What’s small, brown and often polygamous?

22 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature, nature photography

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birding, birds, birdwatching, British birds, dunnock

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I am a huge fan of this small sparrow-like bird. Its name, Dunnock (Prunella modularis), comes from the Old English word for ‘little brown’ and its brown and grey colouring is certainly nothing flashy but it does blend in perfectly with the hedges and shrubs, bracken and leaf litter through which it constantly shuffles to find its snacks of beetles, ants and spiders.

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The dunnock may look rather drab but its sex life is anything but. It may have an incredibly short copulation time, of a fraction of a second, but it more than makes up for that by being the most frequent fornicator of Britain’s small birds, recorded at once or twice an hour for a 10-day period! What’s more, it frequently dabbles in polygyny, polyandry and polygynandry. It seems that by mating with two or more males a female not only increases the diversity of the breed, she also helps to prevent rival males from destroying her eggs and encourages more than one male to feed her ravenous offspring. Smart female!

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The little Great tit

19 Saturday Dec 2015

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature, nature photography

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birding, birds, birdwatching, British birds, Forest Farm Nature Reserve, Great tit

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One of the three different Great tits in these photographs may well be ‘George’, a cheeky little chap who’s earned himself a nickname from the birders who regularly visit the hides at Forest Farm Nature Reserve near Cardiff because he is quite brazen in his visits inside the hide to demand food. His favourite, apparently, is nyjer seeds and, if these are offered in an outstretched hand, he will quite happily sit on the hand and feed. He is fussy though and turned his beak up pretty smartly at my suet pellets!

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Though the Great tit (Parus major) is a popular visitor to many people’s bird feeders, it’s not normally quite as friendly as ‘George’, and its usual habitat is deciduous woodland though, as you see, this tit adapts well to different situations. It’s a melodious little bird, with a standard song that sounds a bit like ‘teach-er’ (which is how it came to be known in days past by the common name of ‘saw sharpener’), but it’s also rather skilled at jamming a variety of tunes and rhythms.

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Is it a mouse or is it a bird?

13 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature, nature photography

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birds, British birds, treecreeper

With its extremely effective mottled brown colouring, the little Eurasian treecreeper (Certhia familiaris) can look very like a mouse as it creeps up a tree trunk searching for food, hence one of its common names, tree mouse. That’s if you can see the treecreeper at all. It’s so well camouflaged that it’s almost impossible to see when stationary, and you need to focus really hard on a tree trunk to notice its scuttling creep upwards in search of the tiny beetles, earwigs and woodlice that inhabit the crevices in a tree’s bark.

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The treecreeper has particularly large and sharp arched claws, which help it scale trees with ease, and its tail is stiff, which helps provide support when climbing. You will never see a treecreeper moving down a tree – it spirals its way to the top then flies down to the base of the next tree to start its climb all over again. And this feeding routine is almost constant – in fact, it’s so active that it’s been estimated treecreepers can climb as much as 2500 metres in a single day. That’s quite a feat for a bird that’s only 13cms in length. Its common name should really be mountain climber!

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Scuffing up leaves

10 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by sconzani in autumn, birds, leaves, nature, nature photography

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autumn, autumn colour, autumn leaves, birds, British birds, robin, scuffing up leaves

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For me, one of the great pleasures of late autumn / early winter is scuffing up leaves. Feet clad in hiking boots or wellies, I head out to those areas of park or woodland where the deciduous trees are at their most dense, and I look for the deepest drifts of leaves I can find. And I walk and I kick and I scuff those leaves up, producing little showers of orange and red and gold as the crispy leaves rustle and scrunch and flutter back down to the ground.

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I feel sorry for those grumpy adults who frown in my direction, their stern looks chastising me for such undignified behaviour. How sad they are to live such a restricted life, to have forgotten the simple – and free! – pleasure of kicking up a few leaves.

As the winter weather slowly morphs the fallen leaves into a dreary brown sludge, I continue to scuff when I can because those leaves now contain the worms and woodlice and grubs the little birds love to eat. And, if I’m lucky, my scuffing efforts will be rewarded by the sweet serenade of a robin, full-bellied and happy from its snacking.

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Little Jackie Bluecap

09 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature, nature photography

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birds, birdwatching, Blue tit, British birds

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With its face mask that looks a little like the Lone Ranger’s, isn’t this just the cutest wee bird? It’s a Blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus), commonly known in some parts of Britain as a Tom Tit or Jackie Bluecap. The name tit struck me as odd until I discovered it dates back to the early 14th century when it used to mean small or a small creature. This makes perfect sense when you consider that these little birds are only 12cm (4.7in) long and weigh in at about 11gms (0.39oz).

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It’s not just their petite size and their cuteness that makes Blue tits popular. They will happily snack at birdfeeders and take advantage of a nest-box in your garden, so are easy to watch and a great way to introduce young children to the joys of birdwatching. And they’re not only popular with the young ones – gardeners love the fact that one of the tit’s favourite foods is the caterpillar. Better in the tit’s belly than munching away on the cabbages in the vege patch!

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Little robin redbreast

07 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature, nature photography

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birding, birds, birdwatching, British birds, redbreast, robin

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Very cute and more than a little cheeky, a delightful number of little robins entertained me with their antics as I walked through the woodland at Forest Farm Nature Reserve today. With such a bright red breast these dainty charmers are instantly recognisable, and one look from those overly large beady eyes is enough to make me kick up a pile of leaves so the robins can search for a worm or two.

As the autumn leaves get blown away by the first storms of winter, robins seem suddenly to appear in greater numbers – is that just because we can see them more easily in leafless trees or have they returned from a long summer holiday to remind us that Christmas is just around the corner?

Of course, robins are often depicted on Christmas cards, reminding us that, when sending cards first became popular in the 1860s, Victorian postmen wore uniform red waistcoats which earned them the nickname ‘Robin Redbreast’.

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