The Big Garden Birdwatch event is simply the counting of birds in your garden over an hour's period. Its the biggest such event in the world and allows people to chart the fortunes of our more common birds. I have a large suburban garden, which connects with other gardens to create a large area of habitat, with plenty of trees and unkempt areas, and so attracts birds. Here are the results:
Wood Pigeon - 1
Starling - 28
Goldfinch - 2
Great Tit -2
Blue Tit - 2
Blackbird - 1
Crow - 2
Collared Dove - 2
Magpie - 2
Chaffinch - 1
The numbers and variety are pretty much typical for my garden. The starling flock seems large, but I have loose flocks of several hundred birds wintering in my street, and sometimes I can have close to a hundred birds in my garden.
Tuesday 29 January 2019
Thursday 24 January 2019
WAXWINGS - Ipswich - 24/1/2019
Most wildlife tends to shun civilisation, its usually a given that the further away from humanity you get the more wildlife there is. One nice exception to this is the WAXWING, a winter visitor to the continent that is mainly fund in towns and cities. Maybe because cities are warmer or maybe because of the large amount of exotic bushes and trees laden with berries, they can be found anywhere in the urban environment, and there is no fixed location to where they may be, any place is just as good as any other.
A bit of luck is always needed to find these birds and that was what I had today. Driving down Defoe Road, Ipswich, I looked up at some birds on a telephone wire, and saw the WAXWINGS distinctive crest - which separates them at first glance from the more common STARLINGS. I pulled over had a brief look before racing home for my camera. The flock was around twenty strong, the birds would fly in at twenty minute interludes to rest on the telephone wires before flying down to feed on a berry laden roadside tree before flying off after a couple of minutes later. It was a dingy sodden day so a lot of the photos came out dark and the birds didn't hang around long enough to get the best composition. It also felt a bit unnerving loitering around a housing estate with a big long lens camera, just wondering when the twitching curtains would turn into calls to the police. I joke about the last sentence, but you do have to watch out with photography, a lot of people do seem to take it to heart that you are photographing them, even when you are most definitely not.
Anyway I was going to spend the day at Alton Water, but when it started to snow decided to call it off - annoyingly after that initial flurry it didn't snow again that day, but seeing WAXWINGS more than made up for it. They are an irruption species, some years there are large numbers, sometimes very little. This is a little winter, so far, with few reported so its a good sighting to have.
Wednesday 16 January 2019
Newbourne Springs, Hemley & Waldringfield - 14/1/2019
I'm always on the lookout for new birding locations, those areas on the map that are often overlooked by those who long for the easy birding at Minsmere. Don't get me wrong Minsmere is great but everyone knows about it, I know about it, and I yearn for pastures new.
On the map, to the east of Ipswich, I saw several promising locations - a nature reserve - Newbourne Springs, and two walks along the river Deben - Hemley and Waldringfield. But here are the reasons why these places are overlooked, they are not great places for birds.
Newbourne Springs is a Suffolk Wildlife Trust reserve where large amounts of alder carr, with smaller areas of fen meadow lie in a valley bottom, with dry woodland and an area of heathland on its slopes. Its a medium sized Wildlife Trust reserve, around 40 acres or so, equivalent in size to somewhere like Sculthorpe Moor. A large SISKIN flock was in the alders, I heard a TREECREEPER, and the first tentative song of the SONG THRUSH was heard - about a month early - brought on by the mellow weather. But mainly it was just the commoner birds present. I plan to come back in June to look for the wild flowers of the marshes, which I think is the main attraction of the reserve.
About ten minutes away from Newbourne is the village of Hemley which is the starting location for a short walk along the Deben. It was very much the last outpost of civilisation, the end of the road with nothing human beyond. The river Deben is the smallest of the Suffolk estuaries and has no real nature reserves on its course, but apart from Woodbridge and a few small villages, is very much unspoilt.
Around Hemley is the largest area of saltmarsh on the estuary, with the river having breached through an old sea wall. The estuary was at mid tide and was fairly quiet with few flocks, mainly of the usual culprits of WADERS and DUCKS. Five SEALS were chilling out on the mud just upriver.
After Hemley I had enough time to go to Waldringfield. The river was wider here and had more mud, but nothing unusual.
Sometimes exploration can lead to something magical, a secret in the countryside, but not today. With work and everything its hard finding the time to go birding and sometimes taking a punt on a place you don't know could just end up being - meh. So expect more reports from now on from Minsmere.
On the map, to the east of Ipswich, I saw several promising locations - a nature reserve - Newbourne Springs, and two walks along the river Deben - Hemley and Waldringfield. But here are the reasons why these places are overlooked, they are not great places for birds.
Newbourne Springs is a Suffolk Wildlife Trust reserve where large amounts of alder carr, with smaller areas of fen meadow lie in a valley bottom, with dry woodland and an area of heathland on its slopes. Its a medium sized Wildlife Trust reserve, around 40 acres or so, equivalent in size to somewhere like Sculthorpe Moor. A large SISKIN flock was in the alders, I heard a TREECREEPER, and the first tentative song of the SONG THRUSH was heard - about a month early - brought on by the mellow weather. But mainly it was just the commoner birds present. I plan to come back in June to look for the wild flowers of the marshes, which I think is the main attraction of the reserve.
About ten minutes away from Newbourne is the village of Hemley which is the starting location for a short walk along the Deben. It was very much the last outpost of civilisation, the end of the road with nothing human beyond. The river Deben is the smallest of the Suffolk estuaries and has no real nature reserves on its course, but apart from Woodbridge and a few small villages, is very much unspoilt.
Around Hemley is the largest area of saltmarsh on the estuary, with the river having breached through an old sea wall. The estuary was at mid tide and was fairly quiet with few flocks, mainly of the usual culprits of WADERS and DUCKS. Five SEALS were chilling out on the mud just upriver.
After Hemley I had enough time to go to Waldringfield. The river was wider here and had more mud, but nothing unusual.
Sometimes exploration can lead to something magical, a secret in the countryside, but not today. With work and everything its hard finding the time to go birding and sometimes taking a punt on a place you don't know could just end up being - meh. So expect more reports from now on from Minsmere.
Thursday 10 January 2019
The River Gipping Lakes - 10/1/2019
I had some time this week, using up some of last year's paid holiday, so I decided to have a walk from my home in North West Ipswich to Needham Market, a route that follows the river Gipping, passing a lot of gravel pits along the way. As the crow flies its about six miles, but walking along the bendy river its probably closer to nine, a big difference when you're walking.
I go to these places quite a lot, its my local patch, and I have written about them on different posts in the past. My main gripe, is that despite being an assortment of lakes of different shapes and sizes they still don't attract many birds. Some are intensely managed as fishing lakes, others just aren't that good. But despite this they are still the best birdwatching sites in the area.
The first site I reached was Barham Pits, three different lakes, heavily fished. They are under new management, and a big fence has been put around the bottom pit - Pit 'B'. I guess this is to stop mink and otter from eating the fish, but I think its also to stop people who are walking the public footpath from walking around the site. Time was you could walk anywhere, just chill out watching the lake from a fisherman's berth, but now non anglers are excluded.
Around the pit 'management' work has been undertaken which basically has involved massacring the lake side alders leaving the place bald and ugly. The same can also be said of Pippins Lake near Pipps Ford, where again the lake side alders have been cut down including a lot of really big trees. As this lake isn't fished it beggars belief why they should be so drastic, destroying so much for so little.
Away from this gripe the bird watching was ok. The best sighting of the day was a PINK FOOTED GOOSE, a single bird amongst a large GREYLAG GOOSE flock. It had a pink and black bill, pink legs (obviously), was smaller and darker than the GREYLAGS. I had my camera with me, but after I took the photo a message came up saying there was no card in the camera - I had left it at home in the computer - a rookie mistake. That is why there are no photos for today.
DUCK numbers were rather small, with most pits having small numbers of TUFTED DUCK, COOT and SWANS. Best numbers were of 27 GADWALL on Pippin's Lake and 13 TUFTED DUCK on Shamford Mere. Even Pipps Ford, usually the best place for birds around here was empty, with just a GREEN SANDPIPER on the working quarry area.
Small birds weren't really that active today, most were still in winter mode and hadn't started thinking about breeding yet. Several GREY WAGTAILS were seen along the river, a common resident that breeds along here. Several TIT flocks held a CHIFFCHAFF, a bird that winters in this country in small numbers next to watery areas. A LESSER REDPOLL was found near Barham Pit B, but the only really decent bird flock was a group of fifty SISKIN, making a lot of noise in alders along the river by the Pink foot.
It took me four hours to walk this stretch of the river, about the same amount of time I took at Welney. Some sites reward you for the effort, while those that take more effort sometimes don't. This is a local patch, the nearest to me, so its a place I have to go to really even if there isn't much there. I enjoy doing it anyway so its no hassle.
I go to these places quite a lot, its my local patch, and I have written about them on different posts in the past. My main gripe, is that despite being an assortment of lakes of different shapes and sizes they still don't attract many birds. Some are intensely managed as fishing lakes, others just aren't that good. But despite this they are still the best birdwatching sites in the area.
The first site I reached was Barham Pits, three different lakes, heavily fished. They are under new management, and a big fence has been put around the bottom pit - Pit 'B'. I guess this is to stop mink and otter from eating the fish, but I think its also to stop people who are walking the public footpath from walking around the site. Time was you could walk anywhere, just chill out watching the lake from a fisherman's berth, but now non anglers are excluded.
Around the pit 'management' work has been undertaken which basically has involved massacring the lake side alders leaving the place bald and ugly. The same can also be said of Pippins Lake near Pipps Ford, where again the lake side alders have been cut down including a lot of really big trees. As this lake isn't fished it beggars belief why they should be so drastic, destroying so much for so little.
Away from this gripe the bird watching was ok. The best sighting of the day was a PINK FOOTED GOOSE, a single bird amongst a large GREYLAG GOOSE flock. It had a pink and black bill, pink legs (obviously), was smaller and darker than the GREYLAGS. I had my camera with me, but after I took the photo a message came up saying there was no card in the camera - I had left it at home in the computer - a rookie mistake. That is why there are no photos for today.
DUCK numbers were rather small, with most pits having small numbers of TUFTED DUCK, COOT and SWANS. Best numbers were of 27 GADWALL on Pippin's Lake and 13 TUFTED DUCK on Shamford Mere. Even Pipps Ford, usually the best place for birds around here was empty, with just a GREEN SANDPIPER on the working quarry area.
Small birds weren't really that active today, most were still in winter mode and hadn't started thinking about breeding yet. Several GREY WAGTAILS were seen along the river, a common resident that breeds along here. Several TIT flocks held a CHIFFCHAFF, a bird that winters in this country in small numbers next to watery areas. A LESSER REDPOLL was found near Barham Pit B, but the only really decent bird flock was a group of fifty SISKIN, making a lot of noise in alders along the river by the Pink foot.
It took me four hours to walk this stretch of the river, about the same amount of time I took at Welney. Some sites reward you for the effort, while those that take more effort sometimes don't. This is a local patch, the nearest to me, so its a place I have to go to really even if there isn't much there. I enjoy doing it anyway so its no hassle.
Wednesday 9 January 2019
Welney and the Ouse Washes - 7/1/2019
In the Cambridgeshire fens, an area so intensively farmed it has as much wildlife as the Sahara, is one of the country's greatest spectacles. For in a small strip of land half a mile wide and twenty miles long is one of the greatest concentrations of wintering wildfowl in the country. We're not talking about thousands of birds, but many tens of thousands, in many cases of just one species. Welcome to the Ouse Washes.
The northern part of the Ouse Washes is owned by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, and they have created a really full on birding experience, with a large café and a heated observatory, providing some of the best facilities for any bird reserve in the world. In a sense it brings the birds to you rather than the other way round. This takes away all that hardship that usually entails in finding birds.
The main observatory was the main port of call. It is heated with comfy chairs and big windows looking out onto the reserve, a watery wonderland, throbbing with birds.
There is some controversy with Welney, and that's the SWAN FEEDING. Its an event where a man goes out front of the obs and throws out grain to attract the SWANS (which are wild) to come right out in front, so people like me can gawp at them and take photos. In many ways its like a zoo, but also it makes wildlife accessible, and most of the time wildlife isn't, to people unable to go out and find it.
Star species of the day was a RING NECKED DUCK, a transatlantic species, which having accidently arrived here has no way to get back across the ocean, a bird that is doomed to wander the wetlands of the UK for the rest of its life all alone. Also present from Chile, so is most likely to be an escape from a private collection, was a RINGED TEAL, which was a lovely little bird.
Most of the Ouse Washes was flooded, like a giant lake, with raised banks providing islands for roosting birds. Large numbers of GODWITS were about, with small numbers of other WADERS - REDSHANK, DUNLIN, SNIPE and RUFF, worth the effort of finding them.
Unusually, because there isn't much grass to attract them, there was a large variety of GEESE. Fifty PINK FOOTED GEESE, flew in and although common in coastal Norfolk are quite rare this far inland. Three WHITE FRONTED GEESE were present and a single BARNACLE also adding to the diversity.
A female MARSH HARRIER was seen quartering distantly over the other side, occasionally putting wildfowl into the air.
The furthest hide provided the biggest spectacle. Here there were still areas of grassland just about still present above the flood, and this provided the best habitat for feeding DUCKS. Also here was the third species of SWAN the BEWICK'S. This SWAN is undergoing quite a lot of difficulty at the moment, with the bird arriving in this country in very small numbers, with the species rare even here. The problems are never easy to solve, and like a lot of "British" birds a large part of their lives are led outside the country and is the case with a lot of our birds its an international problem to solve.
The skies around the furthest edges of the reserve were whirling with huge numbers of LAPWING and GOLDEN PLOVERS, creating clouds that would twist and turn and throb, formed of many thousands of birds. It was truly an amazing spectacle and just shows the possibilities - if you create and protect reserves the birds will come.
I spent quite some time here and it was worth it, I saw a lot, and for a bird reserve, was quite a sociable place. I still had some time left so I decided to visit the other reserve on the Ouse Washes, one owned by the RSPB.
RSPB Ouse Washes
Being rather more low key than the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve at Welney, people don't often realise the RSPB reserve is much bigger. It has a small car park, a little visitor's centre, but crucially lots of hides, the cold wooden ones, not anything heated.
The reserve is similar to Welney, with perhaps more trees, but is made up of flooded grassland. The sheer number of birds is also the same. To look out of a hide and see the many thousands of birds is so overwhelming, I mean searching through all of that to find something unusual can be a tall order. Annoyingly, most of the birds on the RSPB reserve were on the other side of the washes which made birding all the more difficult.
I only had an hour here before the light became too poor to see anything. It was pretty much the same species as at Welney, with the exception of a male GOLDENEYE, and a KINGFISHER that whizzed by, seen funnily enough from the Kingfisher Hide.
Male POCHARD - common on the deeper water in front of the main obs
This was a great birding opportunity and for me this was the first major bird watching sessions of the new year, away from the local patch. Year listing is an activity that pretty much every bird watcher does, even if half heartedly, and it can be summed up as keeping a list of all the bird species seen in a calendar year. The really serious birder, or twitcher usually aims to get over 300, while the more general birder, such as myself, usually sticks to around 200, which, when you think of it, is still a lot. The Ouse Washes are a great place for seeing different species throughout the year, and I got this year off to good start, seeing a lot of birds.The northern part of the Ouse Washes is owned by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, and they have created a really full on birding experience, with a large café and a heated observatory, providing some of the best facilities for any bird reserve in the world. In a sense it brings the birds to you rather than the other way round. This takes away all that hardship that usually entails in finding birds.
The main observatory was the main port of call. It is heated with comfy chairs and big windows looking out onto the reserve, a watery wonderland, throbbing with birds.
The observatory looking out on the SWAN FEED
I found it a bit of a cheat. Birdwatching should be about freezing your arse off in a cold hide, with the birds a mile off, a distant spec in the telescope. But here the birds are right up close to the observatory, in many cases just a couple of metres away. POCHARD like the deeper water immediately in front of the obs, with two species of SWAN present, the MUTE and the WHOOPER both large birds, attracted to this reserve in their thousands. There is some controversy with Welney, and that's the SWAN FEEDING. Its an event where a man goes out front of the obs and throws out grain to attract the SWANS (which are wild) to come right out in front, so people like me can gawp at them and take photos. In many ways its like a zoo, but also it makes wildlife accessible, and most of the time wildlife isn't, to people unable to go out and find it.
The SWAN FEED - the birds were literally feeding out of the wheelbarrow
Most of the Ouse Washes was flooded, like a giant lake, with raised banks providing islands for roosting birds. Large numbers of GODWITS were about, with small numbers of other WADERS - REDSHANK, DUNLIN, SNIPE and RUFF, worth the effort of finding them.
Unusually, because there isn't much grass to attract them, there was a large variety of GEESE. Fifty PINK FOOTED GEESE, flew in and although common in coastal Norfolk are quite rare this far inland. Three WHITE FRONTED GEESE were present and a single BARNACLE also adding to the diversity.
A female MARSH HARRIER was seen quartering distantly over the other side, occasionally putting wildfowl into the air.
A RINGED TEAL - an escape from someone's wildfowl collection
Away from the main obs there were several hides and out in the more wilder areas of the reserve. The main DUCK species out on the reserve was the WIGEON, and there were thousands of them, but they were also supported by large numbers of TEAL and PINTAIL, the latter a reserve speciality, you often don't get them together in such large numbers. The furthest hide provided the biggest spectacle. Here there were still areas of grassland just about still present above the flood, and this provided the best habitat for feeding DUCKS. Also here was the third species of SWAN the BEWICK'S. This SWAN is undergoing quite a lot of difficulty at the moment, with the bird arriving in this country in very small numbers, with the species rare even here. The problems are never easy to solve, and like a lot of "British" birds a large part of their lives are led outside the country and is the case with a lot of our birds its an international problem to solve.
The skies around the furthest edges of the reserve were whirling with huge numbers of LAPWING and GOLDEN PLOVERS, creating clouds that would twist and turn and throb, formed of many thousands of birds. It was truly an amazing spectacle and just shows the possibilities - if you create and protect reserves the birds will come.
I spent quite some time here and it was worth it, I saw a lot, and for a bird reserve, was quite a sociable place. I still had some time left so I decided to visit the other reserve on the Ouse Washes, one owned by the RSPB.
RSPB Ouse Washes
Being rather more low key than the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve at Welney, people don't often realise the RSPB reserve is much bigger. It has a small car park, a little visitor's centre, but crucially lots of hides, the cold wooden ones, not anything heated.
The reserve is similar to Welney, with perhaps more trees, but is made up of flooded grassland. The sheer number of birds is also the same. To look out of a hide and see the many thousands of birds is so overwhelming, I mean searching through all of that to find something unusual can be a tall order. Annoyingly, most of the birds on the RSPB reserve were on the other side of the washes which made birding all the more difficult.
I only had an hour here before the light became too poor to see anything. It was pretty much the same species as at Welney, with the exception of a male GOLDENEYE, and a KINGFISHER that whizzed by, seen funnily enough from the Kingfisher Hide.
WHOOPER SWAN
Well there really was a lot at the Ouse Washes, both in quantity and quality, it really is a great bird reserve, easily one of the best in the country. If you have any spare time over the next couple of months its worth a look for the sheer spectacle, but being a great reserve it is worth a look at any time. Its just a shame its surrounded by a dead zone of intensive farming, as is so common of a lot of reserves, big and small they are often isolated jewels in a harsh landscape of factory farming. The way it is at the moment, wildlife has only a toe hold in the countryside strange as that may seem. I look forward to a time when the countryside is worked in a more enlightened way.
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