The mating dance of a non-native species

I'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.

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!


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 this post 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. ^^


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!


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!


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!


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 Buzzards flirting in flight, and Woodpigeons billing and cooing, 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...

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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!


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


At my local patch, I've seen baby Robins (out on their own) and a baby Great Tit (fiercely 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 my egg post 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?


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 nest I found last year, 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.


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!


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! :)

Eggs, Baby Birds and Books

The 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.


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 three 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.

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The day after seeing the young Blackbirds, I found these in our drive:

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.


This seems a good time to point out the difference between these eggs and the one I found back in January 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:

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.

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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!


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 still happens 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 or 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 also 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


By the way, though I am a feather collector and have a growing collection of bones (and one deer tail), 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.

Sparrowhawks and Magpies

I 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!


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.


The Magpies began to hop around the tree, not getting too 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. ^^


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.


I've seen in-flight mobbing many times (though I believe I've only written about it once: the Sparrowhawk mobbing Goshawk incident in Germany), and seen crows and Rooks mobbing Buzzards all the time at my patch, and the corvids often fly daringly 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.


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!


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!


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! :)


I wrote before about a female Sparrowhawk visiting the garden 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.

Amorous Activities in the Pigeon Family

This is sort of a continuation to my last post 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:

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.


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.


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.


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.


I've talked about courtship feeding before, and how I've seen females in both Blue Tits and Carrion Crows use a wing-fluttering 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 Herring Gull chicks 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!


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?


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! :)

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This is unrelated to pigeons, but on the same walk that I found that eggshell, I saw this:

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.


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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

Someone in this game's development had a sense of humour alright!

Source: http://soapboxview.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/the-animal-crossing-new-leaf-photo-post.html

...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!

Early 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!


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?


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.

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.

This one was from the 6th of January at about 4:30pm.

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.


As I mentioned in my New Years post, 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 had 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.


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 both Blue Tits and Carrion Crows, 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!


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 this post), and honeybee activity this new year: http://fourmarksbirding.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/11th-january-and-i-say-its-all-right.html Enjoy!

German Adventures part 1: What's in a name?

My sister is doing French and German at university and she's currently living in Lemgo, Germany, for her year abroad. Last month my parents and I went out there to visit her. Lemgo is in north-west Germany, and my dad doesn't fly so to get there we took the ferry from Dover to Calais, then drove through Belgium and the Netherlands to get into Germany. Five countries in two days! It was exhausting.

Of course, when my sister was settled in at Lemgo (she lives in a granny flat-type thing under a house), I had one question- 'what's the wildlife like there!' She couldn't tell me much, but from the minute I arrived I had my binoculars out, and practically never put them away. I was determined to find out everything I could about the wildlife of Lemgo, because I don't go to other countries very often and I wanted to make the absolute most of the chance to see wildlife outside the UK. On the day we arrived my sister had some exciting news: she had seen a Red Squirrel from her garden window that morning! On the second day of our stay we all saw one: a dark red, beautiful, tufty creature with a lovely thick tail, perched in the garden apple tree and then running off over the bushes with a piece of apple in its mouth. Germany never allowed Grey Squirrels to become introduced (I hear the closest ones on the Continent are in Italy), and it was wonderful to find out that the Grey Squirrel problem is not all over Europe. For some reason it hadn’t occurred to me that it wouldn’t be. Though Germany does have Racoons- descendants of escaped pets, apparently!

The weather confusingly went from being what my sister called ‘coat and gloves weather’ before we came, to a humid, sweaty mildness, though the leaves were turning autumn shades beautifully all over Lemgo. I couldn’t resist starting a small garden list for the view out of my sister’s window, after 15 minutes of watching produced Blue Tits, Blackbirds eating elder berries, a gorgeous male Bullfinch, a Great Spotted Woodpecker and a House Sparrow in quick succession. (The House Sparrow, a male with only a tiny black bib, appeared to be picking up nesting material- perhaps one of this year’s birds confused by the warm weather?)

The view over Lemgo from the park. Look at those autumn shades!

But things got even better! 5 minutes away from my sister’s place is a large, mixed deciduous and coniferous wood, and with the leaves on the deciduous trees changing bright colours, there couldn’t have been a better time of year to visit. Before we’d even visited the wood I got a taste of the wildlife there. While we were waiting for a bus near my sister’s home, I looked over towards the forest and saw a Buzzard circling over the trees, along with another soaring bird of similar size but which wasn’t holding its wings in the typical Buzzard shallow ‘v’. Looking through my binoculars I saw it was all white underneath, which most Buzzards aren’t, and had a longer tail which it did not spread in flight. It was, in fact, my second Goshawk ever! Unlike in the UK Goshawks are not rare in Germany at all; it has the highest number of breeding pairs in Europe apart from Russia, which is of course a lot bigger. Then later when I got the chance to visit the wood properly I happened to glance upwards, and there gliding above the treetops was another Goshawk, this time being mobbed by another bird, a Sparrowhawk that looked absolutely tiny in comparison. I love seeing mobbing situations that involve birds of prey mobbing other birds of prey, and this also gave me a great chance to see the size difference between Goshawks and Sparrowhawks, two species that are often confused in the UK but that there is no confusing when they are seen together!


I had heard that Goshawks were much commoner in Germany but seeing these two birds without any effort at all took a little getting used to, especially after all the multiple journeys and searching it took to see my first one in the UK. During the visit I was able to meet and chat to a German birdwatcher (my sister’s professor’s wife) who showed me all her bird books and we got talking about our favourite visitors to our gardens. She had seen Hawfinches in her garden! I told her about the Yellowhammers that visited our garden last winter, and the Sparrowhawk that had started to visit regularly (the male involved in last post’s clash of the titans, though he seems to have moved on at the time of writing), which I described as a hawk that is commonly seen in gardens. Using the book I was able to show her which one (the German for Sparrowhawk, awesomely, is Sperber), and she said ‘oh, I thought you meant Habicht’, which is Goshawk. Apparently Goshawks are seen in gardens, in Lemgo anyway! I think Habicht might translate as just ‘hawk’. I love finding out about different country’s names for birds. My favourite example of a different bird name was one of our hostess’s favourite garden visitors, the Wintergoldhänchen or Goldcrest, whose name translates as ‘winter gold chicken’. Firecrest, incidentally, is Sommergoldhänchen (summer gold chicken). The summer and winter parts make sense as in a lot of Germany Firecrests are summer visitors only, and while Goldcrests are found all year round, if it’s anything like Britain they are much more secretive in their breeding season, and a lot more visible in winter when the leaves are off the trees and they tag along with winter tit flocks. The part that really doesn’t make sense to me is the ‘chicken’ part. How can such a teeny bird be compared to a lumping great bird like a chicken? Very strange!

Stadtwald  Lemgo, or Lemgo town forest, with the evening light shining through the trees.

 It’s a good thing my sister isn’t that into wildlife as if she had been she wouldn’t have done any work due to spending too much time in those woods! I could have spent every daylight hour there, seeking out its feathered inhabitants. It was hard to find the birds in the deciduous parts as they were almost silent, but the coniferous parts were filled with little ‘see-see-see’ sounds. Being with family I often wasn’t able to take the time to wait for the birds to show themselves, but at one point I could hear flock calls above me and sat down to wait for a while. After a moment a small bird came into view, and I got an impression of a big, fluffy head, finely barred in white and black, before it disappeared again. I can’t be certain because I didn’t see it very well, but I think it was my first ever Crested Tit! Like the Goshawk, the Crested Tit in Germany has a much wider range than in the UK, where it is restricted to the Caledonian forests in Scotland. Speaking of different ranges, I later saw a Treecreeper...or it could have been a Short-toed Treecreeper, because their ranges overlap over that part of Germany, and they are practically impossible to tell apart by sight in the field. In some parts of Europe you can only find Short-toed’s, so it would be as easy there as it is in Britain, (where you can only find Treecreepers except for very rare vagrant Short-toed’s). So, my notebook just says Treecreeper for now! Maybe one day I will be able to distinguish them by call, if I somehow become well-versed in Continental birdwatching...

Tomorrow: some of the fungi I found in Stadtwald Lemgo!

Sparrowhawk Sketches

Yesterday I looked out into the garden and saw a female Sparrowhawk plucking a large kill on the patio, less than 5 metres away!  At first I thought the kill was a Collared Dove but then identified it as a Woodpigeon.  All the drama and movement of the kill had happened completely without me noticing.  Worried about putting her off her kill, I very quietly crept away and went upstairs to my room, from where I could watch her, and sketch.  All my sketches are from a slightly above angle because of being upstairs.

I wanted to look in detail at the Sparrowhawk's feathers.  In this sketch you can see that the tail has a thick band of darker grey at the end (with a very thin stripe of white right at the end, but my sketch isn’t that detailed!) and 3 bars across the middle of the tail.  The white ‘eyebrows’ over her big yellow eyes curve round to meet at the back.

The female plucked her kill busily for a while, though she never stopped flicking her head this way and that to check for danger in between beakfuls of feathers.  Then suddenly a male Sparrowhawk seemed to appear out of nowhere, about a metre and a half away from me on the roof of our garage.  This bird has been a regular visitor to our garden for the past week (the female was a newcomer), and he’s a particularly colourful bird with deep orange eyes, red cheeks and red barring on his breast, and even his tail feathers seemed to have an orange glow in the sun.  As soon as the female saw him, she opened her wings and spread her tail to mantle her kill so as to hide it from him, and glared at him with a terrible, yellow stare.

While fixing him with her gaze she was very still so I was able to get a sketch, which you can see in the top left of this page.  It was quite something to see.  The male was absolutely not going to get any closer.  A little male hawk about the size of a Collared Dove was not going to approach the big broad female, bigger than the Woodpigeon she was eating.  He didn’t stay long, flying away in the direction he came, and she kept mantling for a little while before digging her talons into the kill and flutter-jumping onto the lawn, moving the kill a few metres away from where she plucked it.  Perhaps she worried the male would come back and attempt to steal some of the kill.

 

On the left you can see her mantling using her spread tail.  Then after moving the kill she sat for a while on it before starting to eat it.  She appeared to be bracing her tail on the ground while standing on the kill, which was interesting to see, not sure why but maybe it helps her keep her balance while she eats? On the right of this page I was trying to get the beak right.  The head of the bird is flat and there’s a tiny ‘forehead’ before it dips down to the beak.  There’s a yellow patch of skin around the beak which extends up the forehead in a thin line, and the main body of the beak is grey with the nostrils at the base.  The beak was easily the hardest thing to get right on these sketches, it’s so small and the shape was hard to see without my binoculars which meant every time I drew it I had to do it one handed.  Consequently I missed it out of a few sketches!

She stayed still for so long that I was able to draw the formation of feathers on her wings.  Natural History illustrators who draw and paint birds show every feather on the plumage, and I want to be able to do that too, so I resolved to look more carefully at birds whenever I have the chance to draw one that’s so close, particularly a larger bird where it’s easier to see the feathers. As she began to eat the pigeon, shifting her talons around to get a better grip, I was able to draw them.  Compared to the size of the bird, the yellow talons are quite slim, but you can see the strength in them when the hawk has a grip on something, and the black claws are long compared with the length of the toes.  One of my favourite things about Sparrowhawks are their extremely fluffy, barred ‘trousers’ that extend halfway down the legs, so I’ve paid particularly attention to them on the right of the above page. After eating a bit of the kill, the hawk showed signs of wanting to move it again, but this time to take off with it properly.  I’ve seen Sparrowhawks eating their kill in trees before, so maybe that was what she wanted to do.  When she was plucking and eating she never stopped warily looking out for danger, and it goes to show that just because an animal is a predator that doesn’t mean it has nothing to worry about.  A ground predator like a cat or fox could attack her while she was on the ground for so long, or steal her kill, and even if the male Sparrowhawk was too small to try this, a bigger bird of prey might have been the next to try for all she knew!  In the wild, no animal is ever completely safe from attack. She hooked her talons securely into it and tried to take off but it didn’t work, instead she fell over, wings and tail flailing everywhere.  It was clear the kill was still too heavy for her to carry, so she gave up and kept eating on the lawn.   On the left is a sketch of her pulling the meat off the carcass in long strips.  On the right you can see how wide apart her legs had to be to let her head bend low enough to tear the carcass, and though I didn’t capture it well in the sketch, she was bending her head at what looked like awkward angles to get the meat.  I tried to show the head markings in the sketch in the bottom right, there's a grey patch of feathers behind the eye of a female Sparrowhawk, and the thin yellow plate above the beak going up the forehead and bordered by grey feathers on each side.  The white eyebrow is quite visible but it’s not clearly defined at the edges, with grey streaking going into it.  After eating for a while she tried to move the kill again, but despite having eaten some more of it she could still only flail about, so she gave up and after a couple of seconds flew away without it.  I went out and had a look, there wasn't all that much left and the head of the kill was completely gone.  I watched her for about 45 minutes overall.  It was fascinating, and the best view of a Sparrowhawk I’ve ever had.