Tits and a Coal Tit, while a Treecreeper suddenly darted onto a nearby tree. Then I noticed a Badger sett opening, surrounded by a big, sandy spoil heap. I looked for paw marks in the sand but it was too trodden about.<br />
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I made up my mind then and there to visit this wood again later in Autumn, I bet there will be fungi springing up everywhere! It's a bit early for now and I only saw a couple of different ones. There was a fallen trunk covered all over in the pure white, shiny, domed caps with big gills that I've previously IDed as White Milking Bonnet (<a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/guessing-at-fungi-and-sly-visitor.html" target="_blank">this post</a>) but I'm still not sure. I love them, anyway, they always look too delicate to be real, like they just sprang up overnight. I wish I'd brought my camera.<br />
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The wood was thick, but luckily the paths were signposted and there were steps down. I came out of the gate at the bottom to a field, which I immediately recognised as the one I had been looking for. It was such a good feeling to finally find it! But that wasn't even the best thing. There was a flock of corvids overheard mobbing something big, which I at first assumed must be the displaced Buzzard again. But one glance through the binoculars and 'Osprey!' sprang into my head. Filled with excitement, I nonetheless checked it carefully in case it was somehow a very pale Buzzard (like 'Osprey' from my old patch, who was not only practically all white underneath but also had a noticeable eyestripe, hence the nickname). But there was no mistaking it. For one thing it was utterly huge, with wings that were long, proportionally narrow and swept back. It had a white face and chest and the eyestripe was huge and bold brown, making 'Osprey' my pale Buzzard's attempt look very weak by comparison. Here was the real thing.<br />
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The corvids, which I think were a mixture of Rooks and Jackdaws, were mercilessly mobbing the huge bird as a flock, buffeting it around the sky. But it was a sunny day and the Osprey let itself catch a thermal and drift upwards, high enough so the corvids lost interest in following it. It soared higher and higher, and I could faintly see tiny hirundines it met up there bothering it as well! But then it began to fly purposefully towards the North East, quickly disappearing from view. It was an absolutely amazing thing to see, and was only my second Osprey in Hampshire (the first being a fly-over at St Catherine's Hill, around this time of year too). In this county you can't predict them, you just have to be lucky and be in the right place at the right time. I don't know if its all the media attention Ospreys get in the country but every time I see one I want to know more about it. Where did it come from? Was it born in this country? Was it this year's youngster or an adult, a few years old? I'd lean towards an adult as it had a primary missing on its left wing, more like a moulting adult rather than a fresh-plumaged juvenile. If so, did it nest here? Where did it leave that primary? I bet their primaries are stunningly massive.<br />
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So that was local patch contender number two, starting things off with a bang! I have to say that despite the fact that its further away, I'm really leaning towards the second one at this point. Leaving aside the fact that its already proved its potential in a big way, its interesting in that it has two distinct habitats: the woodland, and the river and its surrounding fields. I'll hopefully have lots more chances to explore both these places and build up some good records again. It's very exciting and I'm sure I'll have lots to fill this blog with in the coming months! Before that, though, I still have to write about Norfolk this year before I forget it all. Dammit I've been slack with my blogging recently!Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-49117112326429871322015-06-09T21:04:00.000+01:002015-06-09T21:04:52.655+01:00Watching Little Grebes Build a NestIf you're reading that title and thinking 'aren't we a bit past nest building season at this point?' you'd be right! The nest building happened in early May. But it was so amazing that even though it was over a month ago I couldn't not write about it. I have posts cooking up in my brain about wildlife things that happened years ago. Who knows when they'll get written?<br />
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The Little Grebes were at Blashford Lakes and their chosen nest site was in front of the Goosander Hide right near the Sand Martin nesting wall, in a branch that had been deliberately put there by the reserve maintenance team. My mum and I thought it had been put there to encourage nesting of water birds, but according to the reserve blog it was put there to give baby Sand Martins somewhere to swim to if they fell from the nesting wall on fledging. But it was certainly appreciated by the Little Grebes, who already had a nice pile of sticks and weeds built up, though it was far from finished. When we started to watch both members of the pair were working hard, bringing more material to the nest.<br />
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Nearby, a pair of Great-Crested Grebes distracted us by starting the first stage of their courtship dance! (no photos of that I'm afraid, I only got the Little Grebe photos by being about 5 metres away from them.) The dance starts with a head-shaking display where the birds mimic each other and take turns shaking the plumes on their heads. But suddenly a bunch of half-grown ducklings began milling around them! The grebes were distracted, stopped the display, and one of them carefully shooed the ducklings away. (I may be making this up but could the grebes have been gentle with the ducklings because they were worried the mother duck might have had something to say about it otherwise?) Sadly they didn't start dancing again, and instead swam away together. I watched for a long time to see if they'd start again, as it was only the second time I'd ever seen the mimicry stage of the courtship, and I've never seen the second stage (where they stand up on the water and offer each other waterweed). They didn't, sadly, but the Little Grebes were more than enough to watch!<br />
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The Little Grebes were having trouble with the ducklings too, coming closer to the nest than one of the pair felt comfortable with. The ducklings and the grebes were about the same size, but this grebe had no fears about seeing the ducklings off, and driving them back towards the bank were their mother was. Once the grebe was satisfied they were well and truly out of the way he had a quick fishing session, diving over and over and swallowing several tiny silver fish. But then the other grebe began to call, in a series of surprisingly loud notes, and he came back.<br />
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Here's one of the grebes having a little wash. Grebe feathers are supposed to be super-soft, as well as waterproof- perfectly adapted for their aquatic life. Little Grebes have an amazing lack of tail, but from watching them so closely I saw there is actually a single feather sticking out right at the back! It's not very big and isn't really visible in this photo. Does it have any use I wonder? Breeding plumage Little Grebes also have yellow patches on the sides of their beak, which I always thought before were feathers, but I realised they were actually patches of highly coloured bare skin, almost like a gape on a baby bird. It must be for displaying, as well as the lovely rusty cheeks. While this grebe was preening a tiny feather came out, and it ate it! Grebes apparently eat feathers to line their stomachs against sharp fishbones, and also feed them to their babies, so why waste a perfectly good part of your own plumage?<br />
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I love the way the ripples go in this photo! But here's a closeup of the grebe.<br />
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You can see how flat its back is. This came in handy for what happened next. The female sat on the nest, lowered her beak into the water and displayed her back to the male. We wondered what she was doing until the male swam over, climbed on top and mated with her. It was certainly easier for him to balance than for a lot of other species I've seen mating, and he was also advantaged by her total lack of tail, making it easier to perform the actual act. Earlier when I said it was the male who chased the ducklings, I was just guessing when I actually saw it but later it was confirmed when he was the bird who climbed on top.<br />
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I've been checking the Blashford blog but I haven't seen any updates on the nest. It's possible it didn't survive- there has been plenty of rain since the start of May, and all floating nests are vulnerable. Or maybe the nest did progress all the way to hatching but when the eggs hatched the parents took the babies away so they couldn't be viewed from the hide anymore. The Blashford lakes are absolutely huge and the Little Grebes are very tiny, and like many water birds they leave the nest straight away. I'd love to know either way if anyone from my area knows. I was just happy to be able to watch this amazing natural event, a nest I'd never seen before being built. There are lots of Little Grebes on the Itchen Navigation near where I live, but I've never seen a nest, or any chicks. We think they go somewhere on the surrounding water meadows where they aren't so exposed. I've never heard a pair call to each other before, either. Whenever I've seen a pair together outside the breeding season they were always silent. Maybe calling happens more in the breeding season, or just is needed more on larger bodies of water?<br />
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On the Blashford scrape there was also another pair getting ready for upcoming eggs! We saw one Redshank approach another, and begin raising his wings one at at time, accompanied by the Redshank's trademark loud calls. I can't remember where I heard this, but I think for some species of waders I think the white underwings are impressive to the female, and are flashed as a display? Though honestly I can't imagine how one set of white underwings can be different from another, maybe it's more the entire display with the calling and flapping as well. Anyway the female wasn't really paying attention to the male, though he didn't seem to read her disinterest very well and tried to jump on her back to mate with her. Unlike the Little Grebes, though, he had the disadvantage of long legs which made balancing on a bird that isn't that bothered whether you stay on a problem! He fell off without mating successfully.<br />
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Later, while in the woods around the lakes, we found something amazing in a patch of sand. It was the first Badger footprints I've ever seen! I've seen a few <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/badger-mysteries.html" target="_blank">setts</a>, and plenty of signs (rootling patches, <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/recording-signs-of-mammals-for-national.html" target="_blank">dung</a>, scratched trees and chewed roots, kill remains) but never their distinctive, wide pawprints. All the setts I've seen have been on dark chalky earth, and the Badgers turn over the soil frequently near the sett so it's hard to see their prints. But the small patch of sand we found was just enough to visibly show an area where a Badger had scuttled past the night before. The softness of the sand picked it up the detail in the pawmark perfectly. Though my photos aren't all that good and don't really show how distinctive these tracks were.<br />
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The last one shows the wide, often described as kidney-shaped, pad quite well. As you can see I used a 2p coin for size comparison, but I want to impress on you the importance of remembering to take the coin away afterwards! The day after my visit, this post appeared on the Blashford blog: <a href="https://blashfordlakes.wordpress.com/2015/05/02/the-early-birder-catches-the-bird/" target="_blank">https://blashfordlakes.wordpress.com/2015/05/02/the-early-birder-catches-the-bird/</a> The writer of this post found a set of Badger footprints too, in what sounds like exactly the same spot as mine, and he even found a handy 2p coin to photograph it with! Er....whoops. ^^ I could have sworn I took it with me, but I misremembered because this is clearly the same coin! Leaving random coins lying around in nature is not to be encouraged, so kids, remember to take your photographic scale aids with you! Or put them in the reserve collection box, as the writer did. Also you can see some lovely Little Grebe photos in that post. <br />
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Thanks for reading friends, and I hope the joys of Spring found you this year! :)Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-76290390708450966932015-05-20T22:05:00.003+01:002015-05-20T22:06:22.784+01:00Auks and Jellyfish at Portland Bill!This is actually a post I meant to write in April but I've got really behind on my posts recently. In late April I took a drive down to Portland Bill, in the hope of finding migrants and seeing some lovely seabirds.<br />
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The best way to see both those things is to arrive very early, but I live too far away from Portland Bill for that to be possible. I got there at about 10am and as soon as I got down to the cliffs I saw dozens of Guillemots and Razorbills zooming about, landing on their cliff nests and whirring their way over the water, little wings going at top speed. I love watching auks so much! I especially love when they land on the water because you can see how ludicrously far apart and far back their legs are when they lower them to land, and then they just crash into the water and suddenly look like a normal bird again. Until they dive, when it's all wings acting like flippers and you remember they are the penguins of the northern hemisphere. I watched them for hours because there's not really anywhere in Hampshire to see them and I have to get my fill. Some Guillemots could just about be seen lined up on the cliff, with some Shags nesting lower down. I expect the Razorbills breed somewhere but they weren't visible on the cliff. There are always more Guillemots than Razorbills at Portland Bill, but still a respectable number of Razorbills. <br />
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Even if you're a really bad seawatcher like me, auks are easy to recognise by their flight pattern and colouring. They're the only type of bird you'll see on a seawatch that has such tiny wings compared with its body length, and they flap so fast and fly completely straight. If you get any sort of decent view you'll see their colouring too, which in spring is always dark above and light below. They have more white on them outside the breeding season. When it comes to other seabirds I'm very much a beginner. I'm in the process of learning the ways the different groups of seabirds fly, which I've been trying to do ever since I saw my first skua back in 2011. So my aim for this seawatch was to take note of everything I saw, even if I didn't know what it was. Most of the birds out on the sea seemed to be auks, but there were a few interesting things. I saw a couple of Whimbrels fly by which was great. Then I saw a v-shaped formation of dark birds flying low over the sea. They had long necks but long wings too, so they were ducks or geese rather than auks. But they were also too dark to be any of the geese species, even a Brent Goose. Also they seemed smaller with shorter necks than a goose. So I decided through process of elimination that they were probably Common Scoter, which is a very dark coloured duck found at sea. But you can see how it's hard to be certain, especially when you're not that experienced. Not that I always want certainty- in fact I like to identify stuff on my own because I find it the best way to learn.<br />
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I walked along the part of the footpath that overlooks the coast, admiring the clear blue sea and the Fulmars gliding around. There were a group of auks swimming near the cliff, and I heard a splashing noise that was so loud it carried easily all the way up to where I was. At first I assumed it was one of the auks taking a bath, but it seemed to go on and on so I tried to figure out what it was. I noticed a few Shags swimming nearby, and one of them seemed to be bathing very loudly and splashily. Then another one started doing the same. I began to realise that the loud splashing sounds were actually caused by the birds deliberately slapping the water with their wings in quick succession. There was a sort of rhythm to it, with about 12 wings slaps followed by a quick dive down to slosh water over their feathers, then a pause, before doing the same routine again. Two of them even seemed to be doing it 'at' each other at one point! Was this some sort of courtship display? I've heard of it before but I'm often being surprised by courtship behaviours that are new to me, like those <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/a-very-gothic-experience-not-really-and.html" target="_blank">Pied Wagtails</a> from last post. Has anyone else seen anything like this with Shags?<br />
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The sea was so clear that I later was able to see something even more new to me. I saw what was unmistakably a jellyfish, but not one like I'd ever seen before. I've only ever seen Moon Jellyfish, which are the round flat transparent ones with four purple rings inside them that often wash up on shores. But this one had a big, pale pink, rotund body with a mass of what I took to be tentacles coming out the back. In fact it was shaped a bit like a mushroom with the back part as the stem. It also had a very clear dark line going all the way around the edge of the round part. I was worried I would remember what it looked like when I went to identify it later so I did a quick sketch.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Normally it's hard to get wildlife to stay still long enough to draw it but that wasn't a problem here!</td></tr>
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Looking it up when I got home I found out it's called the Barrel Jellyfish, which seems to fit it well. I also found out that my sightings may be part of an overall trend in the UK, because <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11533435/Hot-weather-sparks-jellyfish-invasion-off-Devon-and-Cornwall-coast.html" target="_blank">this article from April </a>comments on large numbers of them being seen off the coast of Devon and Cornwall, a little way down the coast from here. Apparently they thrive in warmer weather, and it certainly was in a very warm stretch of weather when I saw them. It's always cool to find out your sightings fit in with an overall trend. I didn't see whole swarms by any means, but did see four overall. This was the page I used to identify it: <a href="http://www.mcsuk.org/downloads/wildlife/Jellyfishguide.pdf">http://www.mcsuk.org/downloads/wildlife/Jellyfishguide.pdf</a> . It says that Barrel Jellyfish have arms instead of tentacles, which is interesting. And they only have a mild sting, which is good to know! Though hopefully I'll never find myself accidentally swimming with them, that would be disconcerting as they are <i>huge</i>.<br />
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Happy Spring, everyone! Every day I'm surprised by how far along in the breeding season so many of the birds are, and every day I see more evidence that spring is a season of death and life at the same time. For every one life that survives, many don't. At this time of year you'll see dead baby birds often, whether they fell from the nest, or fledged only to get predated as a fledgling. But the countryside is also exploding with life, with busy parent birds darting about everywhere while territories still need to be maintained through diligent singing by the males. It's amazing they find the time! And soon they'll be giant families of tits and warblers everywhere. Happy days.<br />
<br />Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-29251002053963924352015-04-11T21:25:00.000+01:002015-04-11T21:26:33.320+01:00A Very Gothic Experience (not really) and more courtship displaysYesterday I was in a cemetery next to an old church, walking among the graves, when I heard the distant croaking call of a Raven. Looking up I saw the huge, flying cross silhouette of this great and most gothic of corvids, soaring majestically over.<br />
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...Well, that would leave out the fact that it was a glorious sunny day, the graves were covered in beautiful floral displays, and a Raven's croak never sounded particularly gothic in my opinion! I've always been struck by how oddly polite their call is, and while it can be heard from a great distance there's nothing loud or fussy about it. Compared with the screeching of Rooks or the harsh 'chak!' of Jackdaws it's really not sinister at all. But it is great for finding them, as the call is unmistakable, and as soon as you hear it just look up and you'll no doubt see a big black bird flying over.<br />
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This particular church was at Minstead in the New Forest, whose graveyard is notable for having Sir Arthur Conan Doyle buried there (among the new graves because he was buried far from the church due to his spiritualist beliefs being a bit suspicious to the clergy at the time). There's also a grave which originally had the words 'faithful husband' but after finding out some things to the contrary after his death his widow cut carefully around the word 'faithful' and removed it, so now it just reads something like 'he was a husband'. I guess sometimes that's all you can say. ^^<br />
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After visiting the church I went for a walk around the area, and on a field I saw the black and white blur of two Pied Wagtails fighting. It seemed very violent as one kept pinning the other onto the ground, but then as they stayed still for a moment I got a good look at their plumage and realised they were a male and a female. They female crouched down and presented her tail to the male, and began to flutter her wings, and he jumped onto her back and quickly mated with her. In fact it was so quick that I wondered if it had actually succeeded at all. As I wrote about in my <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-black-headed-gull-colony-sketchbook.html" target="_blank">Black-headed Gull post</a>, birds mate by touching their sexual organs together, which are similar in males and females and are called the cloaca. (There are a few exceptions to this as in some species of birds the males have penises, I think Ostriches and ducks, but not may others.) With these Pied Wagtails their tails were so long that it looked like a struggle to get them out of the way for long enough to expose the cloaca to each other. It's possible they had the same thought I had as I saw them mate twice more afterwards. The female can only produce one egg a day, and the pair must mate successfully beforehand each time.<br />
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Most people know about well-known courtship displays like the mating dance of the Great-crested Grebe, but I'm starting to realise that other species all have their own courtship rituals too, and if you watch them carefully enough at this time of year you might see them for yourself. I never would have guessed that a Pied Wagtail gets in the mood for mating with a vicious fight! To see it for yourself keep an eye on pairs of common birds that you see at this time of year, especially of species that you never normally see together, like Robins. You might see the female being fed, displays of behavioral mimicry, mutual preening (like the famous 'billing and cooing' of pigeons) showing off by the male, and after mating some birds have rituals then too such as calling or spending time close together afterwards. It's tempting to anthropomorphize these birds, and I think we all do to some extent, but all these behaviours have reasons behind them and it's interesting to make a guess at what they are. Feral birds like ducks and pigeons, and even escaped birds if they are living in a natural enough environment, can be great to watch as it's easy to get close to them. I wrote about seeing the Black Swan's mating dance <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-mating-dance-of-non-native-species.html" target="_blank">here</a>, and about watching a Woodpigeon feed his mate 'pigeon milk' <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/amorous-activities-in-pigeon-family.html" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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As I walked through an area of heathland surrounded by conifers I was lucky enough to hear the song of a Firecrest, and get a good view of this wonderfully colourful bird. Firecrests are a hundred times more striking in real life than in pictures, and the yellow-ochre splash of colour on their shoulder is particularly dazzling, especially in contrast to their olive backs and black and white striped heads. Their song is a series of speeding up notes, a little like the Goldcrest's song but all on one note. I've always found Spring Firecrests to be very confident birds, easy to see at close range once you hear them. And they always seem bigger than Goldcrests, though whether they actually are noticeably bigger is perhaps not true. It's the colouring that makes them seem so, and perhaps the confidence soon. Firecrests are one bird I'm proud to say I'm 'getting better at'- I saw my first one with help in 2010 and since then I've been finding my own locally, and can recognise their song.<br />
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It's still early April and it's weird to think that while some birds, like the Pied Wagtails, are well on their way to breeding, some of our breeding species are not even here yet! Later on in the Spring if I travel to their New Forest again I'll be able to hear Cuckoos, Redstarts, Wood Warblers, Woodlarks and Tree Pipits, but heard not a peep of any of these species just yet. Meanwhile, the Raven I saw earlier is one of our earliest breeding birds, and could have already fledged his young for the year. It's amazing to think about. One migrant I did see yesterday was the first Swallows of the year, for me at least! It's always lovely to see them come back.<br />
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Finally, as I walked through the wooded New Forest enclosures I was impressed to see a species I don't remember when I last saw- I kept passing mounds of earth covered in great swarming masses of Wood Ants! These beasties are about 3 times the size of a black ant, and are more fussy about their habitat. I'm not sure if they actually eat wood but they certainly chew it, as one nest was near a pile of logs that had become riddled with holes!<br />
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Happy Spring, everyone! I'm certainly full of the joys. :)Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-35958815438842890442015-01-14T23:11:00.000+00:002015-01-14T23:11:18.205+00:00A Look Back on 2014 at Barton FarmHappy New Year everyone! This time last year I wrote a yearly wrap up of 2013 including first and last records of certain species, and I was planning on doing something similar this year only something came up. This post is a little late anyway because the past few evenings have been devoted to my first ever bone cleaning! The bones are now all clean and are drying out, ready for a full post at some point in 2015. I can't wait until they are dry so I can start to try and figure out which bone is from which part of the body, take some photos and generally use my find to learn more about this particular animal, species which will be kept under my hat for now. But it's an interesting start to the year for me wildlife-wise.<br />
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I'm writing today a little sad because building work has finally started at my local patch, Barton Farm. It's been scheduled for development for many years now, and the earliest guess I heard for work starting was June 2014. That didn't happen, but on Sunday I arrived to see an area of the big field had been stripped of soil, right down to the chalk underneath, and diggers were waiting at the edge of the site. The small horse paddock that's behind a house at the bottom of the farm and is often covered in Rooks was also gone. (The Rooks were still around enjoying the freshly exposed earth though!) So it looks like 2014 will be my last complete year at this patch. I know there will still be something to see for a while as building work doesn't happen overnight, but will I still want to visit after they start cutting down the trees and removing the hedgerows? I don't know.<br />
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So instead of last year when I wrote about things I saw in 2013 and the sightings were from all over, this 2014 post will mostly be about Barton Farm and the records I made there. I didn't have a lot of time to watch wildlife this year so when I did get away, that's where I went. And the beauty of patch watching is that a bird can be common as anything but when you see it on your patch it's super exciting because you've never seen it there before. You can watch the changing of bird numbers as the seasons progress and notice patterns. You'll start to make educated guesses about the location of nests, even when you never see the actual nest, just from the behaviour of birds.You start to notice signs of hidden mammals and birds. That's how much this patch means to me, that I will lose this place I know so well. I know it will be missed by many, as it is popular with dog walkers, picnickers, cyclists and joggers. I won't lie and pretend I didn't sometimes wish there were less people about, being the shy person that I am! Barton Farm was farmed by someone who wanted to give wildlife a space on their farm, given that there were wide margins at the edges of the fields that were allowed to grow wild, and the fields spent time in stubble and became covered in feeding birds. <br />
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In Spring, these were the dates of my first and last sightings:<br />
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<li>16/2- My first butterfly of the season, and it wasn't a Red Admiral like it is most years but a <b>Peacock</b></li>
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<li>6/3- Last <b>Redwings</b> and <b>Fieldfares</b> </li>
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<li>13/4- Four <b>Swallows</b> flew North- one day earlier than my 2013 record, (but still much later than some people's records of course!) </li>
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<li>19/4- The <b>House Martins </b>returned to the farm.</li>
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<li> 27/4- The first <b>Whitethroat</b> reappeared, a singing male.</li>
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<li>11/5- The first <b>Swift </b>was seen.</li>
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<li>11/5- A female <b>Blackbird </b>was seen with food</li>
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<li>18/5- The first young bird, a juvenile <b>Robin</b>! </li>
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2014 was a great year for new additions to my patch list, with six new species! I bet I'm not the first birdwatcher who made predictions about what birds they thought they would see next on their patch. My predictions at the start of this year that totally failed to come true included: Mallard (which I thought I had a reasonable chance of seeing fly over during their early Spring 'wandering' period), Raven (I've seen them a few times the other side of Winchester and am still holding out for a flyover!), and Brambling (still haven't picked one out among the Chaffinches, but then Winter 2013-14 was not a Brambling year and it doesn't look like this winter is either, at least not so far). But I did end up adding some species that I <i>never </i>would have predicted! So let's take a look.<br />
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<br />
<ul>
<li>15/1- My first new species of the year, and one that I actually did predict beforehand, <b>Pheasant</b>. It does seem odd that when it comes to game birds, my patch list got Grey Partridge first (ask me about <i>that </i>story and how excited I was when it happened sometime!), and then Red-legged Partridge (several records but it's still only occasionally I see them) before I finally recorded a Pheasant! But Pheasants don't seem to be common around this particular part of the local farmland, even though I had suspected they lived on the farmland on the other side of the road. When I found a few plucked Pheasant feathers, the remains of a kill, back in 2013 I guessed it wouldn't be long before I saw one. And I have a couple of records now, but the fact that I see them so rarely suggests there is no shoot near here.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li> 16-2- Another one that seems obvious, but I didn't really predict- a <b>Sparrowhawk </b>glided over on this lovely sunny day! It seemed strange that I hadn't predicted it, as we get Sparrowhawks in our garden which really isn't that far away. But I already knew that garden wildlife is in some ways a world away from what shows up on the farm, with birds like Greenfinches common in our garden and yet a rare sight at Barton Farm. So the Sparrowhawk joined a rather illustrious list of birds of prey that I've been lucky enough to see here, alongside Buzzard, Kestrel, Red Kite, Peregrine, Hobby, and signs of Tawny Owl and Barn Owl. Wonderful!</li>
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<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">6/7- One of my favourite
moments of the Summer was when I walked to the mature trees in the middle
of the farm and suddenly realised the trees were filled with <b>Spotted
Flycatchers</b>! There were at least three youngsters, and two adults
feeding them! I love Spotted Flycatchers because what they lack in plumage
prettiness they more than make up for in personality. If you know the bird
even a little bit you will recognise the way it sits confidently out in
the open, very upright, and then suddenly flies into a little hover before
perching openly once again. You can watch them for ages because they don't
flit away and hide like some birds do, and when they fly they never seem
to go far. And even when the adults seem to be wrongly named because they
are quite pale and not spotty at all, if you see the young birds you'll
see where the name came from! They are adorably spotty. Spotted Flycatcher
was not a bird I <i>ever </i>could have predicted would once be on my
patch list, because even though the trees on the farm are lovely they are
not all that good for birds, or only the commonest species anyway. It was
wonderful to see the flycatchers appreciating them, though I'm positive
they didn't breed on the farm.</span></li>
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">3/8- Another amazing
record. I was watching the bushes next to the railway cutting and was
amazed to see three <b>House Sparrows </b>feeding in an elder bush! There
were two males and a female. Once a common farmland species, it's rare the
farm that has them now. I haven't seen any before or since, but was still
chuffed to bits that I got to see them just that one time. Far from
predicting them, I actually wrote them off as a bird I would never see at
Barton Farm because it wasn't a farm that had sparrows already, so it
probably never would again. And ok, they aren't resident there, but it did
make me see that sparrows sometimes travel in search of food!</span>
</li>
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<ul>
<li> 17/9- I spotted what I thought at first glance was a Wheatear in the mature trees, which would have been exciting enough...until I realised it was far too brown and streaky on the back, and too small, with a neat splash of orange on its chest. It was a <b>Whinchat</b>! I've recorded Wheatears every Autumn since I started watching this patch, but never a Whinchat, which aren't all that easy to find in Hampshire sometimes. I was honoured to see one passing through on its migration!</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li> 14/10- In one of the field margins, I thought I saw the Whinchat again. The bird sat on top of a bush instead of diving into undergrowth, which is classic chat behaviour, and it was about the same size. But soon I realised this was a totally different bird, with barely any eyestripe and a dark patch behind the eye, and a noticeable white wing bar. All these signs pointed to the Whinchat's close cousin, a <b>Stonechat</b>, and possibly a young one judging by its dull colouring. Needless to say I was thrilled to bits that my patch hosted both the 'chat' chats (Robins and Wheatears are also chats but hey, it's not in their names so doesn't quite count!) in the space of just over a month.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
</ul>
<br />
And here are my first and lasts for Autumn:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>8/9- My traditional Autumn <b>Wheatear </b>record! I get one every year, but only one and not in Spring yet. Sadly my patch may not be around long enough to see if the streak would have been broken.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>2/10- My last visit of the Autumn where I saw butterflies, which were <b>Red Admiral</b>, <b>Small Tortoiseshell </b>and Small/Green-veined White (I didn't note which so must have not got a very good view)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Also on 2/10, I glimpsed what I thought were <b>Redwings</b> flying over, but sadly they went out of sight too quickly for me to properly identify them.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>14/10- about 100 winter thrushes flew over in a Westerly direction, though I couldn't identify if they were Redwings or Fieldfares or a mixture of both. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li> 2/11- The first winter thrushes actually in the site were a small number of <b>Fieldfares</b>.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><b> </b>Also on 2/11, my second ever <b>Firecrest </b>at this site was spotted moving its way along the boundary hedge,</li>
</ul>
<br />
As for mammals, it wasn't such a bad year either. At the end of 2013 I saw a hare and hoped for more sightings in 2014. Well, on 21/2 I saw two <b>hares</b> together, sitting stock still on the field as hares do, nose to nose as if they were a pair. I hoped to see more but as the crop grew up it was impossible to tell if they were there or not.<br />
<br />
Also, remember when I wrote that post about <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/guessing-at-fungi-and-sly-visitor.html" target="_blank">signs of foxes</a>? I finally saw the <b>fox</b>! On the 25/6 I saw it creep out into one of the lines in the barley, apparently not noticing at me at all for a moment, until it did and in one quick leap disappeared into the crop again. It looked healthy, with thick fur and a big fluffy brush with interestingly no white on the end at all. <br />
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A <b>Roebuck</b> with lovely antlers were seen on 11/5, just outside the farm. Other than that there wasn't much Roe Deer activity this year.<br />
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In 2013, I realised Tawny Owls were in the area in quite a sad way when I saw a dead one on the railway lines. But on 6/3 2014 I found some more positive signs, in the form of what I originally thought was a cluster of droppings at the base of a large tree, until I saw they were made up of fur with bone fragments and what I was really seeing was owl pellets! I collected them and finally did what the tracks and signs books say you should do, which is soak them in water to get rid of the fur and break them down to look at the bones. I'll look at the contents in more detail in a future post! It was the first time I've ever found pellets, or found pellets and known it because they do look a lot like poo. ^^ I think the Tawny Owl was roosting in that tree for at least a few days.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The pellets before...</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">....and after!</td></tr>
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I have a very short moth list that began this year when I saw a lovely <b>Scarlet Tiger </b>in midsummer and a <b>Magpie Moth </b>in late summer. Only day-flying species got the chance to be on my list as I only visit during the day. ^^<br />
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As my interest in fungi only grows stronger all the time, and I found a lot of fungi at the farm last winter which I wrote <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/guessing-at-fungi-and-sly-visitor.html" target="_blank">this post</a> about, I started a fungi list this year which includes <b>Yellow Brain</b>, <b>Crystal Brain</b>, <b>Common Jellyspot</b> and some lovely, huge <b>Dryad's Saddle</b> brackets. <br />
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So it was quite an amazing year wildlife-wise at this little farm. I feel privileged to have gotten to know it so well, and I know I won't be the only one sad to see it go. I'll make sure I keep my notes so I won't forget my sightings and experiences.<br />
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On a more positive note, just a few quick things about the rest of the year: I got to go to Norfolk which was of course amazing, and you can read all about that <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/in-norfolk-part-1.html" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/norfolk-part-2-cley-time.html" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/norfolk-part-3-sketching-at-titchwell.html" target="_blank">here</a>!<br />
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I finally completed the epic <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-black-headed-gull-colony-sketchbook.html" target="_blank">Black-headed Gull colony sketchbook post</a> that I've been working on since 2012!<br />
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And perhaps most excitingly of all, I got to see <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/put-ring-on-it.html" target="_blank">birds being ringed</a>, including a Kingfisher!<br />
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I added only three new species to my life list this year, but they more than make up in quality what they lack in quantity! The first two were on the same day and were <b>Long-tailed Duck </b>and <b>Lesser Yellowlegs</b>, both from the New Forest area, the latter being the Lesser Yellowlegs that stayed most of the winter at Lepe Country Park. The Long-tailed Ducks were especially lovely and my mum and I made a special trip to see them after we saw them reported on goingbirding.co.uk because we love ducks. And I finally saw my first <b>Razorbill</b>, on a lovely trip to Portland Bill in April. Yes, Razorbill for me was one of those odd species that's common but you just haven't seen it for some reason. But now I have! Next year: Tawny Owl!<br />
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I hope you all had a wonderful 2014 and that this year is shaping up really nicely. :) Thanks for reading my blog and sharing my passion. Stick with me and we'll explore nature together!<br />
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Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-67800499502887929222014-12-02T21:47:00.000+00:002014-12-02T21:47:37.262+00:00My Personal Favourite DuckEvery British birdwatcher has a favourite duck. Anyone who has seen Spring/Autumnwatch with Chris Packham and Martin Hughes-Games arguing about whether the drake Pintail or drake Smew is the prettiest and most elegant of all the ducks, and any young birdwatcher who has ever pored over the pages of their new bird book knows it. In Britain they are some of our most colourful species, and a lot of the most colourful species are easy for even a beginner to see. When I was young my favourite was the drake Tufted Duck, with his striking black-and-white plumage, purple-sheened head and adorable tuft on the back of his head. Then for ages I loved the Smew. Now my favourite is another sawbill-the fantastic Red-breasted Merganser. I saw a sizeable flock of them a few weeks ago and felt inspired to write about them! Especially as my camera is broken so I can't photograph fungi any more. :( What terrible timing, right in peak fungi season!<br />
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I was at Farlington Marshes nature reserve a few weeks ago and the weather was pretty grim-rainy and windy, and all wind in Farlington feels about double as much because it's flat <i>and </i>coastal, with no hides. The birds weren't bothered at all but I wasn't sure how long I'd stay, until I noticed a flock of ducks bobbing out in the sea. (not the open sea, it's a harbour in the Solent.) It was, in fact, the largest flock of Red-breasted Mergansers I've ever seen! There were 23, which wouldn't be that much if you were talking about Teal, or Wigeon, or many of the other ducks that Farlington gets each winter, but I'd only ever seen one or two together before, with my maximum being 8 or so at Farlington a few winters before. Those had been quite far away, but the large flock was much closer, all bobbing along facing in the same direction. There was an interesting mixture of plumages, with ducks, drakes and young drakes who were still moulting into their adult plumage which made them look quite scruffy!<br />
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Mind you, Red-breasted Mergansers are quite scruffy anyway and that's part of why I like them. I love their shaggy crest and their long, slim, toothy bill. They are part of the sawbill family, which in Britain is made up of the Goosander, the Red-breasted Merganser and the Smew. Out of those the Smew is the odd one out because it is much smaller and looks completely different. The Merganser and Goosander look very similar, especially the females. All three species are interesting in that instead of having the female be brown and streaky for good camouflage on the nest, she is grey with a red head. (This was the reason why I liked the Smew so much as a little girl! The female Smew is so pretty compared to the other female ducks. I hate when birdwatchers call 'redhead' Smews boring and only want to see the drakes-this is a thing, for those that don't know. But it's silly because redhead Smews are great.) I don't know why sawbills don't seem to need the brown streaking for when the female is incubating- does anyone know? Perhaps brown streaking wouldn't work as camouflage in some of the countries and habitats where they nest.<br />
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Goosanders, which I talk about seeing in <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/wow-what-day.html" target="_blank">this post about Blashford lakes</a>, are more likely to be found inland on lakes, streams and rivers, while Mergansers are more likely to be found at sea. This contributes to the 'wild' feel Mergansers seem to have, and even their plumage seems wilder than the more neatly-turned-out and clearly marked Goosander: even though the drakes of these two species have similar areas of colour on their plumage they really are nothing like each other.<br />
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I watched this one flock of 23 diving, which they all did together, starting at the front and moving backwards in a sort of 'wave' effect, so that by the time the ones at the back had dived the ones at the front had just come up. They did this over and over again so it definitely wasn't an accident. I wonder if this was a deliberate strategy to confuse a shoal of fish, perhaps driving fish into the beaks of the birds further back? They dived so often it was impossible to get a good long view, it was almost as bad as trying to watch Little Grebes. Though some Little Grebes actually joined them at one point! There must have been a lot of fish down there. Seeing them compared to the tiny Little Grebe made me see how while Mergansers are still bigger, they really are not large as ducks go.<br />
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Finally the Mergansers finished fishing and settled down for a preen, giving me a chance to get a nice long view. Though preening wasn't the only thing going on. There were two fully adult drakes (possibly the only two in complete moult in the flock? There weren't that many that didn't look a bit scruffy) who started bickering. They began a sort of display with each other, holding their heads high in the air before suddenly dipping them down and opening their beaks wide. It's possible they were also calling, I wished I could hear what kind of sound a Merganser makes. This display was done parallel to each other rather than facing each other, and it seemed like they were mimicking each other. The next breeding season may be a long way off but as they will presumably be in this flock all winter, maybe this is some sort of ritual to sort out each drake's social standing to keep the group harmonious? It didn't last long, anyway, with the drakes soon settling down to preen with the other ducks. And gradually the flock moved its way away from the shore and out into the open harbour, much to my wistfulness. I could have watched them forever.<br />
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What's your favourite duck, and why?Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-12241144807613833482014-11-03T21:58:00.000+00:002014-11-03T21:58:38.529+00:00Norfolk part 3- sketching at Titchwell<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Here we go! In the third and last part of my series of posts about Norfolk, I return to Titchwell and bring my sketchbook too. Btw the above photograph was taken at Titchwell beach. In contrast to Cley's shingle beach it has lovely sand. But the weather was pretty blowy and wild that day so not many sunbathers!<br />
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I went to Titchwell by bus. In my post about Cley I didn't even mention that there's a regular bus service in North Norfolk called Coasthopper which stops literally just outside both Cley <i>and </i>Titchwell. This is really unusual; a lot of nature reserves simply aren't accessible by public transport and in my experience, unless a nature reserve is in or near a large-ish city it's likely there will be no public transport that will get you there. And back when I lived in Kent I would go to many nature reserves that <i>were </i>accessible by public transport but it wasn't easy- you had to change trains many times, or do train and bus, and walk a long way too. In contrast going to Titchwell by bus was as easy as walking two minutes to the bus stop in Wells (ok, the place I was staying was well situated too which helped), staying on the bus until I saw the RSPB Titchwell sign, and once I'd got out, walking down a short path to the visitor's centre. It was soooo convenient! And there were stops in all the small villages we went through on the way.<br />
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Titchwell was another reserve they took us to on the Wildlife Explorers trip 12 years ago. That was back when Titchwell's famous long-staying Black-winged Stilt, Sammy, was still present. Black-winged Stilts are vagrants in Britain usually, but as sometimes happens with vagrant birds this one decided to stick around, and according to Titchwell's wikipedia page was there from 1993 till 2005! I remember walking up the access track with the group and becoming very excited when I suddenly spotted an elegant black and white wader with long, long red legs that could only be Sammy himself. The leaders were all looking at something else and I tried to attract their attention to say I'd seen the stilt, but when they did spot him they didn't seem all that surprised. I don't think it had ever crossed their minds that we wouldn't see Sammy as he was such a fixture around the reserve. I expect they had all seen him many times before given how long he was there. As for me, I'm immensely happy I got to see Sammy when he was still around. And I was greatly taken with him at the time, as you can see from my old field notebook: there are no less than three sketches of Sammy doing different things, at different times. We must have had a lot of very good views!<br />
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This last picture is interesting because it shows a Ruddy Duck, which I don't remember seeing at all, but clearly I did, or we wouldn't have this fine picture! (note the scribbling out, an artist no-no. If you don't have a rubber just leave it and start again, young Esther!) I remember reading about the problems of Ruddy Ducks as an introduced species and the proposals of a cull back when I was a <i>very </i>young birdwatcher. I don't think I've seen one since this was drawn- they have been thoroughly culled, and if there are any left in Britain now it's not many. There certainly aren't any at Titchwell any more and it seems weird to think of a bird so 'plastic' (birdwatcher term for introduced species, most often used for ducks and geese because there are so many kept in this country uncaged that new birds may be joining established feral populations all the time) being in such a wild place. Mind you, there were those <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/norfolk-part-2-cley-time.html" target="_blank">Egyptian Geese at Cley</a> too, that I remembered so vividly. I wonder why I remembered them and not this Ruddy Duck?<br />
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As for Titchwell itself I remembered very little about it except that it had a long path, which wasn't much to go on. When I arrived I walked down to the visitor's centre all ready to pay admission because its an RSPB reserve and I'm not currently a member. But surprisingly there are no per person admission charges! I read somewhere that there may be a car charge, but as I didn't arrive by car this didn't affect me. I'm not sure where you pay the car charge though. As I set off into the reserve I realised it is pretty much all one big main path, though there with a few extra trails. From the path as you set out you can scan across farmland to the left, lagoons and reedbeds to the right, and the path leads directly onto the beach.<br />
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Upon approaching the big lagoon overlooked by the first hide, I scanned over it and quickly spotted no fewer than <b>16</b> Spoonbills! And I'd thought four at Cley was a lot. They were all resting with their heads under their wings, but they were still very conspicuous, being so tall. And just after spotting them I suddenly heard a close, unfamiliar call coming from the reeds, and almost as soon as I'd turned to look, out popped a Bearded Tit! It was one of the best views I've ever had of this frustratingly hard to find bird. It was very scruffy as if it was moulting, its tail that would usually be very long was only about half the length and other feathers looked out of place, but the bright golden colour was so distinctive! It bobbed about for a moment before 'doing the splits' (that classic pose you often see them doing in bird books and photos, where one leg is out to each side holding reeds) and disappearing into the reeds. I couldn't believe it! The amount of times I've spent fruitlessly searching for this bird in Hampshire is unbelievable. What I'm trying to say is that amazing birds seemed to be falling into my lap suddenly with practically no effort. Norfolk was living up to its reputation in my eyes!<br />
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I would describe Titchwell as one of the least elitist nature reserves I've ever been to. For starters there's no per person charge, making it easier for people to visit, and with the reserve being just one flat, well-maintained path it's accessible to wheelchairs and pushchairs. It's an easy walk for young children, and I saw many families. Not only is this great because children can get interested in wildlife themselves, it means that parents who don't have anywhere to leave the kids when they want to go birdwatching are able to bring them. In the hides there was a wide mixture of experience levels, from experts to beginners. As I approached one of the hides I saw a large group of people with telescopes looking out onto the lagoon, which can often mean there's a rare vagrant, and I always find it so scary to ask if that's the case- to be honest, I'd rather miss the bird. However I soon realised from their conversation that they were all admiring the Spoonbills, and hoping they would take their heads out from under their wings and show off their amazing beaks. There was a reserve volunteer with a scope making sure everyone got to see the Spoonbills and explaining how they are increasing in numbers in Norfolk.<br />
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From the hide I got fantastic views of all the waders, including an incredible <i></i>70+ Avocets (!!), and many, many Ruffs. It was really great to see so many and really get used to them as a species and hopefully I'll be able to apply what I learned if I see Ruffs elsewhere. Even when the males aren't in their incredible breeding plumage they are a bird of understated beauty, with a slim, graceful build and lovely scalloped back feathers. And even though the bird book will show a brown bird, they can be surprisingly bright because of how variable they are. There was one bird that was extremely close to the hide- so close even my camera could get a photo- that had an really bright orange-brown base colouring under its scalloped feathers that was really distinctive.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Oy3YtGe1VmHCw1XfJLEJHuvHsOOhVwzpkGXgqTfHBVkaauw07-34tS72ZSFtdKJVwRvIbCR_Gp_sE9tESAfOscVFGWMW-tzOUdIjWKqznASHVQpZdswYIveUg6Z3yjNpUFJt9GJcDvo/s1600/orange+ruff.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Oy3YtGe1VmHCw1XfJLEJHuvHsOOhVwzpkGXgqTfHBVkaauw07-34tS72ZSFtdKJVwRvIbCR_Gp_sE9tESAfOscVFGWMW-tzOUdIjWKqznASHVQpZdswYIveUg6Z3yjNpUFJt9GJcDvo/s1600/orange+ruff.jpg" height="472" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The orange coloured Ruff. Sorry it's so dark- my camera has light levels problems a lot of the time!</td></tr>
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And here's a couple more Ruffs in slightly better light:<br />
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And here are a few sketches:<br />
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The bird in the middle is the orange coloured one who seems to be doing the foot thing from the above photo. Maybe it's a Ruff thing? And the one below it is an Avocet. I find Avocets quite challenging to sketch for some reason, you'd think they'd be easy as they are so boldly patterned. The birds from the 'sketchbook post' image above are also Ruffs and probably the Ruff sketches that came out best. (hehe, or should have be 'rough sketches'? Oh dear.)<br />
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I was really enjoying the close views of waders and took advantage to take a few more photos. Look at this Lapwing that has to be somewhere very important!<br />
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And there was a lovely Black-tailed Godwit halfway through moult, which I took a detailed sketch of. Maybe one day I'll use it as reference for a painting. That's what I always hope to do with my sketches <br />
of birds, but it hasn't really worked out yet. Maybe one day. For now, though, I'm happy with this sketch as it is:<br />
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There's a Lapwing there too: I was interested in the shape of its face markings when seen from the front.<br />
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Throughout all this time I really wanted to sketch the Spoonbills but they had their heads under their wings still and all looked like shapeless white blobs. But then a Peregrine went over and put up practically everything on the lagoon, including the Spoonbills, and once they'd landed again they began to preen and feed. This was my chance!<br />
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I was pleased to catch this one feeding and using that spoony beak! Then I became fascinated with one bird that was preening and the way it moved its neck in order to get that long beak into the right positions.<br />
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First it reached <i>down</i> to preen its shoulder....<br />
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...Then it reached <i>along</i> to do its wing....<br />
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...Then it reached <i>under</i> to do its underwing! See how that neck has to change position to accommodate the length of the beak? Does the foot have to get involved when its time to do the upper neck and the head? It does sound weird but some birds do scratch and maintain feathers with their feet. Some have to- I'll never forget the footage of a Sword-billed Hummingbird scratching with its feet that was on The Life of Birds.<br />
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Once I'd finished sketching the Spoonbills I wandered down to the beach, but on the way what should I see but the boldest Spotted Redshank I'll probably ever see! I was even able to get a photo with my crappy camera:<br />
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It was so close I could see every feature that the Collins Bird Guide shows that identify it from the Common Redshank, in particular the white patch on the head and the much longer beak with just the teeniest, tiniest droop at the end (details not visible in my photo! At least you can see the longer beak). It was brilliant to get such a good view of all these distinctive traits and really get a sense of how this bird differs from the Redshank. Hopefully I'll remember all this wader learning I've done.<br />
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When I had walked all the way down to the beach I scanned the sea (no proper seawatching though as I'd left the tripod behind to get around more easily) and saw a dark coloured bird pursuing a light coloured one. It was just like a bird of prey being mobbed, except the mobber was in this case the predator! Or rather the parasite. It was a skua of some kind, I was sure. It may have been too far away to tell the species but the behaviour was unmistakable. Skuas harass other seabirds like terns to get them to drop or regurgitate their food so they can grab it. I think they're amazing. Later I saw Arctic Skua had been recorded on the sightings board so I'm guessing that was the species; it's one of the commonest anyway. I expect the bird being pursued was a Sandwich Tern as there were soooo many about.<br />
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Of course I could never talk about every single thing I saw at Titchwell, but one thing I didn't see was quite interesting: apparently there are Chinese Water Deer in the reserve, and one was seen that day! How interesting is that? I know they aren't a native species but they are still fascinating to me just as Muntjacs are (as you can see from my <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/mystery-mammal-part-1-and-tale-of-tail.html" target="_blank">dead Muntjac</a> post- and I have another post planned to do with them! Spoilers ^^). As you can see from this stuffed one from the Norwich museum, Chinese Water Deer have fangs!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA-sLzQQoXrgs_m_YtQKkO1U75iZIP88IjC3Mjuea_U5AzFZbRnI9GytD3k9HSklcomDzSLtBBxJ9Cz_sVCuhG__68TBxxaWmIn-8NUjoSTBtri-lOp_sfDwCRq8PaeaaEUYuNE5DWt_c/s1600/IMG_2981.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA-sLzQQoXrgs_m_YtQKkO1U75iZIP88IjC3Mjuea_U5AzFZbRnI9GytD3k9HSklcomDzSLtBBxJ9Cz_sVCuhG__68TBxxaWmIn-8NUjoSTBtri-lOp_sfDwCRq8PaeaaEUYuNE5DWt_c/s1600/IMG_2981.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Well, tusks really. But still cool!</td></tr>
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So that's the end of my 3 part series on Norfolk- thanks for sticking with me! I wish I lived closer so these wonderful reserves weren't once-in-a-decade-type visits for me. But sometimes part of the fun of visiting new places is learning skills you can apply closer to home. I know I've learned a lot about waders and hopefully will be able to apply that knowledge in local wader hotspots like Keyhaven or Farlington Marshes. And Norfolk certainly lived up to its reputation as being filled with wonderful birds, and to my childhood memories of long ago visits. Though I do wish I had seen more Marsh Harriers there. Maybe late summer is a quiet season for them but I only saw one the entire week, at Cley. I did see plenty of other raptors though , the highlight being that <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/in-norfolk-part-1.html" target="_blank">cathedral Peregrine</a>, so I really shouldn't complain!Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-63960118804884447472014-10-02T21:42:00.001+01:002014-10-02T21:42:21.623+01:00Clouded Yellows and Not-So-Yellows!Before I finish the post about Titchwell, I wanted to write a quick post about something I saw recently. I was able to visit two of my favourite Kentish nature reserves again (I used to live in Kent), RSPB Dungeness and Elmley Marshes. I will write about both these reserves and how much I love them and why in future posts, I expect.<br />
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At Dungeness I was happy to see a couple of Clouded Yellows, the butterfly I put in my <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/my-five-favourite-butterflies.html" target="_blank">favourite butterflies</a> list and said was hard to see in some years and easier in others. But the next day when I visited Elmley, I was seeing them flying across the path every few metres! I don't think I've ever seen so many. Is this a Clouded Yellow year? I would predict yes!<br />
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What's more, they weren't all the bright yellow I described in the butterflies post. I saw at least two that were very washed out and pale looking, with a greenish tinge. Seeing butterflies of any species that are pale coloured isn't that unusual as they fade as they get older, and when I saw the first one that's what I assumed it was. But when I saw the second one it seemed really unusual to see two that were faded in exactly the same way, so I looked it up and found out that there's a form of female Clouded Yellow called <i>f. helice </i>that is pale like this, so it seemed very likely that that's what I saw. As far as I can tell <i>f. helice </i>isn't a subspecies but a colour variant, something that's hard to understand for someone who mainly knows about birds like myself, as very few birds in Britain have anything like this (Cuckoos are the only ones I can think of, where rarely a female will be rust brown instead of grey). About 5-10% of female Clouded Yellows will be <i>f. helice,</i> which isn't all that much<i> </i>so I was very pleased to see them, and to see something new, as well as just seeing so many Clouded Yellows! I love them so much. It made me inspired to make some artwork about them, so hopefully that will actually happen, watch this space!<br />
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There's still a few weeks in the Clouded Yellow's flight period, and the weather is still decent, so keep an eye out for these wonderfully brightly coloured butterflies and their not-so-colourful but fascinating sisters! If there are any butterfly fans reading this, I'd love to know if you have been seeing Clouded Yellows too this year.Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-77315267939382076762014-09-22T23:01:00.000+01:002014-09-22T23:06:13.192+01:00Norfolk part 2- Cley Time<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In Norfolk, the place I was most looking forward to visiting was Cley. Wells next the Sea is located on the coast pretty much exactly between Cley NNR and Titchwell RSPB nature reserves. Both are famously good reserves, and both I had visited before, about 12 years ago, when I was in the Wildlife Explorers. It was on a weekend residential where we thoroughly traveled the reserves in this particular part of Norfolk, and then took a detour on the way home to sites for Stone Curlews and Nightingales (successfully seen and heard singing respectively). We went because of Norfolk's fame as a hotspot for birds, and it didn't disappoint!<br />
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I remember that Cley was the first place we (the Wildlife Explorers) visited after arriving, as we went straight there in the early evening and drove down to the beach. I was excited to spot my first 'wild' Egyptian Goose from the minibus (which now I look back was no doubt not at all as wild as its surroundings and was possibly an escape rather than a more 'respectable' feral bird! There don't seem to be any at Cley any more), but as soon as we got out I got to see something much better- the leaders excitedly pointed out a Barn Owl coming into view, which began slowly quartering the surrounding fields. I bet this was what the leaders had been hoping for by taking us out in the evening. I will never forget seeing that wonderful bird, and I've only seen Barn Owls in the wild about twice more since. <br />
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We explored the beach at Cley, and I remember a whole load of starfish had washed up on the shingles and many were fully dried out. This was so interesting that most of us took at least one back to where we were staying, but it was a big mistake as we discovered how badly they smelled when you put them in an enclosed space! They all had to be thrown away. Us silly kids. ^^ I sometimes wonder whatever could have caused all those starfish to wash up. And we visited the beach hide, where I saw my first Marsh Harriers, and fell in love with these wonderfully patterned birds of prey. They are one of my favourite birds to this day. <br />
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So I had a lot of happy memories of Cley, and was excited to return, show my mum around, and see what had changed and what had remained the same. The first major difference was the fantastic visitor's centre they have now, which was a few years away from being built when I had last visited. It's raised up and has huge windows that look out onto the reserve, and there are telescopes and binoculars you can use to view the birds if you don't have your own, which makes it great for young birdwatchers and beginners. There's a lovely cafe and you can view the birds while having a cup of tea and a cake! Perfect. And I should add that the shop has the most wonderful range of bird art postcards, including a brilliant set of field sketch postcards by Steve Cale, which I had to resist buying the full set of! There of course were many wildlife books and field guides for sale but also some gorgeous art books. I bought a book about Robert Gillmor's posters for Birdfair, which not only showed the poster itself but gave an insight into the process of designing it, which was both interesting and inspiring.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Hokasai style albatross is one of my favourites ever. :)</td></tr>
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Though you do have to pay a relatively steep admission fee for the reserve now that the visitor's centre exists, as well as the cafe it has useful things like toilets and a recent sightings board, etc. As soon as we arrived at the centre I scanned the big lake through the window and saw four tall, while birds feeding. They were Spoonbills! And four of them! Now that's a bird you'll have difficulty seeing even one of in Hampshire. These birds are so charismatic I honestly think I could watch them feed forever. As their name suggests they have beaks shaped like spoons: long, with a big round end that presumably helps them feed on whatever food they are feeding on when you see them feeding! I admit, I don't know much about what they eat and why the spoon helps. ^^ But they are amazing. Their long necks, long legs and white feathers make them look a bit similar to Little Egrets in pictures, but they are actually not at all similar, being much bigger and less graceful, and hold their necks straight out when they fly rather than tucked in.<br />
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Cley has a cluster of three hides in the middle of the reserve, and it was a good thing they were there as by the time my mum and I went to explore the reserve the weather had taken a turn for the worse and heavy, if intermittent, rain was falling. Each hide was filled with birdwatchers, and the scrape in front was filled with birds! There were waders everywhere of several species and it was the perfect chance to brush up on our wader ID skills. This can be a great thing to do when you're in a new area as (at least for intermediate birdwatchers who aren't yet up to searching for wader rarities) it can be easy to get into the habit of IDing waders through familiarity of what you usually see. Being outside of that means you look more closely at their plumage and identifying features. For example, my mum and I were stuck on some medium sized short beaked waders with eyestripes, before realising they were Knot. You won't see Knot much in Hampshire (a few on passage), so I'm not really used to them. Of course in the UK you'd have trouble seeing the bright red breeding plumaged Knot, so you're basically dealing with juveniles and non-breeding plumage adults, but juvenile Knots can be quite distinctive in a subtle way. The breast feathers have a yellow-beige wash, the eyestripe is prominent, the legs are greenish, and the beak is super short compared with a Redshank, but not short enough to mistake with a plover. One of these on its own is maybe not enough, but look at them all together and you'll start to narrow it down.<br />
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My mum and I were totally confused by what looked like a lot of Redshanks that had extra white on them, including one that had almost a full white collar. We were just coming to the conclusion that they could only be leucistic Redshanks when a helpful man told us they were Ruff! The males were moulting out of their breeding plumage, and Ruffs are super variable anyway, so this was why they had us confused. Ruffs are another bird I'd never expect back home, but in Norfolk they are numerous. The man who told us this was very kind and awesome. I especially appreciated how he left us to figure out the rest of the waders without trying to tell us them all. As he said, it can be fun to figure them out for yourselves, and I totally agree, especially if you are past the beginner stage and starting to want to learn to ID independently. And I was almost past the beginner stage back when I was at 12 and at Cley all those years ago. I remember sitting in the hide back then, and an older birdwatcher took it upon himself to show me a Pectoral Sandpiper, but he got rather cranky with me when I couldn't find it straight away. Just a thought- if you're going to try and show a kid a bird, don't get mad if they don't immediately spot it! Also if there's a group of Wildlife Explorers, you can probably count on their group leader to make sure everyone has seen the bird. Just saying! The Pectoral Sandpiper was all the way from America so it was pretty cool. I probably couldn't find that one on my own even now.<br />
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If you're ever unsure what's about when you're in a hide but you're a bit shy, it can be good to keep an ear out for what others are saying, which can be a good indicator of what to look for. However always remember that not everyone in a hide will be right about what they're looking at, even if they're older or look more experienced than you. I once shared a hide at RSPB Dungeness with an older guy who kept trying to identify this one odd looking duck that had us both puzzled as all kinds of things, including Little Auk, despite me eventually identifying it as a female Goldeneye and telling him so! However there's one golden rule: if someone has a radio and radios a sighting through to the centre, it's probably genuine! Yes this is apparently a thing that happens in Norfolk nature reserves. Yet more evidence that Norfolk is just that bit more hardcore. It's really good when it happens as it means you immediately know what to keep an eye out for. My mum and I were able to spot the most gorgeous Grey Plover in full glorious breeding plumage from this method. I've seen a few that were halfway through their moult but never one that was still in full breeding. Its pitch black face, chest and belly, outlined with a wide stripe of white and offset by a backfull of thickly barred black and white feathers, made it a sight to behold. The Grey Plover is one that you can see plenty of in winter but they will always be the nondescript round, pale winter plumage birds. Now if only the Ruff and the Knot could have been in breeding plumage too! That would make things so much easier.<br />
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The sun had actually come out by this point so next I persuaded my mum to come down to the beach and do some seawatching. Walking down the path to the sea with the reserve on each side, I got nostalgic for seeing that first Egyptian Goose and Barn Owl. On the beach there was one big change- the hide where we'd seen the Marsh Harriers was gone. It had been washed away in a storm and is apparently being replaced with a viewing platform. High winds and spring tides can be a big problem for Norfolk, and even though this weather was tame compared to the kind of weather than washes stuff away, the winds were strong and the waves threw up spray, and despite the warm sun we wished we'd brought gloves to shield our hands from the cold onshore wind. But there weren't any starfish! This was probably a good thing.<br />
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My mum and I aren't pro seawatchers, in fact we are the newest of beginners to this difficult and patience-requiring type of birdwatching. I've become passionate recently due to my love of seabirds of all kinds (I got hooked during a ferry crossing from <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/ga-part-3-seawatching-from-ferries.html" target="_blank">Portsmouth to Le Havre</a> a few years ago) and often go to the coast in Hampshire to practice seawatching, but the trouble with Hampshire is the Isle of Wight's always in the way. Even if you go all the way to the other side of the New Forest where the Isle of Wight coastline ends, which I sometimes do, its just not the same as looking straight out into the open sea as you can in Norfolk. When it comes to the actual seawatching, we don't have a technique yet, and just intermittently scan with the scope while enjoying the closer wader and tern flypasts. There were loads of lovely, bright white winter plumage Sandwich Terns going past all the time, and Oystercatchers. In among one little flock of Oystercatchers was one Dunlin that looked tiny compared to them, and who started behind them but overtook every single Oystercatcher to be right at the front! It was very funny.<br />
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We also saw a flock of juvenile Shelduck go past, escorted by one adult who had sacrificed the yearly Shelduck moulting trip to Heligoland in Germany in order to look after the kids, and further away going over the sea we saw a group of all adult Shelduck, possibly latecomers on their way to that very place right now! Also on the sea we saw my mum's favourite Gannets, which are common on a seawatch but always lovely to watch, and reassuringly easy to identify. Then I saw one of my favourites, a Manx Shearwater, with its dark-and-light wings and confident glide. Sadly with only one scope my mum wasn't able to locate it in time though. I think seawatching works best when everyone has a scope on a tripod aimed at the horizon so they can just move it along to where the bird is. We both knew a good way to describe where birds are on the sea is to use a buoy or something as a reference point, but in practice when there was actually something to look at we forgot to do that and I ended up giving no helpful directions to where the shearwater was! Next time.<br />
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We had just spotted a lovely 1st-winter Kittiwake, with its distinctive black v-shaped markings on each wing, when a man came by and said 'did you see the Purple Sandpiper?' I said 'Oooh, where??' He said 'Oh it's already gone, but look at this photo I took of it!' And sure enough, he had a lovely photo of the Purple Sandpiper. He said it had gone down by some fishing boats to our left so we went down to have a look but it had obviously flown on by that point. But we were happy enough to have seen the Kittiwake and, as we told ourselves, there's a very reliable wintering Purple Sandpiper spot at home, just down the road from us at Southsea Castle. A little further along the beach we found all the rest of the birdwatchers, who had found a sheltered spot behind a little roofed seating area to keep out of the wind. Probably more comfortable, but more cramped too!<br />
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During writing this post I found an old field notebook from that Wildlife Explorers trip to Norfolk, which was great as I could see what had stuck in my memory (everything I wrote about in this post was remembered without prompting as it really made an impression) and what hadn't. I found out the place we stayed was called the Aylmerton Field Study Centre. Also, it was full of sketches! Back in those days I used to draw all the time in my field notebooks. Now I don't keep a field notebook, only list after a trip (but maybe I'll go back to making field notes one day), and only sketch occasionally. Seeing my old sketches was funny. Here's some Ruffs:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This was May so the males were in full breeding plumage! They look a bit better than that in real life.</td></tr>
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And here's the Pectoral Sandpiper. You can see I drew attention to the clear white line across the chest which is the way of identifying the bird, and presumably where it gets it name.<br />
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Next time: I go back to the fantastic Titchwell, and bring my sketchbook! Plus, more sketches and stories from the past.<br />
<br />Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-87821471214776535952014-09-08T21:53:00.000+01:002014-09-08T21:53:35.301+01:00In Norfolk part 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I was lucky enough to spend the week before last in Norfolk, haven for birds and birdwatchers alike! Of course I ended up with so much material for my blog that one post could never be enough, so I'm going to split my Norfolk writing into three parts.<br />
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I went with my family and we stayed in a little town called Wells next the Sea. True to the name you could walk right down to the beach in about 15 minutes from where we were staying, along a path next to the harbour. At low tide there were Redshanks and Turnstones feeding, with a Cormorants gulping down huge fish on the water at high tide, and any time you walked along you could hear the chirping of an extremely healthy population of House Sparrows, which was wonderful and reassuring as they are in such huge declines everywhere. There were Swallows flying low over the path, Buzzards soaring over the beach, and a couple of Shags that had chosen a very odd roosting spot in the form of a pair of tyres on the side of a boat! All of this was going on just in and around the town so there was plenty to see, but I think one of my favourite things that I saw was a Wall Brown butterfly on the plants by the beach path. I wrote about the butterflies I love to see every year in my <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/my-five-favourite-butterflies.html" target="_blank">last post</a>, so it seems like a good time to talk about the lovely Wall Brown, which I couldn't have put on my list because it's so uncommon in the south where I live. Norfolk is now the most southern part of Britain that I've seen one! Actually I'd be interested to hear from UK readers: is this an every year butterfly where you live? It definitely isn't for me, but like a lot of common butterfly species it may have declined a lot. Wall Browns are a little like very bright Speckled Woods, with orange patterns and a row of eyes around the edges of their wings. The one I saw had a chunk out of one of its wings, but it was flying just fine. I bet the predator diverting eye patterns did their job!<br />
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My sister and I were walking along to the beach along the path when we saw what I at first thought was a dragonfly- it was about the right size, with a long, bright red and black body. But when it landed I could see that its wings were small for its body and held closed over the back rather than open, like a dragonfly. It wasn't a damselfly either as the body was much too thick and too short. I was puzzled until the day after that when I looked in a book about seashore wildlife and saw an insect that looked just like it! It's called a Sand Wasp and apparently is a ferocious predator of caterpillars. I'd never seen anything like it before!<br />
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The beach at Wells was lovely; not so good for swimming as the Welsh beaches I was on last year (where I found <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/life-and-death-in-wales-part-2-gannet.html" target="_blank">the Gannet</a>), but with less jellyfish and Weaver Fish! (I didn't see the Weaver Fish in Wales but there were signs up about them because they hide in the sandy shallows and have a painful sting! I did see the jellyfish though. Moon Jellyfish, we think. There were dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions??!! The beach was covered in washed up ones. No swimming that day!! ^^) One thing that had been washed up at Wells beach was hundreds upon hundreds of razor shells, the long thin shells you usually see only a few of. They were all sizes but there were significant numbers of tiny ones, so we wondered if the Razor Clam breeds nearby. There were loads of Oystercatchers about too, so the source of the shells was quite clear. It looked like they had been having quite a feast!<br />
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I also found this fantastic Mermaid's Purse:<br />
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Just along the coast from Wells you can get a boat trip out to see seals where they breed and congregate on Blakeney Point. This has obviously proved popular as no less than four separate companies currently offer this service! There's no disturbance to the seals as nobody is allowed to land, but one of the shops in Wells had a cartoon in the window of seals in a boat taking photos of a load of sunbathing humans. XD<br />
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Four species of tern also breed on Blakeney Point but this was all over for the year, except for a couple of lingering Common Terns. We did see a lovely Red-breasted Merganser as we approached the colony though, which are always a pleasure to see. And then were rounded the Point and...there were the seals!<br />
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Most of the ones in the top photo are Common Seals, and most in the lower photo are Grey Seals. Until this I didn't know the two species would share a colony like this! As you can see they are of extremely variable colours and there's no 'grey' and 'not grey' despite the name. You can tell them apart by looking at the faces, though I'm not that good at it yet. The Common Seals have what I've seen described as a 'cute' face with a short nose and a rounded face, while the Grey seals have longer noses and pointier faces. Grey Seals can grow bigger than Common Seals but there's a lot of size overlap so it's not a simple rule.<br />
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Unlike other large marine mammals like whales and dolphins, it really is quite easy to get really good views of seals around the British Isles as there are very reliable spots to see them, like this one which I get the impression gives sightings at all times of year. It really is special to watch a mammal that is so unlike the mammals we might get good views of on land. This is an animal whose back legs and tail have fused together to make its body into a streamlined tube of muscle and insulation, and whose front legs have lost their 'fingers', as it was more useful for them to become fully webbed and become flippers. The bones that make those fingers are still there inside the flipper- I remember learning about it in my Biology A-level, and whales' flippers are just the same no matter how big they are. It's quite famous that seals are wonderfully graceful in water but the opposite on land, but I found that the seals I saw moving on land were surprisingly fast and maneuverable! Here's one I saw getting out of the water:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I made this one quite big as it has some nice views of the Grey Seals' faces, showing their long noses and small eyes.</td></tr>
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This one certainly made a splash but it lumped itself along very speedily! It was impressive. Seals are totally used to moving those great big bodies on land and watching them move was fascinating. I honestly could have watched them all day except the boat had to go. Most of them weren't actually going anywhere but it was really funny watching even the ones that were lying around as they don't have so much use for the flippers on land and it makes for some funny poses! You can see in the above photo that most of these lazy seals just let their flippers flop over the fronts, but some were waving them around, and seemed to be attempting to scratch or even shield their eyes from the sun. You can also see in all my photos of the variety of poses that seem to be comfortable for seals! There's one I like to call 'the banana' which a couple of Common Seals in the first photo are doing: it's where they balance on their side with both the tail and head held out stiffly off the ground. It looks horribly uncomfortable to us but it can't be because lots of them were doing it, and when I went on a seal boat trip in Scotland back in 2010 loads of the seals were doing it then too!<br />
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In fact at the time I took these photos the Common Seals were in the middle of their breeding season. The two species of seal seem to share the space amazingly well and it probably helps that they breed at different times, with the Common Seals breeding in the summer and the Grey Seals in the winter. The tour guide told us some really interesting things about seal breeding- it turns out that only Grey Seals have the white, fluffy pups you see in pictures. Common Seals have pups that are born waterproof and can swim almost immediately! That was amazing to learn. And we even saw a very small Common Seal pup! The boat continued along the shore a little way from the colony, and there was a sort of long black blob lying where the sea was washing onto the beach. The guide said this was a baby, and looking through binoculars I saw that it was! It honestly looked like a piece of driftwood that had washed up. The babies are kept away from the colony when they are very young, as this one clearly was, because of the danger that a heavy adult seal would roll over and squash them. But seal milk is very rich and that baby seal would probably have been big enough to join the main colony within a few days of us seeing it. It's so strange to think that such a small seal baby was already capable of swimming independently, if it wanted to!<br />
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Later that week I visited the Norwich museum and saw a taxidermy seal that showed how the end of a seal's tail is structured, something that can be hard to see on a living seal in the field.<br />
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On either side are the flippers containing what were once the animal's foot bones, and in the middle is the tail proper. I'd never realised that these parts were separate! Note: I didn't photograph the whole taxidermy seal because the head mount was just terrible. It looked like someone had just put in any old set of glass eyes without any thought of what a seal's eyes actually look like. The result was this giant pair of goggly orange-rimmed eyes, so unlike the dark, soulful eyes of a living seal. I think it was quite an old specimen, but even so!!<br />
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The Norwich museum was quite something in that it had one of the most comprehensive collections of bird taxidermy I've ever seen. There was an exhibit of scenes showing Norfolk wildlife in various habitats, which of course included many birds, and then there was a room filled with nothing but bird taxidermy, all sorted by species group, that seemed to contain almost every regular British species and several irregular ones too! I enjoy looking at taxidermy birds, especially if they are well mounted and well preserved, because it's an excellent opportunity to look at the bird's feathers closely. But there were so many birds that appear in Britain only as vagrants in that collection that you could tell they had been shot as trophies by hunters. It reminded me of a small collection of taxidermy they have in Beaulieu, New Forest, that I'm quite familiar with, the prize piece of which is an enormous flamingo. According to the description it had been shot while feeding on the Beaulieu estuary, by someone who presumably didn't know if it was a truly wild vagrant or an escape from someone's collection. Being quite young and seeing that was my first introduction to the fact that people used to shoot unusual birds, rather than watching them as birdwatchers and twitchers love to do today.<br />
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Seeing the taxidermy was interesting, but what was definitely more interesting was the video playing in the foyer of the museum that showed highlights from Norwich Cathedral's Peregrine nest cam! Norwich's pair of urban Peregrines had fledged no less than four chicks this year's breeding season. We watched the fledging section, which showed the oldest and biggest chick (Peregrines seem to practice brood reduction like a lot of birds of prey, meaning this chick had hatched before the others) being blown off the ledge while practicing flapping during a windy spell! It must have been a bit of a surprise. He was totally fine, as several days later when only the youngest chick was left on the platform, being reluctant to leave, the oldest chick returned for a visit. The captioning on the video described what happened next as playing, but I'm not so sure! The oldest chick seemed to be persistently trying to preen the neck of the youngest chick, and it ended up pulling out two of the younger chick's feathers! The younger chick retaliated to by tugging at the older chick's neck feathers, though none came out. It was very funny to watch. However the youngest chick did eventually pluck up its courage and leave the platform. Four fledged young Peregrines makes this an extremely successful year for the Norwich Peregrines!<br />
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Later that day, while my parents were looking round Norwich Cathedral, I saw a bird of prey soaring around the spire. Of course I immediately guessed it was a Peregrine, but getting my binoculars on it (I carried them everywhere in Norfolk! You have to) showed that it lacked the very clear black and white head markings of a Peregrine, and was actually a Sparrowhawk. But because I'd been looking up anyway, I scanned past the spire, and what did I see?<br />
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Now THERE'S the black and white head markings I was looking for! It just goes to show that if you don't follow David Lindo's advice and Look Up, there could be a tonne of stuff you're missing! Peregrines have a habit of sitting in a high place in their territory and scanning until they see some likely looking prey. They are so known for it that the RSPB sets up watchpoints in various places around the country each year so they can show people these lovely birds sitting in their favourite spots watching for their prey. I think this one is actually sitting on the nesting platform! It's clearly a specially put up platform so everyone must have been really pleased when the Peregrines started nesting there. I wouldn't have been surprised if the Peregrine had attempted to see off the Sparrowhawk but maybe it just couldn't be bothered. I did once see three Peregrines gang up to force a Buzzard down into a tree so it was out of their airspace! They are incredible birds. It's wonderful that they are becoming so at home in our towns so more and more people are able to see them each year.<br />
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Next time: the sublime and beautiful Cley!Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-46640732307103709332014-08-15T23:21:00.000+01:002014-08-15T23:21:02.663+01:00My Five Favourite ButterfliesSummer is a quiet time for birds. Though some are still feeding babies, the majority have finished and their babies are now independent, or at least don't require constant attention! The earliest returning migrants are definitely on their way out- I haven't seen a Swift since the Saturday of the ringing (and already miss their screaming calls as the soundtrack to my lunch hour). At this time of year most birds stop singing because there isn't the same urgent need to defend a territory. The adult birds start moulting and need to lay low for a while. Woodlands go quiet, as the birds even seem to be calling less at this time of year, and it's hard to find them in the fully leafed trees. Estuaries are still nowhere near migration season so there's not that much to see, and all the ducks are in eclipse so things are much less colourful than usual. Some species, like Skylarks, seem to disappear altogether at this time of year, only to reappear in the autumn.<br />
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I've heard this season called the birding doldrums, and that seems to fit it pretty well. In the UK a lot of birdwatchers start watching butterflies in this season because while the birds are quiet, butterflies (while also quiet, by nature ^^) are springing out everywhere and fill the niche of something to watch. I haven't been able to watch butterflies that much this year but in the past few years I've been occupied every summer trying to find the speciality butterflies of Hampshire. But that's not what I'm talking about today (maybe another time?), these are my top five favourite butterflies that I see every year, and never get tired of seeing. Seeing the first one of these butterflies every year makes me so happy, and I always wish they could be around all year.<br />
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<u>Orange Tip</u><br />
This is one of our most simply patterned butterflies, and yet one of the most beautiful. Only the male is colourful, and he is white with huge, bright splashes of orange on the top of each set of wings. It's a colour you have to see to believe! These butterflies are unmistakable. Even the female can be told with a good look as she has green mottling on her underwing, which the other white butterflies don't have. A few butterflies will show up while its really still winter (Red Admirals as they hibernate and will come out on sunny days, for example), but the Orange Tip is a true sign of spring. I always miss them when they are gone, by early summer.<br />
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<u>Marbled White</u><br />
Not colourful like the Orange Tip, but intricately patterned, this one I remember seeing for the first time on some chalk grassland on a Wildlife Watch walk when I was about eight. I fell in love with it straight away. I know it's not a chalk grassland specialist (unlike the other special butterfly we saw that day, the Chalkhill Blue) but I always associate it with special butterfly habitats, even though in reality it can turn up all kinds of places, even the school playing field when I was kid! I see them on my local patch too, but nothing beats the chalk grassland Marbled Whites for sheer numbers. Sometimes you go when there's clearly just been a hatching and you can barely move for Marbled Whites! Fantastic things.<br />
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<u>Silver-Washed Fritillary</u><br />
Another one that feels special to my locality (Hampshire), and this one really is not all that widespread and I'm lucky to live in an area where you can easily see them. It's a size larger than most common butterflies, and in books it doesn't look that distinctive from the other fritillary species, which are mostly orange withn black squiggles. The distinctive thing about this butterfly is they way it flies in a strange slow and floaty way, especially later in its season. It's great for getting good views, and distinguishes it from the other common-ish fritillary around here, the Dark Green Fritillary, which is very fast flying and is practically impossible to spot at rest. The Silver-Washed is slow to the point that it will sometimes even land on people! I've had them land on my shoes as I was walking through Crab Wood (the fungi place, and one of my most reliable sites for them). Although they like mature woodland they are also wanderers, and we've even had them turn up in our garden, a long way away from any of their local strongholds! Here's a photo I took a few years ago of one resting on a man's arm: <br />
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<u>Ringlet</u><br />
A common grassland butterfly, that is distinguished from other brown butterflies like the Meadow Brown and Gatekeeper in that it never has any orange on it. It is dark coloured on its upperwings, and a good view will show a thin white line all around the outside of the wing. But the really beautiful thing is its underwings, which have several classic butterfly eye-markings on them, each with the teeniest white dot in the middle like someone has painted it with a brush. They like to sit still with their wings closed to show off these eyes. The Ringlet could not be considered colourful but it is special to look at nonetheless! And it has a beautiful name.<br />
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<u>Clouded Yellow </u><br />
This is the only one I've talked about where I may well not see it in a particular year, no matter how many good butterfly sites I go to. You can't <i>try</i> to find a Clouded Yellow, and because they are migrants from the continent, some years are very good for them while others are bad (it used to be that even numbered years were good and odd numbers bad, but seeing as 2013 was a relatively good year in my experience maybe it's broken its streak). When you see one you'll know it, as no other butterfly has such a deep, beautiful yellow shade. The Brimstone, which is the other yellow butterfly and is much commoner, is a much more lemoney yellow. The Clouded Yellow is also special because it turns up right at the end of August and throughout September, when the seasons for a lot of butterflies are over until next year, so it reminds you that the butterfly year isn't quite over yet. And you can see them anywhere- on somebody's flowering garden bush, or in farmland margins or at the coast. They are restless and rarely land, and when they do they will rarely ever open their wings. I've <i>never </i>seen this and have only seen photos as proof that it actually happens! But when they are flying their colour is so distinctive, and so different from any other butterfly in the UK, that you will know immediately that you're seeing a Clouded Yellow.<br />
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I'd love to hear about other people's favourite butterflies, whether UK or in other countries, so please do comment and tell me all about them! I'm now off to Norfolk for a week on a family holiday, and you know what that means- BIRDS!! My mum and I can't wait to go to Cley and Titchwell; even if it isn't migration season and even if the Birding Doldrums aren't over yet, that doesn't matter to us. I'll write all about it when I get back! And, fingers crossed, I'll get some sketching done too. :DEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-56901983441356842672014-08-02T21:36:00.000+01:002014-08-02T21:47:11.832+01:00Put A Ring On It!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My fascination with bird ringing began back in 2003, when my family and some family friends visited the then recently built Barnes Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve. There we met a man who had collected some birds for ringing. He down a little cloth bag, reached in and pulled out a Blue Tit, which he proceeded to give to my little sister to hold. He showed her how to hold its head gently still between her fingers and cup its body in her hand, and I remember how tiny it was and how amazing it was to see it close up.<br />
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Ringing birds is, of course, not really about seeing birds close up but its easy to see why my 13 year old self might have latched onto this! Since then I've learned a lot more about why birds are ringed, and how recoveries can teach us so much about the species; its migration patterns, its lifespan, its population movements, and its presence in new locations. The basic principle, for those who haven't heard of ringing, is that a lightweight metal ring is put around the leg of the bird giving the location it was caught and a unique reference number. That means if the bird is caught again or the ring is found, the number can be used to find out all sorts of information about the bird. In Britain as far as I know its possible to ring any species of bird if you have the right licenses and know the right techniques, but the type of ringing I got the opportunity to see today was mist net ringing. This is when a thin, billowing net stretched between poles is used to catch small birds in flight. Other techniques include ringing chicks in the nest (I've seen a program where this was used for raptors- I can imagine that ringing could be especially important for species of raptor that are still illegally killed in this country) and using a type of throwing net to surround members of a flock of birds, such as geese. I think I've seen this one on a program too, possibly Autumnwatch, where it was used to not-particularly-great effect on a flock of Brent Geese- only about two were captured! In general I don't know much about these techniques.<br />
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This morning, I was lucky enough to attend a ringing session at Titchfield Haven, along with my mum and about 10 other visitors. It started at 6am! This meant getting up at 4.30 for me. But it's amazing how getting up horrendously early to do something you love is a million times easier than, say, getting up at that hour for work. When we arrived, we were taken to a secret part of the reserve, behind one of the mysterious 'keep out' signs on one of the boardwalks. Here there was a little hut, with wires running towards it, and a table outside covered in ringing equipment. The wires, we soon discovered, were powering a CD player in the hut, and several speakers around by the nets that were playing various bird songs. There was a Willow Warbler song, which I've heard many times in real life, and a Grasshopper Warbler song, which I've never heard in real life but recognised from descriptions (it sounds just like a very loud grasshopper). Grasshopper Warblers are active at dawn, so the tape had been playing for a while before we arrived to encourage them into the net, and the trained ringers doing the session had already been round the nets once and emptied them.<br />
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There were three or four fully trained ringers, and one trainee ringer (a young woman just like myself- yay! Sometimes I feel like the only young female birdwatcher in the world) doing the session. The trainee ringer started out being the scribe, which is the person who will record details of the birds species, its age, its ring number and its condition. This information, once computerised, will be the information that anyone recapturing the ringed bird will get, so its very important, and it looked a complicated job too as information comes very thick and fast during the actual ringing!<br />
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Hanging outside the hut were many cloth drawstring bags, some of which were vibrating slightly. The ringers began removing the birds from the bags, and the first birds that were revealed were the Grasshopper Warblers that the recorded song had attracted. This was the first time I'd ever seen one, and though I was expecting that we would see them and had hoped I would recognise them, being familiar with pictures of them, I was somewhat baffled when the first birds were drawn out of the bags, as birds in the hand look so different. But were were shown their distinguishing feature- the barred feathers under their short tails, which are plain on most birds.<br />
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The warblers were held in the way the man at Barnes showed my sister- head supported between two fingers with the body against the palm and the legs pointing outwards for the ring to be attached. The rings were taken from a plastic string, placed in a pair of pliers and gently attached to the bird's leg, loosely enough that it can move freely up and down the leg and will never pinch into it. While in the hand, each bird's wings were measured (while closed, from the first joint to the end) and they were weighed, by placing the bird beak down into one of those little film container pots, for the shortest time possible for the scale to register their weight.<br />
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Soon the Grasshopper Warblers were all done, and released straight away in the opposite direction from the nets. The next birds were Reed and Sedge Warblers, which I did recognise, especially the Sedge Warblers with their distinctive pale eyebrows (actually superciliums but that's a mouthful) and their bright ochre streaky plumage. The Sedge Warblers made no noise in the hand, but the Reed Warblers were very noisy, calling indignantly even while inside the weighing device. None of the birds made any noise in the bags. Being in a dark place is generally calming for birds.<br />
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Next came some young Whitethroats, which were again hard to identify in the hand. Whitethroat juvenile plumage is pale all over the underside and not just the throat, so it was hard to make the association, even though I've seen young Whitethroats in the wild. The ringers were assigning the birds a number based on their estimated age, and while for some birds it was easy to tell they were juveniles (the Whitethroats, a Dunnock that had the streaky breast and pink beak juveniles have), for others it was harder. The ringers showed us how to guess a bird's age using its feathers- the adults would be expected to have worn edges to their wing and tail feathers (especially as some birds like Reed and Sedge Warblers apparently don't moult until they've migrated back to southern Africa), while the juveniles were more likely to have clean edged feathers. I think they said the code was 1 (for birds still in the nest) up to 8 for aging the birds, with these juveniles being assigned a 3. All aging had to be done very carefully with no assumptions recorded.<br />
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There was one young bird that was put in the 2 category, and we were shown why. When the ringer brought it round to us from the nets he said he was going to release it back where it was found instead of at the ringing area because it was so young. It was a Cetti's Warbler, and while it looked fairly well feathered at first, under its wings you could see all the feathers weren't grown yet, which led to a very odd effect- the wing bone actually shows between the feathers! I've seen this before in young birds (not living ones but sadly dead ones that I've had to opportunity to study), and while I didn't get a photo of the Cetti's warbler's underwings (it moved so quickly and my camera is not great for quick moving subjects so I got very few photos throughout the session) I do have this photo of a dead young Great Tit I found in May this year to show you what it was like.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You can see the bone where it joins the body, as well as the 'tubes' the new feathers grow from.</td></tr>
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It's so strange to think of young birds going about with their bones showing under their wings! Seeing a Cetti's Warbler up close was wonderful as well, as they are very good at hiding and are hard to see in the field. (Though I did get a very good view last year of one singing right out in the open! I talked about it in my <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/happy-new-year.html" target="_blank">new year's post</a>.) It was a lovely chocolate brown, and had very short, rounded wings that were very different from the other warblers' wings.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An adult Cetti's Warbler in mid-moult, which is why it's so scruffy.</td></tr>
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The ringers went around to empty the nets several more times, and in small groups were were able to go and see this happening. Only a trained ringer can extract a bird from a mist net, because they can sometimes be tangled and have to be extracted very carefully. When we first approached the nets there were several more small warblers, and something bigger and much more colourful. It was a Kingfisher! When it had been carefully extracted, the ringer showed us an odd quirk of the Kingfisher- when in the hand, it revolves its head slowly round and round, like a tracking CCTV camera, going almost 360 degrees, or so it looked! Apparently the only other British bird to do this in the hand is the Wryneck, and though I have heard Wrynecks use this odd neck action in the field to scare or confuse predators (which is where the name comes from, and I have heard this is supposed to look like a snake but I don't know for sure), no one seems to have seen Kingfishers doing this in the field. Presumably it does it to look out for danger.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It made no sound in the hand, but kept opening its giant beak all the same.</td></tr>
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When the Kingfisher came out of the bag, the ringers had to get a special, extra short ring out to accommodate the Kingfisher's very short legs.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf0orBt5THQIJevb5DRCiO-DQFhyphenhyphenkbAzPcXvT6DmYXjf1kKwnnetaKz1PJTLxGmmHzlYkUJ706HI9oXc3hXIRfWigF8ufjEWWnwUqR_Ci_5ZhNNfQ181qJQybmeyrNrATVCybXbT5wlVA/s1600/IMG_2791.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf0orBt5THQIJevb5DRCiO-DQFhyphenhyphenkbAzPcXvT6DmYXjf1kKwnnetaKz1PJTLxGmmHzlYkUJ706HI9oXc3hXIRfWigF8ufjEWWnwUqR_Ci_5ZhNNfQ181qJQybmeyrNrATVCybXbT5wlVA/s1600/IMG_2791.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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The Kingfisher was a juvenile, which was tentatively sexed as a male due to the only small amount of orange at the base of the bill (females have more). They said it's not possible to tell for sure at this age though. There are no suitable nest sites for Kingfishers at Titchfield Haven so this one must have moved in from elsewhere, and Titchfield Haven is a great place to see Kingfishers outside of the breeding season so I'm sure it's finding the fishing very good!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdMwzfH6Y22DSUvP57rMlsgv_OMSE5ndFUTs68Mz0-FqjyN4HXyrLiL72qoeN_o9fOYcJM5A0f4HDvVaR4ZIMcabuJBaAtFF6GAJZ1cT0f_k0dajmomuABdimQenqp3MJo8hV-UsSebV0/s1600/IMG_2789.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdMwzfH6Y22DSUvP57rMlsgv_OMSE5ndFUTs68Mz0-FqjyN4HXyrLiL72qoeN_o9fOYcJM5A0f4HDvVaR4ZIMcabuJBaAtFF6GAJZ1cT0f_k0dajmomuABdimQenqp3MJo8hV-UsSebV0/s1600/IMG_2789.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Only about a third of the lower mandible was orange- sexing clue!</td></tr>
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The Kingfisher was definitely the star of the morning! Just look at this wonderful plumage.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMn77ozzCnbv1JL3HSrww5nVDaxl_GO5bT9AX7SlssNwHZTMemShhyI-2S-GtjqXi3LyOD4Apqq8R9gqiHq3Zd4T0LB0JePNO3fjp9wOJ1doij6q8ZrRSJ6E3vogjCCnwLOLf6TeWvrUk/s1600/IMG_2788.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMn77ozzCnbv1JL3HSrww5nVDaxl_GO5bT9AX7SlssNwHZTMemShhyI-2S-GtjqXi3LyOD4Apqq8R9gqiHq3Zd4T0LB0JePNO3fjp9wOJ1doij6q8ZrRSJ6E3vogjCCnwLOLf6TeWvrUk/s1600/IMG_2788.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Spangled' is the only word to describe those feathers!</td></tr>
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The birds were also assigned a number to show how much body fat they were carrying. This was judged by the simple technique of blowing on the birds' breast feathers to part them and show the shape of the chest. The fat showed up as pinky-yellow bumps. We saw an adult Sedge Warbler that had an extremely large amount of fat on its body, so that it was put category 8 meaning the highest amount! When it was released the ringer said it might drop right to the ground because of its weight. This didn't quite happen, but almost! This bird will have to do an incredibly long migration quite soon, so it's building up for that. It's normal for migratory birds to put on an incredible amount of weight, and some (like some waders) even compress their internal organs to make more room for fat stores.</div>
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On the other side of this was the other 'big' bird caught (the Kingfisher being the other, though they aren't big at all really), a juvenile Blackbird. It had lots of speckling still, though a full tail. The tail was dark so I guessed it was a male, but the ringers guessed female (though too soon to tell for sure) and said that even female Blackbirds have very dark tails, so I may have been wrongly sexing a few tail feathers in my collection! When the ringers blew on its feathers to judge the weight there was no fat on it at all, just a sharp ridge along the middle of its chest that was the bird's keel bone jutting out under its skin. You couldn't see it at all when the feathers were in their normal positions, and it's so strange to think that feathers cover up these huge differences in the shapes of birds' chests. The young Blackbird pooed while it was in the bag, and the purple colour of the dropping suggested the bird had been living on fruit, so maybe it hasn't got good enough at feeding itself on invertebrates yet? I'm sure there's lots of good weather left this season so it has plenty of time.</div>
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One of the things I had hoped would happen during this session was a recapture of a bird from elsewhere or a previous year, and this sadly didn't happen, though a bird ringed a few days ago by the same ringers did show up. However as a feather enthusiast I also wanted to learn more about feathers, and that certainly did happen! In the past I've seen feathers that have dark bars of wear across them, and I'd assumed this was part of the natural wear of the feather. But one of the ringed birds had these dark bars on its tail feathers, and the ringer told us this can be caused by a disruption in feeding while the bird is a baby in the nest, such as if it rains for a couple of days and the parent bird can't feed them constantly like they would on a dry day. It was fascinating! I had a quick look in my collection to see if I had a feather with these bars handy but couldn't find one.</div>
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The other fascinating thing I found out was about Chiffchaffs and Willow Warblers, and the one way to confidently tell them apart in the hand. I always used to go by the old 'dark legs=Chiffchaff, pale legs=Willow Warbler' thing but that's not reliable. (To be honest, I still go by it sometimes as it's just easier! Of course if the birds are singing their incredibly different songs then it's ok. ^^) But when they're in the hand, the ringers showed us how to look at the primary feathers to tell the difference. In both birds, after the first feather in the wing, the outer webs of the primaries are emarginated. In Chiffchaffs this continues to the the 6th primary, but in Willow Warblers it only goes up to the 5th primary. It was really good to finally hear a concrete way of telling them apart, but not exactly something you can use in the field! </div>
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There were several Willow Warblers in the session, and all were the loveliest lemon yellow colour in their eyestripe and all over their underparts. The ringers said Willow Warblers were more likely than Chiffchaffs to be bright like this, which confused me as a few years ago in autumn we had a very yellow leaf warbler in the garden for a few weeks that I'd always thought was a Chiffchaff. I'd been going by leg colour which isn't reliable, but thinking about it it might have been a bit late for Willow Warblers at the time, as they leave for their migration earlier. Maybe colouring varies depending on where the 'batch' of Chiffchaffs or Willow Warblers are from. The ones we caught today were probably migrants grounded by the cloudy weather, and they might have all come from the same place.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKLQqulSe-mhXTwO8DpROrNsYbk7oiNbuY_AeHQ32Sx0wG3BM9YLzsbzdpwWCwMp1GI-BxLu970lMQk2eR49rrRbWO1wg6kKPCv2O1xt3Fqgc5ogo5GhMrmNxhWI1l-7MQ_xSVuIg9ci4/s1600/IMG_2798.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKLQqulSe-mhXTwO8DpROrNsYbk7oiNbuY_AeHQ32Sx0wG3BM9YLzsbzdpwWCwMp1GI-BxLu970lMQk2eR49rrRbWO1wg6kKPCv2O1xt3Fqgc5ogo5GhMrmNxhWI1l-7MQ_xSVuIg9ci4/s1600/IMG_2798.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Look at those lovely bright yellow feathers!</td></tr>
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Some of the Willow Warblers had quite dark legs (though always with a pinkish tinge) but they also all had very brightly coloured feet that were this strange pinky-yellow colour! Late in the session a Chiffchaff was caught (one of only a couple in the whole session) and it had brightly coloured feet too, showing just how unreliable the dark legs thing is. But its plumage was totally different from the Willow Warblers', being much paler and with less yellow, though there were lovely big yellow patches on the edges of its wings! We were each given the opportunity to release a couple of birds, and I was given this particular Chiffchaff to release. It was incredible to hold it and feel it take off and fly away. :)</div>
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I've been wanting to attend a ringing session for most of my birding life and it was wonderful to finally do so! Thanks to all the ringers ran the session and taught us their knowledge. :) Though I don't think I'm quite ready to train as a ringer just yet (I don't have enough time to dedicate to the training, plus as far as I know there's no one ringing any closer to me than this Titchfield Haven, which is almost an hour away) I'm so happy I got to see it today, not to mention I got to see my first Grasshopper Warblers, and my second ever Garden Warbler!</div>
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The final list: multiples of Grasshopper Warbler, Reed Warbler, Sedge Warbler, Cetti's Warbler and Willow Warbler; a few Chiffchaffs, Whitethroats and Garden Warblers; two Wrens; and one each of Robin, Dunnock, Blackbird and Kingfisher. About 100 birds in total were ringed!</div>
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For more info on ringing, here's the BTO faqs: <a href="http://www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/ringing/about/faqs" target="_blank">http://www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/ringing/about/faqs</a> </div>
Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-85421959881298843562014-07-07T22:23:00.000+01:002014-07-07T22:23:39.883+01:00The Black-headed Gull Colony- sketchbook<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw-DEFRsJwCaD94x_b1I7CcAlSqw8T1Ir3macGTElTvaNSKm-LPOZNCkxaJLkbOV2LL-XFp6BWteLj5mGq-v5SnaFLX5ivRwDzuYQQFXMryaN8CO7oi9ekgab84HDpb7wIG2boc2UJwHM/s1600/sketchbook+post.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw-DEFRsJwCaD94x_b1I7CcAlSqw8T1Ir3macGTElTvaNSKm-LPOZNCkxaJLkbOV2LL-XFp6BWteLj5mGq-v5SnaFLX5ivRwDzuYQQFXMryaN8CO7oi9ekgab84HDpb7wIG2boc2UJwHM/s1600/sketchbook+post.jpg" height="312" width="400" /></a></div>
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(Read the unofficial precursor to this post, Herring Gull Town, <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/life-and-death-in-wales-part-1-herring.html" target="_blank">here</a>!)<br />
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I wrote last time about <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-mating-dance-of-non-native-species.html" target="_blank">the Black Swans</a> and their mating dance at Titchfield Haven nature reserve, which was fascinating but what really draws me there every spring is the amazing colony of Black-headed Gulls that assembles every year on one of the scrapes! This colony is carefully protected with controlled water levels and an electric fence to deter ground predators, and is a relatively recent addition- I've been visiting regularly for about 15 years and I can confirm that it wasn't there during my early visits. It's wonderful that they have been able to create this excellent habitat for the birds to breed. There's a hide overlooking the main scrape, where you can get fantastically
close views of the gulls interacting, and honestly it's so fascinating I
could watch (and sketch) all day! Black-headed Gulls are so commonly
seen scavenging in towns and flying around that it's easy to take them
for granted, but breeding season is the most fascinating time to watch
any species' behaviour and they are no exception.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPwn-5tjlLm7ePbVN8PqpGP6UchK31JAGH8kB7KmkVkCXNki_O1SLUaxpv9Q4hvKRuOAV66azRmJjORdHIG5mad558c5fVO5NukL3f8ZHCBJ1rj0e_jAeyjZPNOeJuAlw8OskvmiU-m28/s1600/6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPwn-5tjlLm7ePbVN8PqpGP6UchK31JAGH8kB7KmkVkCXNki_O1SLUaxpv9Q4hvKRuOAV66azRmJjORdHIG5mad558c5fVO5NukL3f8ZHCBJ1rj0e_jAeyjZPNOeJuAlw8OskvmiU-m28/s1600/6.jpg" height="320" width="307" /></a></div>
I visited four times, this year and last year, and saw the colony at 4 different stages.<br />
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<b>1. Courtship</b> (21/3/14)<br />
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On this visit I wasn't sure if the colony would be there yet, but it was fully assembled. It's only when I visit this colony that I realise the variety of sounds Black-headed Gulls can make, and most notably, how loud they are capable of being! You can hear them all over the reserve. Most other species that normally live there stay away from the scrape at this time. ^^<br />
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The Black-headed gulls were all assembled, but the actual breeding part was only just getting started, and in fact there were a few that didn't quite have their full breeding caps yet (the 'black' cap, actually dark brown, which gives the gull its name). But pairs were definitely forming- everywhere I looked I could see pairs of gulls sitting close together, and one always seemed slightly bigger than the other. When I wrote about the Herring Gulls I mentioned learning that males in that species are bigger than females, and wondered if Black-headed Gulls have this too. It wouldn't normally be possible to tell but having them all sitting in pairs was a useful frame of reference. However the difference may have seemed more pronounced than it really was because the males were showing off so much! They were standing tall, calling all the time with their throats puffed out, and stretching their necks to make the cap look bigger, with the female staying close by their sides.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQzzwraVaigJSQCMPFUuDToyBRwb5IECfTwOQXZPLNOAQBecf7EXejd7F_J8DbbshqmvvLQOaR6kWXDu_mVTJFs6d8MkCm_Y9xpgFcZS7Qy5dLNzrPcXmGG3MOezScOdEJ0LKVCXG_quU/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQzzwraVaigJSQCMPFUuDToyBRwb5IECfTwOQXZPLNOAQBecf7EXejd7F_J8DbbshqmvvLQOaR6kWXDu_mVTJFs6d8MkCm_Y9xpgFcZS7Qy5dLNzrPcXmGG3MOezScOdEJ0LKVCXG_quU/s1600/1.jpg" height="311" width="320" /></a></div>
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In one of these pairs, I watched the female start pecking at the male's beak, in exactly the way the Herring Gull chicks from my post above pecked the red spot on their parent's beaks to get them to regurgitate food. Black-headed Gulls don't have pecking spots (their bills are all one colour and dark red), but it seemed to work the same way as the male suddenly regurgitated a couple of lumps of food (even he looked a bit surprised about it! Though that might have been just me XD) for the female to eat. I've seen the female from pairs of birds from <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-crows-nest.html" target="_blank">other species</a> using similar techniques and it's always fascinated me. Sometimes I think the female is testing the male as a provider by acting like their future chicks will and stimulate his instincts for feeding them, and sometimes I think she is using chick behaviour to get him in the mood for having babies! But most importantly, she needs to be fed to build up her strength for laying the eggs. What was funny with these two was that while the female ate one piece of the food, the male quickly snapped up the other one as if he hadn't meant to give her so much!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVX9K8DMidFYKmJv59_QKHxHUakEQToi4CF0d1gZGCGXR365-PXSjWWq5bTiA4g1JwdKz8y7StB_VBM2odxH9CWuNS1QlaKTEUwYPIKHX91BYNnpEddnQP5gRWG0cX1pyYHi-MD3J9CVU/s1600/3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVX9K8DMidFYKmJv59_QKHxHUakEQToi4CF0d1gZGCGXR365-PXSjWWq5bTiA4g1JwdKz8y7StB_VBM2odxH9CWuNS1QlaKTEUwYPIKHX91BYNnpEddnQP5gRWG0cX1pyYHi-MD3J9CVU/s1600/3.jpg" height="234" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This isn't a sketch of the actual regurgitation! It was too quick a moment for that. Just someone poking at pebbles.</td></tr>
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But that wasn't all the pairs were doing to bond- they were also displaying for each other! I've watched this colony before, but never this early, so I'd never seen them display before. The gulls would make deep 'bows' to each other, dipping the heads low and raising their behind as high as possible, with the tail fully spread, before coming back up and bending their neck as far as possible upwards so it looked bent round almost at a right angle. It was really strange to watch, not least because the male would sometimes be in the middle of a bow before realising another male was getting too close to his mate, and would suddenly burst out towards the invader to scare him away. It kind of ruined the poise of his display, but needs must!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVzX1B6eLXqY4Ac-76d8qqjADE8KclMIi74RAR_l4_b8w6N03Y197VcN0K5DS5a2mdd270jiAvUAxJiDaEYtNJTpW6zZnyKBgaDyQo6NOqI8y2bFq5R_Xak7yioa4TBxn8UXSC5z4hDAk/s1600/5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVzX1B6eLXqY4Ac-76d8qqjADE8KclMIi74RAR_l4_b8w6N03Y197VcN0K5DS5a2mdd270jiAvUAxJiDaEYtNJTpW6zZnyKBgaDyQo6NOqI8y2bFq5R_Xak7yioa4TBxn8UXSC5z4hDAk/s1600/5.jpg" height="320" width="299" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My attempt at capturing the 'bow'</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Another notable thing was the way the birds (particularly, I think, the males) were holding their wings when they were with their mates. Normally a standing gull has its wings tucked flat against its body, but these displaying birds held their wings slightly outwards from the body, in a way that reminded me a little of how male Mute Swans raise the secondaries of their wings up over their backs when they are swimming along. In swans it makes their plumage look particularly fine, and it made the gulls' white and delicate grey feathers look especially smooth and pristine too, but I suspect the actual purpose of this was the same as the swans'- to look bigger and stronger, and threatening to rivals!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCCZfLgkdi7RyIq5fFIJUg38COvKjgrunxSbva-ecvuLZ2EGaYZQi0Y8__3CJZ08AIFE-67RyP__yvgPzTh4WMXSkFlO9a33BR5Clsql_UiqnTMLAyvjQNZ8k07fS5gpcM2zrxY1-IjN0/s1600/4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCCZfLgkdi7RyIq5fFIJUg38COvKjgrunxSbva-ecvuLZ2EGaYZQi0Y8__3CJZ08AIFE-67RyP__yvgPzTh4WMXSkFlO9a33BR5Clsql_UiqnTMLAyvjQNZ8k07fS5gpcM2zrxY1-IjN0/s1600/4.jpg" height="269" width="320" /></a></div>
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Some of the pairs were starting to build nests, but this didn't mean much more than them starting to pick up sticks and bring them to one spot, where one gull (the female?) would be sitting tight as if to 'reserve' it for their use. Gulls aren't great nest builders but I suspect it was still a bit early to see any proper nests. The one in my sketch below kept picking at a plant in front of her that was much too big; there was no way she was pulling it up to get it into the nest but she didn't seem that worried.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigzlDk3iYhrgrDlMv6ofXj51JdNx5MmEn75pyGAetO7zTH_nrCaBU96ExmRwmpnTrdnrYpefXJvfuTfNHvnpiuQXC8V3GuIAIu16esUc77WDC1thcNz2zHE4IE3V9UZHxOhUj72zFj1Uc/s1600/2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigzlDk3iYhrgrDlMv6ofXj51JdNx5MmEn75pyGAetO7zTH_nrCaBU96ExmRwmpnTrdnrYpefXJvfuTfNHvnpiuQXC8V3GuIAIu16esUc77WDC1thcNz2zHE4IE3V9UZHxOhUj72zFj1Uc/s1600/2.jpg" height="337" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nest building, or just picking at it?</td></tr>
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Not all the other birds were elsewhere- there were notable numbers of Oystercatchers on the gull islands too (whether nesting or just hanging around I don't know), and a few ducks, and a nest building Moorhen pair! Their nest was much further along than the gulls', and was nestled in a patch of reeds just above the water level. They were nice and close to the hide so I got a sketch.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv0PnsNoC6ungmadp8wy7doIyP_uDdhLUyTCE7XPtHnLwpIWXb2tZp6PboSlRdrdpHVF9dniKVNmjxz-4TFGb6yWv5oVk-jRWGPsZHyVtOaM27i1_9Myo7RHVRLnvj27Unv2uTYAPSGlQ/s1600/moorhen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv0PnsNoC6ungmadp8wy7doIyP_uDdhLUyTCE7XPtHnLwpIWXb2tZp6PboSlRdrdpHVF9dniKVNmjxz-4TFGb6yWv5oVk-jRWGPsZHyVtOaM27i1_9Myo7RHVRLnvj27Unv2uTYAPSGlQ/s1600/moorhen.jpg" height="315" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
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<b>2. Nest Building and Incubation </b>(2/5/14)<b><br /></b><br />
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Flash forward to about a month later, and I visited the colony again to see how their breeding season was going.<br />
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It had come a long way! There were nests everywhere, with sitting gulls covering most of the islands on the scrape. Some of the nests near to the hide were even pretty impressive, with large piles of sticks on top of clumps of reed, and incubating birds on each one. None of the near nests had any chicks yet that I could see, though it's possible that some of the nests further away had some.<br />
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Sadly the Moorhen's nest was no longer there, and the clump of reeds the pair had been using was now occupied by a gull's nest. Presumably the gulls had muscled the Moorhens away from the spot, and possibly even used the Moorhen's nest as a base for their own nest! I did spot some Moorhens swimming along the side of the scrape though.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCQ7hRenmT7RzhJi9s5NjSRCODa7NGrlA90eLiAHNZ7DkvrLRLsTxMB8RgSn44XzBhEsG0h0lUbSEE3aHnHdjQFaeJqLZt5ylu5YMo-jF4Bd6ZP0P9p1yqu13dkV0ZlyIjS7Nz0kmCjgI/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCQ7hRenmT7RzhJi9s5NjSRCODa7NGrlA90eLiAHNZ7DkvrLRLsTxMB8RgSn44XzBhEsG0h0lUbSEE3aHnHdjQFaeJqLZt5ylu5YMo-jF4Bd6ZP0P9p1yqu13dkV0ZlyIjS7Nz0kmCjgI/s1600/1.jpg" height="524" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I think the nest on the left is the ex-Moorhen nest, now firmly occupied by an incubating gull</td></tr>
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The gulls on the reed nests were the most interesting to watch, especially the pair on the right in my above sketch. The bird on it got up to turn her eggs, revealing she had three. However she couldn't seem to relax on the nest and kept getting up and fidgeting with the eggs. I wondered if they were close to hatching and perhaps she could hear peeping or feel movements. But then her mate came back and I began to see why she might be a nervous bird. He kept flying in with new twigs to spruce up the nest (it was big already, but perhaps maintaining the nest shows he is a strong partner), but his mate was filling the whole nest and he couldn't perch next to it without being too low, so he opted for landing on her back! At first she took it quite well, but after a while she began to seem more and more bothered, her feathers got more messy and the male never seemed to be able to find anywhere to put the sticks. After a while she got off the nest altogether and left the eggs for quite a few minutes. I did wonder if they were an inexperienced pair, and whether those eggs would hatch at all at this rate! But it's all experience for next year even if they don't. There might be advantages to an elevated reed nest, but it did seem to present some problems for this pair.<br />
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Here's a sketch of some different reed nests. There's a fully made nest on the right, and though I didn't finish drawing it in there's another one on the left. In between them there were a pair of birds who seemed determined to make a nest in the area between, where there was a bridge of reeds. The spot was much closer to the water than two on either side and didn't seem ideal, but they kept bringing sticks and one kept bowing its (her?) breast downwards and pressing it into the reeds as though to flatten them and make it comfortable (that's what's supposed to be happening in the sketch). Either they hadn't been able to bag a space on the islands before they filled up, or the reed nests were actually more desirable and they wanted to create a new spot for one.<br />
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I watched a different pair mating, but they seemed to be having a little difficulty! When birds mate (most species, anyway) both of them have to twist their tails around enough for their sexual organs, the <span itemprop="articleBody">cloaca, to touch together. However the male was having so much trouble balancing on her back, flapping his wings around, and waving his tail widely, it didn't seem like they were being very successful!</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNKjVzRnHlSJGkz4OX025Y8umsVOHz_tmzPwCQwSMOX5upTq5_ddit9KDfGLEW61y9gyrzmwKX4gIFxGlwiKMBNF0109FIaHBAYz2ww9N8lbOEqWahjp0sxato1k-EgF8ZmiwjdW9WbTk/s1600/6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNKjVzRnHlSJGkz4OX025Y8umsVOHz_tmzPwCQwSMOX5upTq5_ddit9KDfGLEW61y9gyrzmwKX4gIFxGlwiKMBNF0109FIaHBAYz2ww9N8lbOEqWahjp0sxato1k-EgF8ZmiwjdW9WbTk/s1600/6.jpg" height="297" width="400" /> </a></div>
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<span itemprop="articleBody">I thought it would be a bit too late for this kind of thing but I saw on Springwatch a pair of gulls mating right after their nest had been predated by a Badger, so maybe this pair had lost their nest? Or maybe the female just hadn't finished laying her clutch. </span><br />
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<span itemprop="articleBody">All the nest on the scrapes and in the reeds were being fiercely defended, with intruders being chased away with a threatening stance and a fast swim in their direction! Here's my attempt at capturing it:</span><br />
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<b>3. Chicks! </b>(28-05-13)</div>
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I didn't visit the colony at the chick stage this year, so now I'm going to confuse you by going back to last year (back when I used softer pencils!). I had an enjoyable visit that yea where I got to see the chicks at their most fluffy and tiny! Gull chicks aren't as cute as, say, wader chicks (though both are the type of chick that is active and downy as soon is it hatches, not the kind that hatch naked and do a lot of growing in the nest), but they have an adorable gawkiness to them that I love trying to capture in my sketches. In my post last year (linked at the top) about the Herring Gulls, and Titan and Wilhelmina the chicks, I spent a lot of time not quite being able to capture the chicks' character, and these predecessors to those sketches had similar problems. But it's all a learning process.<br />
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Some of the nests were still at the stage I left them that at last time (or...next year...sorry this post has such a weird timeline!), with birds sitting firmly on eggs and bringing nesting material. I also saw one pair switch which bird was incubating, which was interesting to see. From this I found out that Black-headed Gulls both incubate, which means I was often just guessing about which bird was on the eggs when I talked about them earlier, and noticing roles as clues (like bringing nesting material- is this a way for the male to impress the female?).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGJTpUJ2WzvmfZoBq1c9YPBN2jCiS766FvHj14H8Fp4yjL8XGbdoVIdbnymC1qiH_YwtSh_wUjhK3BA4erSXIdS8E45iei6N4im0E8GRlBLjtCZUWrfoGGaIso7oXqvnOYk0c4sYMbgog/s1600/gulls19.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGJTpUJ2WzvmfZoBq1c9YPBN2jCiS766FvHj14H8Fp4yjL8XGbdoVIdbnymC1qiH_YwtSh_wUjhK3BA4erSXIdS8E45iei6N4im0E8GRlBLjtCZUWrfoGGaIso7oXqvnOYk0c4sYMbgog/s1600/gulls19.jpg" height="288" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's easy to get behind on your feather care in the hecticness of the breeding season!</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSPzIY_U-z8hNHV1nRGvhrivt6DM5Fg2A50dEF6O5xCer7O_cBe_fqtYzaAgE1MblSWpdBFA56fUxfzjogxCorjNSI7AUYkS6FX9NALeCta9xsRNuyCdOl7UAY77ycZIvthCPvgwMIQUU/s1600/gulls18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSPzIY_U-z8hNHV1nRGvhrivt6DM5Fg2A50dEF6O5xCer7O_cBe_fqtYzaAgE1MblSWpdBFA56fUxfzjogxCorjNSI7AUYkS6FX9NALeCta9xsRNuyCdOl7UAY77ycZIvthCPvgwMIQUU/s1600/gulls18.jpg" height="320" width="315" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK0X33xxgLqpEs2USURTHQe5AirBKHbgSPTQpVG2e_N_MEhVsVCw2VbDNb3eJ8SV2e-ZqC0IW2zMeU6GBeVfFzsykTrMpYx6Lwmb3HqyD_1YW2sE8aQBbvmy5uWDJTXf-SZyITZwtE90w/s1600/gulls12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK0X33xxgLqpEs2USURTHQe5AirBKHbgSPTQpVG2e_N_MEhVsVCw2VbDNb3eJ8SV2e-ZqC0IW2zMeU6GBeVfFzsykTrMpYx6Lwmb3HqyD_1YW2sE8aQBbvmy5uWDJTXf-SZyITZwtE90w/s1600/gulls12.jpg" height="270" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This was one member of the pair who switched incubating roles. It had a distinctive brown smudge on the back of its neck below its cap.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOg9oEwPC1FbQDl6juMrm1j-pWQuM1y3lZRNAeUz2ZDd7fGpoafO-PYl5zBvIO2VjDuvZ8lD_ludTWMT5iA8DbtZaIsqX6jI07vIBInZ_it_dBlPEh8Ds6C2-qBVujx4OJwtNuxUVMzKA/s1600/gulls13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOg9oEwPC1FbQDl6juMrm1j-pWQuM1y3lZRNAeUz2ZDd7fGpoafO-PYl5zBvIO2VjDuvZ8lD_ludTWMT5iA8DbtZaIsqX6jI07vIBInZ_it_dBlPEh8Ds6C2-qBVujx4OJwtNuxUVMzKA/s1600/gulls13.jpg" height="236" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The other (assumed male by me at the time) returned at feeding time!</td></tr>
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At this stage a few birds, like the one above, were still sitting on eggs, but there were chicks absolutely everywhere! They were speckley brown and fluffy, with legs that seemed too big for their bodies. </div>
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It was raining throughout the visit, but that was ok. When you're in a hide and you're watching nothing but water birds, rain really doesn't effect your birdwatching! </div>
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But while the adult birds' feathers were keeping them relatively waterproof, the chicks were all still downy and not waterproof at all, leaving their parents with the job of acting as umbrellas for them. This was done by the parent birds holding their wings out from their bodies as far as they could, and the chicks crowding in as closely as possible. It looked like a tight squeeze! It also looked pretty uncomfortable to have wriggly, pointy-beaked chicks stuffed up under your wings.</div>
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<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHq9SnA_l8FvpSUnzTZxYX8sP6R4ZdVCMViywVCcZ4YUiIQgz8U969DBxrQJi5JdxauXZ8dCDH4VzHqvuKD0pEj4zPenSCEMp4mGEOi2fD3xzKFCbins5ZPK8K9qozvHzqQJ5Fr-1JQug/s1600/gull5.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></div>
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Two seemed to be the average number of chicks in each family, or sometimes three, but one family that I made particular notes on stood out.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi_0QF1EI_buThqlwOC5rRw9JF7AJvCPByAPAFqN6AHfh5ViQEE8Xn357Y9CIQOxgRb8GX2cuUFsDHFFclJHhy9_0NkqMJdLY8qtkKocuy5PGmormj7ScNKcYDZymew9uSydJNaBQEv8o/s1600/gull4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi_0QF1EI_buThqlwOC5rRw9JF7AJvCPByAPAFqN6AHfh5ViQEE8Xn357Y9CIQOxgRb8GX2cuUFsDHFFclJHhy9_0NkqMJdLY8qtkKocuy5PGmormj7ScNKcYDZymew9uSydJNaBQEv8o/s1600/gull4.jpg" height="303" width="320" /></a></div>
At first I thought this bird had two chicks, which were both the same size as you'd expect, then another one came and huddled in under her that seemed smaller. Then yet another, smaller still, joined them! I'm assuming they were all hers as it doesn't seem likely that a gull would raise another gull's babies, so maybe there was some form of brood reduction (feeding less to weaker babies and concentrating on the strong ones to ensure they, at least, survive) going on due to her very large family? I then noticed that, sadly, there was a very small, almost dead baby nearby, just outside the nest area. I did think it was dead at first but thought I saw a slight movement; the chicks, jostling to be under their mother, all pecked the baby as they passed it. It was certainly very far gone, anyway. This was possibly the result of brood reduction, for a gull with a clutch of <i>five </i>would certainly be overwhelmed. Or it's of course possible that it wasn't her baby at all, and it just happened to be nearby. Either way, perhaps the chicks pecked because they saw it as a rival in their rush to get a warm spot under their mother's wings.<br />
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There were a few older chicks that were bigger, had a few body feathers and were roaming further afield, but they were easily intimidated by the noise and fights constantly going on among the adult gulls. I watched as a couple of these 'teenage' chicks accidentally got in the way of a fight among adults, and to get away from it they left the island they were on and hurried out into the lagoon where it was so deep they seemed to be almost swimming! Perhaps they were swimming- adult gulls swim after all. </div>
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As time goes by in this colony, I've noticed that more and more Common Terns arrive. They don't nest anywhere on the main lagoon, but a few pairs nest in lagoon behind it that seems less popular with the gull colony, and some more are on special tern nesting islands in the lake next to the lagoons (though Oystercatchers and the odd pair of gulls take up a few of the platforms too). Seeing the terns contrasted with the Black-headed Gulls is always fascinating because it makes the terns look tiny. I think of the Black-headed Gull as small because next to Herring and Lesser Black-backed gulls, it really is. But the Common Tern is much smaller again. In fact all the sea terns, even the bigger Sandwich Terns, are smaller than the Black-headed Gull. Then again, I think I checked it out and found that the smallest sea tern we get in Britain (the tiny Little Tern) is bigger than our most numerous marsh tern! (the Black Tern- I did see some once in constrast to Common Terns and they certainly were weeny.)</div>
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<b>4. All grown up </b>(15/6/14) (no sketches this visit)</div>
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Now in 2014 again, my latest visit to the colony was in mid-June where I was hoping to see more small chicks. There were still some that were downy, but on the closest islands the babies were larger and almost fully covered with feathers, though they didn't yet have the streamlined shape of the adult birds. A Black-headed Gull's first plumage is a mixture of brown and white, mostly brown but with patches of white that make them look very confusing, at just a glance you're not sure what species you're looking at! If they survive until winter, the chicks will moult into a plumage with much more white, with brown fringing across the wings and a dark band at the end of the tail, like the bird in the photo below.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This wasn't taken at Titchfield Haven but was actually from winter 2010, in a park in Paris! I know it's random but it makes good reference for this post. I didn't see much wildlife in Paris so probably there won't be a full post about that. ^^</td></tr>
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Black-headed Gulls won't breed their first summer, and gulls you see in spring and summer that look <i>almost </i>like adults, but with some brown fringing and remnants of the black tail band, are probably always one year old. There were a few of these hanging around in the colony this year, and I found myself wondering if any of them were chicks that I sketched back in 2013! Even if not those specific ones, it seemed likely that they were born at Titchfield Haven, and whatever their reason for hanging around there I expect it will help them when they breed to have been around nesting adults when they were younger!</div>
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Sadly on this visit I couldn't check on the status of the reed nesting birds (whether the pair had succeeded in making their 'in-between' nest, etc) because the vegetation in front of the hide had grown so high that I couldn't see low down enough. But I did see something rather gratifying: <i>two</i> families of Moorhens! I didn't see either of their nests but one had some medium sized but still downy babies, and the other had three absolutely tiny babies! The tiny chicks were roaming quite far afield but the adults had a close eye on them, and they stuck to the side of the scrape and well away from any of the islands.</div>
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There was a large chick on the close island with most of its feathers, but one comical patch of down on the top of its head that it probably didn't realise was there! It was pestering a parent like anything for food, pecking at its beak and trying to get the parent to regurgitate. This succeeded, and the parent dropped a chunk of food onto the ground, but quick as a flash another adult gull suddenly rushed in and grabbed it! Having seen the intruder off indignantly the parent tried again, but it seemed to be having trouble bringing up the next lump of whatever-it-was. Unlike what I've seen with <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/amorous-activities-in-pigeon-family.html" target="_blank">pigeon milk</a>, gulls don't seem to be able to feed their food straight into their chicks' beaks as a liquid, so instead it has to come out in lumps and some of them look hard to cough up! Honestly, it almost painful to watch. :O But the parent eventually succeeded and the baby got its meal, without it being stolen this time.<br />
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Speaking of meals, I was viewing from another hide (overlooking the neighboring scrape but you can still see what's going on on the large scrape from a distance), when there was a scuffle on the main scrape- a Lesser Black-backed Gull swooped down and targeted a family of Avocets. (there's a few pairs that breed at Titchfield Haven! It's really cool. They tend to breed further from the hides though so it's harder to observe them.) The parent had at least two large chicks, almost as big as her and mostly black and white but still with grey baby feathers on their backs. She was <i>not </i>happy with the gull's proximity to her babies and shooed it off angrily, with a strangely musical alarm call. I couldn't help thinking that her chicks were probably too full grown to be caught by the Lesser but it was impressive to watch! The Lesser didn't give up however, and swooped over to the gull nests, where despite being hounded by the adult Black-headeds, it managed to catch one of the downy chicks. It quickly bore the chick away to the scrape in front of my hide where there were fewer Black-headeds about, and began pecking at the chick and holding it underwater to kill it. A man in the hide who was a regular there told me it had taken 'dozens' of the chicks. But even if it had, and even if it was quite sad to watch, the Lesser Black-backed Gull had a good reason- living, just like any other bird. Any bird species only has to raise enough chicks every year to replace older birds who have died to keep the population stable, and the colony certainly didn't have as many chicks as it did on my visit in 2013 at this later stage, but it's not like there were incredibly few either! And soon the ones that are still downy will be feathered, and too big for the gull to carry off, and it will have to find a new source of food. The mortality rate of course includes first winter deaths, and then more in first summer and second winter, but the ones who survive into their second summer when they are old enough to breed will have already survived a lot, and they will hopefully be equipped to survive a lot more. The oldest recorded Black-headed Gulls have been in their twenties.</div>
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Thanks for sticking with me in this odd travel in time, I hope it made sense! I know I will be watching this colony (and sketching it!) for many years to come. It's not only fascinating, but funny! And now whenever I see those common, town dwelling gulls that are Black-headeds, I think about how much they had to go through to get up, because I've seen it happen. Watching common birds on their breeding sites will ensure you never take them for granted again!</div>
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Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-41092464508414672122014-06-03T22:52:00.000+01:002014-06-03T22:52:22.477+01:00The mating dance of a non-native speciesI'm back! Full disclosure: most of this post was written a few weeks ago, but I was so busy with my costume for MCM ComicCon that I didn't have time to finish it. ^^ But now the con season is over, and I'm back to finish the post, and add an update about how the breeding birds in my area are getting on. <br />
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Back a few weeks ago, my mum and I both had a day off, so we decided to go to one of our favourite nature reserves, Titchfield Haven near Fareham. Spring is a wonderful time to visit and watch the thriving Black-headed Gull colony (yes, the one I keep meaning to do a sketchbook post about- next post!) but of course they aren't the only species in the breeding mood. Though I don't think either of us expected to see what we did when we walked along the harbour to the visitor's centre and there were a pair of Black Swans among the Mute Swans, Mallards and Mallard/farmyard duck mixes!<br />
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Black Swans are a species from Australia that will definitely never arrive in the UK naturally, but they do escape from wildfowl collections a lot and there are quite a few in the country. Wildfowl collections are prone to escapes because the birds are usually not kept in aviaries, just on ponds with their wings clipped, and this wouldn't be the first time wildfowl from collections have turned up at Titchfield Haven! There's been such fantastic visitors as Fulvous Whistling Duck, Cinnamon Teal, a previous single Black Swan and a Cackling Goose, as well as a Canada Goose thought to be part Bar-headed Goose that was in the reserve's feral goose flock several years ago. The only one of those that might appear naturally in Britain is the Cackling Goose, which resembles a tiny Canada Goose, but it was clear that this one wasn't wild by it's complete lack of shyness as it fed with the Canada Geese a few metres from the hide. I've written a little about escaped ducks in <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/wow-what-day.html" target="_blank">this post</a> where I talk about thinking I saw wild Red-crested Pochards on a village pond when I was about eight...so naive at that age. ^^<br />
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Unlike Canada Geese and Mandarin Ducks, Black Swans aren't currently a self-sustaining population, but apparently some are worried they will be the next Canada Geese and sweep the country with large, destructive populations! I don't see that happening, at least not in my lifetime, but according to the staff in the centre there are several feral Black Swans living on the Isle of Wight, a mere skip and a jump over the solent from Titchfield Haven, so that's probably where this pair came from. And as we watched them it became clear that they were thinking about the next generation! <br />
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The swans were facing each other with their necks gently curved, making the classic swan's-necks-make-a-heart greetings card pose, and then they began to mimic each other, with one dipping its head under water and back up, and the other doing the same a second later. Then the male moved closer to the female so his breast was touching her side, and looped his neck over her body and into the water on the other side. After he came up he kept his neck draped over her back, and all the time they were making little quiet calls to each other. Then the male slowly began to clamber onto her back so they could mate- actually he climbed on the wrong way round, but she was very patient with him while he slowly and carefully maneuvered his way round to face the same way as her. The actual mating looked a bit difficult and uncomfortable, with her back sinking into the water and him grasping onto the back on her neck with his beak, possibly to help him stay on, but it was over in a second and they broke apart, faced each other, both raised their necks straight up in the air and each gave a loud, triumphant call! You could see the middles of their necks expand out in a comical way while they called. The whole thing was an amazing sight to see, and took place about 5 metres away from the bridge we were watching from. I wished I'd had my camera on me- it's no good for photographing wildlife usually, but they were so close I could certainly have a taken a video of the whole thing!<br />
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The Black Swan pair continued to swim together, and later on we saw a Mute Swan pair swim a little too close to them. Suddenly feeling threatened, the Black Swans split up, and each took a Mute Swan to chase, flapping and splashing aggressively and successfully seeing off the bigger swan pair! We wondered if the male chased the male and the female the female, but as Black Swans appear to be sex alike it wasn't possible to tell- I only identified the male in the mating dance from his role. While the male Mute Swan is bigger than the female with a larger lump on his bill, and sometimes holds his wings raised over his back to look bigger, the Black Swans were both the same size, both had the same red bill with a white stripe on it and the same gorgeous, wavy feathers on the base of the back. I've heard Black Swans described as ugly but their plumage certainly isn't- I think it's the rather odd, contrasting bright red beak that gets people. Black Swans have white primary feathers, and I noticed when they flapped at the Mute Swans that at least one of them had no clipping on its wing feathers, suggesting it had moulted at least once since escaping!<br />
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Whether or not this pair made a good choice for their nest site, incubate well, and get lucky with the weather and predation (they may well be inexperienced), it was just so fascinating to watch such a natural Spring behaviour as courtship and mating in these captive born birds. I've not seen courtship displays in very many British birds- I've seen Great-Crested Grebes do their beautiful mating dance just once in my entire birdwatching history, and I've seen <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-crows-nest.html" target="_blank">Buzzards flirting in flight</a>, and <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/amorous-activities-in-pigeon-family.html" target="_blank">Woodpigeons billing and cooing</a>, but there's not many other birds that I can remember watching courting. I did very much enjoy seeing Avocet courtship on Springwatch the other night, though! It involved delicate splashing with the long, beautiful beaks, and then a sort of wing-hug after the actual mating. ^^ Such amazing birds. At some point I will cast my mind back to 2011 and write about the time I saw baby Avocets...<br />
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Speaking of Springwatch, I wrote last time about the baby Blackbirds in our garden, and like Springwatch I am able to give you an update! I was a little concerned to see one baby being fed several times in a row, but this was not a long term problem, and both babies were seen again, getting more confident all the time. What's more, they were joined by a third! Soon the babies were no longer hiding in bushes but were joining the adults on the ground feeder. At first they begged their parents constantly for food, and then they began to peck at the food themselves but only when the parents weren't around. As soon as a parent would appear, the babies would completely forget about their newfound feeding independence and beg shamelessly, opening their still visible gapes and peeping and wing-fluttering..it was quite hilarious to watch, and the poor parents were so frazzled!<br />
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Blackbirds have multiple broods, and it didn't take long for the female to stop attending the babies at all, as she was no doubt concentrating on brewing the next clutch of eggs, and probably renewing and strengthening the nest after the strain of having had three large babies wriggling about in it. When it comes to feeding, impressively she sometimes uses one of our sunflower heart feeders! Thrushes are not really built for feeders, but she can stay hanging on long enough to gulp a few down. The sunflower hearts also proved a good meal for the babies as they began to feed themselves in earnest, as they were able to peck up all the seeds the messy finches are always dropping. The male was still around keeping an eye on the babies in a sort of hands-off way, and though they still pestered him for food when he was around and he'd sometimes feed them out of habit, they were really almost fully independent. They were flying properly, their tails were almost full length (if a little wonky and scruffy), and their gapes were almost gone.<br />
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It was just about at this point when another baby Blackbird appeared in the garden! This one was a really young one, with the tiny tail, speckley breast and giant yellow gape. The female of the first brood was still absent most of the time, probably incubating her second brood, so this wasn't the original Blackbird pair's baby but from a new brood, and a different pair! It was really funny seeing the contrast between the slightly older babies and the new one.<br />
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Next baby bird to appear was a young Starling, joining the adults on the ground feeder. I'd been looking forward to seeing the first baby Starlings ever since I found the eggshells I wrote about last time, and was so happy when the day finally arrived! The juvenile Starling didn't have the scruffy feathers the baby Blackbirds had, but was just as slim and streamlined as the adults, though light grey all over. I couldn't see any external gape, and its begging technique was different from the baby Blackbirds- it didn't flutter or peep, but just sat there with its great, gaping beak open while the adults stuffed in food! Its beak was bright yellowy-orange on the inside. There were at least 3 adults on the ground feeder with the baby so it wasn't just with its parents, but none of the adults seemed at all worried about each others' presence or the baby's presence, showing the Starlings truly are flock birds, even in the breeding season. This is in stark contrast to Blackbirds, who don't flock in the breeding season, and in fact the father of the first Blackbird babies got into a rather violent scuffle with another Blackbird (probably the father of the second Blackbird babies as I doubt there's room for any more Blackbirds around here!). It was a proper pecking, rolling around and clawing fight and something I've never seen. It was hard to tell who won, but 'our' Blackbird (the father of the first babies) has been looking a bit worse for wear every since, as he lost a whole chunk of the feathers on his forehead. A few weeks later, he's still like that, but now the poor guy has also had an encounter with (probably) a cat, which cost him all of his tail feathers! It's sad to see him wagging his behind automatically, and having no tail to flourish proudly. The moulting season is coming up anyway, though, so he should soon be growing new ones. And until then there's plenty of food about.<br />
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Next to appear was an adorable baby Robin, and two scruffy baby Dunnocks (they have pink beaks! It's weird). Then a couple of weeks ago, there were yet more baby birds in the form of a beautiful (and HUNGRY) Great Tit family, and then the Goldfinches were next, with three beige-faced youngsters watching the adults on the feeder and begging shamelessly for food. Young Goldfinches may not have the black, white and red face pattern of the adults but they already have the yellow wing bars that makes Goldfinches so distinctive. Young Great Tits have the same pattern as the adults but they have yellow cheeks, as do young Blue Tits. When I was younger I saw a picture of this in a bird book and was surprised to see that the youngsters seemed even more colourful than the adults which didn't seem a good idea for baby birds, but when you actually see them the effect of the yellow is to tone down the contrast on the head pattern, turning black and white into black and pale yellow. This, combined with an overall 'desaturation' of the colour on the rest of the feathers means they are far less noticeable than the adults. We don't think either of these species nested in the garden or all that close to it, but we're glad they came to our garden to feed their hungry young. :) Goldfinches are everyday visitors to the feeders, but before the babies came the Great Tit was seen only occasionally this Spring, usually in the evening when it would stop by for a quick bite to eat at the feeder.<br />
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And this evening, I looked out of the window and saw tiny, ball-shaped birds whizzing around the garden- it was a Wren family! The babies perched in our hedgerow and wildflower area, occasionally fluttering from bush, whirring their little stumpy wings at top speed. Despite their tiny size the yellow gape at the edges of their beaks was very visible. We counted three young attended by one adult, who by contrast looked very sleek and confident as it balanced expertly on small stems to pick little insects from under the leaves.<br />
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At my local patch, I've seen baby Robins (out on their own) and a baby Great Tit (<i>fiercely </i>attended by a noisy adult with an extremely wide black belly stripe!), and best of all, last visit there were three young Long-tailed Tits! I couldn't see an adult and they seemed pretty much independent, and they already had full-length tails, but the big smudge of black over their eyes gave them away. It really emphasised the orange eyes Long-tailed Tits have. I've found Robin eggshells and, more unusually, the vivid bright blue of a Song Thrush eggshell. Song Thrushes aren't unusual of course but I rarely ever see them on my patch, or hear them, with the only singing male I've heard there coming from far away, possibly from a garden on one of the suburban estates at the edge of my small arable farm patch. In <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/eggs-baby-birds-and-books.html" target="_blank">my egg post</a> I talk about the Starlings dropping their hatched eggshells away from the nest, so maybe a thrush flew all the way in from a neighbouring garden to really throw predators off the scent?<br />
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The male Whitethroat is back in his usual singing spot, and the male Yellowhammer is singing in the hedgerow, both familiar from last year (this is only my second Spring watching this patch) but there's a new player in the form of a lovely Goldfinch pair who I suspect are nesting in the shrubs below the mature trees in the middle of the farm. The Skylarks are hovering and landing on the fields a lot, and it's exciting to think that somewhere in the sea of green crop are hidden eggs. The Carrion Crow pair are back in the same patch of trees as last year, but not in the <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-crows-nest.html" target="_blank">nest I found last year</a>, which I suspect blew apart in the winter storms. They have a new one, more deeply hidden in the trees, and now both members of the pair are flying around again which I suspect means the babies have hatched! There's a Jackdaw pair around that area, and a Magpie pair in the trees at the edge of the farm.<br />
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Finally, the House Martins, who nest in the area but not in the actual patch (perhaps on the estate too), are visiting their favourite mud puddle on one of the paths to pick up mud for their nests. At one point I counted 17 landing there all at once! I always hope that I'll see their tiny footprints and beak marks in the mud, but I haven't yet. They are extremely light, after all!<br />
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How is the breeding season shaping up in your area? Are there baby birds in your garden, or at your patch? Tell me all about them! :)Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-46978660675134022882014-04-14T20:52:00.000+01:002014-04-14T20:52:52.759+01:00Eggs, Baby Birds and BooksThe first baby birds are in our garden! Last Tuesday I was enjoying the newly light evenings and watching the garden when I spotted some wing fluttering and feeding action in one of the trees. A quick look through binoculars showed that this wasn't a male courtship feeding a female, as the bird being fed was reddish-brown and appeared very round because of its fluffed up feathers and almost complete lack of tail. It was a baby, the first one of any species I've seen this year! (The day after I first spotted the Blackbirds, however, I saw the first tiny Mallard duckings in St James's Park!) A closer look showed it had a visible gape, which is the wide, colourful mouth-edge baby birds have in the nest to make their beaks super visible to the parents birds when they come with food. You can see these on all kinds of songbirds.<br />
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On a closer look, there were two babies, being attended by the male. One was hunched up and still, and I doubt I would have spotted it if I hadn't seen the male arrive initially, which really shows how quietness and stillness can hide baby birds when their parents are away finding food. The other baby, however, was quite active and was fly-jumping around the tree like anything, it's tiny tail cocked, looking like a giant wren! Interestingly the male visited and fed the still baby <i>three </i>times while I was watching, with the active baby not being fed once, even though at one point it hopped right over to where the male was feeding the first baby and sat there looking expectant. I don't know what's happening there, but I have to say the hopping chick seemed very energetic and healthy so I doubt any long term neglect is happening. Blackbirds are such efficient breeders, they tend to be the first baby birds you see in the spring and starting early means they can often churn out 3 broods in a season, and therefore don't go in for massive clutches, so long-term favouritism in their broods doesn't make sense for them.<br />
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The day after seeing the young Blackbirds, I found these in our drive:<br />
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Of course I immediately jumped to the conclusion that they must be the Blackbirds eggshells! But after borrowing my Mum's guide to bird eggs and nests, I found that Blackbird eggs are extremely speckley, and these very pale blue, almost speckle-free eggshells are actually a much better fit for a Starling. This makes sense as Starlings nested under our neighbour's roof tiles last year and we've been seeing them there again. These were actually found surprisingly close to where the nest is, as birds usually take the shells a little distance away to drop them so they don't draw predators to the nest, but at least they weren't directly under it I suppose! I guess here is a possibility it's from Starlings at a completely different site.<br />
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This seems a good time to point out the difference between these eggs and the one I found <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/amorous-activities-in-pigeon-family.html" target="_blank">back in January</a> that I guessed had been predated by a corvid. That one had an intact shell except for a big hole in its side. These ones, however, have been cut neatly around the middle! Here's another photo so you can better see what I mean:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPHb94_Z40ZN1V5E42ma-bN8RrIhQK9Dk5_dsU-3czd7zBsh30sqU22C381lhip82Xf-wByvi1iULGpBImaxUM8AnJgel2CESuJyku5oAugtx-CjhH1k_30V1fkIU09USa_EYgtMBbU5E/s1600/IMG_1770.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPHb94_Z40ZN1V5E42ma-bN8RrIhQK9Dk5_dsU-3czd7zBsh30sqU22C381lhip82Xf-wByvi1iULGpBImaxUM8AnJgel2CESuJyku5oAugtx-CjhH1k_30V1fkIU09USa_EYgtMBbU5E/s1600/IMG_1770.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Look at those careful, regular cuts! A tiny bird has cut those using its egg tooth while still inside. Regular halves are a sure sign that you are looking at naturally hatched eggshells.<br />
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Forgive the absence of posts recently, I've been working on a costume for an upcoming convention I'm going to! Cosplay and birds are my two passions. :D And I'm also in the middle of a post about a Black-headed Gull colony I sketched at about a month ago, but sketchbook posts take forever to put together and I wanted to talk about baby birds! Have you seen any baby birds yet? If so, tell me all about it!<br />
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Now, earlier in the post I mentioned that my Mum has a guide to birds eggs and nests. It's worth mentioning that (as far as I know) you cannot buy these new, because egg collecting has been such a huge thing in the past, it is all kinds of illegal now, but it <i>still happens </i>and the last thing anyone wants to do is encourage it. This is really important, but it can be annoying if you find an eggshell and can't find a book to ID it. My Mum's book was published in the 70s (and was actually published in Czechoslovakia, which I only realised recently and which explains some of the birds included that had puzzled me in the past, like Short-Toed Treecreeper, Crested Lark and Great Reed Warbler, none of which breed in Britain!), and for my last birthday my sister gave me an egg book of my own, which she had found second hand. That, I think, is the best thing to do if you want a book about bird eggs- check second hand shops and stalls, and hopefully you will come across one. Mine is not quite as useful as my Mum's as it limits itself to 'woodland and hill birds', which doesn't appear to include Blackbird <i>or </i>Starling, but it has all the other thrushes, the tits, corvids, pigeons, farmland birds, game birds etc etc so that's all very useful. :) It was <i>also </i>published in Czechoslovakia in the 70s, though the author and illustrator are not the same as my Mum's, which was interesting to spot- maybe loads of bird egg books were coming out of Eastern Europe at the time and being translated? The range of birds is even wider and includes Roller, Nutcracker, Griffin Vulture, Hazel Grouse, Eagle Owl and all that cool stuff! My sister was really on the ball when she bought me that. :D<br />
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By the way, though I am a feather collector and have a growing collection of bones (and one <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/mystery-mammal-part-1-and-tale-of-tail.html" target="_blank">deer tail</a>), I wouldn't recommend anyone to collect eggshells because egg collecting is still just too close to home, at least in the UK. Hatched eggshells are very different from ones blown by a collector, but still, I prefer not to go there at all. The ones in my photo were put back outside once I'd photographed them. Bird eggs are beautiful, but they only belong in the wild, and in the UK every single one of them, no matter how common the bird, is protected to the full extent of the law from human intervention. Nests and eggs are more precious than gold.Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-83173278387036228302014-03-20T19:27:00.004+00:002014-03-20T19:48:35.455+00:00Mystery Mammal part 1, and the Tale of a TailBack in <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/happy-new-year.html" target="_blank">my New Years' roundup post</a>, I wrote: 'With
the help of a friend, I added to these records two mammal records for my area
which were both unexpected and exciting, because they were species I didn’t know
were about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope to write about both
of them soon!' This post is going to be about the first one.<br />
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Last June, I got up one Sunday ready to go to my local patch for my weekly BTO Birdtrack survey, turned on my phone and found a text from a friend of mine. He'd been cycling back from the station late the night before, and had found what he described as a baby deer, dead on the road, and recently judging by the good condition. Being a lot less squeamish than I am, and a cool guy who likes to share stuff (we both find examining dead animals very interesting for naturalist reasons), he picked the deer up and transported it to the entrance of my local patch which was a little way along the road, and left it there under the trees at the entrance. He then sent me a text with the location, and urged me to go and look at it as soon as possible- as I've mentioned, my patch is a very popular dog walking spot, and this was a sunny Sunday, which meant there'd be dogs out in force, dogs who would no doubt be very interested in a dead deer. So I hurried there as quickly as possible, armed with my camera and sketchbook.<br />
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Upon arrival, I searched fruitlessly for a while before finding the poor thing. It was indeed small for a deer, and sort of odd-looking to my inexperienced eyes (inexperienced at deer, anyway!). I'd seen Roe Deer before at the patch and thought of them as the only deer in the area, but this deer was definitely too small. As my friend had called it a baby deer I was still working on the assumption that this was what it was, so I decided to look it up when I got home and started taking photos.<br />
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I won't be using many of the photos I took in this post because looking back at them, honestly the poor deer looks terrible. It didn't smell at all-I think it quite likely died the night my friend found it-and at the time I thought dogs hadn't damaged it that much, but looking at the photos now I think I was wrong. The deer presumably died after being hit by a car but it's hard to tell which of its injuries were caused by the car and which were the dogs. One of its back legs was badly broken, which probably was the car, but its tail had been torn right off and was missing, which was no doubt a dog, and the unbroken back leg had been quite obviously chewed. There were also bloody marks on its muzzle, around the eye and on its head, which could have been a corvid, possibly the Magpie that was sitting in a tree above eying the deer while I was there. The fur on the deer was also thin with small bald patches, which I suppose could have been from poor health before it died, but I suspect dogs worrying the corpse as more likely.<br />
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But enough morbid talk! I may not be using my photos, but I did do this sketch:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj48R8wQU1eEnGFq6Be7fQ980IGggX1o8G0jA9Usf7d0118sLYOeLN2F0GVypo7o8mO7O_CxG8pF52skB_nnV9PJoiVR2eFaeiecYSE_PSr-X6bizcSoCLCrMr36hJSNfRrQ7jvUxRMQjc/s1600/dead+muntjac.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj48R8wQU1eEnGFq6Be7fQ980IGggX1o8G0jA9Usf7d0118sLYOeLN2F0GVypo7o8mO7O_CxG8pF52skB_nnV9PJoiVR2eFaeiecYSE_PSr-X6bizcSoCLCrMr36hJSNfRrQ7jvUxRMQjc/s1600/dead+muntjac.jpg" height="611" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It was lying on leaf litter and one of the ears was buried, which is why I haven't drawn all of it</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Most of the deer I've seen in the wild are Roe Deer, and they are the most common where I live. I've seen Fallow Deer a few times in the New Forest, but all my other observations of (wild, non-park) deer have been of Roes. Going by my assumption that this deer would be a Roe Deer, hopefully you can see from my sketch of what its head looked like why I would say it looked odd. Firstly, its head is wide but tapers sharply down to a thin, pointy nose. The inside of its ear has very little hair on it, with only a tuft where it joins the head and the rest bare, pink-grey, slightly wrinkled skin. The top of the head has odd ridges on it, running down the nose. And next to the eye is a strange, curved hole in the skin. At the time I assumed this was more damage to the body.<br />
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I texted my friend to say I'd found the deer, and he texted back saying 'I think it's a Muntjac'. At the time I thought 'Nah!' because I was so convinced Roe Deer were the only species in the area. By the time I got home and had a chance to google Muntjac Deer, my friend was starting to doubt that it was one. However once I saw the results of my google search, I was absolutely positive it was! Because I saw...this:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO_Fnp6-jAMlkryrXVGgPlKZrFDODyUDDrYtYZ5pkBgZMBD_tuLCoP0utYJpaOFSv7VnI1MY9Iu9fq6pNeWDAlNbhKdAvvvoWbyHhAxNvbBrGMEZZC9xNAcJ0dUrVlf2OwY7w-eRbBfLY/s1600/800px-Muntjac_deer_at_Dumbleton_Hall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO_Fnp6-jAMlkryrXVGgPlKZrFDODyUDDrYtYZ5pkBgZMBD_tuLCoP0utYJpaOFSv7VnI1MY9Iu9fq6pNeWDAlNbhKdAvvvoWbyHhAxNvbBrGMEZZC9xNAcJ0dUrVlf2OwY7w-eRbBfLY/s1600/800px-Muntjac_deer_at_Dumbleton_Hall.jpg" height="283" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">By Nilfanion (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons</td></tr>
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Well, not exactly this one, this is a stock image of a Muntjac, but it does the trick. It really helped that I had spent so much time carefully studying the ridges on the head and the texture of the inner ears while sketching, because when I looked at the photos, those were the features that jumped out at me and made me certain. Here's a Roe Deer for comparison:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0qw7o8sduWLOY8LzP6lmXhvE-XLSuXMYd0QlUyvCfEV4gHbYL7x_w9budFojYi6dZw6AoOHpvRYsnXyz6RyYF3_1_wAVC31vZqJeaMYkAbiqjNrg6SeFYU_5aTYM3WLHU9Pu1oSuZ2aI/s1600/Raadyr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0qw7o8sduWLOY8LzP6lmXhvE-XLSuXMYd0QlUyvCfEV4gHbYL7x_w9budFojYi6dZw6AoOHpvRYsnXyz6RyYF3_1_wAVC31vZqJeaMYkAbiqjNrg6SeFYU_5aTYM3WLHU9Pu1oSuZ2aI/s1600/Raadyr.jpg" height="317" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">By Malene Thyssen (User Malene) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-SA-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons</td></tr>
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You can see the Roe's ears are much hairier, its muzzle less pointy, and it lacks the distinctive head ridges the Muntjac has. Incidentally the Muntjac in the stock picture is a buck with antlers and you can see they grow out of the ends of the ridges, making the antlers seem to lie along the head rather than grow out of the top like the antlers of the native British deer species. The Muntjac I sketched didn't have antlers but both sexes have the ridges, and it was mostly their distinctiveness that made me sure it was a Muntjac. In the pictures you can also see the Muntjac is shorter-legged, shorter necked and stockier, and its fur is a yellow-brown shade while the Roe is more reddish-brown. And regarding the hole below the eye of the Muntjac that I thought was damage to the corpse- the stock picture doesn't really get close enough but you can just see little marks below the eyes. According to the <a href="http://www.bds.org.uk/muntjac.html" target="_blank">British Deer Society</a> those are actually sub-orbital glands, which are very large on Muntjac Deer.<br />
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Until my friend found the dead Muntjac, I had no idea there were Muntjac in Hampshire at all, especially not in my area! I knew very little about them, and I still don't know much, other than what they look like and that unlike other deer they tend to be solitary. Road kill is always sad to see, but there are often times when it can tell you a lot about an animal, and as I've mentioned in previous posts the <a href="http://www.mammal.org.uk/nmap" target="_blank">National Mammal Atlas</a> accepts records of all signs of mammals, so submitted findings of road kill can help build a more complete picture of the distribution of these mammals, and finding and identifying dead mammals that you'd have little chance of seeing alive in the wild is a great way of building your own knowledge of the wildlife in your local area. When I post Mystery Mammals part 2, I'll show another example of the discovery of a dead mammal I didn't have any idea was in the area that was found as road kill. By the way, if you're an artist interested in animal anatomy like myself, I highly recommend sketching dead animals from life, if you have the time and it's safe to do so (obviously if the mammal is in the middle of a road and it isn't possible or hygienic to move it, then maybe photos only!). Drawing the Muntjac from life when I didn't know what species it was helped me pick up on the details that would later allow me to identify it without doubt, and I got a sketch that I'm very happy with and which is much better observed than if I'd copied one of the photos I took instead.<br />
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The sketch isn't the only thing I have relating to this deer. When I finished sketching and photographing, I was walking out of the area of woodland when I noticed a patch of fur under a tree. It was clearly the deer's fur, and nearby I found a much larger scrap that I realised was the deer's entire tail that had been torn off by a dog. On a whim, and thanks to a plastic sandwich bag I'd brought in case I found any feathers, I picked it up, wrapped it in the bag and took it home. My friend (a different friend) knew a bit about preservation techniques for pelts, and I thought I'd show it to her and see if she could teach me how to preserve it. <br />
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Mindful of decomposition, I asked her as soon as possible and she recommended I cure it with salt. Looking for a little more information, I discovered <a href="http://www.wikihow.com/Perform-Salt-Cure-Taxidermy" target="_blank">this tutorial </a>about salt cure taxidermy. It recommends iodized salt, which I found without too much difficulty in a medium sized supermarket. Before starting I examined the tail and found it had come off relatively cleanly, and though I could feel a firm line along the middle where the end of the spine would go, there was no bone left in it at all- it must have remained on the carcass when the tail came off. The firmness was just the edges of the hole the spine had been in pressing together.<br />
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As the tutorial describes, I covered the bottom of a small box with a layer of salt. Then I sprinkled salt over the place where the tail had come off the body, as this is the area that needs the moisture drawn out of it the most, and then placed the tail in the box. Then I covered it up with salt and left it for 8 weeks. (The tutorial says 6-8 weeks depending on size but I went with the longest option to be safe!)<br />
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Here it is! <br />
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Look at the gorgeous colour in that fur. :) As you can see from the bottom photo, everything dried out just fine and though there was never much flesh on it, what there was is now preserved.</div>
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The Muntjac tail is now part of my not-very-big collection of things that aren't feathers. I have a few small bones, which I will write about one day, and a Roe Deer antler (bought not found, sadly), and now my first tail, of an animal I've never seen alive. I doubt I will make collecting tails from road kill into a habit but it's an interesting part of my naturalistic collection. I sometimes read blogs of people who skin animals and preserve the pelt, or stuff roadkill, but I'm not interested in doing any of these things myself, nor am I interested in making jewellery out of (legally collected) preserved animal tails, which the tutorial I used seems to have been made for the purpose of. It's interesting to read about these things, though! That reminds me, I really must start a blogroll in a sidebar on this blog showing blogs I read and admire.</div>
Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-92141788278374601522014-03-13T22:39:00.000+00:002014-03-13T22:39:06.053+00:00Guessing at Fungi, and a Sly Visitor!If you've been reading my blog in the past few months you will know that I love fungi, but it's really a very recent thing that was kickstarted last autumn, when I was looking for birds (unsuccessfully) in <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/non-bird-nature-in-crab-wood.html" target="_blank">a local wood</a>, and suddenly noticed I was surrounded by autumn fungi, of all shapes and sizes. Then it turned into an obsession when I was in <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/ga-part-2-fabulous-fungi.html" target="_blank">a German wood</a> and found fungi in red, yellow, green and purple, and all kinds of shapes and textures. From then on, I've been noticing fungi everywhere.<br />
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I can't remember why I never noticed fungi before this autumn, as I was always out birdwatching before that in places where fungi might be found. I think it was something to do with an idea I had about most fungi being brown and white mushrooms that all looked the same and weren't very interesting. I knew there were more different shapes and colours and textures, but I thought you had to be an expert to find those ones, and you'd only get to that point after getting really good at looking at the brown mushrooms. However, I now realise this is absolutely not true- once you begin looking out for fungi you will start to realise that some of the commonest species of fungi are some of the most brightly coloured, strangest in shape, and weirdest in texture! I'm going to go on to show you some examples that I found in the past couple of months at my local patch during my weekly bird-counting visits- despite the bright colours of some of it, I might have overlooked if I hadn't had my eyes open for fungi.<br />
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First, a quick note: fungi is awesome to look at, but even species that look really distinctive can be strangely hard to identify. I found this out with my Meadow Coral/Yellow Stagshorn confusion in the Germany post I linked above, and from some correspondence I had with the excellent Mark Baldwin at Wildlife Online (<a href="http://www.wildlifeonline.me.uk/">http://www.wildlifeonline.me.uk/</a>) I learned that photographing fungi where it grows may not be enough to always be sure of a positive ID- you may need to photograph the gill structure as well, or cut it in half to look at the structure inside, or for some of the 'brown mushrooms' I mention above, you might even need to taste the fungus's secretion! (Note: do NOT do this unless you are an expert!!! I certainly won't be trying it for a while!) The identification book for fungi that I use (which Mark also recommends), is Mushrooms by Roger Phillips, which I have on long-term loan from my dad, but I really must get my own copy ^^- this book includes how common a fungus is which is really useful (and also how poisonous/good to eat a fungus is, which is just interesting!). To back this up, when I think I've IDed something I use the Hampshire Fungus Recording Group website that I mention at the end of <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/confusing-fungi-and-some-fungi-resources.html" target="_blank">this</a> post, and if there's not many records of it I reconsider the plausibility of my ID. I may also do a google image search on a species I think I've found, especially if it looked close but was a slightly different colour or shape than in the picture in the book, as fungi are <i>widely </i>variable in colour and shape (some with age, some...just to be annoying, I think XD) and an image search should show you several variations of the same species.<br />
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Now: on to the fungi!<br />
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I think these interesting little things are most likely to be Common Jellyspot, even though most of the pictures I saw of Jellyspot were more orange than these various shades of pink and maroon! I love the huge variety of shapes, sizes and textures that were all on the same log. The incredible smoothness, curvyness and shininess looks like some sort of modern art. Looking back at these photos now, I kind of wish I'd poked them with a stick to see if they were as squashy as they look! In the 4th photo down is what looks like one that's been squashed, so maybe they are.<br />
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These are both the same one- you can see in the top one how it seems to melt into the tree, and in the second one how high the dome is. I love this one because of how wet and jelly-like it looks, as if it's sort of melted down over the bark! Unlike the Jellyspot (and most other fungi I seem to see), this one was on its own. This was hard to ID but I <i>think</i> it might be White Milking Bonnet? Heeding Mark's advice about the gill structure, and also because I wanted to see what the stem was like under the cap, I took the following photo:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I had to make it bigger than the others as it's one of my favourite photos I've ever taken! :D</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Even though this photo came out really nicely, I'm not experienced enough to actually use the gill structure to verify ID yet. I think the White Milking Bonnet is a subspecies of Milking Bonnet, and there aren't as many records of White Milking Bonnet in Hampshire as there are Milking Bonnet, but it's tricky with subspecies. This was a really hard one to get even a tentative ID on so if anyone knows about Milking Bonnet-type fungi or has another ID suggestion for my melting white mushroom, let me know! :)<br />
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This little bright one was a relatively easy; it's a Yellow Brain fungus! I couldn't have thought of a better name myself. Again, these are photos of the same one from different angles.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghmPlH6fBFNuiNi8v6HYpfBsHUvQvkVPbHIwcNlNBdcQQsaAlccoK6P0ZnHU-n_RzwFFXfd0lkCYaXzjNxXvGO_42LEUW3LOtcyZrPrb7rDIR1MFrgC84ZKv5_mp0R5fKMrrCAtiuK1Fc/s1600/IMG_1111.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghmPlH6fBFNuiNi8v6HYpfBsHUvQvkVPbHIwcNlNBdcQQsaAlccoK6P0ZnHU-n_RzwFFXfd0lkCYaXzjNxXvGO_42LEUW3LOtcyZrPrb7rDIR1MFrgC84ZKv5_mp0R5fKMrrCAtiuK1Fc/s1600/IMG_1111.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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This one was an odd one. It looks quite like the Jelly Spot without any of the colour, but I found a photo of a fungus that looked like it in the suggested images while looking at google search results for the Yellow Brain- clicking into it showed it was called the Crystal Brain. Despite the name, as you can see it's not really that similar looking to the Yellow Brain, and the Latin names (<span class="st">Tremella mesenterica and </span><span class="st">Myxarium nucleatum) suggest they are not closely related at all</span>. (Even fungi that do look alike aren't necessarily related, of course!) Crystal was the closest ID I could find for the fungi in the photo, but weirdly Crystal Brain wasn't in Roger Phillips' fungi guide at all, not even under the Latin name<span class="st">. But when I searched the name in the Hampshire fungi site, there were many records. Does anyone know why it might not have been in the book? Very odd, and it's a good thing the name is similar to the Yellow Brain or I might never have even had an idea what it might be!</span><br />
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<span class="st">The more interested I get in fungi, the more I see it everywhere! And to an extent, the same thing is happening with signs of mammals. As I wrote about in <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/recording-signs-of-mammals-for-national.html" target="_blank">this post</a>, I've been keeping notes about signs of mammals I see for the National Mammal Database, and my local patch is no exception. Warning in case you're eating dinner: poo pictures to follow!</span><br />
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<span class="st">Up at the top of my patch there's a railway line surrounded by scrubby vegetation, and back in January I detected a sly visitor up there! Unlike most mammals, you can sometimes detect this one with your sense of smell. Walking along the field margin next to the railway line, I smelled a distinctive, spicy, peppery odour that can only mean one animal- a fox! And aside from the smell, there were various visual signs.</span><br />
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My local patch is very popular with dog walkers, and unfortunately a large number of them don't clean up their dog mess, so dog would be the main confusion species for these droppings. However as you can see from the closeup, there are feathers and what looks like crunched up bones in this dropping, not something you'd generally find in the poo of a dog fed on dog food. Plus when I was taking this photo, I noticed that the smell was...actually not as bad as you'd expect from a dog! While dog poo <i>really </i>stinks (and it makes my patch a bit unpleasant on a hot summers day, I can tell you!) this poo merely smelled like more of the fox smell, which wasn't unbearably unpleasant. I haven't included badger as a confusion species for this despite the size being similar, because I've seen no evidence of badgers at my patch or in the area at all, and don't think it's likely. But as I mentioned in the post I linked at the start of this section, badger poo doesn't really seem to have a smell.</div>
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I also found these nearby: </div>
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Considering that the fox droppings had feathers in them, and these Woodpigeon feathers have been broken off by the shaft, I suspect that someone caught a pigeon and ate at least some of it near here! A sign you can use to tell if a mammal removed the feathers from a kill rather than a bird of prey is if the feathers are bedraggled, which can be due to the saliva of the animal and the fact that they sometimes chew the feathers. However in this case I think they're bedraggled because of the rain. The feathers in fox poo show a much more likely connection.</div>
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And finally, I found what looked like trails a fox-sized animal would make while pushing through the undergrowth: </div>
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I was glad to find so many signs of my sly visitor! I don't know if any foxes have a territory nearby, and I've never seen or heard one in the area near my patch (it's near the suburban neighbourhood where I live, and I've never had any reason to believe there are urban foxes about), so it's possible this fox was just passing through. I did smell the foxy odour on a couple more visits since this, but never found so many clear signs again. This was all found a few months ago, I wonder where the fox is now?</div>
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<span class="st">It's funny- the more I look for different types of nature, the more I realise the value of educated guessing. You may not know 100% what you're looking at all the time, but you can get better at guessing, while waiting until you know more, or perhaps meet someone who knows more who can help you. For example, when I first was contacted by Mark Baldwin at Wildlife Online (linked at the top of this post) he verified some speculation I'd been mulling over in my <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/badger-mysteries.html" target="_blank">Badger Mysteries</a> post about whether badgers ever kill pheasants and other gamebirds. Mark showed me research that says- they do! It was brilliant to find out for sure. :) Thanks Mark, and as I always say, if you can give me the answers to any of my questions or you want to correct me on something, then I would absolutely love to hear from you!</span></div>
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<span class="st">And as the Spring rolls in, while you're keeping your eyes on the trees and your ears open for birdsong, don't forget to look down to the ground and keep your nose open too! ;)</span></div>
Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-1274196421951177402014-02-19T22:35:00.002+00:002014-02-19T22:35:55.643+00:00Amazing Lichen...Once again, I keep meaning to post more often, and that fungi post is still waiting for me to get the book out and ID them! Plus a lot of stuff has been going on and I've started another new job (last time it was a Christmas job, but hopefully this one will be long term!). But for now, let me share with you an amazing thing I saw a couple of weeks ago.<br />
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I went to one of the New Forest coniferous/deciduous enclosures in the hope of finding Siskins and Bramblings, but had no luck, so I'd decided to go back and move on to Keyhaven when I noticed a tree stump that was <i>covered </i>in lichen.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkBsr8MTMOWAgUJj4bZrZMaUq-PNp6KNewKh4TTKt2AZpW3Q1pGpTQwnuAgcsUfKWNlUhN3IBKTavrd_hEO7I4T5dNH9pzCqJVLUrhLsqkw6uL9TzWCmDgxXrscXQL3oZSOj9MhWc-X9Q/s1600/IMG_1276.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkBsr8MTMOWAgUJj4bZrZMaUq-PNp6KNewKh4TTKt2AZpW3Q1pGpTQwnuAgcsUfKWNlUhN3IBKTavrd_hEO7I4T5dNH9pzCqJVLUrhLsqkw6uL9TzWCmDgxXrscXQL3oZSOj9MhWc-X9Q/s1600/IMG_1276.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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I went in closer for a look, and was amazed by the diversity of structures of lichen on this one stump. And yet I really think they were all the same species, because there were still similarities despite the different shapes.<br />
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A large amount of the stump was covered in blunt, branched spikes like these ones:<br />
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On some, the branches ended in rounded, shallow cups.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrwcEyhK0xW7dMkvtOnJKiTPY59CLMOrjTcHBwhnBe2G4k5V-QCQ2MFe0frUGFH9TMEzcYTYGT-onxETcULJ9Sy224KwB_Mnhor_e1pBd1BFYQgNyRv7t_Ifehe-JuEIMXuT9Dg3NPnNA/s1600/IMG_1256.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrwcEyhK0xW7dMkvtOnJKiTPY59CLMOrjTcHBwhnBe2G4k5V-QCQ2MFe0frUGFH9TMEzcYTYGT-onxETcULJ9Sy224KwB_Mnhor_e1pBd1BFYQgNyRv7t_Ifehe-JuEIMXuT9Dg3NPnNA/s1600/IMG_1256.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The long red things are old pine needles in case you were wondering!</td></tr>
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And on some of the stalks, the ends were larger and flatter, looking a little like water-lily leaves!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6djN5ahVfwSe437_T-L3uSxJkmJrofzV2eGfzeaRSZDZEwlmsIWSU-YVAYYgOVj2VhB6DQMZJAJ0GuakG4pCKiQgqbEc5K9oNHuW5LXVQEEOH_JS6QX4ZVn6-P3cpANPB48W1JEH3p0Y/s1600/IMG_1267.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6djN5ahVfwSe437_T-L3uSxJkmJrofzV2eGfzeaRSZDZEwlmsIWSU-YVAYYgOVj2VhB6DQMZJAJ0GuakG4pCKiQgqbEc5K9oNHuW5LXVQEEOH_JS6QX4ZVn6-P3cpANPB48W1JEH3p0Y/s1600/IMG_1267.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I didn't really notice the tiny white dots while I was taking this
photo, but now I wonder if those are the beginnings of new stems?</td></tr>
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But there was something even more surprising. Look at this photo:<br />
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Yep, it's quite distinctive- there's a shiny red globule on the end of one of the stems! What's more, to the left of it you can just see another one starting to appear. I had never seen anything like it. What on earth is it? It couldn't possibly be a flower, could it? <br />
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It wasn't the only one either: here's but one of the photos I took of another one that was helpfully isolated on its own so I could get a clear shot:<br />
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I've seen some weird, colourful fungi, in a variety of textures, but all the lichen I'd ever seen before had been crusty and rough-looking, so this was the first time I'd ever seen smoothness on lichen. Maybe that's why I found this so fascinating, as well as the fact that it seemed so different in colour and texture from the rest of the lichen growths, very like a colourful flower growing from a green stem, only lichens aren't plants and as far as I know don't need to be pollinated, so what is the purpose of the red globules? If anyone knows, or can tell me the proper name for the globules, please please let me know! Part of me is happy reveling in how weird they are, but the rest of me would love to know what's actually going on here. ^^</div>
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But that wasn't all! There were multi-growth globules too! </div>
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They look so shiny! They also look like they'd be wet and squashy, but I'm pretty sure I tested this out by poking them with something and they actually were quite solid. Whatever they're for, looking shiny must be useful for that in some way!<br />
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While trying to identify this lichen, I found <a href="http://www.britishlichens.co.uk/pictureindex.html" target="_blank">this helpful picture guide</a> where you can choose what category you think your lichen best fits in. I decided mine was a Shrubby lichen, and that led me to three species that have red growths: <i>Cladonia polydactyla, Cladonia coccifera </i>and <i>Cladonia bellidiflora. </i>(I think all the species in that section are in the <i>Cladonia </i>family.) <i>Coccifera </i>and <i>bellidiflora </i>had different shapes and textures of branch in the photos I saw, so I'm going to tentatively identify the species I found as <i>Cladonia polydactyla, </i>though I could always be wrong so please do correct me if so! Interesting, the <a href="http://www.britishlichens.co.uk/species/Cladonia%20polydactyla%20small.jpg" target="_blank">photo</a> the site had of <i>Cladonia polydactyla </i>had red growths on practically every stalk, and the growths also looked less shiny, so I wonder if the one I found was only just starting to grow its red globules, and the ones it did have looked shiny because they were very new, and soon, perhaps by now as I'm writing this, the red globules would be absolutely everywhere? I wish I could see the stump again right now!<br />
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As you can probably tell, I not only know very little about lichens but have never really considered knowing more before I found this lichen that interested me so much. I probably should read up more on lichens and find out what the red things are and why they are all coming out now. If I do, I'll be sure to write another post, but for now I'll certainly be keeping my eyes open for lichen like never before!Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-52347565222490328182014-02-03T17:11:00.000+00:002014-02-03T18:10:40.282+00:00Sparrowhawks and MagpiesI have a post about fungi and foxes in the works, but I want to write about something I saw a few days ago in my garden. There was a sudden commotion of birds outside, with flocks of small birds bursting out of the trees and Rooks and Black-headed Gulls swirling up above, and then suddenly a large, brown Woodpigeon-sized blur whooshed into the garden at top speed and disappeared into one of the trees. The garden was suddenly empty of birds, and that made me almost certain that the blur that arrived wasn't a Woodpigeon (well, that and the speed it arrived at!), but a Sparrowhawk!<br />
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I kept watching, and sure enough a female Sparrowhawk soon hopped into view, and sat in the tree. I expected her to leave pretty quickly, but she actually stayed about 2 hours. She was left in peace for a little while, and then all of a sudden a pair of Magpies arrived in a flurry of tailfeathers and landed in the same tree. Magpies are an unusual visitor in my garden, probably more so than Sparrowhawks, but they are the corvid that currently visits most often.<br />
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The Magpies began to hop around the tree, not getting <i>too</i> close to the hawk but obviously intending to bother her. They were fluffing their feathers, flaring their tails and making sudden movements. They were also hitting the tree branches with their beaks, especially when they were near the hawk. I kept trying to convince myself it was a feeding behaviour but the longer I watched the more it seemed like a sort of intimidation tactic aimed at the Sparrowhawk, as if saying 'look how sharp and powerful our beaks are and how strong we are!' I later saw a Magpie sitting on another tree pecking the ends off branches, but that time it was clearly picking something off the tree (early buds? Who knows but anything's possible this winter!), and this was different from the branch hammering. Has anyone else seen Magpies pecking branches as an intimidation tactic? I may be totally off with this theory. ^^<br />
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The Sparrowhawk didn't budge at all, but kept turning her head to keep an eye on the Magpies, occasionally preening or tucking her foot into her breastfeathers. It was interesting to see how the Magpies avoided going close to her, and it made me realise I'd never seen a mobbing situation happen in a tree before, only in flight. I knew mobbing in trees happened because it's a known method for finding roosting owls, as you can see smaller birds making a commotion around the area in the tree where the owl is. I've heard Jays making an appalling screeching at Tawny Owls before (didn't see either of them but heard some irate hooting!), but never been able to see the mobbing actually happening. It was very interesting to see a tree mobbing incident.<br />
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I've seen in-flight mobbing many times (though I believe I've only written about it once: the <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/german-adventures-part-1-whats-in-name.html" target="_blank">Sparrowhawk mobbing Goshawk incident</a> in Germany), and seen crows and Rooks mobbing Buzzards all the time at my patch, and the corvids often fly <i>daringly</i> close to the Buzzard, even provoking it to swing its talons so they have to dodge out of the way. I'm sure birds of prey do occasionally manage to kill birds that are mobbing them, but it's clear that being in flight means the birds can use their maximum flying agility to dodge. But perched, they are at a high risk of the hawk suddenly scratching with a talon and inflicting a dangerous wound that could potentially be fatal. It's a similar principle to why Red Deer avoid attacking each other with their antlers during the rut unless they have to-when there's sharp objects involved, it has to be really, really worth it! I'm sure that's why the Magpies avoided going too near, even though the hawk wasn't moving at all.<br />
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The Magpies stopped trying after a while and left, and the hawk was sitting as tight as ever. The small birds were starting to regroup and were all keeping an eye on her; flocks of Chaffinches, Goldfinches and Chaffinches and the Blue Tit pair were all watching that Sparrowhawk with caution, as well as a Grey Squirrel that had begun to climb into her tree but turned back quickly when it spotted her!<br />
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Then suddenly the Magpies were back, but they'd brought reinforcements in the form of two more Magpies. A fifth one was also at the back of the garden- this was more Magpies together than I'd ever seen in my garden before! The four Magpies continued to bounce around the tree, trying to intimidate the hawk. At one point they all flew back to join the single Magpie in the back tree, before suddenly flying back to the hawk's tree in a rush, as if trying to intimidate her with numbers, which was comical to watch. The hawk continued to sit tight, until she seemed to become fed up with being surrounded by Magpies. She made a sudden movement, jumping from her branch to an upper branch, and the Magpies scattered. What's more, they did not return. Their hassling had had no effect, but the Sparrowhawk had got rid of them in one swoop!<br />
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Magpies are confident, bossy birds and it was interesting seeing them be intimidated in this way. I don't know why the Sparrowhawk wanted to sit in our garden, whether she was digesting a meal or thinking of doing some hunting, but whatever it was she obviously didn't feel like being bothered. As far as I know my garden isn't part of Magpies' territory (or if it is, as I've said before, they don't visit my garden very much- I don't think they like that it's quite a confined space), so I guess they decided it was too risky to continue their attempt to shoo her away. If you have any stories of Magpies or other corvids bothering predators, whether the corvids persisted or were driven away by the predator, please send me a comment or email me and tell me all about it! :)<br />
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I wrote before about a <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/sparrowhawk-sketches.html" target="_blank">female Sparrowhawk visiting the garden</a> but I don't think it was the same bird as I saw a few days ago. The bird the above post is about had a little orange-red barring on her upper breast instead of the usual dark grey female barring, while the bird from last October had only dark grey baring. Male Sparrowhawks have orange-red barring all over the breast, and I have seen a few females with a little reddish barring too, but have never seen this explained in a bird book. Its impossible for the birds with a little reddish barring to be males because females are so much bigger. Does it mean these female birds are first-winters? That's the only thing I can think of but it seems wrong somehow, because why would young female Sparrowhawks moult into a brighter plumage before getting their adult feathers? It's possible there's no reason for it and it's just natural variation. If anyone can confirm either of these or knows the real reason, please do contact me. I'd love to find out more.<br />
<del about="" before="" del="" don="" i="" in-flight="" mobbin=""></del>Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-36787867057355943192014-01-23T17:48:00.000+00:002014-02-03T16:21:28.801+00:00Amorous Activities in the Pigeon FamilyThis is sort of a continuation to <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/early-signs-of-things-to-come.html" target="_blank">my last post</a> about early signs of Spring caused by the mild winter, but only sort of, as hopefully I will show! On a walk about a week ago, I found this:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOAtfb0StuGpOhyphenhyphenOd8oA80MOXiaVs0-hk2xg5Ym0bYdUZBMIszahL1-ITV2okFSqCo2LJNml_RCQyEzFNh9jyDndK5gz-8XOXGUBbKw7CealAWPZShc6y5PXCbOJt_m3z68PpvNhuqsSg/s1600/IMG_1044.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOAtfb0StuGpOhyphenhyphenOd8oA80MOXiaVs0-hk2xg5Ym0bYdUZBMIszahL1-ITV2okFSqCo2LJNml_RCQyEzFNh9jyDndK5gz-8XOXGUBbKw7CealAWPZShc6y5PXCbOJt_m3z68PpvNhuqsSg/s1600/IMG_1044.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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This is a Woodpigeon's egg, which has been predated. If it had hatched naturally it would have broken into two halves due to the way a baby bird pecks around an egg to escape it using its egg-tooth. And according to my trusty Helm Identification Guide 'Tracks & Signs of the Birds of Britain and Europe', a predator such as a weasel would smash the whole egg up when it ate it. The hole in this otherwise intact eggshell shows that it was predated by a bird, such as a corvid.<br />
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The reason I said that this is only sort of a sign of early Spring is that Woodpigeons (and other pigeon species such as Collared Dove) are known to breed at all times of year. They can do this because, unlike most passerines, they can regurgitate food to feed to their babies in a substance known as pigeon milk, meaning as long as there's food for the adults there's food for the babies. Other species of birds, such as Blue Tits, need soft food such as caterpillars and insects for their babies, so they have to breed at the right time of year for that food.<br />
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However, weather still matters and I doubt Woodpigeons would have been breeding last January. It was just too cold. And even with this year's mild winter, if this egg hadn't been predated I wouldn't have expected it to survive. Woodpigeons build very basic nests of just a few twigs in a tree, and it's been SO windy and rainy this winter that the nest would have probably blown down. <br />
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Speaking of breeding behaviour in the pigeon family, today I was looking out into my garden and saw a pair of Collared Doves start mating! Then, as if that wasn't enough, only a few minutes later there was a pair of Woodpigeons who also began to mate, but this time I got the chance to see a little bit of their courtship too. What first drew my attention was one pigeon began pecking at the beak of the other, and then stuck its beak right inside the other's; it was being fed on pigeon milk! I'd never seen anything like it before. I guessed the one doing the feeding must have been the male, and sure enough when they began to mate it was this bird that jumped on top. Before mating they sort of snuggled up together, with the male puffing up his breast feathers to look bigger.<br />
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I've talked about courtship feeding before, and how I've seen females in both Blue Tits and Carrion Crows use a <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-crows-nest.html" target="_blank">wing-fluttering</a> display to show they want to be fed by the male. The female pecking the male's beak was different though, and reminded me more of the <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/life-and-death-in-wales-part-1-herring.html" target="_blank">Herring Gull chicks</a> when they pecked their parent's beak on the red pecking spot to get them to regurgitate. Only in the case of the adult Herring Gulls, they were regurgitating a large lump of food onto the ground for the chicks, while the Woodpigeon behaviour I saw suggests that their young take food straight from the parents' beaks. Well, the name 'pigeon milk' does suggest liquid! The male Woodpigeon was showing the female how well he'd be able to feed babies when it came to the time, as well as how well he would feed the female while she was laying and incubating. It looks like more eggs are coming in the future, so let's hope we don't get any more storms!<br />
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Woodpigeons are such fascinating birds to watch, especially as you can often observe their behaviour very closely when they are in gardens and parks. We have a ground feeder in our garden and I've noticed how dominant Woodpigeons have a sort of 'lurch forward and wing-flap' gesture that they do to scare off other birds feeding on it. Or at least, it's supposed to! It works on other Woodpigeons and on Collared Doves; they all back off. But Starlings tend to ignore the gesture completely! Starlings may be a good bit smaller than pigeons but they aren't easily intimidated. And perhaps pigeon body language doesn't translate well outside the family?<br />
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I hope I'll have the chance to write more about Woodpigeons in the future, because I've seen all kinds of interesting interactions among them. I've seen them squaring up, bowing to each other, standing up as tall as possible, mimicking each other's behaviour...what do these behaviours mean? To guess at that I'd need to watch them more closely, which I plan to do in the future. Since writing this blog I've started watching bird behaviour more closely than ever before, and I feel like I'm finding out new things all the time! As always, please do submit stories of your own about bird behaviour- have you seen any pigeon courtship this winter? If so, leave me comment and tell me all about it! :)<br />
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This is unrelated to pigeons, but on the same walk that I found that eggshell, I saw this:<br />
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On the left is a small animal hole (I'd say the photo is about actual size), and in the middle and bottom you can see the shells of seeds. I don't know what species lives here but I'm sure its either a mouse or a vole, as they both eat seeds. Leaving all the seed shells outside reminds me a bit of our hamster, who tends to spit his empty shells outside of his bed! Of course a small animal that lives in a hole doesn't really need to hide its seed shells, as it is safe inside and the hole is so obvious anyway.<br />
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And finally, and back on the pigeons, here's a slightly disturbing pop cultural reference to pigeon milk! I'm a big fan of the game series Animal Crossing, in which there's a pigeon character named the Brewster who owns a coffee shop. After you get to know him a bit, he offers you some pigeon milk to put in your coffee. Um........:O<br />
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Someone in this game's development had a sense of humour alright!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgalxnUhf3qSZU5AUpRF61s6LZEL9NFwAMb-WoO5RQJbWChE-Aoib8UiXftbAwflgl7Y7lohxW_-5MUrhP4OlmvnW-9KQUWnwHXmYo5so3nYo13oz5_rnQ7GZfw0gV5ThNHliaxpEkJ8HE/s1600/pigeon+milk.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgalxnUhf3qSZU5AUpRF61s6LZEL9NFwAMb-WoO5RQJbWChE-Aoib8UiXftbAwflgl7Y7lohxW_-5MUrhP4OlmvnW-9KQUWnwHXmYo5so3nYo13oz5_rnQ7GZfw0gV5ThNHliaxpEkJ8HE/s1600/pigeon+milk.JPG" height="192" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: http://soapboxview.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/the-animal-crossing-new-leaf-photo-post.html</td></tr>
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...But as you can see from the picture, in the game your character seems to really enjoy the pigeon milk-infused coffee. So I guess it's not so bad!Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-40522031673582880812014-01-14T13:54:00.000+00:002014-01-14T14:06:00.731+00:00Early Signs of Things to Come!It's been a milder winter than the past few we've had, and though the nights are starting to get a little frosty it's certainly nothing like last year! This time last year I'd already seen my local patch turn into a snowy wonderland, with unexpected visitors (a huge flock of Lapwings and a smaller one of Golden Plovers!), and my garden was awash with colour as Bramblings and Siskins mingled with the Goldfinches, Chaffinches and Greenfinches! This year the winter finches have yet to arrive, if they will at all (though we have had some small flocks of Redwings visiting, and the odd Fieldfare!). At my patch, the stubble fields are covered with flocks of Redwings, Fieldfares, Skylarks and Chaffinches. I don't remember ever seeing so many birds feeding on them!<br />
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The mild weather has meant that I've been hearing and seeing more signs of Spring everywhere, and though I know we may still get a cold snap it is certainly interesting to see how the birds and plants are behaving. Birds are singing, bulbs are sprouting, catkins are on the trees. In December and early January I heard a Great Tit singing, saw two Robins in the same personal space without a fight (a sure sign of a potential pair!), and heard a Skylark in song-flight, though his song was not as advanced and detailed as it will be in a month or so. Meanwhile a Blue Tit has been thoroughly checking out our garden nest box, mostly perching outside and looking in but popping in a couple of times too. I've seen Black-headed Gulls whose heads are almost completely brown again (the name is a misnomer, the head is chocolate brown!), while some are still in their winter plumage. I wonder what causes the difference?<br />
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My garden is part of the territory of a male Song Thrush, who has been singing every morning and evening since before Christmas. Sometimes he's outside the garden, though the distinctive, repeating song is far-carrying and can always be heard clearly, but when he's in the garden I've been able to get some sketches. This one is from December.<br />
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He sits at the top of the willow tree and sings his little speckled heart out. As you can see from my fanciful notes, an I think female Blackbird was sitting nearby and seemed to be listening! But who knows what was really going on.<br />
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This one was from the 6th of January at about 4:30pm.<br />
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I watched him hop up the tree, making a few song notes, before choosing a good spot to sing, not quite at the top of the tree this time but near it. He began to sing, turning his body every half minute or so to aim his song in different directions. One thing's for sure; male Song Thrushes in the area will know for sure that this territory is Taken! He moved out of the garden after about 10 minutes, but he continued to sing elsewhere.<br />
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As I mentioned in <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/happy-new-year.html" target="_blank">my New Years post</a>, I recently heard a Grey Wagtail sing for the first time-that was this winter too! I was watching a watercress bed in Alresford when a Grey Wagtail landed on it and began to hop about. Soon it began to sing, while still perched on the ground (which makes sense as Grey Wagtails spend most of their time on the ground, but how many birds sing from the ground out in the open? Most sing from a tree, from cover, or from flight, so it was unexpected for me, especially as I hadn't realised Grey Wagtails even <i>had </i>a song!). Then another Grey Wagtail suddenly appeared and shooed the singer away! Both birds had white throats, which adult winter Grey Wagtails all have (while breeding males have black throats) but for most birds (except a few Black-headed Gulls apparently!) it's far too early to be in breeding plumage, so I suspect these birds were both male, and the second bird already owned the territory and was making that clear to the singing bird. Though anyone who knows more about Grey Wagtail behaviour, please do comment and correct me! There may be something I don't know about female behaviour. <br />
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Just before the end of last year, I also saw courtship behaviour in Nuthatches for the first time! I spotted two Nuthatches up in a tree, and then noticed that one was pursuing the other, up and down the trunk and from tree to tree. Then one bird began to dip its head exaggeratedly (but considering how big a Nuthatch's head is compared to it's body, most things it does with it seem exaggerated!) while the other bird started to wing-flutter, like a baby bird does when it wants to be fed. I've written about this behaviour before, in <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-crows-nest.html" target="_blank">both Blue Tits and Carrion Crows</a>, and how it is a commonly seen courtship behaviour in female birds, so it was clear that this was a female and the head-dipping and chasing bird was the male. He then began to sing- Nuthatches have such a strange song, if you ever hear something that sounds like a car alarm going off in a wood, it'll probably be a Nuthatch singing!<br />
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These birds are probably not planning on making nests just yet, but they are establishing pair bonds, territories and nest sites, so they can be all ready for when it really is the breeding season! If you have also seen or heard birds or other wildlife doing these behaviours, please write me a comment and tell me all about it! :) Meanwhile, here's a post from Chris R, also based in Hampshire, about noticing birdsong, woodpecker drumming, Buzzard courtship behaviour (which sounds similar to what I described at the end of <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-crows-nest.html" target="_blank">this post</a>), and honeybee activity this new year: <a href="http://fourmarksbirding.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/11th-january-and-i-say-its-all-right.html" target="_blank">http://fourmarksbirding.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/11th-january-and-i-say-its-all-right.html</a> Enjoy!Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-90749781727295077082014-01-03T14:43:00.001+00:002014-01-03T14:54:22.124+00:00Happy New Year!<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Happy 2014 to all!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
hope you are all enjoying the new year. :)</div>
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<br /></div>
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It’s been a while since I last posted (mostly because of my
extremely hectic Christmas job) and I’ll hopefully be catching up on my backlog
of post ideas soon, but I wanted to look back over the last year for my first
post of 2014.</div>
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<br />
<br /></div>
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To start off with, here are some of my ‘first and lasts’ for
the year!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(I normally only do this with
Swallows, House Martins, Swifts and winter thrushes, as other migratory species
I don’t see quite as often, but I’ve added any other records I happened to make
this year.)</div>
<ul>
<li>14/4- first Swallow (Barton Farm)</li>
<li>19/4- first Whitethroat (garden)</li>
<li>28/4- first House Martin and Swift (Barton Farm) </li>
</ul>
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<br />
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<li>14/9- last Sand Martins (Itchen in Winchester) (note: I don’t
see Sand Martins as often as Swallows or House Martins, so they were probably
around much later than this!)</li>
<li>21/9- last Reed Warbler (Hook with Warsash)</li>
<li>3/10- last Swallows and House Martins (Barton Farm)</li>
<li>25/8- last Swift (Washington WWT)- This is a particularly interesting
record, as it seems unusually late for a Swift, and for it to be so far north
(Washington is near Newcastle).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was
watching a flock of House Martins and Swallows when I spotted the unexpected
Swift among them!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Very surprising.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My last Swift record of 2012 was in early
August in the south! </li>
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<ul>
<li>6/11- first Redwings of autumn (Barton Farm)</li>
<li>21/11- first Fieldfares of autumn (Barton Farm)</li>
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I saw 141 species of bird this year, which is down on last year (148), but that's ok.<br />
This year I added 3 new species to my British list, all
being species I have wanted to see for soooo long- Goshawk, which I wrote about
<a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/queen-of-forest.html" target="_blank">here</a>, and Great Grey Shrike and Red-crested Pochard, which I wrote about <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/wow-what-day.html" target="_blank">here</a>,
including my reasons for wanting to see a Red-crested Pochard so much (it’s
more complicated than Goshawk and Great Grey Shrike, my reasons for them are
both ‘this bird is clearly awesome!!)</div>
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I saw several interesting new species in my garden, most notably 4 Yellowhammers that
came to feed under the feeders in February.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A Nuthatch was another great addition to the garden list, and a female
Whitethroat that took cover in the garden for a while.</div>
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I saw 9 new species at my local patch, including Red Kite,
Peregrine, Hobby, Lapwing and Firecrest! It was an exciting year for my little patch (1km square of arable farmland, which I will write about in a future post).</div>
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I also found the feather of a Barn Owl in my patch, which
while Barn Owl won’t be on my list unless I see one, proves that a Barn Owl was
present!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was an unexpected and
fantastic record.</div>
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Completed my first year of patch watching.</div>
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A pair of Peregrines nested in my town, as far as I know for
the very first time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To make it even
more exciting, one (possibly two) of their fledged young visited my patch! That’s
a post to get around to writing next year.</div>
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Breeding species observed at my patch (i.e. I saw recently
fledged young or suspected a nest site) included Blackbird, Robin, Wren,
Whitethroat, Yellowhammer, Magpie and Carrion Crow.</div>
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I began a <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/ga-part-2-fabulous-fungi.html" target="_blank">new interest</a> in <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/confusing-fungi-and-some-fungi-resources.html" target="_blank">identifying and recording fungi</a>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think it’s been a good autumn for them!</div>
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It was a great year for Clouded Yellow butterflies, and I saw
many individuals, including two records at my patch.</div>
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I was able to return to Kent this year and visit the places I
used to go to see wildlife when I lived there while at uni (moved back to Hampshire
a year and a half ago).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I went back to
Elmley Marshes and saw the nest box of Barn Owls they had this year (this was
early November and the young were fully grown and feathered but seemed to be
still using the box as a daytime roosting site, though they were awake and
looking out when I saw them!), and enjoyed watching the abundant Marsh Harriers
again- they are one of my favourite birds but are scarce in Hampshire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also visited my old patch Ferry Marshes, a
walk along the Swale estuary where you never know what you might see- this time
it was a Grey Seal swimming up the Swale!</div>
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I went on my very first twitch! (I’ve been meaning to write
about this for ages, but for now I’ll just say that I didn’t see the bird, and
probably won’t go on any more twitches. XD)</div>
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My knowledge of bird songs and calls has got much better
this year, and I’ve been able to add to my experience by hearing some birds
songs I’d never heard before, such as Redstart, Wood Warbler, Firecrest and Grey
Wagtail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I always find hearing a bird
sing and then identifying it by seeing it is the best way to make sure you won’t
forget that song, much better than listening to a recording.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Though recordings are very useful for
confirming things, I use them for that all the time!)</div>
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I began making records of every mammal I saw, found dead or
saw signs of for the National Mammal Atlas, and it was absolutely fascinating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It made me realise that I don’t actually see
mammals all that often (though this of course depends on where you live-
staying at my Uncle’s in London over Christmas, I saw squirrels in the garden
every day, and a fox, and was also awoken by the incredibly eerie screams of a
fox early on Christmas morning!)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With
the help of a friend, I added to these records two mammal records for my area
which were both unexpected and exciting, because they were species I didn’t know
were about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope to write about both
of them soon!</div>
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I did more sketching of wildlife and wildlife behaviour (and
posted some of them: here are my <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/life-and-death-in-wales-part-1-herring.html" target="_blank">Herring Gull colony sketches</a> and my
Sparrowhawk kill sketches) and I hope I will be able to sketch more, and
therefore observe and learn more, in the new year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I studied illustration, and if I can incorporate
those skills with the wildlife knowledge I have been building since I was a child,
maybe I can one day become a professional wildlife artist, or at the very least
develop a fulfilling and worthwhile hobby!</div>
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I was able to visit <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/german-adventures-part-1-whats-in-name.html" target="_blank">Germany</a> and learn a little about the
wildlife there.</div>
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My efforts to improve my seawatching continued this year, and while I’ve had
limited success so far I hope to improve my knowledge of this tricky subject in
the coming year.</div>
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I saw a Cetti’s Warbler sing out in the open!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This happened back in January and yet it
remains one of the most notable records of the year in my mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a bird that can be inches away from you
when it sings while remaining so well hidden in cover you can’t even glimpse
it, it was extraordinary to see this one so well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was looking at a small, brown bird perched
in a leafless tree, and trying to place what it was, when it opened its beak
and out burst the forceful and unmistakable song of the Cetti’s Warbler!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It remains the best view of a Cetti’s I’ve
ever had.</div>
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And...I started keeping this blog!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s been very enjoyable, and I want to thank
you all for reading and especially to those who commented and who emailed me
with information and feedback, it means so much to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope to be able to start writing on a
regular schedule in the New Year, with perhaps a day for posting, or posts
coming out every two weeks or even every week!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I do have a lot of upcoming post ideas.<br />
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So that's my wildlife recap of 2013! I'd love to hear about your years too: what wildlife did you see for the first time this year? Did you record any species unusually early or late? What did you see a lot of/not much of? What new things did you learn this year? Tell me all about it. :)</div>
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I hope you all have a happy new year, and happy wildlife
watching!</div>
Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4906684686832707990.post-62010953092948798312013-11-25T22:54:00.000+00:002013-11-25T22:55:02.943+00:00Confusing Fungi, and Some Fungi Resources!Hi everyone! I know I said in my <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/wow-what-day.html" target="_blank">New Forest and Blashford Lakes adventure post</a> that I'd write about fungi I saw on that trip the next day, but my new job turned out to be more exhausting than I thought so it's had to wait till now. Sorry about that!<br />
<br />
First I have a bit of a confession to make: you know that <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/non-bird-nature-in-crab-wood.html" target="_blank">other fungi post </a>where I said I'd always bring a camera in future? Well, the other week I went on a wildlife detective-y expedition where I photographed some fungi, and for some reason it didn't really help with IDing them, or maybe it was that photographing them made me put off IDing them for longer. So it seems there is no perfect way, unless maybe I can get hold of a smaller guide to fungi that I can take out on trips! Anyway, I didn't take any photos of the fungi I saw, partly because I thought it might not help, and partly because all the birds going on were so interesting I was absorbed in watching them most of the time. And I'm now regretting not taking photos, as you'll see later.<br />
<br />
The first fungus I found was a really quite pretty one that presented no ID difficulties when I looked it up later. I found it on the heathland where I saw the shrike, and it was a single round, flat one growing straight out of the ground, with concentric circles in different shades of golden brown. I identified this as Tiger's Eye, which I'm confident about not just because the picture in my book looked like it but also because the habitat description was so spot on: 'on heaths, usually on sandy soil'. This one was definitely on a heath, and the ground in that particular part was elevated above the boggy area, with sand visible on the paths. Well that was easy! What's next?<br />
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My next find was a piece of horse manure with tiny, white mushrooms growing out of it. Going through my book, the closest I could find was the Nail Fungus which fitted the description, in that it was very small (and I mean very, very small, each fungus no bigger than a few millimeters across and no more than a centremetre tall), pale coloured, and round-ish or oval shaped. And most importantly of all, it was described as growing out of horse manure. The only problem was the book described it as on the Red Data List for conservation, meaning it's rare, and as a novice I usually go for the commoner option, on the grounds that it's more likely to be that, unless there's a very good reason.<br />
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I did some googling to try and find out about fungi that grows on horse manure, and found <a href="http://www.gardenguides.com/89327-identify-fungus-grows-horse-manure.html" target="_blank">this post</a> which says that only 8 types of fungi grow on horse manure, and lists them all. I've looked them all up, and none of them are even <i>close </i>to being what I saw, except the Nail Fungus. (note: I think that post is American, but all the ones they list except 2 and 7 are in my UK fungi book, and I doubt the UK has more fungi diversity than in the US, so that suggests there are only 6 species in the UK, though I'm happy to be corrected.) And then I found this <a href="http://www.hampshirefungi.org.uk/fungi.php?name=" target="_blank">very useful resource</a> (Hampshire only, I'm really sorry everyone else! Maybe there's a similar thing for your area?) where you type in the Latin name of the species and it shows you where it's been recorded- my book is for the whole of the UK, so it's really handy to know if a species could plausibly be found in the area I thought I might have seen it, though these things rely on people making reports so it's possible some common species are not represented very well. Anyway, I typed in the Latin name for Nail Fungus, and it showed a very large number of locations its been found, mostly clustered around the New Forest area. I suddenly realised that a fungus that grows on horse manure probably became rare because there's not a lot of horse manure about any more, but the New Forest would be the perfect place for them because of the New Forest ponies, which are owned by people but roam freely throughout the Forest, and pay a key part in the Forest ecosystem by grazing it. There's also strongholds of Nail Fungus in places like Dartmoor and Exmoor, home of the Dartmoor and Exmoor ponies, which makes perfect sense.<br />
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The only problem was that when I did a search for more images of Nail Fungus (by the way, don't do a search google image for just 'nail fungus' if you don't want to see a lot of gross pictures of toenails! Search for the Latin name <i>Poronia Punctata </i>or add something else to the search) they looked a little bit different from what I remembered seeing. I've done some sketches to try and show this.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj__Qtyjlf08u7EDZPNqQXhHsD3ztvDLHr_0y1SMh3qvRwk6cxObdDVZLRz5bdZsuDxH_NtMbOgRHWfJfRxSJhLIpu-_OS1cD7CSPIvBPmTrJQj99TFriXensQCFxidShVGdXyqbrQaQH4/s1600/the+horse+manure+fungi+I+saw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj__Qtyjlf08u7EDZPNqQXhHsD3ztvDLHr_0y1SMh3qvRwk6cxObdDVZLRz5bdZsuDxH_NtMbOgRHWfJfRxSJhLIpu-_OS1cD7CSPIvBPmTrJQj99TFriXensQCFxidShVGdXyqbrQaQH4/s320/the+horse+manure+fungi+I+saw.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This is what I remember seeing- tiny flat white-ish fungi with a little dip inwards in the middle. This is probably about actual size, and the dark bit is supposed to be the manure!<br />
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Now here's what most of the image search results I got looked like:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtUfkY4tzNx9cAIDEtg4iodUSELVhIRklv920x3fQel2sAWQYawxPZQMwLddroEEzTvtbHpqMkchsarWamPVE22MqQzoOgaD_yq4X5K0jnCTF2OrKNKdugKBYxD0ILnj9EvJiuvUmgBo0/s1600/nail+fungus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtUfkY4tzNx9cAIDEtg4iodUSELVhIRklv920x3fQel2sAWQYawxPZQMwLddroEEzTvtbHpqMkchsarWamPVE22MqQzoOgaD_yq4X5K0jnCTF2OrKNKdugKBYxD0ILnj9EvJiuvUmgBo0/s320/nail+fungus.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Those little dots on the surface of the fungi are diagnostic, apparently. Though in the pictures some of the smallest ones had no dots and a dip in the middle. <i>This </i>is where a photograph would have come in really really handy! From now on I will <i>definitely</i> photograph any fungi I find when I'm out looking at wildlife.<i> </i>It's possible the dots were there and I didn't notice them because I didn't know I was looking for them. Or maybe they weren't there at all and I'd actually found a different species. If anyone who reads this knows about fungi that like to grow in horse manure, please please get in touch and let me know what you think this could be Nail Fungus based on my descriptions and terrible diagram! ^^<br />
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My general thoughts are that it probably was Nail Fungus that I found, because there just aren't many different kinds of fungi that grow on horse manure, but without a photo I can't report my sighting because I can't be 100% sure. Oh well, next time I'll make sure I use that camera!<br />
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While at Blashford Lakes I found a couple of other interesting types of fungi. The first were puffballs, only they had burst open so that they looked like birds eggs on the ground that had been pecked open! I've <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/non-bird-nature-in-crab-wood.html" target="_blank">talked about puffballs before</a> and how they want to be stepped on to spread their spores, but if they aren't they will eventually harden and burst open on their own. My book has a picture of a Meadow Puffball that had burst open like the ones I saw, so right now I'm thinking it was that that I saw, but I can't be sure because there's loads of types of puffball and they look a lot alike.<br />
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The second was some very large bracket fungi, maybe a foot across each. They were about the same colour as the tree bark and a similar texture too, but underneath they were a very contrasting smooth, clean white. The most distinctive thing about them, though, was that the top of each fungus and the area around it were all covered in spores. Back in <a href="http://a20somethingsnaturediary.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/non-bird-nature-in-crab-wood.html" target="_blank">this post</a> I mention a big bracket fungus that had covered the wood around it with white spores, but this fungi I looked at the other day was different- its spores were brown, something I'd never seen before. I've tried to draw what I remember it looking like.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbTNWxX9NRbjU5JcYwCfoEkb8YAC9mfaVdPmM4xWgRfge6P-1e63r8zamnJsJSN-CiF8AJ4RlV1lUtt_VcF8bqgpVnP4tOjTVs1SNkS7FMg92J91KkE6wpf0stGFPC_0IF5Kw3P4W89iE/s1600/brown+spore+bracket.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbTNWxX9NRbjU5JcYwCfoEkb8YAC9mfaVdPmM4xWgRfge6P-1e63r8zamnJsJSN-CiF8AJ4RlV1lUtt_VcF8bqgpVnP4tOjTVs1SNkS7FMg92J91KkE6wpf0stGFPC_0IF5Kw3P4W89iE/s400/brown+spore+bracket.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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(that's supposed to be the tree around the outside, I could probably have added some lines to show bark texture. ^^) I tried to get a similar shade of brown as the spores were.<br />
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I thought this one would be quite easy to identify because of its distinguishing features-large; contrasting white underneath; brown spores- but it wasn't because the pictures in my fungi book don't as a rule show the fungus in its habitat, which means the photos don't include things like spores released in the general area. In the end I googling something like 'bracket fungus with brown spores', and eventually found <a href="http://www.kew.org/news/kew-blogs/arboretum-team/Fruiting-bodies.htm" target="_blank">this from the Kew Arboretum blog</a>, which shows the fungus I found in the 5th picture down. Only the caption of the photo only gives half of its Latin name, so I had to use my book too, but it narrowed down the search because I knew which family of fungus it's in- and soon I found out that this fungus is <i>Ganoderma Pfeifferi </i>(Boo! No English name!). I'm really chuffed that I saw this fungus because apparently it's not very common. Of course it makes sense that such an interesting ecosystem as the New Forest, and such a great nature reserve as Blashford Lakes, would have more unusual fungi to see!<br />
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I had to do quite a bit of research to find out what the fungi I saw were, so I decided to include some of the resources I found in this post to help other people. Some of the links are in the post above, but I'm including them all in a list as well to make it easier to find them.<br />
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A photo gallery of British fungi species, from the Wild About Britain website: <a href="http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/pictures/showgallery.php/cat/8" target="_blank">http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/pictures/showgallery.php/cat/8 </a>(it's a really, really big photo gallery, just to warn you!)<br />
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If you're from my neck of the woods, here's the tool for finding where fungi is distributed in Hampshire, from the Hampshire Fungus Recording Group: <a href="http://www.hampshirefungi.org.uk/fungi.php?name=">http://www.hampshirefungi.org.uk/fungi.php?name=</a> (if you don't know the Latin name of your fungus, Wikipedia will have it!)<br />
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Here's the post from the Kew Arboretum blog that I found useful: maybe you will too? <a href="http://www.kew.org/news/kew-blogs/arboretum-team/Fruiting-bodies.htm">http://www.kew.org/news/kew-blogs/arboretum-team/Fruiting-bodies.htm</a><br />
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And the book I use is <i>Mushrooms </i>by Roger Phillips, published in 2006 by Macmillan.<br />
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As I research fungi further and hopefully find more useful resources, I'll post them at the end of further blog posts and tag it 'resource post' so you can find them easily. At some point I'll probably make a resources sidebar, but for now this will be a good start. :) If you like, let me know about your fungi finds and any confusing ID situations you have had!Ehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11413910646344825736noreply@blogger.com1