Wondering about Waxwings

I saw my first Waxwings of the winter right back at the end of October, a handful close to home, but it's taken until the last week to catch up with many more. On Sunday, though, there were three decent sized flocks in the middle of Coalville, Leicestershire, where I live.

The first thing to notice was that these birds were very much confirming what we're always told about Waxwings, with two of the flocks turning up in supermarket car-parks (Netto and the Co-op/Iceland, out of interest, although I'm not sure they're especially discerning).

The third flock, in a few rowan trees around the Clock Tower, tended to refute the Waxwing stereotype, though. They actually fed on very few berries (the trees around the square had been largely stripped anyway), instead spending most of their time eating the occasional insect, and hanging around in the manner of people waiting for a party to begin.

The good news for them is that, when the cold weather returns in the next couple of days, there are plenty of berries still around. The car-park of the nearby doctor's surgery is one huge cotoneaster buffet just waiting to be raided.

Finally, on the way to work this morning, a few were in a tree next to the A47 at Tixover. It's strange that, though they can look superficially Starling-like, you very quickly start to find them totally distinctive, even at distances at which their crests aren't apparent. It's something to do with the way they move and interract with each other - a classic case of 'jizz' being more important than more tangible ID factors.

UKBS: Greater Manchester

Because of an early deadline for the August issue, one or two UKBS reports may not have made the cut-off. Here, then, is the Greater Manchester round-up, with the birds seen in June.

Greater Manchester

Highlights: A Red Kite flew over Woodford Aerodrome (4th). The male Black Redstart was still in Manchester city centre all month. A Marsh Harrier was at Bryn Marsh, Wigan (12th-13th). A Quail was flushed from an Offerton garden (17th).

Mersey Valley: A drake Wigeon lingered at Shell Pool late month (23rd-30th).

Elton Reservoir: Star bird was a brief Little Tern with the Common Terns (6th). Ten Gadwall (3rd) was a noteworthy count. A Dipper was regularly seen nearby from Bury Bridge.

Other sites: A drake Garganey was at Horrock's Flash, Wigan (1st) with 31 Black-tailed Godwits there later in the month (17th).

Dr Paul Brewster 01606 590 491 (& Peter Alker Pennington Flash, 01942 605 253), Chris Nield, Peter Baron

Easter birding

Easter's always a favourite time of year for me, because of course it falls during the spring migration period. A little earlier this year than some, and certainly a little colder, but still a great chance to get out there and try to catch up with a few migrants.

In fact, though, my two birding highlights of the long weekend didn't involve new arrivals at all. The first came on Saturday, in the unlikely surroundings of Welford Road, Leicester Tigers' rugby ground.

Now, over the years, I've got some reasonably good ticks while watching sport, with the best probably being an Osprey drifting over the cricket club where I play. But, in many years of watching at Welford Road, or more often at the nearby Walkers Stadium (and Filbert Street before that), I've learned not to expect much more than Feral Pigeons and Black-headed Gulls going overhead.

But, as I stood there around 20 minutes before the kick-off, with 22,000 people packed in for the game against old rivals Bath, my eye was caught by a bird flying diagonally across the stadium, just above the level of the tallest stand. The sun caught it, and I could see that it was a Woodcock, one of the last birds I'd expect to see in the middle of Leicester. I excitedly pointed it out to everyone around me - not suprisingly, most looked at me as if I'd lost my marbles!

Yesterday, as I returned home from looking for Wheatears, Ring Ouzels and Black Redstarts at Beacon Hill (only the former were to be found), a large bird drifted across the road in front of me at a height of around 100ft. For a second I took it for a gull, then realised that it was a Curlew, followed by another.

In the time it took to park safely, they'd landed in a large field where I've often seen them at this time of year (so much so, in fact, that I think of it as the Easer Monday Curlew field). They were a bit nervous, but for 45 minutes or so, I watched them feeding and occasionally doing their wonderful display flight and song, the latter a bubbling, trilling thing of beauty that is probably my favourite ever birdsong.

Whether they breed locally is unclear (they certainly did within living memory), but the Curlews that I see in this particular vicinity are always around six weeks later than the first I see going through the local gravel pits. For me, their appearance is always proof that spring has well and truly arrived.

Birding getaways

Later this year in Bird Watching, you'll be able to read UKBS stalwart and Scottish birding enthusiast Gordon Hamlett's excellent account of an RSPB Birding Weekend at the Cavens Hotel, Kirkbean, Dumfries and Galloway.

In the meantime, though, you can find out more about the hotel (situated on the bird-rich Solway Firth) and the birdwatching breaks it offers here.

It has RSPB Weekends scheduled on April 23rd-25th and November 5th-7th, when you can join RSPB experts for a trip packed with the best of Solway birds, including flocks of geese, breeding waders, dabbling and diving ducks, spectacular seabirds, spring songsters, migrants and
birds of prey. Visiting some of the best bird-watching sites along the North Solway Coast, you can expect to see around 100 different species.

The all-inclusive weekends include:
Drinks reception with expert
Ranger-led daily excursions & talks
Delicious dinners including wine
Packed lunches
Hearty Scottish breakfasts
Afternoon tea
£137.50 pppn or £550 for Country rooms
£150 pppn or £600 for Estate rooms
(based on two people sharing)

In addition, 10% of your room rate goes directly to the RSPB.

More migration watch

We're starting to get the first reports of summer visitors arriving in the UK, with a small group of Sand Martins at Marloes Mere, Pembrokeshire, and both Sand Martin and Wheatear seen around Worksop, Nottinghamshire, at the weekend.

Let us know as and when you note the arrival of migrants, and we'll try to build up a picture of just what's going on out there.

And us? Well, we go to press with the April issue today, but once that's finished, we'll be out there scanning the skies with the rest of you...

Migration watch

There are two sides to visible migration. One is the hard slog – standing on a windswept hilltop, freezing cold, getting a crick in your neck as you try to log huge numbers of Sky Larks, Meadow Pipits, geese or whatever passing overhead.

Despite all that, the rewards are enormous. There’s no better way to get an idea of just how many bird movements go on in these islands, even among species we often think of as essentially sedentary.

The other side of it is the happy accidents. A couple of years ago, I went along to a local reservoir at the end of March to see a Lesser Scaup that had arrived the previous day. As I set up my scope on the crowded dam, I looked up at the observation tower just as a very bedraggled Wheatear alighted on it. For 15, maybe 20 minutes, it sat there, occasionally preening, but mainly just getting its breath back. It visibly revived, before heading on its way further north, perhaps even beyond the UK.

Yesterday was a glorious, clear day, but still probably a week or 10 days too early to realistically expect the first Wheatears or Sand Martins. I went over to Willington Gravel Pits, a fine Derbyshire Wildlife Trust reserve between Derby and Burton, mainly in the hope of seeing the Water Pipits that have been there.

After parking in the village, I walked up the green lane as far as the entrance to the reserve itself, when I heard the unmistakeable ‘coor-li’ call of the Curlew. Small numbers are fairly regular visitors here in spring and autumn, but at first I struggled to locate just where the sound was coming from.

I scanned over the valley of the River Trent towards Repton, and finally, between the trees and hedges and fences, picked up some movement in the water meadows there. A flock of 30 or so Curlew were bustling along the riverbank, feeding constantly as they went. Once or twice, they were flushed into the air by dogwalkers, but they quickly returned to the same spot and resumed their lunch, joined now by a pair of Oystercatchers.

Now, I love Curlews anyway, and although we don’t have huge numbers on my inland patch, neither are they particularly difficult to find in the course of the year. This, though, was the biggest flock I can remember for a long, long time, and the sight and sound of them even overshadowed the long-staying Bittern that flapped over the reedbed a little later, or the Whooper Swan drifting through a flock of Goosanders.

I suspect they’ll be gone on their way to their breeding grounds very soon (indeed, they’re probably already gone), which makes the lucky chance of our paths crossing all the more pleasurable.

We want to hear about migration on your patch. Let us know when your first summer visitors arrive, about large-scale movements of year-round birds, or anything else you see on your travels.

Matt Merritt, features editor

How did you start birding?

What was your birding 'eureka' moment?

The Glamorgan UKBS report for the April issue arrived this morning, and the mention in it of the Ogmore Estuary took me back to childhood summer holidays in South Wales. My mum's family are all from Bridgend, Kenfig and the surrounding area, so every year we went down there and spent days on the beaches at Porthcawl and Ogmore. One year when I was still pretty young, I remember standing at the edge of the water at Ogmore and seeing a small flock of Oystercatchers fly over. They're such an eyecatching bird that they must have really caught my fancy, so off I went to find out more.

There were other things that got me started, notably having to do a project on birds at school. It led me to start watching the Kestrels that nested up a lane near our house (incidentally, walking down that lane a couple of weeks ago, it was good to see that there were still Kestrels doing well), but that moment on the beach might just have been the start of my birdwatching life.

So what was it that started you off? Let us know...

Matt Merritt, features editor

Keep the questions coming

One of the most interesting, and enjoyable, parts of the production process at Bird Watching is putting together the Q&A pages.

Every month, we get a little flood of queries from readers about birds they've seen, behaviour they've noticed, or features they've read in previous issues of the magazine. While we're sometimes able to answer them straight away, on other occasions we send them out to friends whose specialist expertise can help us come up with a fuller explanation.

But, we're also always pleased at how often readers come up with the answers. What might be unheard of to a birder in one part of the country might be obvious, or familiar, to a someone else.

So, don't hesitate to write or email with your questions, or your answers. It's a learning process for all of us.

Make a difference

You'll have noticed by now that I do a lot of thinking about birds and birding on my journeys to and from work, and today was no difference.

With the weather much more pleasant than it has been for ages, and spring on the point of exploding into life, it was disappointing to see long stretches of hedgerows not just cut back, but stripped almost bare, at exactly the time of year when many birds will be looking to use them for nesting.

Now this isn't an anti-farming rant. A lot of farmers do a great deal to help the birding environment, but the main problem in cases like this one, I suspect, is that some are still unaware of just how relatively minor changes to their routine can impact on wildlife.

A bigger hobby horse, for me, is the cutting of roadside verges by councils. In some locations this is, to be fair, absolutely necessary for the sake of visibility and road safety, but in others it seems absolutely pointless. It does, however, significantly affect birds, by reducing the amount of available insect and seed food, and by reducing scrubby cover.

So, if you get the chance, have a quiet word with your local farmer about bird-friendly scheduling of tasks such as hedging, and better still write to your local council to suggest that this spring and summer, they let the verges grow. They'll be doing birds a big favour, and they'll be saving themselves a lot of money.

Matt Merritt, features editor

Buzzard variations

My birding over the weekend was pretty much limited to the garden, for one reason and another, although I did manage to walk a little two-mile circuit close to my house yesterday afternoon.

But home and away, the most noticeable birds were Buzzards, in pairs, soaring and mewing away like crazy. A pair drifted fairly low right over my garden at one point, a first, although I’ve seen one in the nearby cemetery regularly.

These days, they’re the UK’s commonest raptor, but the sound of them always makes me think back to the days when they were a comparatively rare treat on a trip to the Peak District or Wales.

It’s fast reaching a point when some birders don’t pay them much attention (although quite apart from anything else, it's always worth checking fro the possibility of Rough-legged Buzzard).

But one of the real pleasures of Buzzards is the variation in plumages. Within 15 miles of home, there’s one very pale bird, appearing almost white from a distance, and another very dark one. And then, driving into work this morning, I saw one on a roadside fencepost that, while mid-brown, had only the merest hint of the U-shaped pale breast band that’s usually such a distinctive feature. Variety - it's the spice of birdwatching.

Matt Merritt, features editor

Wooden woodpecker

About a week ago, there was an intriguing report on the news services of a Black Woodpecker at a site in Cumbria. One or two birding blogs mentioned it too, there was a little flurry of activity on Twitter, and we braced ourselves for one of the biggest UK twitches of recent years. Even though it sounded rather unlikely, we're as insanely optimistic as most birdwatchers.

For some reason, even though they can be seen immediately on the other side of the Channel, Black Woodpeckers never make the short hop across the sea to the UK. This, then, looked mega.

Sadly, the bird turned out to be a model, placed on a telegraph pole specifically to deter Great Spotted Woodpeckers! Binoculars, scopes and cameras were put away, travel plans cancelled, Ginsters pasties returned to chiller cabinets in petrol station shops.

I’m not laughing too loud, though. On some allotments near to my house, someone has placed a handmade and highly realistic model of a Tawny Owl on a fencepost. No matter how many times I drive past it, I feel compelled to look and check that it isn’t, in fact, a real owl.

But all this talk of woodpeckers leads us to a little trivia test for you all. There are five woodpeckers on the British List – can you name them all?

Matt Merritt, features editor

Spring migrants

Our May issue is going to be taking a close look at the whole subject of migration, but in the meantime, we're all getting excited at the thought of the arrival of the first summer visitors. In little more than a couple of weeks, the first Wheatears and Sand Martins might be appearing locally, and there are already reports of some freakishly early arrivals.

We'd like to hear from you about what, when and where your first summer visitors are. Forget the annual Cuckoo debate on the letters page of The Times - this is where it's at! Email us at the magazine, or post your comments below, with details of your migrants.

Owling mad

I've spent quite a few cold afternoons this winter watching the owls down at Cossington Meadows, a Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust Reserve just north of Leicester. There have been three Short-eareds (now possibly four - it's a long while since we've had even one long-stayer in the area), around the same number of Barn Owls, plus the resident Little Owls and Tawnys (although you only hear the latter).

Anyway, I'm no photographer, but Andy Mackay, AKA The Leicester Llama, has posted some great shots on his own blog, and at Soar Valley Birding. Enjoy!

Matt Merritt, features editor

I can see clearly now

Seems like every post these days is about the weather, but sitting there waiting for the roads to clear this morning I noticed one little bonus of all this snow.

The light reflecting off it makes it much easier to identify flyover birds, and turned a straggly flock of Fieldfares from the usual dull silhouettes into the sharply marked beauties they actually are. Some consolation, at least!

Weather or not to go birdwatching

Driving to work today was like barrelling through an enormous cotton wool tunnel - from beginning to end, visibility never got more than 50 yards or so, and at times the fog was even thicker than that.

But although it might, on the face of it, seem like the worst birdwatching weather possible, there are times when a bit of fog is the birder's friend. Six weeks from now, for example, when spring migration is well and truly in full swing and everything's on the move, a bit of early morning fog can be the signal to get down to your local reserve and start scanning, because it can ground all sorts of birds that might otherwise overfly your patch in the night without stopping.

In future issues of Bird Watching, we're going to be paying closer attention to the weather than we have in the past. We won't be making any rash forecasts, but we will be looking at how certain conditions can bring in certain birds.

We'd also like to know your weather-related birding tips. And we don't mean "always carry an umbrella"!

Getting twitchy

Our thoughts, and those of Bird Watching columnist David Lindo, AKA The Urban Birder, have been turning to twitching these last couple of days.

The reason? A Dusky Warbler - London's first - discovered at Lockwood Reservoir, Walthamstow. It's around the allotments on Black Horse Road, E17, if any of you are interested in going after it. So far, the weather has stymied David, but we don't reckon he'll resist temptation for too much longer.

It's another sign that spring's on the way. In early January, it's easy to vow only to bird your local patch this year, but the closer the spring migration period gets, the more you start to think: "Well, maybe I'll twitch the odd county rarity".

We'll be looking at the psychology of twitching, and of birdwatching more generally, in the magazine in the near future, but what are your thoughts on it? Where do you draw the line? And what birds might lure you into a madcap overnight motorway dash to the other end of the UK?

Here comes spring

I know that by saying this I’ll guarantee that I’ll wake up tomorrow to six-foot snow drifts, but yesterday really did feel like spring was right on the brink of exploding into life.

It wasn’t particularly sunny, or warm, but it was milder than it has been for a while, and everywhere I went, birds were in full song. Blackbirds and Song Thrushes in particular, but also the likes of a Nuthatch. One dense plantation of larches I walked past was absolutely alive with Goldcrests. There are fears that they might have suffered badly in the bad weather, but they seemed to be doing well here – stand still for a minute and do a bit of pishing, and six or seven would appear to have a look at you.

Of course, that’s why St Valentine’s Day is on February 14th – it’s when, traditionally, birds were thought to start pairing up for the breeding season. The truth is a bit more complicated than that, as you can discover in Bird Watching magazine soon, but it’s one of those pieces of folk wisdom that is firmly rooted in reality.

One of those days

We've already talked on here about how the hard winter has affected birds (our March issue will contain more on the same theme), and it shows no sign of changing.

I had the day off yesterday, and although there was the odd wintry shower early on, things brightened up by the afternoon. I thought I'd head over to a rather nondescript field where, in the past, I've found Jack Snipe, but although it still looks perfect for them (boggy, with lots of tussocky grass), there was no sign. I did see a Kingfisher flash down the nearby stream, though.

So, it was on to Kelham Bridge, a former sewage works that's now a Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust reserve. It's my favourite local site, but I've neglected it a bit recently. Next to the first hide, there are a few feeders, and as I settled into my seat I did a double-take - underneath them, a Water Rail was pecking away at the fallen seed, along with a few Moorhens, Dunncoks and Robins. Now I hear the Water Rails squealing away here quite often, but to get such great, unobstructed views was amazing.

On the feeders themselves, there was a mass of Great Tits and Blue Tits, plus the bizarre sight of a Moorhen trying to climb out along one of the branches to get to the feeders (or possibly the tits - Moorhens can be voracious and none-too-fussy eaters). One of those days, as it turned out, to learn something new about birds you think of as familiar.

UK Bird Sightings

It's deadline day here at Bird Watching, which means putting the finishing touches to the UK Bird Sightings section. It can be a bit hectic at times, but the real hard work is done by our little army of contributors and our UKBS sub-editor, Gordon Hamlett.

Every month, against a strict and pretty tight deadline, they produce reports from most corners of the UK We know from talking to readers, and from surveys, that it's one of the most popular parts of the magazine. You might not read every word, but most people will look at their own county and neighbouring regions. A lot of people use the information for the future - if you see that a site has a regular influx of, say, Smew in January, you can go there the next year in anticipation of seeing one.

Inevitably, over time, our entirely voluntary correspondents come and go, as they move house, change jobs and generally get on with everyday life. That means there are always a few gaps in our coverage.

So, if you think your county is not getting covered (at the moment, notable absentees include Oxfordshire, Surrey, Gwynedd, Shropshire and most of Cheshire, while Kent, Sussex and Northumberland will shortly need new writers), and you think you can do the job (we'll give you the guidelines), let us know in the comments box, or email matthew.merritt@bauermedia.co.uk

Challenging IDs

There’s a really interesting letter in the current issue of British Birds (Vol. 103), concerning the identification of Willow Tit and Marsh Tit. To sum up, Dr JTR Sharrock and Barry Nightingale respond to a recent paper by Richard Broughton, and say that they feel he may have been too pessimistic. They add: “Positive field identification of these two species may be challenging, but it is – in our view – easier than that of, say, silent Common Chiffchaff and Willow Warbler”.

Now, I was thinking about separating the two when I was at Willington GP on Sunday, and I’d tend to agree with what they say. One thing that tends to get underplayed, in our experience, is the structure of the two birds – Willow Tits always look very bull-necked to us, and that seems to be a more reliable ID factor than any of the others (pale wing panel, shape of bib, glossy or non-glossy cap). The letter writers, to be fair, point out that the important thing is taking into account a whole combination of factors, and we'd agree.

But we'd like to know - would you find separating Willow and Marsh Tit easier than separating silent Chiffchaff and Willow Warbler, as they suggest? And are there any other match-ups that you find even harder?