The Grey Wagtail

I was surprised to learn from the RSPB website that the estimated UK population of grey wagtails (motacilla cinerea) is only 38,000.

I first recall noticing these birds on Sliabh Mannan  several years ago. They frequent the margins of the Culloch Burn and in  the summer they are well supplied with insects of various kinds.  I don't actually know if they can catch midges on the wing like swallows and house martins, but if they can, good luck to them.  In the winter they leave the uplands and take refuge at lower altitudes near the estuary.

Anyway I've been struggling to take a decent photograph for years. Though larger than a pied wagtail these birds are still quite small, pretty skittish and, as their name suggests, terrible at sitting still. The reach of my 75-300 Minolta lens has not really been adequate, while my photography brain is still too slow and my old fingers too arthritic to achieve wonders with my entirely manual Sigma 400 mm.

This year I have managed to acquire  an Alpha-type doubler lens to go with my recently acquired A580. Using this with the 75-300 produces a maximum aperture of f 9, which is too slow for autofocus but the camera can automatically raise the ISO when I'm struggling. This means that on aperture priority my only task is to focus manually, and I can just about do that, at least some of the time.

As a result I can now boast some tolerable, if grainy, stills of a grey wagtail!

The Swallows Are Back

The annual migration to Sliabh Mannan of the house martins (bottom right) and swallows (top left) began a week ago.

It always seems to me a wonderful thing that these small birds can make the journey of many thousands of miles from southern Africa, yet even more astonishing is that each year they travel such a great distance in order to resume their interrupted residence in my outbuildings.

What, I wonder, is the nature of the advertising used by hirundine travel agents in the spring? Come to beautiful Sliabh Mannan folks; 500 feet above sea level, unspoiled natural surroundings and all the midges you can eat? Time share in a 1783 stable block with your old friends the horses? Play amusing games in the garden diving at the cat? Sliabh Mannan is THE place for a bird to be at this time of year.

Well, whatever the persuasion they employ, it seems to work. Here they all are again, remodelling and refurbishing last year's nests, zooming all around the farmyard and twittering loudly at each other, no doubt exchanging news of how they outwitted the bird hunters in Cyprus or drought in the Sahara.

Welcome back boys and girls. Now I know it's really spring!

Corvidae

Members of the crow family are to be found on Sliabh Mannan in considerable numbers. 

Probably most numerous are rooks (Corvus frugilegus), whose noisy flocks build villages of untidy nests in the tops of the tallest trees in the surrounding woodland.  They are very sociable and commonly go around in large groups.  Quite often we see a collective search for food in grass fields, with several birds all speaking at the same time.  The uproar sounds just like a session of parliament and it is easy to imagine votes of censure being passed by the assembled birds against farmers who regard them as pests and shoot at them in the lambing season. 



Rooks (above left) are easily distinguished from the similar-sized carrion crows (Corvus corone) (right) by their grey beaks and grey patch of skin on the face. 

The crows tend to appear in much smaller numbers, often ones and twos. They are very hard to photograph because of the uniform blackness of their plumage, from which it is very difficult to pick out clear features.

Magpies (Pica pica) do a very good impression of being always dressed for dimmer, but since dinner is likely to include small birds and nestlings they are not often welcome guests. They are rumoured to harbour larcenous intentions as well.  From a bird photographer's point of view however they do offer at least the potential for better compositions than their all-black relatives.

There is at least one pair of ravens (Corvus corax) in the neighbourhood, but so far I have seen them only in flight and photographed them poorly.  The easiest distinguishing features of this bird are the wedge shaped tail and 'cronk' call note.

Jackdaw (Corvus monedula) families have moved into a couple of disused chimneys of our house, which seem to be large enough to contain nests for these smaller members of the crow family.  This was not too much of a problem until the night when one fledgling fell down the chimney and landed sootily in the bedroom!  Fortunately I was able to release it without too much difficulty or damage.   The jackdaws, with their shorter overall length and stubbier wings seem to be capable of some remarkable aerobatics.

I have mentioned in an earlier post how good the crow family are at mobbing buzzards.  Usually the aggrieved raptor will just lumber stolidly away, doing its best to appear unconcerned.  Recently however I observed an interesting variant.  The buzzard simply climbed in a spiral until it exceeded the operational ceiling of the mob, all of whom promptly dropped away and descended again to the tree tops.

Grey Herons

The Grey Heron (ardea cinerea) is present in small numbers in my part of Sliabh Mannan. I have never seen more than two together. However as consumers of fish and frogs they are reasonably well supplied by the waters of the Culloch Burn and other streams, as well as a number of ponds and areas of semi-permanent standing water.

These upland herons are warier of human contact than those that you may find around town rivers or in shallow areas of larger waterways. This means that they are commonly seen in flight, retracting their long necks into an s-shaped bend and beating their wings in a slow and relaxed rhythm. Their flight is surprisingly graceful for such a tall and gangling bird.

Herons are regarded as predators by the local rook population and correctly so, for they will take small birds if they can. It is less common to see rooks mobbing herons than mobbing buzzards, but I have seen it. I have also seen herons quite happily roosting in trees, a sight which for some reasons seems incongruous, though no-one seems to have told that to the herons.

It was not until a river cruise in central Europe that I was able to take good pictures of herons on the ground. I would need a very long lens to achieve such pictures around Sliabh Mannan. This one was happily standing on one leg and pretending to be a statue.

Robins

Of all garden birds, the robin (erithacus rubecula) is probably the best loved. A sight of a redbreast is particularly welcome in winter when cold, grey skies and drizzle make gardening more of a chore than it is in summer. They will come and sit on a convenient local perch and look as if they are taking an intelligent interest in your activities.

Of course they are doing just that, though the prospect of your exposing some hapless insect is more likely to be their motive than a desire to offer constructive criticism of your digging technique. But they look so cheerful in their smart red waistcoats that the gardener's heart is lifted anyway.

If you can tell male robins from females, you're doing better than I can. When I see aggressive territorial behaviour from these birds I'm never sure whether the victim is a rival male. I assume the robins themselves can tell the difference.

From the point of view of an aspiring photographer, robins are a great help. Not only are they usually ready and willing to adopt and hold a good Christmas-card pose, they also have a good colour contrast between the eye and its surrounding feathers, making it much easier to focus and more likely that you will catch the reflected light in the eye that makes a bird photograph come alive.

Taiga Bean Geese

Probably the most famous inhabitants of Sliabh Mannan, considerably more famous than your present correspondent, are the overwintering Taiga Bean Geese (anser fabalis).

There are only two regular wintering grounds for this species in the UK, the other being in Norfolk. The Sliabh Mannan bean goose population consists of about 250 birds and has been carefully monitored since 1992. In 2008 the area was protected under the EU Birds Directive. This year a tracking study, in which local schools participated, found that the summer home of our geese is northern Sweden. For some reason I had been convinced that they came from Russia, which shows you how little of the bean goose language I really understand.

"Are we nearly there yet?"

"Honk!"

"You've been saying that since Spitzbergen!"

Honk!"

It is of course a very loud language, particularly when flights of well over a hundred birds pass overhead together in their characteristic V-formations. This autumn, if I interpret my records correctly, I saw my first bean goose flight on 27 September. For several days I was being confused by a smart rook who went around imitating goose calls and making me believe that they were early.

From time to time in my winter wanderings I come across hopeful twitchers equipped with binoculars and a great deal of optimism. Around my home we have never seen the birds on the ground, but overflight is common. I get the impression that training flights build up in the new year, prior to the spring departure. Well, it's a long way across the North Sea, you know!

"So, does that mean we're nearly there, then?"

"Honk!"

Paridae

Four species of tit are to be found around Sliabh Mannan.  Three of them come to my garden.  Sometimes on a grey day they can be hard to distinguish by sight.  The easiest to confuse are the great tit (parus major) ( top left) and the coal tit (parus ater) (second from top).  

The naked eye is drawn straight to the white cheeks and black cap that the two species have in common and although the great tit is larger this is not much help if you don't see the two together. 

A good distinguishing feature is the bright yellow underparts with a black stripe down the middle of the belly of the great tit, whilst the coal tit has what you might call dull buff / pink underparts. The black "cheek strap" is usually incomplete in the coal tit, which also has a white stripe down the nape of its neck, (not seen in this picture.)

 

The blue tit (parus caerulis) (left) is much more easily distinguished by its colour though this can sometimes be a little dowdy in winter. One pair obligingly occupied a nest box outside my kitchen window and very kindly cleaned house after raising a family and moving out.

It is interesting that these three species seem quite at ease with each other, as well as with other individuals of their own species. I have observed none of the sort of territorial feuding that can often be seen, for example, amongst robins. 

The fourth species to be found in woodland around the moor is the long tailed tit (aegithalos caudatus).  There is no mistaking these, but they skitter and are reluctant to pose for the photographer, chattering away to each other and performing acrobatic manoeuvres in the shrubs and trees.

 The whole extended family is numerous locally and often to be heard even when not seen.

Buzzards

Only two species of daylight raptor are at all common in the skies above Sliabh Mannan, buzzards and kestrels. Owls are frequently to be heard at night but almost impossible to see amongst the woodland. I have not yet succeeded in photographing one.

The more common of the daylight birds of prey is the buzzard (buteo buteo). A neighbour of mine claims to have once seen a dozen in the air at one time; I have a feeling that I may once have seen as many as five, but the memory is too hazy to attest with any certainty.

One pair breeds annually in a wood not far from my home and they are frequently to be seen hunting over the open farmland and the embankments of the long-defunct railway line that used to carry coal across the moor. At high altitude a buzzard is capable of spectacular soaring flight.

In the last couple of years another bird, perhaps one of their offspring, has also moved into the area. This one is remarkably noisy, regularly mewing in flight and advertising his presence to every rabbit and vole in the area. I am not sure why this method should be effective, but since he has been around for at least two seasons he is evidently not starving.

When out walking, I am quite often alerted to the presence of a buzzard by a tremendous commotion amongst local rooks, who resent the intrusion of a predator into their airspace and frequently despatch a squadron of interceptors to see him off. At low altitudes buzzards are cumbersome, lumbering flyers, easily outmanoeuvred by rooks and other smaller, nimbler birds who will readily mob them.

Even single rooks think nothing of attacking an interloping buzzard in the air. I have seen rooks dive into the attack with such speed that it seems inevitable there will be a mid-air collision. Once I wondered whether an impact had truly happened, but both birds went on seemingly unharmed. Usually the buzzard decides to pretend that he was already on his way somewhere less noisy and departs, escorted on his way by a final patrol rook. Honour is perhaps satisfied, but the observer on the ground is not fooled.

Kinderdijk

This is Kinderdijk in the Netherlands, visited during a wonderful European river cruise that I enjoyed this summer.  If you ever get the chance to visit Kinderdijk on a sunny day you should certainly take it. I have seldom enjoyed a wander more. This is both an engineering marvel and an amateur ornithologist's paradise.

To begin with the engineering, the dry land here is three big steps down from the River Lek (Rhine). There is a canal and reservoir system through which the mills lift the water to the height of the river. All of the mills are driving pumps; none of them are milling corn. The area around the mills, and  one of the mills itself, can be visited, but the land that they are actually draining is in use for agriculture.

There is a saying apparently "God made the world but the Dutch made the Netherlands" and this is one of the polder areas where this is true. We were approaching the former Zuyder Zee, an arm of the North Sea which is now much reduced in size and has become a freshwater lake. If the mills stopped pumping it would take about three months for the polder to flood completely.

Now because of the canals and reservoirs and reed beds you have a little natural wonderland. The first thing I spotted was a cormorant; then a hovering marsh harrier (a first for me) then coots and grebes and geese and ducks of several varieties. I could happily have stayed there much longer and I do wish I had been warned to carry my 400mm lens. This is old and so heavy that I tend to use it just from wherever my base at the time happens to be, but it would have been worth lumping it around for this opportunity.

Fortunately I was carrying my 300mm zoom, so this great crested grebe is an example of the sort of photographs that were possible there.  The grebe was unconcerned about the visitors, most of whom in fact had eyes only for windmills (understandably) and perhaps did not even notice him.  Since it was relatively early in the day, the grebe's mind was still on finding some breakfast.