End of year favourites - Birds on trail camera

Birds show up every day on my trail cameras.  I don't usually keep the videos of moorhens, ducks, geese, robins, pigeons, etc that I see every day but some of the recordings offer us a privileged view of behaviour that we wouldn't otherwise see.  Here are a few favourites from this year.

I am used to seeing sparrowhawks at home but this one appeared on my otter camera.  It's a first year bird, probably a female from its size, and whatever it was chasing it missed on this occasion.  I thought at the time that the call in the background was a buzzard but now I think it might be another sparrowhawk.

Water rails are much more often heard than seen.  They have a strange un-bird-like call, as this one is showing in front of the camera.

Water rails mostly eat invertebrates but will take larger prey, here a fish and a newt.

Carrion crows are pretty clever but this one was outsmarted by a mouse.  The story is a bit long to repeat in this post but you can find it here.

I posted a video of a heron eating water shrews a couple of days ago.  Another one (or perhaps the same one) tried to eat a frog, but lost it, and caught a toad but soon let it go.

Cetti's warblers were first recorded breeding in the UK only 50 years ago and they are now resident and breeding birds up here.  Like water rails they are mainly heard rather than seen but this one did turn up on the camera.  Unfortunately it wasn't singing.

Cetti's warblers sing all day and all night in the summer.  One was singing while a common snipe was exploring the bridge.  There is a little grebe and a bumblebee in the background at one point as well.

Finally a video I haven't posted before but something that turned up on PolecatCam in Allendale. A tawny owl catching a black spider in complete darkness.  Amazing.

There are birds every day on the cameras that don't make it to the blog.  I hope this has given a taste of what goes on while no-one is looking.

The crow is outsmarted

Crows are pretty smart but this one wasn't quite as clever as it thought.  A carrion crow appeared on OtterCam with a piece of dried bread.  It dunked it in the water to soften it (clever) and ate half.

It decided to hide the rest for later (also clever) and then flew away.

However, later that night a wood mouse found and ate the bread - although the camera didn't trigger as the mouse stole the bread the evidence is pretty damning.

The following afternoon the crow returned for the bread but couldn't find it.

I see some interesting things as non-target captures on trail camera but this is one of the best. The video is a bit longer than usual but is worth a watch.

Crows have deserved reputation for intelligence but don't always get the upper hand.  Aesop's fable The Crow and the Pitcher shows how smart they can be but in The Fox and the Crow it was the fox who came out on top.  As far as I know Aesop didn't write about The Crow and the Wood Mouse.

Feeding the crows

This has been going on for the last couple of years and I think by now the crows have got me well trained.  Each time I get home they are sitting on the roof waiting for me.  As soon as they see me they fly down to the lawn outside the kitchen window and peer up at the window trying to look hungry until I give in and throw them some peanuts.  There are often three, sometimes four, but two are dominant.  I think these must be the resident pair and the others are last year's young who are reluctant to move on (carrion crows don't breed until two years of age).

They all scoff as many peanuts as they can and then try to pick as many as they can before flying off with a beakful.

Although they are family there is no spirit of cooperation between them and it is each crow for itself.  They are tolerant of me to a certain extent (after all I provide the food) but remain quite wary and jumpy.  They were very suspicious when I put down a trail camera to get a closer view but I did manage to make this short montage.

In the absence of a trail camera one or two crows return almost immediately in case there is anything left.  This time a couple of magpies came in to clean up.  This is a good example of how the Poundland close focus lens brings the focus forwards on the trail camera, giving good focus from less than 1m up to about 2 or 3m.  Without the extra lens it focuses from 2 or 3m to infinity so anything closer is blurred.

Feeding the crows

Feeding the crows has now become a regular part of my day.  The first usually appears at around (my) breakfast time and stands on the lawn outside the kitchen window looking hungry.

If I don't notice, or don't react quickly enough it calls me by cawing loudly until I do.

When I open the back door it retreats few steps and watches while I throw out a handful of peanuts.  As soon as the door is closed it trots across to the food but will run or even fly to get there first if there are other crows around.

Then it is a case of trying to lick up as many peanuts as possible in one go.

Often there are two crows, which I assume to be a pair.

Sometimes there are four but two of them are much more wary.  They are full grown but have smaller beaks and sometimes still beg for food (and are ignored) so I think they must be this year's young.  I don't know what the crows get up to when I am not at home but they are often sitting on the roof watching and waiting when I go out and when I return.

Once it is dark and the crows have disappeared it is time to put out more peanuts for the foxes.

The fox and the crow

Sometimes the foxes get a special treat so they don't get bored with peanuts.  The first to turn up is the winner but the crows don't approve.  The fox can't do much about it as the crow is on the roof.

Here's the video.

The Fox and the Crow is one of Aesop's fables.  In the tale the fox tricks a crow into dropping its cheese by flattering it and persuading it to sing.  My crows are smarter than that.

Clever crows

Crows are intelligent and resourceful birds and these two have been putting a lot of effort into training me to feed them. At least I think it is that way round.  Over the past couple of weeks they have been fed several times a day at the back door.  They stand staring wistfully through the kitchen window until I take pity on them and throw out a few peanuts.

The crows know when they are on to a good thing and they aren't prepared to share.  They guard this new arrangement jealously, as you can see on the video.

Crow black

It isn't often you see a camouflaged crow.  This one was scavenging on the beach at Newbiggin-by-the-Sea.  The black stuff it is standing on is a thin layer of coal which is washed out of the nearby rocks and, being lighter than sand, settles out on top.

To begin at the beginning:

It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.

Under Milk Wood

Dylan Thomas

Bird of the week - Carrion crow

Carrion crows (Corvus corone) are shy birds here in the garden but in the local supermarket car park in the winter they are much more confident.

Unusually for a shiny black bird, the crow's feathers seem to show little colourful iridescence when the light catches them, perhaps adding to its sinister appearance.  The black-rimmed black eye surrounded by black feathers makes it a difficult photographic subject.

This is Thomas Bewick's image of the crow, published in The History of British Birds in 1797.

He wrote "They feed on putrid flesh, and garbage of all sorts; likewise on eggs, shellfish, worms, and insects.  These wary birds live in pairs, and are commonly seen together flying at a great height, out of the reach of the gun, while they are prowling over the country in search of their food, which, with penetrating eye and acute scent, they discover afar off.".

A pair of carrion crows has nested in my garden each year since 2011.  Before that there was a rookery here but the number of nests slowly declined from 44 in 1990 to six in 2010 and after that the rooks didn't return.  Carrion crows are solitary nesters so it is interesting that I have often seen four birds in my wood in recent weeks - perhaps the other two are younger non-breeding birds.

Carrion crows are found throughout the British Isles apart from Ireland, the Isle of Man and north west Scotland, where there are hooded crows (Corvus cornix) instead.

Carrion crows seem from this map to be encroaching on hooded crow territory.

Across the country carrion crows are doing well with a doubling of their numbers over the last 50 years.

Carrion crows are relatively common garden birds.  The BTO Garden BirdWatch data show no medium-term trend.

Listen to the call of the carrion crow here.  Listen to Chris Watson's BBC Radio 4 Tweet of the Day on carrion crow here.  Read about Aesop's fable The Fox and the Crow here.