Tag Archives: birdwatching

Even more distant birds

27 Wednesday Nov 2024

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The day was bitterly cold, a strong wind from the north cutting right through the many layers I was wearing, as I watched snow showers shedding their flakes above the hills of Exmoor on the opposite side of the Bristol Channel. Why was I standing on a beach in sub-zero temperatures? Birds, of course.

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As I mentioned yesterday, cold stormy weather can bring in rarities, and it had, again, in the form of three scoters, two Common scoters (Melanitta nigra) and a Velvet scoter (Melanitta fusca). For me, using only binoculars, no telescope, these were even more distant than yesterday’s Red-breasted merganser, just three little black sea ducks bobbing along in the choppy waters off shore. We’d had Common scoters in Cardiff Bay earlier in the year (Distant birds, 25 April 2024) but I’d only ever seen a Velvet scoter once before, off Musselburgh beach, in Scotland, on a short birding trip with friends back in May 2018. So, it was definitely worth risking frostbite for even a distant glimpse of this one.

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– one of the Common scoters is on the left; the larger duck on the right is the Velvet scoter

A distant bird

26 Tuesday Nov 2024

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Most folk prefer calm weather and warm temperatures but we birders often hope for the exact opposite. That’s because bad weather, especially cold stormy weather, often forces birds to seek shelter in locations where they wouldn’t normally be seen. That’s exactly what happened last week, and it brought a bird that’s usually more at home on the salty seas to Cosmeston Lakes Country Park.

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This is a Red-breasted merganser (Mergus serrator), a cousin of the Goosanders that overwinter in the non-saline waters (I hesitate to use the word ‘fresh’ to describe them) of Cardiff Bay, with a similar saw-like bill structure. I’ve only seen these mergansers a couple of times before and, sadly, this bird stayed quite far out from the lake shores so I didn’t get great views, despite trying to sneak a look from every possible direction. Still, it was wonderful to see one locally.

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Little egret on the canal

23 Saturday Nov 2024

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This gorgeous Little egret was foraging for food along the old Glamorgan Canal at Forest Farm Nature Reserve in north Cardiff yesterday.

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I took a short video to show how it uses its feet to stir up the sediment in the bottom of the canal to release tiny invertebrates and fish to feed on. It was fascinating to watch, and seemingly quite effective, and I couldn’t help but think it was almost like a dance, a leg shimmy, a Michael Jackson moonwalk in reverse.

Scaly legs

19 Tuesday Nov 2024

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This lovely Chaffinch was one of the little birds that came to feed on some seed I’d sprinkled on and around a tree stump in a local woodland last week, and I couldn’t help but notice that the poor thing was suffering from swollen and scabby looking legs. According to the British Trust for Ornithology website, there could be several reasons for this: ‘mites of the genus Knemidocoptes‘; the virus Fringilla papillomavirus, which causes growths that look a bit like warts and affects Chaffinches and Bramblings; and bacterial infections. From the BTO’s description, this particular Chaffinch appears to be suffering from the ‘scaly legs’ caused by mites. The possibility of spreading diseases like these is why anyone who feeds birds in their garden should regularly and thoroughly clean their feeders to prevent cross-infection.

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Raucous parakeets

16 Saturday Nov 2024

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Last week, to counter the continuing anticyclonic gloom, I took myself for a lovely wander around Cardiff’s Bute Park, admiring and photographing the beautiful autumn colours (I’ll post those tomorrow), and was entertained by five raucous Ring-necked parakeets and their companion, an Alexandrine parakeet, the first I’ve seen in the city.

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Due to the grey misty weather and having to look straight up in to a tall tree, my photos are not the best (please excuse the dreadful chromatic aberration) but I think you can see the difference in the two parakeet species. The Alexandrine, which is in the centre and was probably someone’s pet before it escaped to live life on the wild side, is quite a bit bigger than the Ring-necked parakeets. The Alexandrine also has a much longer tail and, though it’s not easy to see here, it has red patches on its ‘shoulders’.

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I’m not sure the Ring-necked parakeets were very happy with the Alexandrine’s presence as it seemed to be a bit of a bully. And the Carrion crows were not at all happy with either species of parakeet being in their woodland, but I think the parakeets are probably here to stay.

A squadron of Cormorants

12 Tuesday Nov 2024

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This squadron of Cormorants was rafting, quite successfully, in Cardiff Bay, though they were constantly being disturbed by all the marine traffic.

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I’ve blogged about this rafting behaviour before, including a quote from research covering the effectiveness of this fishing behaviour, in Rafting Cormorants, December 2022. I thought I’d cover this again, as the squadron was quite close, and it was large, and my photos are better than previously, and I was only one of several people who stopped to watch them.

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When preparing this blog I discovered that the collective nouns for Cormorants include squadron (hence the title of this blog), raft (a reference to the behaviour shown here), the standard bird word flock, and – I loved this one – gulp, presumably a nod to how they manage to swallow down enormous fish.

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Mipits in the Bay

05 Tuesday Nov 2024

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This time of year can be fairly quiet in Cardiff Bay bird-wise. Any migrating birds have mostly passed through, and the weather has been quite calm, which means that none of the rarities we are lucky enough to see during the winter months have yet appeared. The one bright light in my birding day when I walk around the Bay is the return of those birds that left to breed elsewhere but have now returned to overwinter in the Bay’s calmer conditions.

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One of those birds is the Meadow pipit. Though there are Rock pipits in the Bay all year round, they look very grey compared to the rich spicy brown of the Meadow pipits newly moulted plumage so they’re easy to identify, even when they perch on the Barrage rocks.

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Most of the time, the Meadow pipits can be found poking about in grassy areas, looking for tasty insects but, when disturbed, they frequently pop up on to higher spots, like fences, until they feel it’s safe to fly down to the ground again.

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Two Firecrests

31 Thursday Oct 2024

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‘Tis the season for Firecrests, those darling little birds that only flit through my local area for a few of the cooler months of the year – the official description by Glamorgan Bird Club is ‘uncommon passage migrant and winter visitor’.

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This is another bird species that I’ve looked for over the past few weeks, in locations where it’s been seen in previous years, unsuccessfully. So, when I heard two Firecrests had been sighted in Cardiff’s Bute Park – another favoured location, I thought I’d take a look – I had chores to do in the city, and the autumn colours in the park are always worth a visit, so I figured that, even if I dipped the birds, it wouldn’t be a wasted journey.

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And, as you can see from my photos, it most definitely was not a wasted journey. Firecrests can be quite elusive and secretive, and, as they are tiny, are often obscured by vegetation. These were the best and closest views I’ve ever had, so I was over the moon!

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Woodpigeon migration

29 Tuesday Oct 2024

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An amazing bird migration occurred last week, and the whole phenomenom is a bit of a mystery.

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The migrating birds were Woodpigeons (Columba palumbus), which may surprise you – who knew Woodpigeons migrated? Even more surprising is the numbers heading south west, estimated to be between 50,000 and 150,000 birds. I saw some of the flocks passing over and they were huge – it is truly an amazing spectacle to witness, and it happens every year, in late October / early November, the timing probably dependant on various weather conditions.

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What’s mysterious about this migration is where the birds come from and where they are going. These do not seem to be local British birds, as our population seems either to be mostly stationary or restricts its movements to within the UK, so the current assumption is that these are predominantly Woodpigeons passing through Britain, possibly originating in Scandinavia and likely heading to Spain and Portugal to over-winter.