Dene Park on a sunny and warm February day

What a lovely few days, it really helps raise the spirits at this time of year when warm dry weather lasts for at least a few days!

I went down to the Alders, by the stream at the edge of the wood.

The first bird I saw was a Greater Spotted Woodpecker, but it was quickly away - too quick for a photograph.

This Blue Tit was searching the bark of an Alder tree, with the orange of the catkins forming a bit of a background to the photograph.

There were also Great Tits in the canopy - these seem to be commoner than the Blue Tits - or just louder or more visually obvious!

There wasn't much else in the woods today - lots of dog-walkers and families - but there were still Blackbirds and Robins, and of course Wood Pigeons overflying.

Oare to Uplees

Dunlin, Golden Plover, Redshank, Curlew, Oystercatcher, Grey Herons, Little Egrets, Black-headed Gulls, Herring Gulls, Little Grebes, Shelduck, Shoveller, Teal,

Knot in breeding plumage at Oare Marshes

A nice adult (I think) Knot (Calidris canutus) just coming out of breeding plumage, (perhaps the back is quite blackish?) hidden in among the Black-tailed Godwits, Limosa limosa. A Knot in winter plumage then gradually joins it, making a nice comparison. 

Fieldfare in the garden

We were so pleased to see a Fieldfare in the snow in the garden today (probably the same one more briefly yesterday afternoon). I hoped that it was attracted by the newly planted Crab Apple, and sure enough it spent some time feeding on the crabs on the tree itself. Paula took a photo with the iphone, and I followed up with a few of my own. Fieldfares are very dramatic thrushes, and I was also very pleased to see over a score scattered across the College grounds, but particularly on the banks of the ditch along the main drive. Make the most of it while its there I thought!

All plumped up...

The Fieldfare, Turdus pilaris, is a common winter visitor to the UK, one which I always absolutely delighted to see, and of course to hear. Perhaps a couple of pairs breed in the UK.

They do have a bit of a reputation of being driven into gardens in hard weather, feasting off crab or domestic apples and whatever they can find. Today was no exception, Twitter containing many similar experiences to our own. I must get some apples to put out! Meanwhile this particular bird has found my crab apple fruits.

I have come across one (only one) website that suggests that the female is a little duller. The juveniles are duller, without the grey head, but I assume they will have moulted before arrival in the UK I think.

About three quarters of a million migrate over to us each winter, starting in September but continuing until November at least.

25 cm long, wingspan about 40 cm, so quite a large thrush, nearly the size of a Mistle Thrush.

When a group is in a tree they all tend to face in the same direction, keeping up a constant chatter. When foraging on the ground, often in association with Redwings, the group works its way up wind, each bird pausing every so often to stand erect and gaze around before resuming feeding. When alarmed they fly off down wind and the feeding group reforms elsewhere.

When berries ripen in the autumn these are taken in great number. Hawthorn, holly, rowan, yew, juniper, dog rose, Cotoneaster, Pyracantha and Berberis are all relished. Later in the winter windfall apples are eaten, swedes attacked in the field and grain and seeds eaten

Cliffe Pools

A rather grey late afternoon at Cliffe,  properly with most birds too far away to photograph. I had a good look at the Great Black-backed Gulls for colour-rings, but had no luck reading the rings of the two (probably) Scandinavian birds - with orange rings on the left tibia - that were there.

Looking at the bills of the GBB Gulls, few seemed entirely adult, and although this one was close, the dark marking on the bill might indicate either a 4th winter or young adult bird.  A Juvenile GBB and juvenile Herring Gull behind and to the right.

This is probably a first winter bird, with a completely black bill, and now a paler head than a juvenile:

This is quite a nice view of what is probably a third winter bird with the tip of the bill turning yellow but the rest remaining black, and what looks like a mix of grey and black on the back:

This group below I think  indicates the variation in apparent size of the Great Black-backed Gull, with the younger male on the right (bill completely black, grey markings on the back) being substantially bigger than what are probably first a 4th winter female (slight black markings on the bill) and then an adult female on the left - and then I wasn't not sure of the rearmost bird.

This youngster is showing the classic angled forehead, flat crown and rather mean eye, together with the parallel-sided large bill with a bulbous tip.

Scotney Castle in the gloom

Looking for Hawfinches, but only found Mistle Thrushes, Blackbirds, Starlings, Greenfinch, Chaffinches and Blue Tits. Wandered around the car-park, and walking along the parkland/farmland trail anti-clockwise, deviating through Colliers Wood a little.

This is an interesting sign, but does not absolve the landowner from completing the normal visual tree safety and other assessments.

The woods had many monitoring tubes in them, all marked by hazard tape:

Out on the fields the oak trees had some tall modified Tulley tubes to protect them:

Bontuchel

Visiting Nain, the bird-feeders are going incredibly well, Blue, Great and Coal Tits, Robins and at least one Nuthatch. Also Mice.

Nuthatches are amazing looking birds with very sleek grey backs and warm peachy undersides. They also have long vicious bills. According to the RSPB, the birds seldom travel far from the woods where they are hatched, so the one in Nain's garden may have come from the woods around the Woodlands or perhaps from those on the other side of the valley (average distance of ring recoveries are less than a kilometre away from their ringing site). They will take food from bird-tables and secrete it around their territories, which are held throughout the year. They are unique among UK birds in plastering mud around their nest-hole entrances (eh? House Martins?)

They are found across most of England and Wales, and now just into Scotland, forming a population of about half a million birds altogether, with numbers steadily rising since the 1970's - perhaps due to increasing use of bird-feeders. It will be interesting to see if ring-necked parakeets compete vigorously with it for nest sites, and have any impact on its numbers in the future.

Their hoarding habit is long term - three months or more, and the hoarded food is used strategically, mainly in periods of severe food shortage, and rather less in more benign weather.

Shellness with Dark-bellied Brents

A slightly gloomy typical Sheppey long afternoon at the end of the day on a very high tide.

The fifty or more Brent Geese were happily vocalising just offshore, exploring backwards and forwards. There were one or two birds in every dozen that I thought were youngsters - unclear or very limited white neck collars - e.g. lines rather than triangles, and the flanks more evenly grey, rather than diagonally streaked pale and dark. Even as they lose these juvenile markings first-winter birds may still retain the juvenile pale tipped coverts on their backs, although even these gradually fade over the winter (Clausen et al, 1998). They are all such beautiful, if nearly monochrome, birds.

Turnstones explored the shelly beach, often well up from the waters edge. I was closer to these than any of the other birds, and they were really lovely!

Grey Plovers were perched here and there - for example on the groyne pillars just poking out of the waves. Later as the tide peaked (?) battlegroups of Grey Plovers skimmed past from the direction of Muswell Manor to the North, and settled close to the blockhouse. They gave me a very musical send-off when I left.

Again as the tide peaked I suddenly noticed about a hundred Curlews on the grazing marsh - before a passerby flushed them off out onto The Swale.

On the spit beyond the blockhouse, hundreds of Oystercatchers and dozens of Great Black-backed and other Gulls were roosting. Three or four Common Gulls, Larus canus, were seen floating just off the large glass-fronted house.

A Pied Wagtail searched the tideline.

The day finished off with a colourful sunset over the wide horizons of Sheppey, as I bumped over the ruts picked out by the headlights back to the tarmac.

I looked back at the older posts in this blog and thought about the variations in breeding success, juvenile plumages, and feeding habits of the Brent Geese noted there. I do love these geese! I also had a look at the scientific papers relating to the species. It was interesting to find a 2001 paper by McKay et al., recommending Clover as a suitable "Alternative Foraging Area" or "AFA" to tempt the geese away from winter wheat where they can cause a lot of damage. However, I thought Clover looked a bit like fast food, its growth can be very variable in different seasons according to the weather (it is "notoriously unpredictable), and therefore perhaps should not be entirely relied upon.

An alternative is grass regularly cut short, which is normally low in fibre and therefore rich in Nitrogen, although in trials by Rillington et al., 1995, in Southern England the geese show preference for, and benefit from longer grass if Nitrogen fertilised, a situation which should have a greater carrying capacity. However Nitrogen fertilisation does have environmental side-effects, and will be inappropriate in many situations, perhaps requiring an environmental derogation for the sake of the geese. Another point they made was that disturbance while feeding on land was potentially highly disruptive, frightening the geese off their pastures.

Hassall and Lane (2005) working in Norfolk argued that the geese are constrained both by nitrogen limitation and perceived mortality risks. For most of the season they exhibited partial feeding preferences by feeding on two or more types of food each day. They fed on salt marsh plants throughout the entire wintering season. In addition, from October until March they fed for part of each day on supplementary sites that were more profitable for nitrogen. In October they fed first on intertidal algae, the most profitable source of nitrogen. When this became depleted in late autumn, they moved inland to feed initially on winter wheat, where they were subject to control shooting, then onto pastures. By mid-March the pastures were no longer a significantly more profitable source of nitrogen. The geese then switched to feeding only on the salt marshes at a cost of a 39% decrease in their overall assimilation rates.

It was very interesting to see that ancillary evidence gathered in Rillington's paper also suggested that the geese on the land preferred fields with low hedges, unimproved, proximity of the sea, and no roads or footpaths. This does sound a bit like the fields at Reculver which the geese use. However at the moment, early in the winter and soon after their arrival, they still seem to be focusing on feeding on algae, etc, on the sea and in the inter-tidal zone.

The move to feeding on agricultural fields is thought to be an indirect result of historic population increases to previously known levels. The traditional wintering habitat is mostly shallow coasts and estuaries with extensive mudflats and intertidal areas, as Dark-bellied Brent Geese rarely occur far from the sea and feed on intertidal plants such as Zostera, Enteromorpha and a small range of littoral plants. Population growth during the 1980s resulted in more rapid seasonal depletion of natural food
sources. Thus, since the late 1970s, the geese have adapted to use coastal grasslands and the
early growth of cultivated cereal crops (van Nugteren 1994; Ebbinge et al. 1999). However how the populations prior to the 1930s and in the nineteenth century (and possibly earlier) managed without modern autumn sown cereals and winter pastures is rather a matter of guesswork.

Clausen et al.,  (1998) working in Denmark and NE England with the small Light-bellied Svalbard population, showed that in some years with apparently colder winters there were substantial losses of the first year birds - sometimes over 50% and in one year actually wiping all the youngsters out. They also suggested that other mortality factors might include hunting on migration routes or the wintering grounds, the availability of Zostera or its local alternatives on the wintering grounds, egg and down collection on the breeding grounds, predation by carnivorous mammals (e.g. Arctic Foxes and Polar Bears on Svalbard) on the breeding grounds, or even competition from other, larger, geese such as Barnacle Geese for nest sites, etc.

Folkestone Harbour

A brief gull watch after the eco-poetry workshop.

I think this is a first-wintered plumaged Great Black-backed Gull, just moulted into its first winter plumage. It is likely to have moulted fairly recently, probably in October according to the books. The fairly clear chequered look is quite characteristic. The scapulars are quite fresh and with anchor-shaped patterns . The coverts are quite whitish overall, and therefore contrast with the darker secondaries beneath.  The primaries are quite well pointed, rather than rounded. The secondaries are relatively dark compared to later plumages. The bill is entirely black. The head is relatively pale, a fairly clear distinction from the juvenile.

This was the ringed young Great Black-backed Gull, which I have reported back to the Norwegian Ringing Group based in one of the southernmost peninsulas of the country. I am currently guessing that it is a second winter bird.

Here is an adult Great Black-backed Gull on the foul mud in the harbour.

This is I think a young Herring Gull, probably a first winter from the pointed tips to the primaries. The eye seems very high and far forward.

I saw a Common Guillemot in the outer harbour earlier on, and watched it "swimming downwards" as it dived.

A Long-tailed Duck was also reported, but I was in the middle of becoming a poet when it was supposedly seen opposite "Rock-Salt".

Reculver

Leysdown-on-Sea

A blowy day with quite a few others reporting birds like Pomarine Skuas flying past off the headlands of Kent.

Not quite so much in the brief time I was at Leysdown, but quite a few gannets way out to sea. On the shore some nice Herring Gulls.

This I think is a First Winter bird, as it has a dark eye, dark beak pretty much all the way to the tip, and rather pointy white tips to the primaries. However it might be a relatively immature Second Winter bird. It is possible that this bird is still growing some new outer primaries.

Oare Marshes thinking of Golden Plover again

The Golden Plover at Oare 

Eurasian Golden Plover, Pluvialis apricaria (Gravenhorst, 1820), (Desvignes, 1856). An interesting bird that seems to have declined in its UK breeding population steadily over the last few decades, perhaps due to changes including reductions in keepering on upland moorland, consequent increased carrion crow predation, reduction in moorland burning, possibly increased raptor numbers, or many other factors.

The much larger overwintering Golden Plover population from northern Europe, Russia and Iceland does also seem to have shifted its wintering distribution in the UK away from pastures in the West towards (particularly) arable land on the eastern side of the country since the 1980s. The Kent birds might seem to prefer grassland still but I well remember seeing birds on ploughed fields in Yorkshire on one journey up to see or pick up Simon.

In the early part of the winter in Kent, large numbers can be seen in the Swale and specifically at Oare Marshes. Today there must have been getting on for a thousand birds here at Oare today.  It is one of the twenty two sites listed in the non-breeding SPA for this species, each site being a multispecies SPA.

The plumages of the birds are quite variable in detail. This might be a juvenile or first winter bird on the left - underside more speckled further down the flanks and belly, and ONLY IN MY PERSONAL VIEW, a little warmer in the face and the supercilium thereby a bit less contrasty.

I checked for slender (long-legged?) birds with somewhat clearer supercilia and long wings projecting beyond their tails - but no possible American Golden Plovers as far as I could see!

The overall ecology of the bird is very interesting:

Moorland Breeding

In the small and declining UK population the birds nest on moorland, although during the incubation period the adults really like to feed on neighbouring farmland pastures on worms and cranefly larvae, etc, while their partners are incubating the eggs. During the day the males incubate and the females feed, and during the night the females incubate and the males feed. Tipulids are a key feature of both the later adult and the chick diet. Pearce-Higgins and Yalden showed in one of their South Pennines studies (2003) that the particular arable, improved and pasture fields chosen by the off-duty birds for foraging in were those with appropriate pasture sward heights, appropriate moisture levels and good numbers of earthworms and particularly cranefly (Tipulid) larvae. Over time, sheep stocking density has increased in UK uplands, which might be helpful, but is also associated with agricultural intensification such as drainage, which would probably reduce Tipulid numbers.

According to Whittingham et al., working on moorland in Northern England in 2001, chicks on the moorland tend to use mosaics of dwarf shrubs such as willow, crowberry and bilberry, and more open areas of cotton-grass and bare peat. Again Tipulids and Beetle larvae do tend to be very important in the diet. Rotational strip-burning or careful manipulation of grazing management systems could be used to help maintain these mosaics.

Later in 2011 Pearce-Higgins did some very interesting theoretical modelling on the extent of the impact of expected climate change on this population on the southern edge of its range, and suggested that the impacts would greatly reduce Tipulid numbers, and chick survivability, and proposed equivalent increased management activity to help maintain the population, either environmental management to increase Tipulid food sources by 80%, or by reducing nest and egg predation by 35%.

There are birds in Sweden that also breed in the uplands, like the UK breeding population, although the habitat there is referred to as Fennoscandian arctic tundra. Machin et al in 2017 showed that the chicks in this habitat in Sweden feed on a more diverse diet of beetle larvae, cranefly larvae and St Marks Fly (Bibionids) larvae, and breeding success appears to be at least in part linked to Bibionid population fluctuations from year to year. The Bibionids are found more in willow scrub, and the chicks may move into this habitat as they grow in part according to prey availability, but also in part in order to gain increased protection from predator attack.

Over-wintering

After the young have fledged, the adults and young migrate to lowland farmland and coastal habitats for the autumn and the winter. According to Gillings et al., in 2007, in recent decades winter populations of both Golden Plover and Lapwings appear to have switched from using pastures in the west of the country to using arable land for much of the winter - October - February (harrowed fields for winter cereal initially, then sugar beet and then other crops). Large open fields which had been manured were particularly favoured, and it is perhaps to be hoped that both manuring and sugar beet growing will continue into the future for these large numbers of birds over-wintering in the UK. However the reasons underlying the move and whether the pastures have become less attractive, or the arable more attractive, or both or neither remains a bit of a mystery. Could climate change have impacted on the relative attractiveness of these two types of habitats? In France research reported in 2007 indicated that cereal fields were the preferred wintering habitat in that country.

As for field size, Leitão and Peris working in Portugal in the late 90s concluded that Golden Plovers avoided fields less than 10 Ha, and preferred fields larger than 20 Ha, and preferred pastures in this particular environment.

Birds migrating from further North and East in Europe and Russia use arable fields in southern Sweden as autumn staging posts, where Lindstrm et al. showed in 2010 that numbers tend to be quite high and they are able to both moult and then also (critically) put on weight after their moult for the next stages of their journey, perhaps to the UK. The adults and young follow more or less the same pattern although the young do follow the adults after a little delay. The length of stay on these fields is about three months, August to November, indicating the importance of this habitat to this population of migrating birds.

Research reported by Piersma et al in 2003 into birds over-wintering in the Netherlands showed some fascinating patterns. The birds put on weight in the autumn (September - November) and their weights peak in late November and December as they (presumably) put on fat to sustain themselves in bad times. They then lose weight again - I imagine as they use up their reserves, perhaps with somewhat poorer food availability. Then in the spring they start to put on weight again, perhaps as food becomes more available again, in preparation for their spring migration and the breeding season to come.

However between the 80s and 90s, the December peak mass decreased as the weight gain stopped earlier, although the rate of increase during the shorter period of weight gain remained the same. As weather conditions remained similar, this was interpreted as a response to increased raptor numbers, such as Peregrines and Goshawks - possibly leading to slimmer fitter birds more adapted to raptor evasion. However this seems to me to be a rather over-optimistic view of the ability of these birds to plan ahead, and to control their weight!

Machin et al reported in 2015 on individual winter movements of birds from a breeding population in Swedish Lapland, showing that some started their winters in NW Europe in areas such as northern France, and shifted south to Spain or Africa in cold spells, giving a degree of flexibility to their over-wintering, while others sometimes didn't move further and stuck out the cold spells where they were. Cold weather movements were noticeably long and fast, real escape movements.

High Tide at Oare

The light wasn't very good, but the company was very pleasant!

This particular Ruff, Philomachus now within Calidris pugnax, was very neatly coloured, and with somewhat yellowish-green legs:

This bird shows a very scaly back, one of the characteristic features of the species. It is quite a warm peachy colour (still?). I wonder if it has been breeding up on the High Siberian Arctic.

Oare again

Still lots of twitchers, most of them looking at the Wilson's Phalarope and the Long-billed Dowitcher.

Wilson's Phalarope at Oare Marshes

Rather a lovely bird!

Little Ringed Plover Oare Marshes

Today turned out warm and briefly calm for a while in the afternoon when I arrived at Oare Marshes. It was lovely to see a few of the usual birds on the East Flood, and a kind couple kindly pointed out a Peregrine Falcon on top of one of the electricity pylons inland of the West Flood hide.

Shortly after that I picked out a Little Ringed Plover, Charadrius dubius, (Scopoli, 1786), on the little mud spit on this side of the East Flood, from its yellow eye-ring, and then its noticeably black bill. I rather missed the pattern of white above the eye narrowing to the rear, but continuing and widening centrally over the front of the black forehead, but was reminded of this by the wonderful BTO video ID guide. This was my first ever definite sighting of this species, so it was very exciting indeed! It really did seem to have superficially pretty much the same black and white head pattern as a Ringed Plover. It bounced or "bobbed" up and down a little, and did seem a bit more slender and fragile generally. Some photos did seem to suggest a thinner beak than the commoner Ringed Plover.

There are about 1200 - 1400 breeding pairs in the UK, and the first known breeding was apparently in 1938, and it has been greatly encouraged by various gravel pit constructions over the latter half of the 20th Century. It is a summer visitor, over-wintering in West and possibly also Central Africa. The UK breeding population is about 1% of the European population, and the birds that come to the UK and western Europe are of the subspecies curonicus. In the photo below the dark eye-stripe clearly dips well down behind the eye, almost into a point.

The birds rely on fairly bare ground, only partly vegetated, so require newly disturbed habitat on a fairly regular basis. Predator control by placing cages over the nests seems to have something of a positive effect, together with habitat management, improving productivity and gradually increasing numbers. From the breadth of the breast band in the photo below I would guess that this bird is a male.

A fly got into the background of the photo below.