Yesterday the whole country seemed to have Little Gulls passing through. We had a fair share in the Peterborough area with a couple at Ferry Meadows CP, 7 reported at Deeping lakes and at least 5 at Maxey/Etton pits, where I managed to take the above images. At least 3 of the Maxey birds seemed to be in full summer plumage, a stunning bird with an all black hood, black bill and a slight pink tinge to the breast, which is hopefully obvious in a couple of the photos.
Another trial with the new camera. This time with a bird that has been hanging around the local area for a while now, but time constraints have meant that I have been unable to catch up with this large white heron. That changed on Monday, with the weather being awful and so, not conducive to gardening and with the bird being reported from Maxey, my local patch.
It was first seen on the Maxey Cut, in the company of a couple of Little Egrets, but then flew to the adjacent field, where it stood and preened for a while. It then took flight and went out of view.
Again, not the greatest, but a `record` shot of this addition to my PBC year list.
It's been a while coming, but finally the summer migrants are making their way onto our shores. The cold weather has seemingly delayed birds such as Swallows, House Martins, Redstarts, Ring Ouzels and Wheatears, to name a few, from making their way to Britain for the summer months, but now these are all coming, in their droves!
The past couple of days have been a bit crazy in the Peterborough area, with several Redstarts being seen, we are lucky to see more than a couple in the Spring, but this year up to 8 individuals have been present in various sites. Common Terns have started patrolling the lakes at Ferry Meadows and Deeping and huge numbers of Wheatears have been present at a couple of locations. 14 of these birds were seen in a field close to the village of Yaxley and yesterday there were 17 in a field close to the village of Ailsworth where there was also the only Ring Ouzel to be reported so far this year.
At Maxey/Etton gravel pits there were 3 Wheatears present (the male in these photos), a female and a Greenland type male. Also present were up to 6 Yellow Wagtails with one showing signs of being from the flava race, or Blue-headed Wagtail if you prefer and a Common Sandpiper.
This Little Owl tends to be found in the same tree day after day, month after month and, as it turns out, year after year. The tree is close to the site of Maxey Gravel Pits and I have managed to see the owl in said tree for the past three years.
It has been a couple of months since I have added anything to my PBC (local) year list and an absolute age since adding a local lifer. That changed on Thursday with the addition of two birds, one the first for a couple of years and the other, a 'lifer'.
I decided to pay a morning visit to Maxey GP, my local patch which has been having problems of late with the water levels. The pump has been broken and the water has been rising and rising, flooding the area and leaving it only suitable for wildfowl. The pump had been mended and the water removed revealing lots of wader habitat, ideal for a juicy rarity or two. On arrival I noticed two waders fly from a nearby spit, one Dunlin sized, the other smaller. On setting up my scope I saw the two birds to be a juvenile Dunlin and a juvenile Little Stint, a year tick and the first in two years.
The Dunlin is on the left, the Little Stint on the right
And below, a little video of the two.
At lunchtime I received a call from Mike Weedon and a text from Brian Stone to tell me of a male Common Scoter at Ferry Meadows CP, a PBC lifer for me. I couldn't get there for a few hours and I hoped the bird would linger. I didn't have to worry as the bird was still present on my arrival, showing very well.
A small, black duck that is normally seen at the coast in large flocks, indeed I saw several at my last visit to north Norfolk, but this was the first time that I had seen one in my local area and a male to boot!
My year list now stands at a respectable 172, with my local PBC life list reaching 208.
Two quite similar darter species of dragonfly are the Common Darter and the Ruddy Darter. They are both found in good numbers at Maxey gravel pits, where the above photos were taken.
The Common Darter is in the first 4 photos, the first 2 are of a female (I think) and the other 2 are of the male. The last photo of the Common Darter shows how similar it is to the male Ruddy Darter, which is in the next photo. The Ruddy Darter is told apart by the waisted blood red abdomen and the all black legs, both features that the Common Darter doesn't have.
The flight season of these two dragonflies can last until late Autumn, even after the first frosts, it is lack of food that eventually kills these beasts rather than cold nights.
The Osprey is making a welcome comeback in the British Isles. After being persecuted to extinction as a breeding bird by 1916, this bird started to re-colonise itself with a pair breeding in 1954. After a faltering start due to egg collecting and continued persecution, the numbers of this bird have gradually grown to number over 150 pairs, still a very small number when you consider that Golden Eagles number over 450 pairs. These birds are still persecuted with individuals being shot or 'disappearing' from breeding areas. One individual at Rutland Water 'disappeared' last year after having mated and started to raise young, it was feared that he was shot.
In the Peterborough area the sighting of these birds is pretty much an annual event, with birds passing overhead in the Spring and Autumn. Some even hang around for a while, favouring a lake from which it fishes before moving on. This is in part due to the close proximity of Rutland Water, one of the sites where a re-introduction programme was started in 1996. The bird in the photos below show an individual that has been hanging around for a while now and was seen by myself at Maxey GP on Sunday. I thought that I would get some shots using my new camera and some using my trusted digiscoping method. You can see the difference in results for yourself. The first two are with the Canon Powershot SX40 HS with the other two being digiscoped.
The shots with the new camera were taken with the lens at full 35x zoom, with the digiscoped images using my scopes 30x eyepiece. I am happier with the 'camera' photos, but to be honest, not truly happy with any of them! The bird was a bit distant and the heat haze was pretty horrible, but then again I am not complaining about a bit of heat haze!
The first Wheatear on Autumn migration appeared at Maxey GP the other day. The bird was only present for the morning of the 19th and has obviously moved on somewhere else to continue its migration to Africa. Hopefully it will survive and return next Spring, perhaps even stopping off at Maxey as it passes through on its way to its breeding grounds!
The Green Woodpecker is the largest British Woodpecker, about the size of a Feral Pigeon. The above pictures are of a juvenile bird, the heavily spotted and barred plumage will soon be lost as it moults into its adult plumage of vivid green with a yellow-green rump and red crown. This moult takes place between August and September. There are a fair few of these juveniles around at the moment, none more so than at Maxey GP where I have seen at least 4 individuals, including this one.
Those of us that are of a certain age will remember the television programme `Bagpuss` and perhaps the character of `Old Professor Yaffle, an old wooden book-end in the shape of a woodpecker`. The Green Woodpecker is also known as The Yaffle bird because of its unmistakable call, normally heard in Spring, but is also uttered when taking off in fright, a loud `laughing` noise, not unlike Professor Yaffles laugh.
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.
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.
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.
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!
