Another Chat

Well, the same one as my previous post actually, just a closer shot!

Just lately I have had a bit of luck at Maxey GP. I found this Whinchat on Wednesday and it was still present Thursday and Friday, then I found an Avocet, then today there was a Wood Sandpiper in the morning and then 3 Ruff dropped in. Unfortunately these birds were too far away for any kind of photo, although Mike Weedon managed to get a shot of a Wood Sand this afternoon when there were 2 of these birds present.

Avocet

An evening visit to Maxey GP the other day produced this Avocet that had obviously just dropped in for a quick feed and a wash as it was gone the next day. A pair of Avocets have bred at this site before, a couple of years ago and also an attempt was made last year, but this was unsuccessful as the young were predated, but there was no sign this year. This lone bird was obviously just passing through.

The Avocet is a striking bird and once you see one you will never forget its appearance. It is black and white with a long black upcurved bill and long blue-grey legs. It is the logo of the RSPB for an obvious reason. A true success story with now over 1500 pairs breeding in Britain after becoming extinct as a breeding bird in 1840.

Whinchat

My PBC year list has been pretty stagnant just lately and after missing out on a Purple Heron, Osprey and Curlew a couple of weeks back I began to wonder if I would soon add another bird to the list! An early morning visit to my local patch at Maxey GP answered my question. On a new piece of fencing erected in the Spring was a lovely Whinchat. It kept dropping down to the ground and then returning to the same post or its neighbour, doing what Whinchats do. It was quite distant and jumpy so these shots are just record shots really of only the second known bird in the PBC area this year (the other was in the Spring and I missed out on that one too). This lovely bird brings my PBC year list limping to 161.

The Whinchat is a summer migrant to the U.K. arriving in April and May and is just seen on passage in our area. They breed on moorland edges, amongst bracken, in young forestry plantations with areas of short grass and where there are prominent perches to hunt from. They are also found in other rough grassland areas, including water meadows and upland farms.

They feed mainly on invertebrates, including mayflies, caddisflies, moths, beetles, spiders, small snails but will also eat some plant material, such as blackberries.

The numbers of Whinchat are slowly falling, in line with a lot of our other summer migrants. This could be due to the `tidying` up of the countryside and overgrazing at nesting sites, but also there may be problems at their winter grounds south of the Sahara, especially when a drought occurs.

Feeling a bit Ruff!

My previous post (which I have now removed) showed photographs of a bird that I thought to be that of a Pectoral Sandpiper. It has kindly been brought to my attention by a couple of far better and more experienced birders than myself that they are photographs of a Ruff, or more accurately a juvenile Reeve (the name for a female Ruff)! Thankyou to Mike Weedon and Will Bowell for their kind and constructive help.

This has been an invaluable lesson for myself to not get carried away taking photographs and actually look at the bird properly! Also, it shows how easy it is to be swayed on an i.d. when you have a group of birders all wanting to see a particular bird, seeing something similar and all agreeing that the i.d. is correct. There was one voice amongst the group who bravely said that he thought it could be a Ruff, but was out voted. I will next time listen and then maybe not look like such an idiot on a public forum!

Below are a couple of photographs of a Pectoral Sandpiper that Mike and Chris Orders have kindly let me use to illustrate what a Pec Sand looks like.

Lesson learnt, humility is supposed to be a virtue.

Copyright Mike Weedon
Copyright Chris Orders

Small Copper

All photo`s hand-held Canon Powershot A640

Another butterfly post, but one of a butterfly that up until recently I have been unable to photograph.

This little stunner is the Small Copper, a fairly common and widespread species. They are found in a wide range of habitats, from flowery hillsides to woodland rides and are sometimes seen in gardens. This butterfly thrives in hot, sunny conditions and in good years can have 3 or 4 broods, lasting from late April until November. In cool wet summers (this year being an example so far), the population of this lovely butterfly can crash and take several years to recover.

In East Anglia this butterfly has found it hard to survive, again due to agricultural intensification and there has been a slight decline in numbers. This butterfly has a brilliance that would be greatly missed were it to die out like the only other British butterfly with coppery wings, the Large Copper.

Little Egret

It wasn`t that long ago that the Little Egret was classed as a rarity in Britain, indeed before 1950 there had only been a dozen or so sightings of this bird. Nowadays, it is a fairly common sight and by 2002 the bird had bred in 11 counties in England and Wales. The birds numbers have gradually increased and in 2006 at least 60 colonies had been recorded with c.450 pairs.

Maxey gravel pits is my local patch and this too has its fair share of Little Egrets, although I don`t think they breed here, no signs of this have been seen as yet. There have been 7 of these birds seen regularly, both in the pits complex itself and also on the little river known as the Maxey cut. Hopefully, one day these birds will indeed breed, but until then it is a lovely sight to see these graceful white birds with feet that look as though they have walked in a pot of yellow paint!