73/366 Egg-citing news

13 Friday Mar 2020

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature, spring

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birding, birdwatching, British birds, Coot, Coot on nest, Coot with eggs, Eurasian coot

Mr and Mrs Coot are pleased to announce the laying of three eggs! I can’t tell male from female Coot – I’m not even sure if it’s possible to tell which is which – but one of them was sitting tight on the nest when I visited this morning.

200313 coot (1)

However, this small area of water has two pairs of Coots in residence, and they are uneasy neighbours. First, they were simply trying to intimidate each other.

200313 coot (2)

Next thing you know, there’s a full scale battle underway.

200313 coot (3)

And the sitting Coot left the nest to join in the tussle, which is how I know there are three eggs.

200313 coot (4)

Luckily, the skirmish didn’t last long, and the eggs were soon safe and warm under their parent once more.

200313 coot (5)

72/366 Sand martins

12 Thursday Mar 2020

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature, spring

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birding, birdwatching, British birds, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Sand martin, spring migration

When I walked through the park this afternoon, three Sand martins were riding the blustery winds over Cosmeston’s west lake, twisting and swerving this way and that, hunting for tiny flying insects, feeding up after their marathon flights from Africa. What a joy it was to watch them!

200312 sand martin (1) 200312 sand martin (2) 200312 sand martin (3)

69/366 First Chiffchaffs

09 Monday Mar 2020

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature, spring

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bird migration, birding, birdwatching, British birds, Chiffchaff, spring migration

Spring migration is underway! Our county bird recorder yesterday reported seeing his first Sand martin for 2020 and today I’ve seen my first Chiffchaffs, newly arrived from overwintering in the warm countries around the Mediterranean or perhaps somewhere in west Africa. Such long migratory flights by such little birds – incredible!

200309 chiffchaff (1)

I saw or heard five Chiffchaffs during my walk along the coastal path this morning and then another three at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park. Above is number three and below is number seven. Hearing them singing their ‘chiff chaff’ song made my heart spring!

200309 chiffchaff (2)

64/366 ‘A wonderful bird’

04 Wednesday Mar 2020

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature

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#WorldWildlifeWednesday, American white pelican, Great white pelican, Kuala Lumpur Bird Park, pelican

A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His bill will hold more than his belican,
He can take in his beak
Food enough for a week,
But I’m damned if I see how the helican.
~ The Pelican, Dixon Lanier Merritt, American poet

I met the stunning Great white pelican (Pelecanus onocrotalus) above at the Kuala Lumpur Bird Park in Malaysia in May 2013. The great thing about the bird park was its huge aviaries, where the birds had plenty of space and a relatively natural environment to roam in. The American white pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos), below, were gathering to roost on the Fox River, in De Pere, in the US state of Wisconsin in July 2015.

200304 american white pelican (1)

I can’t help but wonder what the pelican with its beak open is doing – scratching an itch?

60/366 Barefaced crow

29 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature

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birding, birdwatching, British birds, British corvids, corvids, Corvus frugilegus, Rook

Barefaced crow is one of the common names for the Rook (Corvus frugilegus), and it’s easy to see how it came about, though it’s not so much that its face is bare but rather the top of its large, pale beak (compare the Crow on the left, the Rook on the right).

Though there’s a rookery in a nearby town, and used to be one in the woods at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, I haven’t seen a lot of Rooks in my local area … until this winter. Now, I see them quite often, in the farm fields north of the park itself, usually in the company of Jackdaws and Carrion crows.

200229 rook (2)

I was fascinated to read in my Fauna Britannica, that ‘If a death (especially of the head of the household) occurred in a family owning the land that supported a rookery, there has been a widespread tradition that the Rooks must be told.’ Let’s hope that doesn’t prove necessary!

200229 rook (3)

58/366 A weather warning from the Wren

27 Thursday Feb 2020

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature

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birding, birds as weather forecasters, birdwatching, British birds, Troglodytes troglodytes, wren

200227 wren (2)

In its section about the Wren (Troglodytes troglodytes) my Fauna Britannica has this disturbing sentence: ‘In some areas, the sight of Wrens congregating presaged bad weather.’ I’d better not tell you how many Wrens I saw together yesterday because I’m sure that, like me, you really don’t want any more bad weather!

200227 wren (1)

52/366 Up close

21 Friday Feb 2020

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature

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adult Cormorant, birding, birdwatching, British birds, Cormorant, Grey heron, juvenile Cormorant

During today’s wander around parts of Cardiff that I only occasionally visit, I managed to get very close to, and spend quite a long time watching, several birds. These are three: a Grey heron, and two Cormorants, an adult and a juvenile. It was magic!

200221 grey heron 200221 cormorant adult 200221 cormorant juvenile

50/366 WWW : Flickers

19 Wednesday Feb 2020

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#WorldWildlifeWednesday, Andean flicker, Campo flicker, Colaptes campestris, Colaptes rupicola, South American birds, South American woodpeckers, woodpeckers

In the past on this blog, I published ‘world wildlife Wednesday’ posts, sharing some of the creatures I have been lucky enough to see in my travels. I thought I had mostly exhausted that topic but, last week, while going through my masses of photos, I found a few more. Which all goes to explain why today’s post includes two South American members of the woodpecker family, two flickers, both of which spend much of their lives on the ground, rather than in trees.

This first is an Andean flicker (Colaptes rupicola), photographed at Chinchero, a little town about 30 kilometres from Cusco, from the days when I lived in Peru.

200219 Campo flicker

And this second woodpecker is a Campo flicker (Colaptes campestris), seen near the small town of La Cumbre in the province of Córdoba, in Argentina.

45/366 A brown-headed gull

14 Friday Feb 2020

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature, spring, winter

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birding, birdwatching, Black-headed gull, breeding plumage, British birds

Love is in the air for the Black-headed gulls, as many have already completed the change to their breeding colours, their head plumage morphed from (mostly) winter white to the chocolate brown (not black) of summer. It’s little wonder people find identifying (not sea)gulls confusing when they are so misleadingly named.

200214 brown-headed gull

Here’s a link to a blog from 2016 that shows the change process in photographs.

44/366 Signs of Green woodpecker

13 Thursday Feb 2020

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature

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birding, birdwatching, British birds, Green woodpecker, Green woodpecker pooh, signs of Green woodpecker, woodpecker holes in dirt

Even if I hadn’t heard the Green woodpecker yaffling as it flew from the paddock ahead of a dog and its walker passing through, I would have known the bird had recently been there. For, as I strolled along the boundary path, every patch of bare earth had punched into it the tell-tale holes of the woodpecker’s probing beak as it had searched beneath the ground for ants and other insects.

200213 green woodpecker signs (1)

And, always quite close to those scatterings of holes were the bird’s droppings, with their characteristic hook at one end – just like a stick of candy, someone once told me, though undoubtedly the taste would be rather different. If you look closely at my photos, you might just make out the carapaces from the bird’s feasting.