Top 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:


5. Owls
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!


4. Nightjar
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.


3. Jay
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.


2. Fox
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.


1. Marsh Frog
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!



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!

A Look Back on 2014 at Barton Farm

Happy 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.


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.


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.


In Spring, these were the dates of my first and last sightings:

• 16/2- My first butterfly of the season, and it wasn't a Red Admiral like it is most years but a Peacock

• 6/3- Last Redwings and Fieldfares

• 13/4- Four Swallows flew North- one day earlier than my 2013 record, (but still much later than some people's records of course!)

• 19/4- The House Martins returned to the farm.

•  27/4- The first Whitethroat reappeared, a singing male.

• 11/5- The first Swift was seen.

• 11/5- A female Blackbird was seen with food

• 18/5- The first young bird, a juvenile Robin!

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 never would have predicted! So let's take a look.

• 15/1- My first new species of the year, and one that I actually did predict beforehand, Pheasant. It does seem odd that when it comes to game birds, my patch list got Grey Partridge first (ask me about that 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.

•  16-2- Another one that seems obvious, but I didn't really predict- a Sparrowhawk 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!

• 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 Spotted Flycatchers! 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 ever 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.

• 3/8- Another amazing record. I was watching the bushes next to the railway cutting and was amazed to see three House Sparrows 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! 

•  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 Whinchat! 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!

•  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 Stonechat, 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.

And here are my first and lasts for Autumn:

• 8/9- My traditional Autumn Wheatear 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.

• 2/10- My last visit of the Autumn where I saw butterflies, which were Red Admiral, Small Tortoiseshell and Small/Green-veined White (I didn't note which so must have not got a very good view)

• Also on 2/10, I glimpsed what I thought were Redwings flying over, but sadly they went out of sight too quickly for me to properly identify them.

• 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.

•  2/11- The first winter thrushes actually in the site were a small number of Fieldfares.

•  Also on 2/11, my second ever Firecrest at this site was spotted moving its way along the boundary hedge,

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 hares 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.

Also, remember when I wrote that post about signs of foxes? I finally saw the fox! 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.

A Roebuck with lovely antlers were seen on 11/5, just outside the farm. Other than that there wasn't much Roe Deer activity this year.


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.

The pellets before...

....and after!

I have a very short moth list that began this year when I saw a lovely Scarlet Tiger in midsummer and a Magpie Moth in late summer. Only day-flying species got the chance to be on my list as I only visit during the day. ^^

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 this post about, I started a fungi list this year which includes Yellow Brain, Crystal Brain, Common Jellyspot and some lovely, huge Dryad's Saddle brackets.


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.

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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 here, here and here!

I finally completed the epic Black-headed Gull colony sketchbook post that I've been working on since 2012!

And perhaps most excitingly of all, I got to see birds being ringed, including a Kingfisher!

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 Long-tailed Duck and Lesser Yellowlegs, 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 Razorbill, 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!


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!

Guessing 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 local wood, 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 German wood 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.


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.


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 (http://www.wildlifeonline.me.uk/) 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 this 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 widely 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.


Now: on to the fungi!

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.

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 think 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:

I had to make it bigger than the others as it's one of my favourite photos I've ever taken! :D

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! :)

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.

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 (Tremella mesenterica and Myxarium nucleatum) suggest they are not closely related at all. (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. 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!

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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 this post, 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!


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.

 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 really 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.

I also found these nearby: 

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.

And finally, I found what looked like trails a fox-sized animal would make while pushing through the undergrowth: 

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?

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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 Badger Mysteries 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!

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! ;)