Chasing birds

 

Chasing Birds is the make of the new cover for my new lens.  An odd name but it is very good quality and the lens is superb, inspiring me to get out and take a few more photos.  The male cuckoo above was singing at Bollihope Burn and landed not too far away for about five seconds. Another photo as it took off.

A few days before I heard and saw another cuckoo at Sharnberry Gill, not far away.  That one was farther off and into the light, so a more difficult target.

As it was singing from a tree across the valley it was harassed by a brave pair of meadow pipits, the host species for the cuckoo.

A little while later the light was better but the cuckoo was in a tree high above me and was again being mobbed by meadow pipits.

Also at Bollihope Burn I heard this singing male ring ouzel in a treetop too far away.  This is a heavily cropped image but at least you can see what it is.

Nearby was a lapwing.

On a trip to RSPB St Aidan's in Yorkshire with Brian Rutter we saw a black-necked grebe.

and a little owl, both new birds for my cameras.

And earlier this week I went to Muggleswick to look for pied flycatchers.  This is the male

and the female.

These last two photos were taken from about 15m in the shade of an oak wood so it's amazing what a modern camera can do.  I still have a lot to learn about the camera and the lens but I am looking forward to chasing more birds.

A near miss on OtterCam

How about this for a close encounter?  I went to change the trail camera cards and batteries with my mate Brian and we stopped to look at a newly-emerged damselfly.  The dog otter must have heard / smelt / seen us and quietly slipped into the water only a few yards away.  We only realised what had happened when I looked at the videos at home.  Frustrating!

The other news is that the otters are courting.  The three cubs have left their mother although I think two of them are still around.

Two days before the picture above the dog went through the same spot whistling for a mate.

And a few hours before we were there the courting couple were caught on camera.  First the male went behind one of the cameras.  A little while later the female followed him and moments later they reappeared.  In her hurry to keep up she bumped into the camera before running ahead into the water and circling round to encourage him.  The chittering noise is one I have heard every year to attract the male but this is not as loud as this time last year.  After a bit of scent-marking and sniffing they went off out of view.

The timing of this is interesting.  This is the fourth May in a row that I have seen courtship behaviour in the otters.  Here is a fairly primitive chart to show what has been happening in the 7+ years that I have been following the otters with trail cameras, starting in February 2019.

You'll see that a pattern has emerged in the last four years with cubs (presumably) born in July - gestation is 63 days - and visible from October/November before dispersing in May as courtship begins.  Otters are non-seasonal breeders but this has settled into an annual cycle.  In the earlier years I didn't have cameras in permanently and hadn't worked out the best place to put them but even so we can see a different pattern.  The courting in February 2022 was well seen on camera but presumably didn't lead to anything as new cubs weren't seen until November that year.

Otters don't usually breed until they are about two years old and I read that the average female only lives long enough to have two or three litters.  However, otters can live for up to eight or nine years in the wild so it is obviously possible for one female to have more.  If a female died or was no longer able to reproduce I would expect there to be a delay while the territory was taken over by a new female so the chart makes me wonder if this female is already six years old and is hoping to embark on her fifth pregnancy.  If so, and if all goes well, we should expect to see new cubs on the cameras in October or November.

One other observation.  None of the three recent cubs ended up larger than their mother so I suspect all three were female.  You'll see above how much larger the male otter is.  A year ago both cubs were male and grew larger than their mother.    This is a video from yesterday and I think it shows two of the cubs still in the territory, or possibly the mother still with one cub (when she's not courting).  Notice that the first cub has a tick in its left ear whereas neither the dog otter nor the mother had a tick in the video above.  Once the videos show only a solo otter it becomes more difficult to tell who is who.

Birds on trail cameras

Birds account for most of the "non-target" triggers on the trail cameras, mainly pigeons, ducks, geese etc.  The advantage the cameras have is that they are watching all the time, so they see things that would otherwise be missed.  The videos can also show us natural behaviour in an undisturbed environment, something else rarely seen.

Bitterns have been causing great excitement in Gosforth Nature Reserve this spring with at least one booming male and at least one female.  Hopes are high that they may breed in the reserve for the first time.  Most of the time they are hidden in the reeds but this one, probably a female, went for a wander in front of the cameras last week.

And then it happened again a couple of days ago.  The bittern walked past three cameras and was a bit too close by the end.  It appeared to pause when it heard a sudden burst of song from a Cetti's warbler close by in the reeds.  I was interested to see that it stood tall and still when out in the open, just as it does for concealment when it is in the reeds.

Another recent recording showed an adult male Redstart, a summer visitor to the UK and a rare record for the reserve.  This one was presumably en route to a breeding territory farther north in upland woodlands.

And this is what I am seeing most of the time.  There are several Mallard, Canada Goose and Greylag Goose families in the reserve and they spend a lot of time using up camera memory and battery power.  This is a brief excerpt from a prolonged visit from the greylags.

A BIG surprise on OtterCam

It's only a glimpse but is on two cameras and well worth a look.  The dog otter went past with a huge eel, almost as long as himself.  What a pity he didn't stay to eat it in front of the cameras.  I have slowed both down to quarter speed to make it easier to see the action.

Basil Dean, an Environment Agency specialist in river restoration and currently seconded as a Development Manager to the Ouseburn Way project, says he has long suspected that there are large eels in the lake as the habitat is perfect for them, so it is good to have proof.  My cameras have previously recorded otters with fish, a rat, moorhens, ducks, frogs and now an eel.  As long as it is meaty, if they can catch it they'll eat it.

Eels are a favourite food of otters but I expect most of those they catch are smaller than this.  I can't imagine that he could eat it all in one go and I suspect he didn't need to go fishing for another night or two.  The European eel population has declined by 98% over the past 40 years and the species is now on the IUCN Red List.  And it's not because otters are eating them all - the principle causes include pollution, loss of habitat, climate change and physical barriers to migration, so it is good to know that this is somewhere they can thrive (if they stay out of the reach of the otters).

In other news, as they say.  The otter cubs are still with their mother, or at least two of them are. The last time the cameras saw all three plus mother was 10th April but I can't tell if the two are always the same two.  The cub with a bad leg is still there and is almost back to normal.  The cubs are now 10 months old and are likely to disperse soon, perhaps this month.  I think all three are still around because I am often seeing a solo otter (not the dog) and quite often it is whistling a contact call.  It could be that one (or more) is already semi-independent but still in the territory. Here are all four in April - the middle cub is the one with the limp but you can see it doesn't look too bad.

And here is the latest play fight.  When it involved three cubs the mother always joined in but this time she just let them get on with it.  It's a bit disjointed as a lot of the action was off camera and it was a misty night with some of the cameras a bit steamed up but it looks like fun.

The previous three litters all left at about 10 months of age and each time it seemed that the mother initiated it by courting the dog otter.  From the timing of things I suspect that the present female has been the mother of the last four litters but I can't be sure.  Female otters generally only live long enough to have two or three litters so, if I am right, it may be that this female won't breed again.  It will be interesting to see what happens in the coming weeks.  More news soon.

Feeding the birds

I expect you have seen the latest recommendations from the BTO on feeding garden birds.  The new guidance is to stop feeding seeds and peanuts from today to the end of October in the hope of reducing transmission of trichomonosis which has caused declines in populations of chaffinches and greenfinches.

The problem is widespread but seems a bit less up here compared with farther south.  This graph from the BTO Garden BirdWatch shows the reporting rate for greenfinches in the North East.

Compare that with the South East.

These are similar data for chaffinches.

I don't remember ever seeing a finch on the peanut feeder so I think I'll continue with peanuts until they are all used up and see what happens.  That will be a relief to the woodpeckers who will be here with their fledglings in June.

I reckon I only see about one sick finch a year here.  One effect of stopping feeding is that all the finches will disappear so recording of both healthy and sick finches will presumably plummet but I expect the BTO experts have thought about that.  I'll be disappointed not to see the birds but I guess it is all for the greater good.

At the moment I still have lots of siskins, redpolls, bullfinches, greenfinches and chaffinches outside the kitchen window.  They are going to be very disappointed.

My prize visitor, a brambling, was only here for a week before setting off home to Scandinavia about three weeks ago.

Assuming most people comply with the advice it's going to be interesting to see what happens, both here and nationally.  I expect I'll be getting complaints from the local clean-up squad as well.

The fastest creature on Earth

These aren't the best photos I have taken but they were some of the most exciting and most challenging.  I went to RSPB Bempton Cliffs on Tuesday, mainly to look at the gannets (more on those another time).  As I was starting to walk out to leave a Peregrine Falcon appeared.  Seeing it in real life was astonishing.  It appears from nowhere, very high and moving fast.  Several times it moved into a stoop by folding its wings and within seconds it was half mile away.  I was trying to take some photos but it was really hard even to find the bird through the viewfinder and then hard for the focus to lock on.  At one point it flew past at eye level only about 20 metres from the cliff edge but it was probably travelling at well over 100 miles an hour and was gone in a flash.  The best of the photos is above.  These next few show the peregrine pulling its wings in as it accelerates into a dive.

This is an uncropped view of the peregrine through the super telephoto lens, disappearing rapidly in the distance.

I didn't see it catch anything.  There were thousands of birds in the air but I think it was hunting pigeons - there were plenty around.  When I was closer to them several times they all took off and flew around in a tight group so I suspect they had seen a peregrine, although I hadn't at that stage.

I watched the peregrine on and off for about 20 minutes.  It was a thrilling experience and amazing to see how fast it moves over huge distances in real life.

A couple of weeks ago I watched a wonderful film The Birds by Martin Dohrn.  He is an expert wildlife cameraman yet even he was having trouble following a peregrine as it was hunting over The Wash.  You probably saw the film as well but if not it is available on the BBC iPlayer here. Next time I go to Bempton Cliffs I shall be forewarned and I'll try to do better with the photos.

Charting the decline of sparrows and starlings

There have been many changes in the wildlife in my garden over the years, perhaps the most dramatic being the recent disappearance of tree sparrows and starlings.  I have been submitting data to the BTO Garden Birdwatch since it started in 1995 and data from my garden are available online from 2003.  I was keen on graphs when I was at work, often using them to investigate changes over time.  So here's a graph.  It shows the number of weeks per year that I recorded a starling or a tree sparrow in 2003-2025.

Starlings were regular residents in the garden from when I moved here 37 years ago.  They nested in tree holes each year, disappearing after the chicks fledged and returning six months later. There were no nests in 2024 or 2025 and I haven't seen a starling here this year.

Tree sparrow was a very rare bird here until 2012.  Although I counted the nests in nest boxes they also nested in tree holes so I don't think the nest box numbers are all that useful but there were nine in 2016, only one in 2023 and none in 2024 or 2025.  You'll see from the graph they were here all the time for a few years and records fell precipitously since 2019.  I have only seen one once this year.

Both starlings and tree sparrows are in decline nationally and both are red-listed on the UK Birds of Conservation Concern although the national picture isn't quite as dramatic as the changes here.  The UK breeding population of starlings fell by 57% from 1995 to 2023.  During the same period the tree sparrow breeding population increased by 39% but that was after a catastrophic decline from the 1970s - numbers now are still only 5% of what they were.  I found couple of graphs on the BTO website that sort of mirror my experience but use different data on a different timescale.  This is their starling graph.

And their tree sparrows.

There have been two other major developments in the garden in recent years which may be related to these changes.  The first was the arrival of ring-necked parakeets that have been here every day since late 2022.  They are tree hole nesters and could potentially compete with starlings for nest holes but they don't nest in the garden and wouldn't fit through a nest box hole. Here's another version of my graph.

The second change, which is probably more relevant, has been a change in the status of American grey squirrels.  The first grey squirrel was seen here in 2005 and the last native red squirrel in 2016.  For 18 years I was part of a team exercising grey squirrel control locally in the hope that the red squirrels could be preserved.  However, the grey tide was unstoppable and I eventually gave up in early 2023 after everyone else had already done so.  Grey squirrels have been here every day since.  They also nest in tree holes and the nearest to the house is in what used to be a starling nest.  I suspect the starlings and sparrows may have seen the resident squirrels and decided otherwise go elsewhere.  On this version of the graph the grey box shows when grey squirrels were resident (and not persecuted).

The grey squirrels have a lot to answer for but there isn't much I can do about them.  After last week's post I haven't seen the stoat again and I think it may also have been put off by the squirrels.  Of course both the parakeets and the squirrels, or neither, might be involved.  It would be nice to think I might see starlings and tree sparrows nesting here one day.  Here's hoping.