Starlings

Big Garden Birdwatch 2021

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Another year, another lockdown; or more cheerily – another year, another Big Garden Birdwatch! The perfect thing to do for an hour when you can’t leave home.

Saturday it pretty much poured with rain all day, so today seemed like a better birding day. It was still bloomin’ cold sitting there though for an hour and my derrière was pretty numb by the time I finished.  Still it was worth it to record a very respectable 34 individuals of 12 species.

Top of the abundance was, as usual, the house sparrow. I  counted at least 12 in one go, although I’m sure we actually have more than that. Joint second were the blackbirds and jackdaws – 4 of each. I can’t tell the difference between male and female jackdaws, but for the blackbirds there was one female and at least 3 males.

Most of the rest arrived in pairs – goldfinches, great tits, collared doves, wood pigeons, starlings and magpies, although I only seemed to manage to get photos of them one at a time.

And then there was a singleton blue tit, dunnock and robin. The robin was the most sociable of the whole bunch. He even landed on the camouflage netting right by my head – too close to even get a photo. As if sensing that he might be missing his photo op, he then obligingly hopped down to some stems in front of me and posed so I could get his good side. Of course there was still a twig in the way – isn’t there always?

The (almost) highlight of the whole hour came near the end when I think a sparrowhawk zoomed across the garden after a small bird. Unfortunately it all happened so fast that I couldn’t be sure that’s what I saw and I almost got tangled in the camouflage netting in my haste to stand up and get a better look. So although I’m about 80% certain it was a sparrowhawk, I wasn’t sure enough to include it in my birdwatch results. So close!

A bit disappointed that our wren didn’t put in an appearance, nor the long-tailed tits. And really disappointed that our male blackcap was a no-show too. He’s been pretty much resident outside our patio doors for the last 3 weeks, but today of course he chose to have the morning off. Just to prove it, here he is from a few weeks ago.

Submitting my data took a few goes as the RSPB website seemed to be struggling. Hopefully that’s a good sign and means lots of people have been doing the count.

Success in the end though and nice to know I’d contributed in a small way to another bit of citizen science. Talking of which, tonight happens to be my next slug collection night for the Slug Count project. It’s all go!

30 Days Wild – Day 29

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TWT 30 Days Wild_countdown_29

Day 29 of 30 Days Wild and we were down on the beach enjoying the seaside atmosphere. First up a brunch sitting outside at a café that we’ve been going to for about 30 years – think the menu was pretty much the same as it had been all those years ago too, although there was now a Specials board with exotica like Houmous wraps!

StarlingsWe sat outside and were joined by a greedy flock of starlings, who clearly understood café culture. The adults were initiating the young ones into the delights of eating alfresco and watched us keenly to see if we were going to give them anything. They had competition from a couple of seagulls, but thankfully the gulls didn’t actually join us on the chairs like the starlings did.

The view out to sea was the same as I remembered too. Oil supply vessels sitting out at sea, were lined along the horizon.

View

The North-East of Scotland has miles of sandy beaches stretching past Aberdeen up into the sand dunes further north. The tide was in while we were there, so you can’t really see the extent of the sand from the photos. We were lucky in that the sun was shining and we had more or less blue skies, with just a bit of a breeze to liven up the waves.

Big Skies

Waves

Chris risked getting soaked to try and get some close up shots of the spray splashing up over the seawall, while I stayed safe and dry further up the steps!

Waves 2

I had thought we might go really wild and go for a paddle, but then I remembered just how cold the North Sea is and how much I really hate getting sand between my toes. In the end I guess we were both just Too Lazy to Paddle!

Too Lazy

We headed back into town through the harbour. Aberdeen is a big industrial harbour – all concrete and metal. But even here we found some unexpected delights. These orchids were thriving between the fence and these huge rusty metal chain links. A little splash of colour of nature fighting back.

Orchid

Today was a much more relaxed, lazy day than some of our previous ones and it was really nice just to chill out down at the beach and recharge out batteries.

Ivy leaved toadflax 30 WEEDS

And finally the second last weed in 30 Lazy Garden Weeds – the Ivy Leaved Toadflax. This pretty little flower grows out of our walls at home. For some reason the name Toadflax makes me think of the names of Hobbits in Lord of the Rings, or of some of the rabbits in Watership Down (no idea if the name Toadflax was actually used in either of these of course). The flowers are like little purpley blue snap dragons. They have a clever mechanism whereby they face the sun until they have been fertilised and then they face back to the wall, so that the seeds when they form get embedded in cracks more easily. A clever little plant!

Busy Birds

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The birds are certainly busy in Malvern at the moment (as no doubt they are all across the country of course). There is a constant buzz of activity in the garden, be it gathering nesting material or just a feeding frenzy over the food we put out. The sparrows in particular have been keen on last year’s artichoke flowers for nesting material. It’s amazing how much they can stuff into their beaks, ending up with  ludicrously oversized moustaches!

Sparrow nesting material

In true Too Lazy fashion, we had left the old flowers standing thinking they would provide seeds for birds and maybe shelter for overwintering insects. We hadn’t realised they would make such good nesting material, but clearly the sparrows knew better. We’ve seen them plucking at the flowers in all weather, even when the high winds rock them about in the video below.

We already knew the blue tits had been checking out the bird box, so it was really nice to see this one taking nesting material in, although he or she did seem to be struggling a bit to get it all through the hole!

Birds of all sorts have been eating us out of house and home in the garden, hopefully building up their energy reserves for nesting. The blue tits regularly perform for the trail camera, but it was nice recently to get footage of the starlings and sparrows who have tended to be more camera shy. Being able to see the starlings close up like this you can appreciate what beautiful and colourful birds they really are – not just the plain black they can sometimes appear from a distance.

Starling on suet

The sparrows gather round the suet feeder in groups of up to about 8, although they can rarely manage to squeeze more than 3 or 4 on it at any one time.

There are still several species that have so far refused to be filmed although we see them regularly in the garden – Great Tits, Coal Tits, Goldfinches and of course the Sparrowhawk. Chris was out in the garden the other day, bent over a flower trying to get a shot of a bee, when the sparrowhawk swooped over him and grabbed a sparrow right out of the bushes. Chris carried on photographing the bee, oblivious to the action behind him! The trail camera was of course in the garden, but also pointed in the opposite direction. I could only watch frustrated from the living room, no camera within reach!