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29 Nov 2017

Fieldfares

Its great when a plan comes together. When we first moved into our new house I was keen to attract some winter thrushes into the garden by leaving the windfall apples from our very old and gnarled trees on the ground. last year our builder asked if he could take some for his pigs and ended up taking the lot so no thrushes!  This year I've been collecting them in buckets (to stop my son & daughter in laws labrador puppy eating them!) and have been spreading a few around - its worked. We've had a few Blackbirds and Redwings feasting and at the weekend a couple of Fieldfares dropped in.

They were extremely aggressive towards the other birds and very protective of 'their' apple. They were also extremely wary and it took an hours wait  in the wet and cold, crouched down behind a wall, to get these photo's.











25 Nov 2017

Caw. Will you rook at that!

One of the benefits of our new home is, being in the country and surrounded by pasture, we get to see lots more Rooks. They really aren't the most attractive of birds but in sunshine their iridescent plumage is stunning. We've been getting a lot coming to pick up grit off the lane in front of the house. They're usually very shy and as soon as you open a window and point a camera out they're off. Today  I persevered and got these shots.




Theres also a large flock of Jackdaws including one that looks good for an eastern race bird with a large white collar. It didn't stick around but hopefully it'll come back and I'll manage some kind of photo.

20 Nov 2017

Hawfinch.

There's been a massive influx of Hawfinches into the UK this autumn and Cheshire has had its fair share with flocks of up to a dozen being reported. Everyone around me seemed to be adding Hawfinch to their patch lists but despite many hours diligently searching the skies and with my ears tuned in there wasn't even a sniff!

With a family wedding Saturday, at which I was best man, there wasn't going to be anytime to continue the hunt this weekend! Sitting in bed at 6.45 am Saturday morning, with a mug of tea and browsing the news on the iPad before contemplating cooking scrambled eggs and smoked salmon for the bride-to-be and chief bridesmaids breakfast, I heard a familiar call. Jan nearly spilt her tea as I yelled 'Hawfinch' and leapt to the window. There it was sat at the top of a black poplar tree in our back garden! Grabbing the handily placed binoculars I watched it calling softly to itself before rushing to grab the camera for a record shot........ It flew whilst I was out the room.

This was only my 2nd Hawfinch in Cheshire following a showy bird at Marbury Country Park in January 2009 - see here

We had a couple more garden visitors that did actually stay long enough for a photo.


13 Nov 2017

A garden surprise.

I've been trying for more Redwings over the last week or so without much success - mainly due to the weather.  I've caught 2 more in between the hail storms and heavy rain.

A few hours Sunday afternoon resulted in one Redwing and this young male Blackbird. The Blackbird is a calendar year bird and has moulted all its greater coverts and one of its primary coverts. There's loads feeding on hawthorn berries in our hedges at the moment but all the berries are right at the top so the birds aren't coming low enough for mist netting. They've been joined by 2 Mistle Thrushes as well. It was easy to see what the Blackbird had been eating s it promptly regurgitated two hawthorn berries as I had it in the hand.



Despite not being successful with the Redwings I still managed 20 + birds with 4 Goldfinches, 2 Greenfinches and 4 Long-tailed Tits in the total. If the weather had been better and I'd put the nets in a different place rather than sited for Redwing I think I'd have easily had 100+ birds.

We spent Saturday morning ringing at Barry's and caught a nice female Blackcap!


With over 130 birds ringed between 07.00 and 12.00 it was a busy morning.

6 Nov 2017

Local patch birding.

With a large influx of Hawfinches currently taking place in the UK and other places in Cheshire having multiple sightings I spent a lot of time overt he last weekend out and about searching and listening for one of these steroid enhanced chaffinches. Seemingly they don't exist in my part of Cheshire. We have a yew tree covered in berries, supposedly one of their favourite foods,  in the garden and a hundred metres down the lane there is a massive one attracting flocks of feasting Blackbirds. Zilch. Nothing.

However I did get a new patch and garden tick with 4 Whooper Swans flying south. Given that we can see Moel Famau and must be in a direct line with the Dee Estuary and have Pinkfeet flying over daily it wasn't really a surprise but they were still nice to see.

Another unexpected garden visitor was a Moorhen strutting across the back lawn. We can see them in the pond opposite the house but this is the first time one has visited the garden.

After torrential rain the weather cleared Sunday afternoon and with a number of Redwing buzzing around I decided to stick a mist net up in the garden and sure enough I caught a single Redwing. I think  I would have had more if it wasn't for bonfire night and a children firework party starting in the neighbours garden. Next time I'll also re-position the net and spread a few more windfall apples around.

This was a young bird of the Scandinavian  iliacus race.





See here for a comparison between the Icelandic & Scandinavian races during my recent time on Fair Isle.