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.

Bird of Prey, Flying High

Two of the Rutland osprey family (photo taken through binoculars)

Back in the haze of early August, Rose's parents took us to BirdFair at Rutland Waters. We only had a ticket for the Saturday so on the Friday we went to look at the ospreys nesting there. Rutland is one of only two sites in England where ospreys nest, so it's a truly rare treat.

We went into the hide we'd been directed to and it was packed full of eager birdwatchers. Usually these places are empty or maybe there's someone in the corner patiently waiting with a telephoto zoom lens for a sighting of something interesting, but this hide was full of osprey fans.

The ospreys' nest was out across the waters on a raised plinth and there were a few more platforms where the family of five could sit and hang out and eat their prey. We watched them for a while as they flew around and hunted and whenever they did something interesting, like swoop down into the water for a fish, there was a burst of shutter clicking from the photographers in the hide like paparazzi. 

At one point there was a red kite in the sky, really high up. We only knew because someone else pointed it out. It was so high you couldn't see it with the naked eye. Only through binoculars.

Then this other bird came along. It was big, probably as big as the ospreys, maybe slightly bigger. From a distance its colours were dark with a light head. The ospreys didn't like it being in their territory and a few of them flew out to chase it off. It was like a kind of passive aggressive show of strength in numbers, no direct violence, just suggestions to the intruder that maybe it should go.

We didn't know what this trespassing bird was. The man next to me didn't know what it was either. I asked one of the more experienced and well-equipped bird watchers, and he said it was a female marsh harrier.

An example of a female marsh harrier (taken by someone else)

A week or so later, I was at work in the bakery, weighing up the farmhouse, and François was playing Fatboy Slim songs on his iPod. That song came on, the one with the sample that goes, 'bird of prey, bird of prey, flying high…in the summer sky' and it reminded me of seeing all those majestic birds at Rutland and it gave me a real thrill of happiness.

Summer Holiday Birds (Part Two) - 'A Crow in Danger'

The 'setting' for our story

On our first proper day of holiday we walked for a while in the relentless heat of the Dorset coastline until we found a bus to take us back to Weymouth beach. Then we returned in the early evening to the campsite and dined on pot noodles. After dinner we went for a walk, this time going left along the coast, the idea being to turn back in time for the sunset which we would watch and appreciate and get back just as the darkness descends.

On our way back, Rose spotted some movement in a hedge. It was a bird flapping its wings, a crow, and it seemed to be struggling. She wanted us to go and help it, or at least just go and check that it was alright, so we began to vault the fence into the field. Before we were even over the fence there was someone in the distance shouting at us, telling us we couldn't go through the field, that it was private property. We tried to shout back that there was a possibly a crow in trouble, but he said, 'let nature take its course.'

We got off the fence and continued walking back. Rose insulted the landowner rather fiercely, but out of his earshot. We thought maybe we'd be able to sneak in once he had gone but he stayed and watched us walk away. It seemed pretty heartless. 'Let nature take its course' is all very well but if a bird is suffering and you can stop it, then you should, surely?

We discussed it. We fumed at the selfishness, the heartlessness of man, the property greed, the disregard for animals. And we returned to the campsite. The field with the distressed crow in it happened to be pretty much adjacent to the field we were camping in, and its owner was sitting there surveying his land, making sure it was protected from intruders.

I decided we should just go over there and talk to him. Even though it seemed on the surface that this guy was a stubborn uptight landowner, shouted conversations across a field can only yield so much rushed personal information, like a car honking its horn always sounds rude even when it might just be softly informing someone that the traffic lights have gone green.

So we went over and this guy had his mate with him. They were sitting around a fire in their camp. They immediately recognised us and I asked them if they could just go and investigate the distressed crow, just, you know, if it's suffering, we should help it. Close up they were friendly, hippyish, young, long-haired. One of them half-reluctantly went to check out the distressed bird in the tree and we chatted to the other one, who told us about their comfortable lifestyle here in the field adjacent to the campsite. They grew their own food and sometimes shot pigeons to eat and once a seagull (its meat like shoe leather apparently) but not yet crow. 

Turns out the crow wasn't in distress, it wasn't trapped and it had gone by the time the actually rather friendly landowner reached the tree. He said it was probably just raiding a magpie nest, which in hindsight makes sense, the flapping aggressive rather than panicked, the victim the attacker.

I don't have a photo of the crow, but here are some fetching six-spot Burnet moths we saw on our morning walk:

Summer Holiday Birds (Part One)

We went camping in Dorset for our Summer holidays. The campsite, which overlooked the surprising Chesil Beach, was called 'Swallows Rest'. Migrating swallows obviously get across the sea and think 'this'll do, I can't be bothered to fly any further' and they spend their summer holiday at the campsite, like us, though to them it's like a winter holiday, a break from the heat of Africa to breed in the more hospitable British summer climate. 

They constantly swooped around us, from barn to stable to hedge, skimming close to the ground searching for food or maybe just showing off. (I always think birds are showing off - they probably don't even realise how cool they look. Or do they?) Sometimes two of them (lovers? brothers?) would acrobatically follow one another, just inches away at high speeds like Jedis, guessing which direction the other will go, like starlings, like red arrows.

On the way to the shower block there were some swallowlings sitting on a fence. I tried to have a close look at them but the parents dive-bombed me with guano. I was hit within seconds on the shoulder and had to wash my t-shirt. I felt bad for scaring them. I just wanted to look.

Here is a video of the swallows swooping around the campsite. You can kind of get the idea.

The birdlife was more active in Dorset than it was in the New Forest where we holidayed last summer, even though this part of the Jurassic Coast was quite a barren landscape: lots of exposed treeless fields, oppressive in the heat. We had many interesting bird encounters, far too many to pack into one post, so this is just 'part one'. 

A good holiday should take you out of your comfort zone and force you to examine your place in the universe. On our trip to Dorset, the birds were often the catalysts for this kind of self-discovery.

A Real Lark Ascending

The river on our previous visit

We went to Cuckmere on Sunday with Rose's parents. There a twisty river meets the sea at the feet of the seven sisters. Rose and I had been there a few years ago and it was drab and grey but this time the weather was kind to us. The spitting rain of the morning disappeared the moment we sat down to have a picnic beside the river and the countryside/riverside birds were gregarious in the sun.

There were little egrets like whitewashed herons predating the river and a kestrel hovering. We asked a birdwatching couple if they had seen anything and they said, 'not much: meadow pipit, whitethroat…' (neither of which we've ever seen). Then we saw two linnets drinking from a puddle, sparrow-sized but tinged strawberry-pink, some stonechats, swallows, cormorants and herons.

Best of all though were the skylarks. As soon as we got near the river to have our picnic, we could hear their insistent, complicated song that goes on and on without stopping. They nest on the ground in the long grasses near the water and they look like many British birds: brown and grey and black, speckled and striped. It's important to look as dull and mud-like as possible if you're going to nest on the ground, so close to predators. Like many plain-looking British birds the skylarks' secret weapon is their song, and they fly as they sing it. They rise upwards in obvious display mode broadcasting their songs in a wide boastful arc.

Vaughn Williams wrote a piece, a kind of violin concerto called 'The Lark Ascending' inspired by the British soldiers who heard the lark singing in the silences between gunfire over the trenches on the Western Front, and it would remind them of home. As we watched a single lark ascend into the blinding blue sky above us, singing its complex music, I tried to see it as the symbol of hope it was for those soldiers. I was glad to have the chance to see/hear for myself what VW was celebrating and I think you can hear some larkish similarities in the more extended twiddly violin passages.

That little bird in the middle is a skylark (you'll probably have to take my word for it). I took this picture the first time we went to Cuckmere,  though at the time we didn't know what it was.

Skylark singing. It's pretty intense.

'The Lark Ascending' by Ralph Vaughn Williams

The progress of this year's peregrine family

Last time this blog saw the peregrine family they were 2 adults and 4 eggs. Now they are 2 adults and 4 teenage hatched eggs. It was around 2nd May when they started hatching, now they're a month old and pretty much getting ready to leave the nest it seems.

I can't see them from my window anymore. We have moved. We have different windows. I can still see them from the street if I walk round the corner but it's not quite as fun. Here in our new flat there are quite a few starlings who hang around on the rooftops. I listen to their songs, which sometimes include a lovely glissando from high to low, the full gamut of their range. I must listen out for them imitating blackbirds and ringtones. Sometimes I hear goldfinches flying by but I haven't seen any and there have been some swifts in the sky this evening, they squeaked by almost at my eye-level. But alas we cannot see peregrines.

I haven't paid attention to much of the peregrines' chickhood, which I am starting to regret. We watched them for a while on the webcam the other day. They were feasting on a pigeon. Imagine seeing a peregrine catch a pigeon! In mid-air. (Did I say all this last year?) 

The nest box now is a death scene of pigeon feathers and bones. I can see the sun is rising in the webcam. Only one chick is in there at the moment. Have the others left him/her behind and ventured out into the world beyond the nest?

Here are some photos charting their development from egg to fluffy white thing to mini peregrine.