DUCKLING . BROWNSEA ISLAND
Category: BIRDS
CUBAN PEWEE
NATURE’S SMALLEST TYRANT
Contopus caribaeus – a species of bird in the family Tyrannidae
AMAZING…
Amazing! Despite my rather feebly apologetic post bemoaning my own indolence in letting this site slide towards oblivion, erstwhile followers have kindly rallied round with some likes and comments. Completely undeserved, but for which many thanks indeed.
So here in return is Ebony, the very rare black barn owl that I was lucky enough to fly last summer. Definitely a top 5 experience for the year. Maybe it’s the start of a minor blog resurrection…
DELAYED POST
This blog was started in 2012 and was originally intended to be an omnium gatherum of specific and conceivably interesting categories. The menus below mostly had sub-menus. The blog was a spin-off from a more time-consuming effort that took priority.
I never posted very regularly, and I didn’t promote the site. Looking back at my stats, I can’t help noticing that, even by 2015, I was excusing myself for long gaps between posts. I see that 2017 was the last year that I made regular posts. In the last 5 years there have been 30 short posts – none at all for the last 2 years.
It could easily be argued (I do so with myself sometimes) that I should quietly put the blog out of its misery and delete it. However, several thousand people a year visit the site and possibly find something of interest, entertainment – or even the exact thing they are looking for.
So I have decided to leave things as they are, at least for the time being. And thanks to those who have visited, even if only once…
If you are interested in Sundials of all kinds and / or Medieval Churches, there’s a properly working blog HERE
If you have an interest in natural history elsewhere in the world – birds, reef fishes, marine mammals – try HERE
AHEAD OF THE CURVE / A CURVE OF THE HEAD
A WOODPECKER DILEMMA
At the end of out garden we have – or had until last week – four trees. All were planted by us and all have taken well to the rather clay-rich soil. There’s a copper beach, an amelanchier, an apple tree (cookers) and until a few days ago, a pretty silver poplar.
The poplar, being soft wood, started to attract great spotted woodpeckers. After a couple of years chiselling into the trunk without much enthusiasm, they decided to press ahead and build No 1, The Poplars. The following year, they hatched and raised a brood, and I recorded their progression from tiny almost inaudible peeps to full-bloodied yelling for food. They ran both parents ragged with their insatiable demands. We were quite pleased when eventually they left the nest and peace was restored.
And so it went, first with an old hole being cleaned out frantically to make the nursery; then another hole was started higher up. Then, two years ago, we had our bienniel pollarding done, and done badly. Without a terminal ‘knuckle’ for the new growth to sprout from the following spring, the tree began to die back.
By last summer, the foliage was pitiful – the tree was more dead than alive. The leaves were withered and crispy. Before the end of July, they had all blown off. Inevitably the tree had to come down and we arranged to have it done this month.
Which brings to us 2019, with a male woodpecker rushing up and down the trunk to find a perfect spot to drill a hole. We watched as he went about his work, spraying shards of wood-chip over a wide area. There was a sad franticness about it – especially as we knew that in a couple of weeks the tree would be gone.
After the crime scene had been cleaned up once the tree had been felled, the woodpecker came back and seemed genuinely puzzled (as well he might). He appeared to be looking for his vanished home. We watched him try half-heartedly on the other trees. They can’t have suited him – he flew away and we haven’t seen (or heard) him since.
As these photos show, the death of the tree may not have been entirely due to bad pollarding; the trunk itself had had its core removed at two or three levels. As you can see, we kept a souvenir cavity from the woodpecker days.
The woodpecker in happier times
BLACK-TAILED GODWITS, TIMOLEAGUE, CO. CORK
I saw black-tailed godwits for the first time (to my conscious knowledge…) this summer in southern Ireland in Timoleague, at the head of an estuary to the west of Kinsale, Co. Cork.
Mostly they were on the far side of the water, and hard to capture in detail on camera. We watched them foraging, sticking their long probing bills into the squishy sand. In fact, their entire heads.
Eventually one of the godwits took flight across the estuary and landed in the muddy margin on our side. Here are some of the photos that resulted. These birds seem to be rare for the area, so they were a lucky and unexpected find.
Now I have met these lovely godwits, I’ll know what to look out for next time. As long as I don’t get confused with the similar bar-tailed godwit…
All photos: Keith Salvesen
HYBRID BIRDS OF PREY IN IRELAND: A GYRFALCON / SAKER FALCON CROSS
During a recent short trip to Dublin, we hired a car for a day to explore the Wicklow Mountains and to visit Russborough House in Co. Wicklow. This wonderful country estate has a fabulous collection of paintings and furniture – and has been the location for some spectacular burglaries. One was by Bridget Rose Dugdale, for example, for those with long memories. It is also home to the National Birds of Prey Centre of Ireland, which we had time to visit briefly.
I took some photos of several uncaged birds that were tethered out in the open. Many were, or at least looked, familiar. They were unlabelled and when I came to check IDs later, including on the centre’s website, some of them didn’t add up. Eye-colours were wrong. Facial and frontal markings were unusual. And so on.
I emailed some low-res imaged to the centre, and they quickly explained the reason: we had been looking at hybrids. This post shows one example, a juvenile female gyrfalcon crossed with a saker falcon. Here are wiki pics of each of the pure-bred birds.
Gyrfalcon
Saker Falcon 
So now I realise that there’s a whole extra angle to bird of prey ID that I had never before considered…
BLUE TIT BREEDING SUCCESS IN A LONDON GARDEN… AT LAST
About 10 years ago I was given a terracotta ‘bird ball’ as a birthday present. Over the years it has been hung in several shady positions around the garden. We have seen blue tits give is a cursory once-over in April. It’s been ‘perch on the top, head through the door, quick discussion, fly off never to return’. This year it was different: late April interest and preliminary inspections, followed by moving in, furnishing, egg-laying, incubating, hatching, frantic activity, tiny squeaks and cheeps… then we went away for four days. Bad timing – we had missed the main event.
The nest is now empty, the occupants all flown. With some difficulty, I managed to get a shot of the little nest made of dry grass and moss. The birds left the nest very tidy, with just a single tiny thank-you feather left behind…
POCHARD ON RADIPOLE LAKE, DORSET
A flash of sunlight across the lake, and suddenly assorted wildfowl emerged from the half-gloom and showed their true colours. This pochard was closest so I seized the moment…
MEA MAXIMA CULPA
My attention levels to this blog have dropped from the insouciant to the negligent, and right down to the culpably neglectful. A prosecution for recklessly wasting precious space in the diminishing capacity of world’s supply of ether must surely be close. I have considered closing it down, but somewhere in the mix there are a few things that people obviously find interesting or useful; things I have researched and photographed in detail. Followers may be comparatively few, but the daily hit tally remain surprisingly high – whether I post anything or not. So for now, I’ll keep this running… But there’s only so much time in the day, and this blog is one project that takes a hit.
ROLLING HARBOUR GALLERY 