Sunday 23 November 2014

No Movember for me but once again flocks of birds settle on the upper lip of the UK ....Starlings galore, posing finches and massing thrushes!

I should never be surprised of course but wow are these nights drawing in now, and with cool winds whipping around my legs en route to the shower block of a morning and murky skies overhead from 2.00pm onwards, my thoughts are rapidly turning to my next big road trip! Same general direction as last year - South and some winter Spanish sun, but a full 3 months this time Jan - March so less frenetic and probably centred around the Ebro Delta and Costa Blanca for most of the time. I simply cannot wait!

Having said that I'll kinda miss my temporary little patch of East Yorkshire here at Fangfoss Station but unless I find somewhere better next year I'll be back in April to see what this most perfect of green lanes produces in the Spring. I'm unlikely to turn up a rarity here (though there's always a chance) but for traditional UK countryside birds I think it's exceptional, and with resident birds such as Skylark, Yellowhammer, Grey Partridge, Common Kestrel, Sparrowhawk, Tree Sparrow, Song Thrush and Green Woodpecker to name but a few, and all in good numbers, within spitting distance of my motorhome there's never a dull day; oh and then there's the owls that I hear every single night.... Tawny, Barn and Little Owls - just fab! So good in fact that apart from a brief trips to Tophill Low & Hatfield Moor, I haven't strayed much recently.
Fangfoss Station Lane ... centrepiece of my patch

Male Bullfinch, Fangfoss

A bird I didn't mention above was our very own Bullfinch. Now I love these sizeable finches but boy are they shy and a nightmare to photograph ... never had a full frame decent pic and still haven't but there are up to half a dozen around here feeding on the mast heads of last season's Rosebay Willowherb and with a steady hand and not a little bit of stalking I've managed some very reasonable distance shots over the last couple of days when the morning light has been at its best.... here's a selection of pics











 
Female of the species
finch, showy, bright, northern, perched, seed eater
Male Bullfinch



.......... and this male seemed particularly showy!
 

 


Not the sharpest by any means but the only half decent of both Mr and Mrs Bullfinch at lunch together .... typically showy male!

The early morning light was almost too bright lending more of an 'orangey' tinge to the male's normal rosy red breast.


Absolute corkers some of those male Bullfinches and its great to see little flocks of them around here. No less colourful are the many Yellowhammers around here (flocks of 50+ are not uncommon down this one lane), and this little chappie was nicely framed by the Hawthorne bush he was perched in.


Yellowhammer



  

























passage,migration, Yorkshire Wolds, winter visitor
Fieldfare en route overhead!







The Fieldfares and Redwings that were initially slow to arrive on our shores this Autumn are now well and truly here on our bushes and consuming our berries! This one is a Fieldfare and one of many I took a week or so ago when big flocks were making landfall on the coast and then streaming in over the Yorkshire Wolds along with Northern Song Thrushes and Blackbirds that swell our UK resident populations in Winter.









Song Thrush, one of many new arrivals in the lane


November is not only the best time of year to grow a moustache (I've declined again), it's also one of the best months of the year to catch up with and see big numbers of a variety of common birds. Why? Because in flocks they can work together to find food and gain safety from predators by being part of a big crowd!




Tits, finches and thrushes do this all the time in Winter as a survival mechanism and many other small bird species will often join in the crowd to take advantage of this mass foraging behaviour. This is why you will often see the odd Treecreeper, Goldcrest, Nuthatch or if you're very lucky a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker in amongst a 'Tit band' of Long Tailed, Blue and Great Tits .... there's a Lesser Pecker doing just this at Adel Dam, nr Leeds at the moment!


Moving away from my patch but sticking with the 'common bird' theme here's some atmospheric Starlings nr Hatfield Moor the other evening as they were coming into roost ... me n Mark had close on 5000 massing birds around telegraph wires and although the light was abysmal the results were ok.






Massing Common Starlings, nr Hatfield Moor


Arty Starlings

 
............ magical and always a thrill to witness, hear and feel such events.

Maybe only a mini 'murmuration' by national standards but awesome all the same and with a bit of tampering in photoshop, the artistic possibilities are endless!


tophill low, male, flight, yorkshire
Male Marsh Harrier, Tophill Low
......and to round things off, an impromptu visit to Tophill Low nature reserve, nr Beverley whilst I was en route to Hull with Rob for a musical chill sesh, brought a nice male Marsh Harrier shot and in the briefest of good light some splendid Shoveller ducks ... just a shame that none of the 70 or so Goldeneye that were also about didn't come into a similar range!
 
 
Male Shoveller, Tophill Low
 
Shovellers, Tophill Low
 

Wednesday 5 November 2014

Great Givendale morning walk, Fieldfares coming in and yet more Fungi

One of the more diverse and scenery rich areas of the Yorkshire Wolds, Great Givendale is now on my doorstep and with the weather set fine (for the morning at least) and some favourable winds for perhaps a bit of long overdue winter thrush passage I decided this morning to heave myself out at the crack of dawn for a tramp around.
Great Givendale
Ridings Beck
Some fantastic late Autumn colours on show as you can clearly see; less than clear were the numerous natural springs that feed the becks around here which in turn feed into the Rivers Foss and Ouse. I was hoping to locate at least one of these 'bubbling puddles' I'd pinpointed on the map but to no avail so had to make do with a couple of pics of the Ridings Beck, one of the many chalk streams that are such a unique a unique feature of this landscape.


Ridings Beck
A glorious morning and a lovely walk, not much happening in the bird world apart from some pleasing numbers of Skylarks in the air, the odd finch flock and a few Common Buzzards,but these days I'm not just a birdwatcher and my Autumn fascination for fungi continues and as I scanned these chalky slopes these big beauties almost dazzled me ..... Common Puffballs

Common Puffballs
Slippery Jack


and these are common too but freshly emerged Slippery Jacks looks as good as anything pushing up from the earth

Slippery Jack
 Finally, as the skies darkened and I was retracing my steps back to the car and looking forward to coffee and a bite to eat I caught something out of the corner of my eye, looked up and bingo - a flock of about 70 birds heading in from the Northeast and my biggest flock of Fieldfares this Autumn
Fieldfares coming in over the Yorkshire Wolds
...... mission accomplished!



Monday 27 October 2014

A rare twitch for me but worth it for some great pics of a Rough Legged Buzzard in the Yorkshire Wolds

I've said it before and doubtless I'll say it again, I'm not a great fan of 'twitching' (man I can't afford the fuel costs for one thing!) but if there's a good bird on my doorstep sure I'll make an effort and so it was the case today ...so many thanks to Mikey for alerting me to this peach of a raptor that's been hanging around for the past few days on the Yorkshire Wolds nr Grindale, just outside of Bridlington ... a Rough Legged Buzzard.

Similar at first sight to our own Common Buzzard, one or two of these sub Arctic hawks over winter here nearly every year and East Yorkshire seems to be a favoured spot for them. They're longer winged than our own, paler with a distinctive white rump and they tend to hover a lot, pretty much like a Kestrel does, and on their breeding grounds further north Lemmings are what they're usually after. Not sure what this one was after but it sure was doing a lot of hovering and have to say it was a wowzer of a bird! Shame about the poor light but if it hangs around I might pop back on a better weather day.



Hovering like a Kestrel but so much bigger!


Nice profile!

From some distance but that white on the rump is so distinctive

Awesome head on view!

Nice in black and white!

Unfocussed I know but it was coming right at me!


Lemmings are in short supply in East Yorkshire but I bet he'd have been interested in this Stoat I spotted on my patch this morning!

Fascinating Fungi and a good find in the Yorkshire Wolds

I've always been semi fascinated by fungi but in common with 99% of us I know next to nothing about these curious fruiting bodies that appear in our woodlands and grasslands at this time of year. Steeped in folklore and for centuries believed to be of manifestations of evil, the truth is that without these fungal growths the majority of our trees and wild flowers could not thrive. So lets hear it for fascinating fungi!!

Here's a few I've seen recently at YWT reserve Moorlands and been confident enough to identify.....


Glistening Inkcaps, Moorlands

 
Fairy Inkcaps, Moorlands


Clavulina Rugosa (Wrinkled Cub), Moorlands
Ganoderma applanatum (Artists Fungi), Moorlands
 



When I was in France, where it has to be said fungi, mushrooms or 'fets' as they call them over there are much more obvious, I was equally fascinated at around this time of year and can remember taking absolutely loads of pics of these fleshy forms, some of the like I've never seen since and of course have never got around to identifying ... here's a small selection of these delightful fleshy French fancies!

 
 



 
Some mushrooms and associated fungi are edible, some are not and some are downright poisonous so if in doubt just leave well alone. To my knowledge you can't do it here, but in France its part of a chemist's role to help out mushroom foragers by identifying the ones you can eat ... sound idea.
 
Back to the UK and a great little spot I've found on the Yorkshire Wolds called Cot Nab, a couple of valleys away from Great Givendale. Impressive valleys and chalky hills are a feature of the Wolds but here there's also some decent and sizeable bits deciduous woodland that are otherwise in short supply.
 



Lots of Pheasants (and I mean 100s) exploding out of the grass which I don't always like to see, not just because they're obviously being reared so a bit unnatural, but also because they make such a racket and scare many other birds away! This one must have injured itself somehow because it was just flapping around on the grass ....I couldn't deal with it but I have at least one mate who would have had it dispatched, plucked and in the pot in no time!
Returning to Fungi and this splendid thing is a Shaggy Inkcap and was all alone at the bottom of the valley ... very impressive and dare I say 'shagtastic'!
 

 
 


This is probably a very fresh Bolbitius Titubans or Yellow Fieldcap ... very small and unusual in colour.
 
 ..... and these tightly packed fruiting bodies are perhaps Field Blewit?

As ever I welcome any comments so any fungi enthusiasts out there who want to put me right on any of my amateur identification skills are very welcome to tune in.

 
 

 
 
 
 
 

Thursday 16 October 2014

Birds in the hand, birds in the bush, Owls in the air.... Autumn migration time again at Flamborough

Here's a 'quicky' from Flamborough and Buckton ....a day out birding yesterday with Rob to catch a bit of incoming migration. Given the north easterlie's and associated rain over the past couple of days I for one was expectant of squadrons of Redwings & Fieldfares advancing into the UK over the North sea and a bit of Autumn migration mayhem on the headland.

Didn't quite pan out as planned but hey it rarely does! Equally rarely is there never something a bit 'unexpected' turning up - that's the nature of birds on the move and although we dipped out on a Great Grey Shrike and by all accounts most of the winter thrushes made landfall in Norfolk, we had more than enough to keep us happy throughout the day.

2 caught & ringed Stonechats

You've heard the saying 'a bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush' .. of course you have, but what does mean? I should know but it's an easy google search so if you're bothered you'll know soon, but by way of a slightly clumsy link here's 2 birds in the hand and 1 in a bush!
1 of many Goldcrests on the headland
The Stonechats are male and female and both immature. They were both caught in mist nets at Buckton (nr Bempton) and then ringed so that we can learn more about their movements in the coming years. Its unlikely and rather a fanciful idea but maybe they're brother & sister from the same brood migrating together?! Like I say, a bit fanciful, but one thing we do know is that as with the vast majority of small birds on the headland they've recently flown across the North Sea from somewhere like Scandinavia.

European Robin
It was good to catch up with Mark Thomas again (the Buckton Birder) - he was the one doing all the ringing and a mighty fine job he does too. The Goldcrest above had evaded his nets for the time being - it was one of about 10 we flushed from a cliff side ravine in which we also disturbed a roosting Barn Owl, but he'd already ringed plenty and there were maybe upwards of 100 that we recorded in the general vicinity. Although we didn't see them, he'd also ringed Whitethroat and Garden Warbler (both very late migrants). The most obvious passage migrants around were of course Robins and I'd guess he must have ringed scores of them as they were everywhere!



Short Eared Owl, Buckton








Little chance of this getting caught up in the mist nets though, a superb Short Eared Owl we watched in off the sea and then get predictably harassed by corvids!





















Yeah the light wasn't the greatest!

Back at Flamborough and doing a stint of sea watching from the lighthouse these were a pair of unexpected ducks - Velvet Scoter. Much rarer than the most often seen Common Scoter they're a treat to see so close to coastline. Mainly coastal in their wintering grounds south of the Arctic circle, they're more associated with boulder strewn lakes and wooded shorelines in their breeding grounds of Northernmost Europe






We also had a few Red Throated Divers on the sea here, plus some Common Scoter and someone had recently spotted a Grey Phalarope and a Little Auk on the sea earlier in the morning. The only other thing we saw on the sea were this pair of frolicking Seals ... looked like they were having fun in the warm and mild conditions.
















Other birds of note both here and at Buckton were some impressive numbers of passing Skylarks (200ish), a Wheatear, about 20 Song Thrushes and 200+ Blackbirds, 30 Meadow Pipits, 1 Brambling, 1 Siskin, 10ish Chiff Chaffs and 10ish Blackcaps (one of which, a female with the wind blowing its red cap into a plume I thought for a second was a Waxwing.... one of those slightly embarrassing id moments!) Oh and we did see a few Redwings (about 15) and 2 Fieldfares eventually.

We might not have had the numbers of migrating birds, the weather was maybe too quiet, but always good to be out and about when any birds are coming in from distant lands and moving through in front of you. That Short Eared Owl was the highlight for me ...a good bird to have anywhere.

And you just can't leave the cliffs at Buckton without photographing at least 1 Gannet and hoping that it comes out like one of Steve Race's!

Buckton Gannet

......maybe next time!!