Big Garden Birdwatch 2010

I can’t believe it’s a year since the last Big Garden Birdwatch! Not a super-exciting tally this morning, but I still managed a couple of bullfinches, which is always nice. Here’s the full list for the hour…

Great Tit – 4
Blue Tit – 3
Blackbird – 1
Collared Dove – 1
Woodpigeon – 1
Magpie – 3
Jackdaw – 8
Bullfinch – 2
House Sparrow – 1
Robin – 2

No long-tailed tit, dunnock or coal tit, but otherwise pretty much what I expected. House sparrows were once only very rarely seen in my garden, but recently a male has taken residence here, often using the tops of bushes and next door’s guttering as a singing perch.

Finches are also very rarely seen in the garden, and it’s quite unusual to see goldfnch, chaffinch or greenfinch, although bullfinches pass through fairly regularly but rarely use the feeders. I think this lack of finches is due to the fact I don’t encourage spilt seed or any ground-feeding, due to cats, and the feeders are high up in a tree where tits are much more likely to find them. Saying that greenfinches and chaffinches do very occasionally use the peanut feeder – I wonder if it’s just there’s some more suitable feeding stations for them in nearby gardens.

The great spotted woodpecker that used to make several visits to the fat cake every day hasn’t been seen for ages, in fact I’m not sure I even saw it once last year, and the goldcrest that was making forays into the garden at the time of the last BGBW was only a temporary visitor.

Don’t forget you’ve still got all weekend to do the BGBW – follow the link at the start of this blog post for more details.

A morning at the Longshaw feeders…

Yesterday I had a trip to the Longshaw Estate via Padley Gorge, to stake out the feeders for a bit for the common redpolls that have been seen there. Confusingly, common redpolls really aren’t that common at all in Britain, and so to avoid confusion I’ll use their alternative name of mealy redpoll for the rest of this report!

The feeders housed the usual stuff, including siskins (Longshaw’s a reliable place to see them in good numbers all year round), greenfinch, goldfinch, chaffinch, nuthatch, and coal, blue and great tits. A couple of treecreepers were also slinking around the tree trunks. Visiting the feeders were a good few lesser redpoll, but squinting through them (between passing cafe patrons and ramblers sending them flittering away to safety) failed to produce the frosty plumage of the mealies. This one below did get me wondering due to its rather pale white wing bars, and its rather robust appearance compared to many of the lessers around, but on reflection is way too brown to be a mealy.

But my patience was rewarded with one good bird, with a single brambling making an appearance with the chaffinches, allowing one hasty (and terrible) photo before being scared off by the aforementioned cafe patrons (how dare people want to use footpaths while I’m scanning through finches, eh?!)…

…and of course the lesser redpolls and siskins posed for some nice photos, with a shaft of bright sunlight even making an appearance at one point.

Elsewhere on the estate 3 ravens cronked overhead, providing a nice year tick, and a dipper was perched on a fence by the stream on the footpath leading from the B6521. Padley Gorge was its usual quiet self for this time of year (very different to the redstart/flycatcher/warbler-filled joy it becomes in Spring) but still turned up a singing goldcrest and a sparrowhawk.

And the mealies? Well apparently they were showing well in the car park while I was staking out the feeders all morning. Typical, eh?! Maybe next time…

Lesser Spotted, spotted.

I’ve just had a quick look at Beeley Wood, and was lucky to very quickly stumble upon a tit flock containing a lesser spotted woodpecker, not far from the Beeley Wood Lane entrance of the wood. A beautiful bird – sadly it wouldn’t stay still or near enough for a decent photo, and this is the best I could come up with…

Crap photo, great bird! Also around were a couple of nuthatches and at least one treecreeper.

EDIT – The SBSG website is reporting a chuffin’ BITTERN at Old Wheel Dam this morning! A lesson there – I really should get out of bed and work my patch a bit more often, shouldn’t I?!

Swanning around…

This morning, when the alarm went off at 6.45 I questioned my own sanity. The wind and rain were lashing at the windows, and a slight ache from a couple of pints at a family birthday party on Friday night was niggling at my head. I had an hour and a half journey, on three modes of public transport, to a damp field on the outskirts of Mexborough to look forward to… what was I thinking?!

You’ve probably guessed the reasons were birdwatching-related – I was off to see a pair of Bewick’s Swans that have taken quite a shine to a single field on Sticking Hill near Manvers, where they’ve stayed since Christmas Eve. And sure enough they were there waiting for me this morning – a local rarity and the first lifer of 2010.

A trip to Old Moor, meeting up with Dave Simmonite, followed, and good birds were everywhere despite the drizzle and still-icy conditions. A whooper swan at Wath Ings, along with the usual mute swans, completed the swan triumvirate, and other wildfowl around included goldeneye, goosander, wigeon, teal, pochard, shoveler and a single pintail. From the “Tree Sparrow Farm” viewing screen I picked up a year tick in the form of, um, tree sparrow, and another in yellowhammer, many of which were feeding on the stubble there.

The birds kept on coming with a distant, but showy green woodpecker, an overwintering green sandpiper by the Field Pool Hide, a wonderful hunting barn owl, and a water rail scurrying through the reeds at Wath Ings, plus slightly more mundane year ticks in the form of linnet and stock dove.

A brilliant day in all – well worth dragging myself out of bed for!

A whopping 54 species seen today, with 11 year ticks. Full list below, year ticks in bold.

A snowy walk and an urban peregrine…

Yesterday I had a nice, freezing walk from High Bradfield to Wharncliffe Side. Highlights of the walk included a large group of around 100 red grouse near Cowell Flat, a flock of 46 crossbill and an overhead buzzard at Wigtwizzle, and a large flock of around 50 siskin, two goldcrest, a nuthatch and 3 goosander at Broomhead Reservoir. Very cold, but a good old walk!

Today I had a bit of a walk round town on my lunch hour and was lucky enough to find one of these…

Wintry urban birding…

I didn’t want to do an “it’s snowing!” post, as I’m sure everyone’s noticed… however the cold snap has meant some good urban birding opportunities this last week. Winter thrushes seem to be everywhere at the moment, for example, everywhere you look there seems to be a few redwing and fieldfare around, either munching berries or “tseeeping” or chuckling overhead. Today I had a look round Sheffield Centre for the peregrines that keep being reported (no sign, but it’s my mission to see one before the month’s out…), and found a nice flock of redwings, with a few fieldfares mixed in, on Carver Street.

The cold weather’s also meant a large gathering of gulls has appeared on the tin roofs opposite Mecca Bingo on Penistone Road. The river is probably the only unfrozen piece of water, so it’s probably no surprise it’s attracting more birds than usual.

I first went down yesterday due to reports of an adult yellow-legged gull there, which would have been a nice addition to the yearlist! However I couldn’t find it, among the hundreds of black-headed gulls, and smaller numbers of common gull, herring gull, lesser black-backed gull and great black-backed gull.

This blog may sometimes give a false impression I know what I’m talking about, but gulls really make me realise I don’t! I saw the fella below (on the right), with a clean head that made me initially think 1st winter YLG. However its size was obviously deceptive, as the good people of Birdforum let me know I actually had a 1st winter GBBG. Ooops!

The gull in the middle of the shot here also made be wonder about YLG, due to its very clean head making it stand out among the herrings. However one thing was missing, and that was yellow-legs! Also the “mirrors” on the wings are large, pointing well towards its true identity of herring gull, albeit one with a whiter head than you’d expect at this time of year.

So no rare gulls, but a very educational squint at the more common species, and an added bonus was a female goosander bobbing past on the river, which is a very nice lunchtime tick indeed.

New toys and interesting ducks…

Today I took a couple of new toys for a spin, and found a fantastic new birding spot in the shape of the Calder Wetlands near Wakefield.

The first of the toys in question was a Cley Spy Mulepack, which I got for Christmas from Laura. It’s a tripod carrier/backpack, which means carrying the tripod and scope is made very easy and keeps hands free for using binoculars and cameras. To be honest lugging tripods around is one of my least favourite aspects of birding, and on many occasions I’ve left the scope at home and regretted it, and this is a comfortable solution that works a treat. Not cheap, but well recommended.

The second toy was a a brand new pair of Opticron Imagic BGA SE binoculars. My trusty Bushnell H2os have gone wonky, and as I was going to replace them soon with better bins anyway, I thought I’d bring the purchase forward. They really are great bins for the money (I got them for £340) – great optics, bright image, good depth of field, great eye relief for glasses wearers like myself, and good performance even in lower light levels. Thoroughly recommended!

And on to the birding… I started out at Calder Wetlands, and soon got on to our old friend the ferruginous duck, which has relocated from Pugney’s. It was very easy to find on the only ice-free patch of water on the lake behind the Swan & Cygnet pub. Sadly the ring-necked duck that has been there in recent days seems to have moved on.

A walk up and down the Calder itself, in the vain hope of finding the smew that has been hanging round recently, made for a great hour of birding nontheless, with two red-breasted merganser on the river, great views of kingfishers, lots of goldeneye and goosander, grey wagtails, a redshank, and a low-flying sparrowhawk, as well as a small number of chuckling fieldfare in the trees.

Pugney’s didn’t turn up too much, bar a fox hunting on the ice from the nature reserve hide, and a heard-only water rail which sadly didn’t show itself (which I’m not counting this year – only seen birds count, however much they annoy me!). Cetti’s warbler and bittern had both been seen this morning, but not by me! However one interesting bird there was the weird hybrid goose-duck thing below. Anyone want to take a guess at parentage?!

Finally we made a trip to Millfield Lagoons, on the other side of the Calder, which were (as we expected) completely frozen. However as we got there I got a tip off via text from Dave Simmonite (cheers fella!) saying his pager had just beeped with news that the smew was hanging around the sewage works at Horbury. We weren’t a hundred percent sure where the sewage works were, but knew which direction to head, so marched up the river until we finally traced the bird, hanging round with a particularly skittish party of goldeneye. Despite them taking off a couple of times, they kept landing on the river and we got two very good views of the smew. Smews are one of my favourite birds, and one I didn’t get chance to catch up with in 2009.

So a brilliant day to play with my new toys, and just in time if the snowy forecast for the next few days are anything to go by… 51 species seen over the course of the day, with 20 year ticks (don’t you love January?!). Full list below, year ticks in bold…

Days two and three…

Two more days into the year, and two walks in the Loxley Valley to show for it. Yesterday I managed to time it so most of my walk was taken up with a heavy snow shower, so there weren’t many birds to see at all, by far the biggest highlights being a large flock of 120 or so siskin near Old Wheel Dam, c20 fieldfare at Stacey Bank, and 7 tufted ducks at Old Wheel Dam.

Today it was a nice clear day, and the birding was a little better, with a small skein of Canada geese being a year tick as I left the house. On the path opposite the house three lesser redpoll were a nice surprise…

…other birds seen on a round walk to Old Wheel Dam and back included my first mistle and song thrushes of the year, a dipper on the river near the bowling green, and a nuthatch on Rowell Lane. A small flock of around 15 siskins were on Low Matlock Lane, but the numbers seen yesterday weren’t apparent.

Tomorrow I’m off to the Pugney’s CP/Calder Wetlands area – hopefully I can pick up some of the rarer ducks that have been loitering there recently, including ferruginous duck (yes, the same one as last time…), ring-necked duck, smew and red-breasted merganser, as well as the possibility of glaucous and iceland gulls.

And so it all starts again…

Happy new year everyone, hope a good Christmas was had by all.

Today the yearlist was reset and the whole sorry process began again! The first bird of the year was a dunnock in the garden, followed by blackbird, jackdaw, woodpigeon, great tit, magpie, robin, black-headed gull, blue tit, house sparrow, a flyover sparrowhawk, long-tailed tit and collared dove. A trip to a Potteric beefed things up, with feral pigeon, starling, herring gull, carrion crow and kestrel picked up on the way.

At Potteric the place was very icy, with most of the pools devoid of birds, with the exception of a couple of unfrozen areas at Huxter Well (which I didn’t have time to visit, but squinted at from afar). There were, however, bitterns on show, with one sighted from both Willow Pool and Piper Marsh hides. Others picked up include chaffinch, bullfinch, moorhen, pheasant, redwing, wren, goldfinch, kingfisher, reed bunting, coal tit, willow tit, jay, great spotted woodpecker, mute swan, mallard, coot and teal. Sadly the reserve’s water rails weren’t playing despite a few trips to Willow Pool in the hope they’d emerged from the undergrowth.

So a so-so 36 kicks off 2010, and I start the year in the bizarre position of getting bittern before grey heron and Canada goose! At this rate I can’t predict what the next couple of days will turn up!

The last half of 09

In July I posted my half time analysis of my birding year so far. I’d seen or heard 171 species by this point, with some crackers including black-necked and red-necked grebe, dotterel, chough, black guillemot and great grey shrike.

July continued slowly, as July does, with only a debatable Cat C tick of red-crested pochard at Attenborough to show for it, and not a single new species seen in August. Things had slowed down considerably… I was starting to fear my year goal of 200 may not be as obtainable as I’d thought…

September started more promisingly with whinchat finally found after several attempts at Redmires on the 2nd, and little stint picked up at Potteric Carr the following day. The RSPB skua cruise at Brid brought up the usual bounty in the shape of arctic and great skua, manx shearwater and common scoter, with the addition of knot in the harbour. A tour of Flamborough with the BirdForum guys afterwards turned up two lifers in the form of a flyover osprey and an uncharacteristically showy barred warbler at Bay Brambles.

A small flurry of passage excitement in the Dearne Valley area saw me pick up goodies in the form of spotted crake, pectoral sandpiper and curlew sandpiper, and the first of two autumn trips to Spurn yielded snow bunting and red-throated diver. It seemed I was back in the game…

A small trickle came in with another trip to Spurn at the start of October, with brambling, yellow-browed warbler got easily, and bird of the day being split between a Pallas’s warbler, which happened to be discovered as I was passing the churchyard, and a nice showy merlin which finally mopped up my biggest bogey bird.

Just one more was added in October, with a cattle egret at Carr Vale being a quick and dirty twitch at the end of the month.

With only two significant birding trips in November, it nethertheless proved to be a monster month with 8 new species added, 7 of which being lifers. First a trip to Carsington Water led to yellow-legged gull, great northern diver and barnacle goose (sadly ring-billed gull was dipped), and the SBSG twitchers trip round Lincolnshire and East Yorkshire turned up some amazing birds including red-necked phalarope, shore lark, water pipit, twite and whooper swan.

December started well with a journey to West Yorkshire, picking up the ferruginous duck and a brief but just-about-tickable view of Cetti’s warbler at Pugney’s, and finally tracking down scaup and much better views of great northern diver at Angler’s.

The final tick of the year came closer to home, as the Broomhead Res crossbills finally showed themsleves after a whole year without finding any.

And so a grand total of 202 for the year (203 counting heard-onlies…), with some great birds seen and fantastic new places visited. Some surprising ones missed too – I didn’t expect to end the year without short-eared owl, little gull or grasshopper warbler.

But what for 2010? Well there’s still a few easy lifers to mop up (Med gull, jack snipe and Slav grebe spring immediately to mind), and two easy heard-onlies to finally pin down properly (grasshopper warbler and turtle dove) but it’s generally going to be harder. Next year’s target – somewhat less importance on the year list (although another 200+ would be nice), and to get the life list up from 212 to 250. Wish me luck!