The late birds ‘get the worm’

We’ve been to the RSPB reserve at Pulborough Brooks once before. This time we had a room booked in a tavern in nearby Bramber so we could take our time and stay until the dusk closing time.

We saw goldcrest, nuthatch, blue tit, great tit, robins, chaffinch, a green woodpecker pecking at the floor right in front of one of the hides, teal, wigeon, shelduck, geese, handsome redwing, fallow deer and noble fallow stag, shoveller, goofy snipe, curlew, lapwings, long-tailed tits at the bus stop, ruffless ruffs, no birds of prey unfortunately, no bullfinch, no crossbill, but out of all the birds we saw, two birds stood out and both of them emerged right at the end of the day.

The sun was setting and it was becoming difficult to tell the birds from the stray leaves and cones in the trees. I heard a loud clear song different from all the robins and the incessant great tits whose songs filled the air. It was like a blackbird in its squawk-like tone but the repeated phrases were shorter: little riffs and arpeggios, liet-motifs, they were more enigmatic, less melodic than the blackbird. I found the bird in the binoculars. It was a song thrush clearly on display on an outstanding branch, showing himself for an evening performance. His colours are humble browns, plump with a creamy speckled belly. I’ve never seen one before or heard one in real life. Such a proud song, I stood and listened for a while, he was still going when we left.

We went back into the visitor’s centre which was just closing and the assistants were relieved to get their binoculars back. A few other lingering visitors were looking through the binoculars and scopes out of the big viewing window. A little chicken sized bird waddled out from the reeds and the expert said we were lucky to be seeing it. It was a water rail, almost a chicken, almost a wader, tentatively pecking on the ground, just long enough for us to get a view through one of the scopes before we were ushered out of the visitors centre so they could close up and go home. The water rail makes a noise like a pig snuffling apparently, but we didn’t get to hear it. It's blue-grey belly and orangey-red bill make a satisfying exotic combination, but it comes across as a slightly unfortunate bird what with the pig-noise it has been lumbered with, the awkward chicken legs and the inelegant name. It seems content for sure, but that arouses the sympathy all the more.

Great Crested Grebe at Shoreham

It was a day I remember almost entirely from beginning to end, every detail in between. We (me and Rose) went to Shoreham, just down the coast from Brighton. We had been told of a nature reserve on the beach with wild flowers and accompanying animals and so went to explore.

Off the crawling meandering bus we wandered against aggressive wind towards the river, which we followed for a while, hoping to see river birds, or any birds, but there was little except mild bending water. Though the sun shone generously in intervals, the wind was unpleasant and made it cold. We walked partway down the river path which would have led to Guildford if we kept going long enough, but we turned back on ourselves across a bridge to what we hoped was a more populous nature world. However the sunny side of the river offered only seagulls and bushes.

I was lacklustre. The wind was annoying me. We went to see the houseboats, a colourful row of converted battleships and barges aground on the riverbank. And then in the river between the boats in the boat street, a bird sailed past. We followed it. It wasn’t a duck or a swan, but something in between. I took photos on my camera and zoomed in to try and see it closer. (I had forgotten the binoculars.) It was a great crested grebe. We followed it excitedly up the river, trying to get closer to it to take a good photo. It just floated along, lazy, majestic, like a purple Mandarin prince visiting from the East.

At home I had a bird magazine with a GCG on the front. I never expected it to make the jump from magazine cover to real life. When we spotted the GCG, the day changed from wind-beaten birdless amble to victory march. The trip had been worth it if only for this and everything else afterwards was coloured by the sight of this colourful bird, long after he had ducked under the water under the bridge away from us  - the subsequent desolate beach stretch of nature reserve peppered with sea cabbage and viper bugloss, the peninsula fortress, the long harbour dead end retracing of steps, the almost missed bus, the fish and chips, all coloured by the sighting of this obliging unexpected bird.

My unimpressive photo

Among a wealth of birds...2

At the Arundel duckworld some of the ducks were caged in large landscaped pens. These were presumably the rarer species less accustomed to survival with rivals, put there to remove all possible risks and ease them back into numbers. In one of these contained environments, a small yellow bird flittered into view. It was either a yellow wagtail or a grey wagtail. Both have distinctive breast yellownesses. With hindsight I’d say it was the yellow wagtail.

It was confined in the cage as far as we could see; as far as we could see, there were no escape holes in the mesh. The yellow wagtail flew around the cage in and out of view and outshone the rare ducks like a secret bonus bird.

We wondered if it was happy in that cage without family and potential mates. The bird attendees must know it’s in there and have deemed it appropriate to leave it in there, and we trust them to know what’s best for the birds, but still it seems a bit lonely.

Among a wealth of birds…1

We went to the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust Park in Arundel. There were a great many birds there: gaggles of geese, a fanfare of swans, a whimper of coots, a phrace of moorhen, thrifts of pigeon and wounds of ducks, so many ducks, all colours and shapes. It's a bird zoo essentially, but there are also some hidden and wild. They are more elusive and mysterious and it’s more of an honour to see them.

Rose’s goal was to see a kingfisher. I feared she would be sad if we didn’t see one. I would have been a little sad as well but I’ve seen one before when I was a teenager on the grimy banks of the river Dour in Dover, on my way to school.

We made a circuit around the reed bed walkways and woodland tracks without seeing a kingfisher, then we went back to the visitor centre to have some tea. The café tables looked out onto a small lake surrounded by trees and reeds. It was said to be a good place to see kingfishers. And indeed it didn't take long before there was a flash of electric blue across the water into the trees.

The kingfisher has a massive beak, proportionately. It’s like it’s half beak, but not quite.

We saw another one later on when we were having a boat tour of the reed beds. The blue of the kingfisher is caused by the refraction of light through the fine feather hairs; the feathers are not blue. Our tour guide alerted us excitedly to the presence of the bird as it whistled past. I’m glad it was still exciting for her, even though she guides that motor boat through the reeds every day in search of fluffy water voles.

Long Tailed Tits At The Hotel

I was in a positive mood because I was going to a five star hotel to try out for a baking job. The gates to the hotel began on the busy main road and through the gates the private road to the hotel wound through acres of trees, lots of old trees; massive redwoods, twisty cherry trees, limes and oaks, all in their autumnal splendour, constantly drizzling leaves into the wind.

Even though I was eager to go and hang out in the opulent hotel, I stopped to look at the birds bouncing on the winds between the trees. I went into a clearing where the ground was spongy beneath one of the redwoods. I thought there might be some goldcrests. They like conifers.

Cars were driving past on the hotel road. They were big and new and had blacked out windows, and were driven by massive men in suits. I began to imagine I was in a dark moneyed Murakami underworld and if I stood by the side of the road peering about through binoculars, I might be stopped and asked to move on, but I did it anyway.

I saw some long-tailed tits. Even without binoculars I could tell it was them. Their silhouette looks like a ping-pong ball on the end of a trailing ribbon or something. The tail is longer than the body, which is round and fluffy. I’d never seen one before. Ever since I saw the picture shown above, I wanted to see one.

The day after, I heard some goldcrests at the hotel. Strangely they sound like goldfinches. There’s a similar type of twilpy blib, like a Radiophonic Workshop drip, but the goldcrest’s call is higher and more whistly. I wasn’t in a positive mood anymore though, so I didn’t get my binoculars out.

Fake Tree and Starlings

Me and Rose went out walking in Lower Horsebridge, or was it Upper Dicker? There were fields all around but they were mostly inaccessible and the public footpaths were dead ends. There was a fake full sized pine tree in an enclosure with some electricity generators. Only when you were at the foot of this ‘tree’ could you tell its branches were jutting metal pipes and the trunk was a tall metal pylon of some sort with the grain painted on, and that was the strange thing, because you can’t see the grain of a real tree when it’s a tree; it’s covered in bark, isn’t it, and that’s why it looked weird from a distance, though I didn’t realise it at the time.

We saw a few green woodpeckers as they swooped down to feed in the grass, and along the only footpath that wasn’t a dead end, ‘the cuckoo trail’, there were quite a few small birds in the hedges – chaffinch, many sparrows, robins, goldfinch, and in one particular bush there were some peculiar calls, harsh and digital and loud. I peered into the twig matrix. An old man walking two scrawny puppies stopped to talk to us. He was one of those old men who always stop and talk to people. I carried on scanning the hedges and espied a light brown bird, maybe slightly bigger than a blackbird and it had a streak of yellow feathers in its tail, rather like a greenfinch but it was too big for a greenfinch and didn’t have that stocky mini-parrot finch-beak.

We later realised that the calls we heard in the bush were from a starling. One distinctive part of their repertoire is the glissando, starting from a high pitch and swooping down. The rest comprises less recognizable clicking and squawking. We saw quite a few starlings around after that. Through the binoculars you can see their speckled colours, the fading summer iridescence of the males. 

Flocking Wagtails

On Wednesday I was walking down Church Street in Brighton and there were lots of small birds squabbling about in the tops of some young London Planes (trees). I watched them for a bit and tried to work out what they were. They were small and had white breasts. I thought maybe they were tits of some kind but they seemed slightly too big. Unfortunately I didn’t have my binoculars to look more closely and I was late for a dinner with Rose and her parents so I left the little birds arguing over whatever they were arguing about. I saw Miranda. I don’t think she noticed the squawky cacophony.

Today I went back to the London Planes. I brought my binoculars with me this time. I went at six o’clock as the sun was setting, the same time as the other day and I could hear them as I walked down the hill so I excitedly got my binoculars out. 

Rose’s dad said they might have been housemartins, but they were the wrong shape; they had long tails and they didn’t have the same aeroplane wings as housemartins. No, they were wagtails, loads of them, probably about fifty maybe. They’re called Pied Wagtails, because they're black and white and they always walk about wagging their long tails. Pretty little monochrome birds.

Were they migrating? Were they stopping off in the trees to rest before moving on?

The RSPB website says wagtails often gather in roosts in city centres, and that they are residents all year round, so they aren’t migrating birds. Just a coincidence I suppose, that I noticed them flocking about in the autumn, at migration time. They were probably gathering together to be safe and warm.