Snow Showers

This morning we woke up and everything was white with snow. The snow showers carried on all morning, but by the afternoon most of it had melted. I went for a walk to Eske/Pulfin from 3-4.30pm expecting the cold weather to bring out some birds. I was pretty much wrong there, with just the normal collection of species present. Plenty of Wigeon on the lake, along with Mallard, Gadwall, Tufted Duck and Pochard and a few Great-crested Grebes.

The wintering Goldeneye has been joined by three more, all four are females.

The hedges did contain quite a few Long-tailed Tits, Great Tits and Blue Tits, but almost no finches at all; just a few Chaffinches and Greenfinches. Pulfin Fen was under quite a bit of water and loads of Teal were feeding there with a nice sunset in the background. In the distance to the north about 30 Mute Swans were feeding in fields and a distant Barn Owl was hunting along some ditches.

On the way back another Barn Owl flew very close by, illustrating how common they are in this area - I've sen more Barn Owls in the 2.5 years I've lived here than in the rest of my life put together!

The state of the footpath was interesting; the first 200 metres from the road were terribly churned up where people have wlaked along it, but after that it was far less muddy, showing just how few people walk more than a couple of hundred metres from their car!

Figham Common species list

Yesterday's trip to Figham Common turned up a number of new birds for the location, mainly due to the fact that I very rarely go there, so I've posted here a list of the birds I've seen at this site. As is obvious from the list of species below, I've only ever been there in winter, I'll have to get out there in spring and add a load of common migrants to the list. Has anyone got anything to add to this list?

An Unlikely Treecreeper

Having finished a peice of coursework, due in later this week, I found some time for a quick walk at Figham Common. What a bright sunny day it was too, but a wintery breeze finally brought some seasonal temperatures. I only had an hour an a half; from 2-3.30pm but there were plenty of birds around. However, the common is very muddy, there aren't really any proper paths other than along the river, so decent boots are a good idea or you end up with cold, wet feet - like I did.

The first bird I spotted was a Barn Owl, hunting over the rushy part of the common. Figham seems to be a good place for this species, I've seen at least one here on all but one visit. As it neared a clump of trees a flock of about 60 Fieldfares flushed out and flew away making a racket. Just a little further along a male Stonechat sat on a fence post and was shortly joined by a female.

Unfortunately, the pasturemasters seem intent on keeping the common drained, I'm not really sure why, there are only a few cattle grazed here in the summer, and where tractors have been used to dig drainage channels it is difficult to pass without ending up to your knees in mud.

I crossed to the western section of Figham where there is very wet pasture, some scrub and a small rushy reedbed (actually it's greater reedmace). Loads of birds here - hundreds of Redwings and Greenfinches feeding on hawthorn and these were joined by a Goldcrest. Heading towards the wettest area I heard a Treecreeper calling from a lone, and very stunted, hawthorn in the middle of a very boggy area. After some time I finally saw it, having thought that I must be mistaken - surely it could have found some better trees around to creep around on? There are some decent beech trees a few hundred metres away, they would have been much more suitable.

At the reedmace patch 15 Teal and about 35 Snipe were flushed - there always seem to be lots of snipe here - and a large female Sparrowhawk flew overhead. Not much else on the way back, just a Meadow Pipit and a first winter Reed Bunting, although there were more excellent views of the Barn Owl which didn't seem to mind me being there.

A few Herring Gulls were calling overhead but I was too busy unsticking myself from the mud and trying to untangle myself from thorns and barbed wire to bother to take more than a quick glance.

As usual for my birdwatching walks near Beverley, I was the only person there. I guess the other birders are out somewhere better!

Chaffinches at last!

Almost three weeks into 2007 I finally saw my first Chaffinch of the year. It's almost unbelievable that one of the UK's most common species has eluded me for this long. Not that I've been searching for it or anything, it's just that I've been out enough times that I should have bumped into it before now, even if I haven't been more than a couple of miles from Beverley.

Anyway, my Chaffinch was seen in the courtyard of Bishop Burton College's Higher Education block, yesterday afternoon, where there are some bird feeders. A nice male was happily foraging around on the floor, having apparently been disappointed to find that the feeders were empty, only to enter into an altercation with a female over some controversial food item.

It reminded me of my wife and I when we go shopping.

A very windy walk

I must be feeling energetic because I went for my second walk to Pulfin Fen (Click here for map) in two days! It's probably about a mile to walk along the River Hull from Hull bridge in Tickton and today it was so windy I had trouble standing up straight. Fortunately the path is on a river flood defence and I was able to walk in its shelter. There were pretty much no birds at all due to the wind until reaching the lake. No Chiffchaff today and only a few Blackbirds, Redwings and a single Fieldfare.

At the lake there are enough trees to get some shelter from the wind and hold my binoculars still enough to scan the water for ducks. Pretty much the same suspects as on tuesday, with lots of Wigeon, Shoveler and Mallard. A few Pochard, Tufted Duck and about 20 Gadwall along with about 30 Coot. The two male Pintail were still present although they took off and flew north as I watched them. Possibly they'll turn up at nearby Tophill Low. There's also a female Goldeneye that seems to have made this lake its home for the winter and a small flock of 8 Great-crested Grebes.

All the wildfowl at this location seem to be very flighty, constantly taking off, flying around and relanding. I wonder if there's a problem with shooting here? It's certainly a popular pastime in this area.

One side of the lake is very sheltered by trees and an earth bank and it was surprisingly warm there, so I decided to sit down and enjoy the relative warmth. Then the sun came out! Felt like I was on a tropical beach. Well, not quite. Some quite nice cloud formations were interesting enough for me to take a couple of pictures. I'm not much of a photographer, but here's what I managed.


No matter what I seem to do my photos go wrong, but I seem to get some half decent results with my digital camera. The best thing of course is that I can delete the three dozen crap ones to leave the single good shot that I managed to get.

Whilst I was pussy-footing around with my camera a beautiful male Bullfinch flew into a nearby tree. Just about the only small passerine I saw today and a first for the location (at least for me it was).

A very windy walk back to the car and quite nice to get home only to see, on the lunchtime news, that the wind was causing havoc throughout the country.

Eske (Or is it Pulfin Fen?)

Today I didn't just think about birds, I actually went and looked at some!

From 11am to 1 pm I walked up the Hull river to an area known as Eske. However, part of this area is a Yorkshire Wildlife Trust reserve called Pulfin Fen, so I'm never really sure what to call this location. The weather was fairly good for birding, no wind at all and good visibility. I always walk to this spot from Hull Bridge and take the footpath on the eastern side of the river; there is a path on the western side, but there is no access to the lake from here. I've shaded the area where most birds are likely to be seen pale green.

There was almost no bird activity at all until I got to the first hedgerow alongside the path and suddenly there were birds everywhere. Mostly the hedge was full of noisy Blackbirds, Fieldfares and Redwings, stuffing themselves on hawthorn berries. A number of the Blackbirds were huge, so presumably these were birds from Europe.

However, whilst watching this lot, a small bird flew off and began foraging in a sheltered area under the hedge: I was pretty surprised to see that it was a ChiffChaff. I guess I shouldn't have been that surprised really, I know they winter in the UK more and more, and this winter must be one of the warmest ever. Still, this far north I would imagine that it is unusual.

At the lake there were hundreds of Greylag Geese and lots of ducks, mostly Wigeon and Mallard, but there were also Teal, Shoveler, Pochard, Gadwall, Tufted Duck and a very welcome sight of two male Pintail. On the way back to the car a flock of around 200 Pink-footed Geese flew overhead and I finally saw my first Grey Heron of the year.

Somehow I still haven't seen a Chaffinch this year. I wonder how long I can go without seeing one.

Corn Buntings

I spent most of today thinking about Corn Buntings, not actually looking at them, just thinking. I'm in the third year of my degree in Wildlife and Countryside Conservation, and my dissertation is concerned with the breeding habitat selection of Corn Buntings. I did all the fieldwork in East Yorkshire/North Lincolnshire from May to August 2006 and I'm finally getting a chance to write up my findings.

I surveyed in the region of 100 square kilometres near RSPB Blacktoft Sands and found 168 singing male Corn Buntings. I plotted their territories and recorded the crops that each was using, whilst mapping the land use of the entire area. Fortunately, the weather was really warm and sunny for most of the study period, so the task was very pleasant indeed.

The initial results show quite a preference for Winter Barley in the period from 15th May to 15th June, but this changed after this period. The Barley was harvested in the first few days of July and the implication is that most of the nests were destroyed by this. On the positive side, birds seemed to be making use of other crops after this, perhaps making another attempt to breed. Winter Wheat and Peas were both popular from mid June to mid July. The next stage is to work out a biodiversity value for each kilometre grid sqaure and to compare that with Corn Bunting territory density, to see if there is an association between crop diversity and Corn Bunting density.

I also recorded Corn Bunting song posts, although this will not be a part of my dissertation as I already have quite enough data with the crop selection records. I recorded what the males were using as song posts, and the results were quite interesting (See graph below).

The labels are a bit too small to read I can see:

The first tall column from the origin is for umbellifers; both Cow Parsley and Hogweed.

The second tall column, which reaches to about 50, is for trees and large bushes.

The last tall column is for overhead wires.

All the other columns are for various arable weeds and crops.

Most birdwatchers that have seen Corn Buntings will have noticed birds using wires and trees to call from, but the massive preference for umbellifers over other arable weeds has been of interest to most people I have spoken to, including Simon Tonkin of the RSPB, who has done lots of work on the species (See his post about some of his success with CBs here).

There will be plenty more about Corn Buntings here when I've done further work with my data, I'll have to get a move on, my dissertation has to be in by mid April; almost a year after doing the work!

A feeble 50 species!

I just put together my year list so far, and so far there are just a feeble 50 species on it; proof if ever I needed it that I'm not getting out enough. My excuse is that haven't used my car to drive miles away in search of birds and by not doing so I am reducing my carbon emissions in order to help birds. In fact I have used my car to go birdwatching on three occasions this year, but to sites only a couple of miles away; 3 miles at most.

Tomorrow I think I will go for a walk though and see if I can find some "year list birds". It shouldn't be hard for goodness sake, I haven't even seen a Grey Heron yet!

Pied Wagtails: Buy One Get One Free!

There's often a large roost of Pied Wagtails where I work (Morrisons in Beverley) and when I left this evening I made a point of looking for them. Looking carefully along the roof I could see lots of little bodies cuddled together above the entrance - probably about 70 birds that were visible. Presumably the supermarket remains warmer than many other places, with staff working through the night, creating an ideal roosting place in cold weather. Fortunately none of the management seems to have noticed, so currently no one has decided to move the birds along.

Too Windy Again - Swinemoor

Woke up really late this morning after having a nightmare where my life was completely screwed up by having a baby (not me: my wife). I couldn't get this spectre out of my head, so I went out for a walk and some birdwatching despite a howling gale. In fact, the wind had been so bad that the TV aerial blew down overnight, to be left dangling from the telephone cables. Strangely enough the reception has been improved by this, so it can stay there until someone else decides to do something about it.

Anyway, at around midday I got into the car and headed for Swinemoor, another one of Beverley's old commons (See below for map). Swinemoor gets a few dog walkers on it, but it isn't heavily used and it consists of unimproved grassland and scrub. The piece of the common between the large drain and the Hull river gets really wet in the winter and can be good for waders in the spring. I was hoping that there were a few winter waders around.

The common is really wet at the moment and if this continues, birdwatching here in the spring could be really good. However, not much at all today; lots of Lapwings, which were very flighty, and around 200 Black-headed Gulls with a few Common Gulls. Scanning around revealed almost nothing, so I decided not to extend the walk beyond playing around with my digital camera. Took a few shots of the common, you can see how wet it is from this one.

Some bloke with his dog began shouting at me for some reason. I didn't bother to respond, he didn't seem to have polite intentions and I can't be bothered to speak to rude idiots, so I left. The guy tried to intercept me by cutting across the common and seemed to get stuck in the mud.

Other species I saw were:

Blackbird, Rook, Woodpigeon, Starling, Collared Dove, Mallard, Moorhen, Kestrel and Cormorant; as uninspiring a list as you'll ever see!

The First One - Figham Common

So, I finally got this blog set up somewhere close to how I want it. There seems to be some sort of problem with the template options when I'm on the new system, so I've ended up mucking around with the old template and html editing!!

After spending all morning on the computer doing college work, I managed to get enough energy summoned to go for a walk. As the weather was quite dreadful, strong winds with showers, I opted for a location nearby where a short stroll was an option.

Beverley has a number of ancient commons, and today I went to probably the least visited of these and least manicured: Figham Common. In the map above I've shaded Figham common green; it's just to the south-east of Beverley.

The common is bisected by a large drain, and bordered to the east by the Hull river. The land between these two watercourses is inundated with rushes and I had two Short-eared Owls there in February 2006. I was hoping for something similar today.

Well, what a disappointment. After about 5 minutes I was questioning the wisdom of this trip; the wind was outrageous and, predictably, all the birds were hiding away in the undergrowth. With my mind wandering to the warmth of my flat and tea with scones I was awakened by a large flock of Fieldfares. They all had particularly colourful breasts, but scan as I might I couldn't find any other species.

That was about the story of the walk really; wind and Fieldfares with a bunch of Redwings thrown in. In fact, the whole common was filled with both these species with probably about 300 Fieldfares and 250 Redwings. A flock of about 40 Linnets and a lone male Yellowhammer were the only other birds to make me stop and look.

So that was it, my exercise for the day. Not one of the most memorable day's birding.