Bird of the week - Rock pipit

This little bird is a common sight on walks along the coast near here.  It is a rock pipit (Anthus petrosus) and several were hunting for small invertebrates along the shoreline at Newbiggin-by-the-Sea this week.

This is a bird of rocky shorelines so it is found mostly in the north and west of the British Isles.  Its breeding range does extend to the North East coast here and in winter visiting birds from Scandinavia expand the range to most of the UK.

In Thomas Bewick's day pipits were considered as belonging to the lark family and he knew the rock pipit as a field lark.  This is his woodcut for A History of British Birds (1797).

Thomas Thorburn painted a rock pipit with a blue-headed wagtail in 1925.

Henrik Grönvold, a Danish artist, painted a pair of rock pipits in 1907.

You can listen to the BBC Radio 4 Tweet of the Day on rock pipit here.

Bird of the week - Red-backed shrike

To be honest this was a bit of a twitch, not something I would normally do.  But I was planning to be close by and I knew the bird was there so it seemed rude not to call in to Newbiggin-by-the-Sea and have a look.  This is the second red-backed shrike I have seen - the first, amazingly enough, being in my garden in 1990.  That was an adult male whereas this is a juvenile.

Red-backed shrikes (Lanius collurio) used to nest fairly widely in this country but are now rare passage migrants in spring and autumn.  This juvenile is very late heading south in December.  

Although they are red-listed in the UK red-backed shrikes nest throughout the rest of Europe and winter in Africa.  They are small - slightly larger than sparrows - and eat mainly beetles and other insects.

The red-backed shrike is too rare for the BTO to produce population trends.  This map from the BTO Bird Atlas Map Store shows the breeding distribution 50 years ago.

This is the population decline since then.

And this is the breeding distribution in the latest 2008-2011 atlas.  I think the large circles represent single breeding attempts but are widened out so as not to give precise location information for security reasons.  The black dots, mainly down the east coast, show all the birds recorded in four years and show how rare they are.

Thomas Bewick doesn't mention numbers but I get the impression that the red-backed shrike was a reasonably common bird in his day.  This is his illustration of an adult male for A History of British Birds (1797).

Archibald Thorburn painted red-backed shrikes several times.  Here are male and female adults.

This shows a great grey shrike (L) as well as a pair of red-backed shrikes.

ID composite Red-backed Shrike from the Crossley ID Guide Britain and Ireland. Wikimedia Commons CC-BY-SA-3.0.

You can listed to the BBC Radio 4 Tweet of the Day here.

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 - Rock pipit

The rock pipit is a shore bird but stays away from the waves, preferring to search around rocks and seaweed for insects to eat.  It is brown with a slightly olive tinge, perhaps more than is shown in these photos.

Because rock pipits like rocky shores it is easy to predict their distribution.  We are at the southern end of their breeding range on the eastern side of the country but some move farther south in winter.

In Thomas Bewick's day the pipits seem to have been classified with larks and he called it the field lark or rock lark.  He included it in his first book A History of British Birds (1797) and not in volume II which dealt with water birds.

I'm pretty sure this is the same bird as our rock pipit as he writes:

The rock pipit is Anthus petrosus.  In French it is Pipit maritime.  You can watch a BTO video on rock pipit identification here.  And listen to the BBC Radio 4 Tweet of the Day on rock pipit here.

Bird of the week - Redshank

The redshank is usually very wary and is easily disturbed.  Before you can get anywhere near it flies away with a loud alarm call.  So it was a surprise that this one let me get close enough to take a few photos.  Perhaps it didn't see me well with the sun behind me.  Or perhaps it was perplexed by the sight of an old man crawling through the rocks towards it.  When I first saw it it looked like this, both pictures quite heavily cropped.

I managed to get a bit closer for these photos.

Redshanks are more usually seen at a distance, poking about in mud or in rock pools.

Here is another bird that let me get a bit closer.  The very bright sun made its legs look a bit more orange.

The redshank is Tringa totanus.  It seems a bit strange that the redshank and greenshank are so named but their cousin the greater yellowlegs is not the greater yellowshank (or yellowleg).  It might be because the last is an American bird and was named there.

Redshank numbers are declining - due mainly to loss of habitat, as is usually the case.  They nest in upland or wet areas of the British Isles and winter on the coasts.  The UK breeding population is around 24,000 breeding pairs and is boosted by wintering birds from Scandinavia.

Thomas Bewick knew the redshank - this is his engraving for A History of British Birds (1832).  I'm not sure where the name Red-legged horseman comes from but the French name for redshank is Chevalier gambette.  Other traditional English names include ebb cock, sentinel of the marshes and watchdog of the marshes.

You can watch a BTO video on identifying redshanks, greenshanks and spotted redshanks here.  And listen to the BBC Radio 4 Tweet of the Day on redshank here.