Bird (mini-)expedition

[sam_t]

Cycling - but not too far - in search of a few more birds on which to try out the new binoculars. The weather suddenly turned colder and rainy, as it tends to when it sees my bike coming, but thankfully eventually warmed up enough to allow me to eat a hot jacket potato sitting on a bench outside. I headed for a local lake (not the one round the corner from me, which is more of a pond, really) by a route that would take me through an area I hadn't been to before and across a piece of ancient common.


Around the houses:
There was a lot of variation: new houses, turn of the century terraces, 60s council estates, 20s semis, local shops, and so on. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of the birds, although this was perhaps my own fault for not stopping to listen in the rain.

• Blackbirds


• Feral pigeons


• A dunnock, heard and seen in my neighbour's garden


• A couple of sparrows, ditto

The common:
The board at the entrance to the common promised that come Spring there would be numerous wild flowers, and in Summer there would be skylarks and meadow pipits. Sadly, it didn't mention the exciting things you could see in the Winter, which proved to be because in Winter the common does an excellent impression of being a rather boring green-and-brown and damp flat place, at least to people currently being rained on. It did have a plague stone, however.

• A wood pigeon


• A collared dove


• A couple of (rather straggly) trees full of starlings


• A crow


• Some unidentified gulls in the distance

An unexpected patch of woodland:
This was a small patch of (probably youngish) mixed woodland between the common and some more houses. Nothing too exciting - although I'd have probably heard more had I stayed longer - but I did hear the first wren of the year. I am always absurdly pleased when I see or hear a wren. They're fairly common but they're so small and brown it feels like a bit of an achievement to have seen one. Their song sounds so loud for their size that it's hard to believe that it comes from the tiny brown shape standing in the hedge with tail cocked in that characteristic wren posture.

• A wren heard calling, not seen. No song yet.


• A couple of blackbirds


• A robin

The lake:
I ended up not using the binoculars because the ducks are used to being fed by people walking in the area. All you have to do is stand by the water, and the birds come to you. Each bird seems to stick to a relatively small patch on the lake, so you can't be entirely lazy, but pottering around on the (not too muddy) paths wasn't exactly unpleasant, especially as the rain had stopped by then. Everything was in breeding plumage except the black-headed gulls - still definitely in Winter plumage - and possibly the shelduck (I need to check whether the beak changes colour, as it looked rather dull despite being a male shape).

• About fifteen pochards


• Lots of mallards, including some brown and white variant plumage


• A pair of tufted duck


• A (probably) male shelduck


• A ruddy shelduck, which seemed to be going around with the 'ordinary' (Northern) shelduck. According to the bird books, this bird shouldn't be here at all and is probably a feral bird rather than something that has blown in unexpectedly. Someone expected it, anyway, as there is a board by the side of the lake - now faded blue, so only really helpful if you know what colour the illustrations are supposed to be - which lists ruddy shelduck as a species to look out for.


• Moorhens. No obvious mating behaviour going on yet, but there was a splashing from a nearby bank that could have been a moorhen dust-up.


• Coots


• A male gadwall, which almost got misidentified as a 'female something' until I got a closer look. The markings really are exquisite when you see them closely - each muted brown feather on its back when at rest is outlined in a gentle golden brown, and its flanks are finely mottled rather than grey, as suggested in some bird guides. The white wing patch was only obvious when it rearranged its feathers a little. Here's a photo of a male and female, from the West Midlands Bird Club website.


• A few widgeon


• Quite a few greylag geese, in clumps around the site


• About five barnacle geese


• Ten or so snow geese, with examples of both the white and the white-headed colouration. I wasn't sure about the identification, so checked it when I got home. Again, both of my guides (one a field guide to Britain and Europe which I meant to take with me but forgot, one a medium-sized stay-at-home book on British birds) insisted that they shouldn't be here. I think I need a better book.


• Black-headed gulls


• Blackbirds


• A few robins


• A few blue tits (heard, not seen)


• At least one great tit (heard, not seen)


• Unidentified pigeons in distance


• Dunnock (heard, not seen)

I returned home as the light was failing, around four-ish. All in all, not a bad afternoon.