Glossy Ibis at Ferry Meadows, 31/10/2020

 

As far as I know, this bird was first reported on the Nene Washes near Whittlesey on 27 Oct. It moved to Heron Meadow (near the eatern viewing platform) at Ferry Meadows on Friday 30 Oct and was seen and photographed by lots of people. It left, presumably to roost, about 16:20 but was back again in the same sort of area early Saturday morning. I got there around 9-9:30 and it was right at the eastern end of the meadows, nearest to Butterfly Bridge feeding amongst tussocks of rushes in a fairly dry corner. It is reported to be back again today (Sunday, 1st Nov) in the same area.

Although this is now a regular visitor to Britain, being reported every year in small numbers, it is still pretty exciting and the first time one has bee seen in the Country Park!

Great-white Egret

There has been a Great-white Egret on the River Welland along the Deeping High Bank, usually east of Crowland bridge and water tower, for about 2 weeks (seems to have been reported first on Bird Guides on 2nd Sept). I caught up with it a couple of hundred metres east of Crowland Bridge yesterday afternoon and took a few video clips of it fishing. It seemed to be doing rather well! It caught mostly quite small fish fairly constatntly, every few minutes, during the 10 or 15 minutes I was watching. I took some video clips using my mobile phone mounted on the telescope.

Deeping Lakes 30th June

A late afternoon visit to Deeping Lakes produced a number of waders on the East Pit including Bar-tailed Godwit, Little-ringed Plover and Common Sandpiper - 2 of each. The water level has dropped further and it is looking very suitable for waders at the moment. At the other end of the site, I saw a Little Owl for the first time in many weeks.

Lots of drgonflies about today with considerable numbers of Orthetrum cancellatum (Black-tailed Skimmer) around all the water bodies. I saw several pairs mating in flight over the East Pit. Also, large numbers of Coenagrion puella ( (Azure Damselfly) everywhere, both over the water surfaces and perching on the vegeration. An adult Lesser Black-backed Gull on one of the islands on the East Pit appeared to be catching and eating damselflies.

Trip: 26 miles, 4kWh

Morton’s Leam east of Peterborough

A longish cycle ride (35km) today, partly along Morton’s Leam, a medieval irrigation channel east of Peterborough centre.

Three cranes near Bassenhally were the highlight. These birds can be difficult to see at this time of year with the tall vegetation but these were in the open. On a warm June early afternoon, the Nene washes can seem a bit quiet. The best tactic I find, is just to wait until a passing marsh harrier triggers a mobbing flight. Suddenly the washes fill with previously invisible lapwing, redshank and snipe.

Tanholt Pit Plovers

I planned to do a quick cycling trip to Tanholt Pit today, but ended watching a plover for ages trying to confirm its identity. I hadn’t got my scope with me.
There’s an increasing amount of mud being exposed on the northern pit, and it does provide a small feeding area for passage waders. So far in spring this year, I have seen black tailed godwit, little ringed plover, common sandpiper, lapwing and oystercatcher here. Not bad for a little known inland site. Autumn passage might be quite good here if the water level drops further.

As I arrived, there were two plovers together with a smart dunlin. One of the plovers flew off - no wing bar - little ringed plover. The other stayed put. It was larger than the dunlin and had orangey legs, and no sign of a lemon eye ring. The bill was orange with a black tip.

I waited for ages for it to preen or fly to show a wing bar. Eventually it had a stretch and showed a wing bar. First ringed plover for me on this site since 2013, and only my 6th record here. (38 site records for Little ringed plover).
The delays meant I got soaked by a heavy shower going home.

Cuckoos, Cettis and red kites were other highlights

From Collins Guide

Garganey at Deeping Lakes, 1st June

A pair of Garganey were reported on the East Pit at Deeping Lakes yesterday, so I went along this morning to see if they were still there. I only saw one bird, the male, which was very visible in the corner of the pit nearest the road.

A remarkable number of Mute Swans are on The Lake at the moment including a few family parties with young cygnets. There has been a huge hatch of Azure Damselfly (Coenagrion puella) and they were everywhere in the vegetation. I also saw a female Banded Demoiselle (Calopteryx splendens) and one bigger dragonfly I didn't get a good look at.

Trip: 26 miles, 5kWh

Curlew Sandpipers at Frampton Marsh RSPB, Sunday 31st May

A visit to the RSPB reserve at Frampton Marsh was my first since before lockdown began in March. I normally try to get there at least once a month. As expected, the visitor centre (including the toilets) and the hides were closed. The other change since I was last there is that the anti-predator fence around the main scraped is now completed and operating. This means that you go through a gate in the fence on the way round the North Scrape from the Reedbed Hide towards the East Hide and then you go back out of it at the base of the steps up the sea wall. Signs on these gates say that they are open from 9:30 to 16:00 and are otherwise kept locked. I had a chat to the warden before I left and he said that this was to ensure that they were not left open at night - which would of course, totally defeat their purpose!

The breeding season is in full swing and there were young birds everywhere. Avocet chicks were especially noticeable. In small groups all around the pools and not obviously associated with an adult in most cases. Young geese, ducks, Coot, Black-headed Gulls and Lapwing were also much in evidence. Whilst many Black-headed Gulls have chicks, I didn't see any tern chicks, although many were sitting on nests.

The highlights were Little-ringed Plover, my fist of the year, a Spoonbill, a Greenshank and a couple of Curlew Sandpiper - not something I would have expected in late May.

The winter stuff has not completely departed: there were about 15 Brent Geese on the main scrapes, 4 Barnacle Geese on the wet grassland and a pair of Wigeon on the North Scrape. Presumably the Brents are either too young to breed or too old and sick to migrate.

This was a hot and sunny Sunday morning with enough of a breeze to keep it pleasant and by the time I left at about 12:30 it was busy! Both car p[parks were full and there were family parties everywhere.

Trip: 63 miles, 14 kWh.

Quail near Crowland

Several Quail were found calling from fields of beans along Renew's Drove, about a mile north of Crowland a couple of days ago. Both my co-author Dave and myself went out there last night (Wednesday, 27th May) about 7pm to listen. It was a pleasant evening at the end of a rather warm day, but a bit breezy and we found several other birders strung out along about a kilometre of road when we got there. We did hear a single Quail which was calling rather sporadically from the western end of the middle of the three fields of beans, but it was very occasional bursts of two or three calls. This is a very open area of high intensity cultivation, so it was interesting that there were a number of "good"  birds about including several Corn Buntings singing, Yellow Wagtails flitting about (my first of the year!), a fairly distant Cuckoo and, as we were leaving, a distant Barn Owl hunting. The ditch edges and one rather low and sparse Hawthorn hedge along the roadside also supported Reed Bunting, Whitethroat and Sedge Warbler. This clip includes some Quail calls and Corn Bunting song:

Trip: 21 miles, 4kWh

Long-eared Owl

The best place to see Long-eared Owl locally is undoubtedly the winter roost at Deeping Lakes Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust reserve. Typically around 1-3 birds roost in thick scrub covering the islands immediately in front of the main hide on The Lake. However, they are not easy to spot: their plumage provides excellent camouflage and they usually choose a perch deep in the vegetation. It is often hard to be sure that what you are looking at is (part of) a bird rather than a bundle of dead leaves and it is easy to fool yourself after a long period of hopeful staring through a 'scope! So persistence and patience are needed. This rather nice video clip was taken by Ian Gordon on 2 March 2020 (phone on his 'scope) of a bird that was more out in the open than usual!

I checked my records on BirdTrack and, over the last four winters (October through to February) I visited the reserve 38 times and saw Long-eared Owl on 10 of those visits. So my hit rate was around one visit in four. The winter of 2015/16 was particularly good whilst 2019/20 was about average with 3 sightings from 11 visits.

There are lots of theories about when they are most likely to be seen. One theory suggests that a north wind is good because the birds will tend to seek a sheltered roost - which will then be on the south side of the islands and more likely to be visible from the hide. Another theory is that they show better if the sun comes out just after rain when they move into the sunshine to dry off (although I have never seen one of these roosting birds move beyond rotating its neck or fluffing up its feathers!).

There are more Long-eared Owls about locally in the winter as birds from further north move into our area, but this is never-the-less a local breeding species. It is on the Cambridgeshire Bird Club's list of scarce breeding birds about which we should not publicise locations for actual or suspected breeding, so I am not going to mention localities.

I find it the most difficult of the owls to locate. Little Owls often sit near their nest sites during the day and can be fairly easy to see. Barn Owls are also active around dawn and dusk near breeding sites and may be out well before dusk when they have chicks to feed. Tawny Owls make there presence very obvious with the loud hoots of the male and "ke-wick" calls of the female. In contrast, Long-eared Owls are very nocturnal in their activities and their calls are rather quiet and inconspicuous. Here is a recording of what I believe to be female contact calls. Made on 7th May, it is a rather repetitive, soft bleating call which, on this occasion, went on for at least 8 minutes, hardly missing a beat:

They are most readily located when they have young. Like a lot of young birds, they make a fairly noisy, repetitive and persistent begging call - which sounds like a badly oiled metal gate (the "squeaky gate" call). This can go on and on for ages! Again, the original recording was over 5 minutes long with scarcely a pause:

This recording was made on 23rd May last year, so this the time to be listening out for them!

STOP PRESS:

Here are a couple more recordings of juveniles calling made at a local site last night (25th May). The first one is of a single bird at close range:

The second one is of at least two juveniles, possibly three:

Deeping Lakes, 20/05/2020

With a completely clear sky, full sunshine and very little wind, it was a pretty warm morning at Deeping Lakes. The car said it was 27C when I left about 11am! The East Pit is looking good at the moment with plenty of islands and shallow water and breeding is in full swing. Many Lesser Black-backed Gulls, a few Herring Gulls and Black-headed Gulls and a good number of Common Terns nest on these islands. Some of the Common Tern nest sites are remarkably close to the easterly viewing screen (nearest the road). I suppose there was a lot less human activity than usual whilst they were settling in. Here is some video (shot using my mobile phone through the telescope) of a couple of pairs of Common Terns courting and at a nest (sorry, there is no sound).

Other species are further on and there were numerous family parties of Greylag and a few of Mallard. On The Lake, the Cormorants are also well on with many nests with well grown chicks. Noisy and messy creatures!

The warblers are a bit quieter now - presumably they are mostly paired up and busy with nesting, so far less singing going on. Reed Warblers were  rattling away everywhere and Chiffchaff, Blackcap, Whitethroat and Cetti's all gave occasional bursts of song. I though I could hear a distant Lesser Whitethroat several time and I eventually found where it was singing - from the south side of the river right at the west end of the site. The inevitable couple of Egyptian Geese were also sat on the bank of the River Welland. Anything up to 4-5 seem to be permanently around these days.

Altogether a pleasant morning, although a bit warm for my taste, and my BirdTrack list was 48 species - not too bad!

Trip: 26 miles, 5kWh

Teaching a friend some birding basics -Nene Park Peterborough

Turns out that my blogging co host Stuart, was in roughly the same area as me this morning. I didn’t bump into him though,

I had arranged to introduce a friend to some of the birds of the Nene Park area. Virginia (Vi) and I started at Orton Mere and cycled to the Watersports Centre at Ferry Meadows. Although Vi is a birding novice, she has spent a lot of time around the River Nene in the past three months and has seen some amazing sights such as kingfishers displaying and an otter. She has even caught a glimpse of a Cettis Warbler, without having much of a clue about what she was looking at, other than knowing it was responsible for throwing out a shouty song. Respect for that.

Showing a beginner some basics is a great experience for an old hand like me with more than 40 years of birding to draw on. It makes you think very carefully about what you are seeing and hearing, and take nothing for granted. A one to one session (forced upon us by the corona restrictions) helped us to keep focussed without too much distracting banter - a feature of larger groups. Although I had equipped Vi with my battered old binoculars, I told her that we would mostly be relying on our ears rather than our eyes. But the aural side of birding is bloody difficult- especially for a novice. Bird song is as tricky to disentangle, as a drawer full of obsolete charging cables. Blackcaps versus Garden Warblers wasn’t  even on the agenda. But we did enjoy listening carefully to Whitethroats, chiffchaffs, cettis, and reed warblers. What was probably less enjoyable was me droning on at great length about migration strategies, climate change and why birds sing.

When we got close to the Watersports Centre we picked up the unmistakable phrases of a nightingale.
I knew one had been in the area for several weeks (an unexpected delight for this site), but I wasn’t sure whether it would still be there or still be singing. But there he was, deep in a bramble patch, in a busy part of the Country Park. And as a bonus, another male started singing more distantly. I told Vi that if we came back next year, we are unlikely to be so lucky - but you never know.

In terms of birds seen, the highlights were:

A parakeet on the feeders (that’s an impossibly bright green isn’t it)

A close buzzard that was marked in such a way that it looked like it was wearing a bra

A flash of blue heralding a kingfisher

The rather classy great crested grebe

Some sand martins preening in a low tree.

Best of all, perhaps, an outrageously crested lapwing with shimmering green on its wings and a vibrant rusty vent. It’s been a while since I played close attention to a lapwing. Must do that more often.

Vi - who is Spanish - took notes throughout the morning. Some of these were mis written. My favourite was a “Song crush”. Nothing relevant to came up for Vi on google later. I can’t help feeling that such a bird with such a name should exist.

Anyway, all in all, a delightful, and low carbon way, of enjoying a morning.

Vi ready for cyclo birding

Woodston Ponds and The Boardwalks

Went for a cycle out to Orton Staunch and back this morning taking in Woodston Ponds on the way out and the Boardwalks on the way back.

The cycling sound-recordist - parabolic mic on the back!

I wanted to get a good recording of Cetti's Warbler, and there have been lots of them at Woodston Ponds on my last few visits - especially around the channel that comes in from the River Nene. Unfortunately, whilst I heard several Cettis's, they were all distant. There was a very vocal Cuckoo however (with Cetti's in the background!) and all the usual stuff like Reed Warbler, Reed Bunting, Common Terns and so on.

At least two Ring-necked Parakeets in the big Willow trees at the Boardwalks. This really is a sad site these days. The carr woodland is almost completely dried out and becoming invaded by nettles, the path through the middle is very overgrown with the bridges beginning to fall apart - holes in the deck and the handrails rotting away.

At the bridge over the old power station outfall, the Swan with a nest beside the path had clearly just hatched its chicks. Mom was sat on the nest with dad close by and several tiny faces peering out through her feathers. Very cute!

Dave’s introduction to cyclo birding in East Peterborough

The majority of my birdwatching involves cycling around the north eastern  quarter of Peterborough. There’s Star Pit to the north, Eye Green and Tanholt Pit further east, as well as Flag Fen, the Power Station Area, Fitzwilliam and Millennium Bridges . My wife refers to this pastime as “touring the local flytips”. I will admit that this urban fringe, aka “edgeland” is perhaps not the most scenic area of England, but this patch can be very productive in terms of birds. 

The flat terrain and dedicated cycle tracks are well suited to this form of birding. I call it “cyclobirding”, and I’m surprised more people haven’t discovered this combination. Birding is very popular, cycling is very popular, but the intersection of the two is a minority interest. Lycra is not recommended for cyclobirding, especially for gentlemen of my age. All my data since 2008 has been entered onto the BTOs excellent Birdtrack website. I have over 1000 complete lists for this area, a suite of 17 sites. 

In the current lockdown, I have been able to continue visiting these areas in the course of my daily prescribed exercise. Maintaining social distancing has not been too much of an issue, but with the good weather throughout most of April, and a lack of competing leisure time attractions, there have been many more people about than usual.

It’s not the prospect of rarities that primarily motivates me, it’s mainly the regularly occurring but often scarce species that  get me out of bed in the morning and onto the saddle. For example, on checking my birdtrack data, I found that I have at least 10 patch records for quite a few notable species. This includes wetland specialists such as  bittern, water rail, little ringed plover, kingfisher and mandarin duck. Passage birds include greenshank, wheatear and common sandpiper. Passerines of interest  are corn bunting, grasshopper warbler, tree sparrow, grey and yellow wagtail. Regular raptors include marsh harrier, red kite, peregrine and hobby. But if I were asked to name my favourite patch bird, I would probably say green sandpiper. I’ve recorded this lovely white rumpled wader in my patch area over 100 times. Sadly though, records have declined significantly in the past three years. 

I’ve met some interesting people in the course of these 1000 visits. Recently I talked to a young man with a bicycle and binoculars. He told me that he took up cyclobirding when he was unable to drive his car due to a broken arm. He got to realise the advantages of birding by bike and carried on doing this regularly after his arm healed. On another occasion, I was approached one morning by two 13 year old lads who asked me what I was looking at through the telescope. In the spirit of encouraging youngsters to take an interest in birdwatching, I showed them the green woodpecker that I was watching. I was subsequently distracted by another sighting (sparrowhawk I think) and when I turned back to look at the green woodie I noticed that one of the boys had swung my scope around to focus on a bungalow. I asked him what he was looking at.

“There’s a far more interesting bird in there and I think she’s just getting dressed”. The other boy sniggered and pleaded with his mate to let him see. 

Outraged, and feeling somewhat “in loco parentis”, I gave them both a stern talking to and quickly departed from the scene. 

Main sites in my birding “patch” east of Peterborough 

Turtle Dove

Maxey has always been one of the best areas locally for Turtle Dove. I used to be involved with Packers (Peterborough Area Canoeists and KayakERS) and we used to run a training weekend there around the May Day Bank Holiday and I always hoped to hear them then. But, these days, it has become a pretty scarce species in the area and has disappeared from many sites. I went early this morning with my sound recording gear and could hear them purring as soon as I got out of the car and even saw one fly across the track almost immediately. Recording them proved to be more challenging! Firstly, they are not very loud, whereas some of the stuff around them (Wren, Cetti's Warbler!) is. Secondly, they tend to call once or twice and then shut up or move, so by the time I got lined up and my recorder switched on, they had stopped. This recording contains a couple of brief sound clips.

Trip: 20 miles, 4kWh.

The sun powered car

Stuart has had a fully electric car, a Renault Zoe, since December 2018. This has a 40kWh battery which gives it a nominal range of around 180 miles on a full charge. We find that, in the Summer, we get 180 miles or a bit more pretty reliably, but in the Winter it drops to 150-160 miles and can go down to 130 miles in really cold weather. Remember that Lithium-ion batteries are chemical devices and therefore temperature sensitive! They work best at about 30C and become less efficient at low temperatures.

We charge the battery using the solar panels on our roof. We find that between about mid-Feb and the end of October we can usually keep the car fully charged without importing power from the grid. During November to February we don't always manage to generate enough, especially if there are prolonged periods of dull, overcast weather.

When we bought the car, installation of a charger was included in the price. This would have been an  unsophisticated device from Charge Master which only has one option: plug it in and it charges at 7kW. If we had gone for this, they would have claimed the Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme grant of £350 on our behalf. We decided to install our own choice of charger - the Zappi from MyEnergi - and claimed the grant ourselves to put towards it. The Zappi is designed to work with micro-generation systems whether solar panels, wind generators or hydroelectric. It has three charging modes:

• "Fast" - charges at 7kW, importing from the mains as necessary (though of course it will use anything you are generating as the Charge Master would have). At 7kW, our battery would charge fully from empty in about 6 hours.
  
• "Eco 2" - charges only using the excess power you are generating and would otherwise be exporting to the grid. You must be exporting at least 1.5kW for charging to occur. This is the minimum charge rate that EVs are designed to accept. If you are exporting more than this, then it will all be used to charge the car's battery up to the Zapp's maximum of 8kW.
  
• "Eco 1" - charges at least at 1.5kW. If you are exporting less that this, it will import what ever wattage is necessary from the grid to make it up to 1.5kW. If you are exporting more it will simply use all of it to charge the battery - just like Eco 2.

We keep the Zappi in Eco 2 mode pretty much all of the time, so whenever there is enough sunlight and the battery is not already full, the car will be charging. If we really need to have the car charged at a particular time for some reason and are not generating enough (most likely in mid-Winter) then we use Fast mode overnight.

The bottom line is that a reasonably sunny morning in the Summer will power an average local birding trip of around 50-60 miles.