Bird in Devon

We've been in Devon in a yurt soaking in the deep peace of the deep countryside. This was complete isolation, borrowed space from the trees and the animals.

There was a bird singing loudly near us. It was almost as loud as the wrens. It had more stamina though and the song was varied and surprising, familiar yet different. I thought it might be a whitethroat but the phrases were longer and more elaborate. It was a bit like a dunnock but the range was lower - like a blackbird covering a dunnock song. I have a birdsong app on my phone, which I scoured but there wasn't anything that matched.

I followed the mysterious singing bird and even though it seemed like it was in a bush just in front of me, I couldn't see any movement except a glimpse when it flew off somewhere else. It looked small and brown and nondescript. I abandoned the quest and went to do something else.

But it kept singing. I heard it when I woke up at 5 in the morning and it was there when we were having breakfast. I left my coffee to go and see if I could identify it but still it escaped my view.

I knew it was only feet away. It was definitely there, I could hear it. And I had recorded it singing, so eventually I'd be able to identify it, but I just wanted to see it, to meet it, to watch it. Rose said it was my nemesis. Its song seemed mocking in its concealed closeness.

Then after the next breakfast, I said to Rose that I was going out to find it and I wouldn't come back until I had seen it. This could have been a fool's pledge but I followed the singing and for just a few seconds it paused on the telephone wire just above a hedge. It was a blackcap! A new bird. Seeing it felt like I had caught it. The hunt was over. I went back to tell Rose.

Here is a video showing how loud and close and frustratingly hidden it was:

Here is what a blackcap looks like:

Though I didn't get a picture of the bird myself, I think I might have filmed one of its children:

When nightingales sing

Due to various organisational/transportational mistakes and difficulties, we missed the annual Plumpton Green Nightingale Walk (May 1st) and we had to find our own way.

It was about quarter past eight and still just about light. We had a torch and phones, etc. but we were still a little apprehensive to be walking off into the evening countryside with no guiding principle except the vague memory of a map on the internet.

We went over stiles supplied by local volunteers called 'The Monday Group' and strayed through farms. It was quiet. There were no cars rumbling in the background. The secluded farmhouses looked like the most peaceful places on earth and then in the gloaming we could just about see a woodland floor carpeted in bluebells. We thought maybe we would see a barn owl and then all would not be wasted if we didn't hear any nightingales.

I don't think we ever considered the possibility of actually seeing a nightingale; questing for a nightingale is usually purely to hear its song. That's why it's famous. It's not for their looks. They actually look pretty boring, just light brown and white, slightly bigger than a robin. Their song and the fact that you can often hear it at night is the reason you have such things as Keats' 'Ode to a Nightingale' and that (human) song, 'A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square', which is about how mysterious and special it would be if you heard a nightingale singing in the centre of London, seeing as they are usually found in countryside hedgerows. 

Their song is varied, with lots of quick repeated blips and blops. I think if someone who didn't know anything about birdsong heard a nightingale singing they would think 'woah! that bird's making some weird noises.' The nightingale is a strong insistent singer with an impressive repertoire.

When a nightingale is singing at night it's because he hasn't found a mate yet. While the others are settling down and getting an early night, he's out partying.

Just after we saw the bluebells, we turned back to go home because it was getting dark and yes we did hear a nightingale singing. It was too dark to see anything but we stayed and listened until it flew away and it was special.

Looking for red kites in Plumpton

Yesterday I went to Plumpton on my own to look for red kites. Kaile has seen some there loads of times, so I was fairly confident.

The day was as beautiful and unblemished as you could ask for, weather-wise - the kind of day that would be wasted if it wasn't spent outside.

I bought a cake and an apple from the village shop and asked where the college was. I was told it was a long walk away but I didn’t mind and I wasn’t necessarily going there anyway, I was just curious.

As the walk took me across fields, I could hear lots of birds singing, including my first chaffinch of the spring and I managed to see one in a tree, as well as great tits and chiff-chaffs and greenfinches.

Then I saw what I thought were some red kites in the sky. They were high up, but they looked real big, with light markings on the underside of their wings. Unfortunately they were soon out of view.

I followed in their direction hoping to catch up with them. I think I imagined turning a corner into a forest clearing to see them a few feet away tearing apart some kind of corpse, snarling at me because they think I want some, but not flying away in fear.

I walked for a while. I got to the main road and kept going. I didn’t know where I was going. I hadn’t made exact plans. I hadn't asked Kaile where I should go to find the red kites, which I should have done. I just kept going up a steep hill, right up to the top, hot in my winter coat but I didn’t want to stop until I got to the top, and I knew that it would have to be pretty magnificent when I got there because I had been walking upwards for ages.

When I did reach the top, I realised I had reached the top of the South Downs and that I could see out across Sussex with Plumpton an unimportant cluster miles and miles in the distance.

I sat down and ate my cake. There was a yellow bird and I skipped away to chase it, leaving my belongings exposed and unattended in the grass. I thought about leaving all my possessions behind and becoming a nature man. There was plenty of room there for someone to live in some kind of hut or tent. I thought, what if I just stay out here for a few years? - finding out which flowers are edible, which branches construct the best huts, which leaves make the best hats, bathing in the rain, drying in the sun, rising when the sun she rises, riding a sheep to victory.

There were some walkers walking the South Downs Way and that kind of broke the illusion of wild isolation. I carried on walking. I went back down the hill and found the college but I couldn’t see any more red kites. There were lots of crows though and because the sun reflecting on their relatively broad wings made them look light-coloured, I kept thinking they might be red kites. Sometimes it’s hard to judge size from a distance. Then I thought maybe the ones I had seen earlier could have been crows as well. But I didn’t mind too much because the day wasn’t as focussed on the sighting of a particular species as other previous trips have been. At least I had heard all the spring birds singing and seen celandines and primroses and a six-petalled white flower and a four-petalled blue one and a big black mushroom, magnolia trees, the yellow bird, all kinds of generous green/brownery.

I thought about taking the bus back into Plumpton because my feet were very tired but I didn’t want to wait around for it and I’m glad I didn’t because on the walk back I saw two red kites high in the sky and I’m pretty sure they weren’t crows. I watched them for a while circling high above me in the late-afternoon sky:

[N.B. After examining the pictures/footage I took, I have concluded that they were actually buzzards and not red kites. Note the small, non-pointed tail.]

Tern, Tern, Tern

Our summer holidays found us again on the Dorset coast. We took a daytrip to Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour. I went there as a teenager and was only interested in seeing the red squirrels that are supposed to live there. I didn't see any then and we didn't see any this time, but this time I only really wanted to see some birds.

As it happened, the birds of Brownsea Island are a lot more numerous and visible than the squirrels. From the café garden we could see a tern: 

Rose likes how they fly, in quite a darting acrobatic kind of way, like a swallow, equipped as they are with a similarly forked tail. There was also an oystercatcher close by:

(look at that fierce orange!)

Further into the island there were hides overlooking the water. On the mini islands in the water there were more terns nesting and spawning fluffy new terns. 

I thought the first tern we saw was an Arctic Tern but we found out it was a Common Tern. The difference between these terns is almost imperceptible.  The Arctic has a shorter bill and shorter legs but unless you see both terns sitting conveniently next to each other in exactly the same position, without moving then I have no idea how you'd be able to tell the difference. We only knew the ones we were looking at were Common and not Arctic because we were told.

And then there were some Sandwich Terns. They’re more distinct. They have black crests and seemed more dignified, quieter, stylish. They also had nests and babies.

Sometimes I can’t see how any of this would matter, but other times I feel like I could just walk around outside looking at birds all day and not need anything else at all to make me happy.

Spring and the chiffchaff

We went up to Devil's Dyke on the bus past houses that got more opulent and futuristic, whose gates got more and more threatening, the higher we went. We went to see the spring and to hear it. We went left along the ridge, down and along, with Sussex spread out below us.

Chaffinches were the first to be heard and soon we managed to spot a few, fluffy with winter fat, in the bare trees. As Rose says, this is best time for spotting birds because they are beginning to sing their whereabouts and the trees don't have any leaves to conceal them.

We also heard wrens, robins, great tits, blue tits, skylarks and a great spotted woodpecker hammering on a tree. Just below the woodpecker a little bird hopped into view. We wondered aloud what it was and then it called out its name: chiffchaff.

Usually you can hear the chiffchaff but you can rarely spot it, partly because it's so small and indistinctive, kind of light leaf colour, but this time both sight and sound converged for us. He stood on a branch and as he chiffchaffed he turned round and round, projecting his call to as many females as possible. His legs were like twigs.

Here you can hear him, and possibly see him, but I don't think so:

Here you CAN see him as a speck in the trees, right in the centre of the picture:

Wild flowers seen: Dog Violet, Celandine, White Dog Violet?

Other springlike things: butterflies chasing each other, lone bees, late sunlight, hot-cross buns I made, unidentified white tree blossom, magnolia trees in the gardens of the rich on Dyke road, fragrant evening

Here is a good picture (someone else's) of a chiffchaff:

Summer Holiday Birds (Part Three) - 'In Search of the Bearded Tit'

Bearded tit on the cover of the RSPB summer magazine.

Summer seems a long time ago now, but due to the sluggish nature of my blogtivity, there's still one more of summer's bird adventures to be recorded.

There's an RSPB reserve in Weymouth just outside the town, sandwiched between two A-roads, and we thought maybe it wouldn't be very idyllic or pleasant or bird-friendly, but we decided to give it a go on the last day of our holiday. When we got there it turned out it was pretty idyllic actually. It mainly consisted of wooden walkways through towering reed beds and though there were roads roaring around us and a Carpet Land just beyond, it still felt like a separate contained bird habitat.

In the visitor centre there was a list of recent sightings and a few things appealed; a visiting marsh harrier and the resident bearded tits in particular. 

Rose and I first went to Dorset a few years ago for a Christmas break and to celebrate being together one year, and that was when our interest in birds was awakened. I noticed blue tits for the first time in the snow and in the Dorchester museum there had been an exhibit about local wildlife, the bearded tit one of the most distinctive.

OK, I said, as we entered the reserve, I'm not leaving until I've seen a bearded tit. I decided that if they are here all year round and they had been seen as recently as yesterday, then surely I'd be able to see one if I only had enough patience. 

It's not really a tit, the bearded tit. It looks like a rare bird, an exotic bird, fat and rounded, the beard in question more like Fu Manchu moustaches.

On our trip round, we met a few other birdwatchers. Now we are more experienced, we tend to talk to the other birdwatchers more. We can speak more of their language and are less embarrassed by any lack of knowledge. No one had seen any bearded tits that day. The common consensus was that Weymouth's other reserve was better. One man played us the call of a bearded tit on a little speaker which he sometimes used to attract birds. This kind of technology is frowned upon by the staff here, so he was surreptitious. The call was indistinctive, just a high-pitched single note 'ping'. I told him I wasn't leaving until I saw one. He said that was a bold statement. 

We made our way round the circuit through the reeds, blocked at one point by an aggressive male swan who had built his nest in the middle of the path. We thought it best to go back round the other way rather than find out how strong swans can really be, whether they really can break your arm. 

And we didn't see any bearded tits. It's possible we heard them but though I stood and stared patiently, imploring into the reeds where they had been spotted, all I saw was a heron poking his head up and it became apparent that my vow not to leave until I had seen one would be exposed as foolhardy. Neither did we see the marsh harrier (it came and went just before we got to the hide apparently) or the hooded merganser, but we saw a tern, maybe a reed warbler, sandpipers, and had a pleasant if sweaty summer dawdle through the reeds.

Later as if to soothe the sting of our defeats we were flocked by friendly little birds in a park. We had some flapjack and fed it to sparrows who came right up to us; one even took a piece from my very fingers. A blackbird and a female chaffinch also joined in, though the greenfinches stayed in the trees, disapproving.

Epilogue

Going back through my recordings from that day I think I have identified the call of a bearded tit. We were so close. Hidden in those reed beds just in front of us, just out of sight, was the bird we were seeking. If the vicissitudes of nature had favoured us just a fraction more, the bird we were seeking might have chosen that moment to stretch its wings and show itself.

Bird of Prey, Flying Low

What bird is that? (photo taken by Stephen Burch)

On the morning of BirdFair we went looking first for some birds around the waters. The hides were sparsely populated being far from the excitement of the ospreys. It was grey and threatened by rain. The wooden huts provided shelter.

There were ducks and a few unextraordinary waders then Rose spotted a bird hovering about over to the right. It was a bird of prey. It could have been a kestrel but seemed subtly different. Kestrels have a black stripe quite visible bordering their tail. This bird did not. This bird was speckled, yes, and about the same size but with the lack of this black 'terminal band'.

A kestrel hovers silent and motionless with that tail fanned and head inclined intently toward the earth. Usually, unless you're lucky enough to see one pounce, they will just float on by and find a post to sit on. The bird we were observing did not drift to a resting place; this bird hovered, yes, but frequently swooped down low towards the grass. However, there never seemed to be any small rodents in his talons. He didn't fly off to devour his prey in privacy after any of these swoops. But surely he had caught something? He wouldn't be wasting all this energy. Maybe it was an inexperienced youngster? Either that or he was catching something. Bugs?

We watched the bird hunting for a long time. It was a privileged viewing position, just us there in the hide, just us and the bird not twenty yards away.

I thought it was a hobby. Later we looked in a bird guide and it said that hobbies feed on dragonflies on calm summer days, so that pretty much confirmed it and explained the confusing behaviour. Hobbies are like a cross between a kestrel and a peregrine because they've got moustaches like the peregrine but they're a similar shape and size to the kestrel. They assert their individuality by wearing 'brown trousers'. However, the easiest differentiating factor in this situation was its hunting behaviour and it's this kind of hint that can really expedite the frustrating quest of bird identification, especially if you don't have any binoculars. 

Kestrel (taken by Paul Cecil at Sussex University). Notice the differences. The first picture was a hobby.