22 Monday Feb 2021
Posted in birds
Where the Mute swans do their grooming and preening, there is always a profusion of white feathers, large and small, stiff and downy. I grabbed this one because I liked the way it showed the constituent parts of the feather.
Rather than repeat what others have so ably published, I thought I’d just post the pretty pictures here and, if you want to learn more, you can check out this particularly good post (with excellent illustrated drawings to aid their explanations) on The Cornell Lab website.
20 Saturday Feb 2021
Posted in birds
Now that the cold-weather ‘Beast from the East’, a freezing Arctic blast, has passed and been replaced with much milder temperatures, the birds have decided it’s spring.
This week I’ve heard Song thrushes and Blackbirds belting out their tunes from the treetops, Dunnocks singing from the bushes, male Greenfinches wheezing a welcome to prospective mates, and Skylarks songflighting above the local farm fields, which is all wonderful, but it also means the thrushes that have been over-wintering in Britain will be heading back to their breeding grounds.
These Fieldfares are probably the last I’ll see, until the winter thrushes return again later in the year. They may already have started their long flight back east, to the Scandinavian peninsula, Finland or northwest Russia, according to the BTO website.
17 Wednesday Feb 2021
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I was standing at a regular feeding spot on the edge of one of the lakes at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, checking the gulls that were floating on the choppy waters, watching them watching me. Amongst the many Black-headed gulls, there was one Common gull, a species which, despite its name, is not so common in my local area.
There was a bitter easterly blasting across the lake and I knew the birds were hungry, hoping for a handout. So, I obliged, sprinkled the contents of the seed container I had brought with me on to the grassy bank.
The reaction was instant, a screeching of throats, wings flapping, an excited flurry of hungry gulls heading for the bank, knowing they had to be quick, to beat their fellows, to gain even one seed.
As I’d hoped, the Common gull came with them, and its slightly larger size meant it had an advantage, used its bulk to muscle in and claim more than its share of seed. And, of course, that meant I was also able to get some reasonably close photos of it. A win for the gulls, and a win for me.
15 Monday Feb 2021
Posted in birds
Pheasant feathers – these long tail feathers, in particular – have long been prized as adornments to fashionable hats, and such feathers are still available in large quantities today, due to the huge numbers of pheasants that are bred and released throughout Britain for the sport of the shooting fraternity. Though there are no pheasant-breeding farms in my local area, these birds can frequently be heard, if not always seen, as soon as I step outside our urban streets.
13 Saturday Feb 2021
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First, they were berry-eaters, stripping trees and shrubs of every luscious fruit. Now, they are frantic leaf-turners, wanna-be worm-pluckers, competing with the Song thrushes and Blackbirds for every tasty wriggler. Soon, the Redwings will be gone, flying back to their breeding grounds to produce next year’s berry-eaters and worm-pluckers. I will miss them; the worms probably not so much.
10 Wednesday Feb 2021
Posted in birds
Redshanks are well known for being flighty birds – as soon as they spot something out-of-their-ordinary, or there’s a sudden movement within their range of vision, they start body-bobbing and, if the disturbance continues, they’ll signal their kindred with a noisy cry and fly off. That usually means every other wader in the vicinity also reacts to their alarm, and it’s why Redshanks have long been known as the sentinels of the marshes.
In my area, it’s more a case of them being sentinels of the river embankment. And now that I’ve learnt to recognise their behaviour and see that first body-bob, I know to stop, stand still and wait for them to calm down. As long as no other pedestrian comes along to disturb them, my patience and stillness are often rewarded with some lovely time spent watching them feeding or just snoozing. I’ve found it can be very relaxing watching a bird sleep.
08 Monday Feb 2021
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If you think our Magpies are black and white, look again.
03 Wednesday Feb 2021
Posted in birds
Collared doves can be quite flighty I’ve found so, when I was out for a local walk recently, I was delighted to spot this pair grazing amongst the leaf litter on the pavement.
As soon as I stopped to get my camera out of my backpack, they saw me and flew off. But I was lucky, as they had only flown across the road and were sitting on a stone wall.
Using a van that was parked on that side of the road as cover, I managed to get close enough to get a few photos, then moved around the van and edged closer, very very slowly, to get more images.
Happy with those shots, I then put the camera down and just enjoyed watching these beautiful creatures for some minutes, until other pedestrians walking along the street scared them off. I really value special moments like these, and I was cooing quietly to myself all the way home.
01 Monday Feb 2021
Posted in birds
I could easily have overlooked this feather if, at the very moment I glanced down, the sun hadn’t shone through a fleeting break in the dense cloud cover and highlighted the tiny splodge of bright blue on one side below the white.
Once I’d picked up the feather and looked closer, I also noticed the faint blue mottling at the other end of the white patch. That blue is an indisputable identification pointer – this is from a Jay, it’s one of the less vibrant and well marked of its wing feathers.
30 Saturday Jan 2021
Posted in birds
This gorgeous wee duck has already starred in a couple of this winter’s blog posts but yesterday, when I passed her regular spot, she was closer to the path than usual so I managed to get some slightly better photos, which I can’t resist sharing.
The Ring-necked duck (Aythya collaris), like the Tufted ducks this one spends its time with locally, is a diving duck that summers and breeds in North America but migrates to spend the winter in the southern United States and Central America. Sometimes that migration goes awry and, according to the BTO, around 21 Ring-necked ducks find their way to Britain each year.
Hopefully, in another month or so, our winter visitor, this lovely immature female Ring-necked duck, will catch a favourable wind to carry her back across the Atlantic to rejoin others of her kind and find herself a mate. Fingers crossed!
earthstar 
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