English jays are usually careful to stay hidden, unlike their black crow cousins and magpies. This one stayed around on the grass at Anderton Country Park just long enough to take a photograph before he flew off.
These are also known as ‘brown jays’ or ‘old world jays’ to distinguish them from more colourful variants, such as the American blue jay.
The other day we heard our first cuckoo of spring, in fact the first for several years, in Anderton Country Park. Cuckoos were ubiquitous in my youth, but alas no longer.
We then saw these small white flowers by the canal, which I had seen other years and been meaning to look up. What a surprise, when they turned out to be cuckoo flowers – so named because their appearance tended to coincide with the hearing of the first cuckoos!
You know that moment when you suddenly see a large bird flying towards you, grab the camera, switch on, point and shoot as it passes quickly overhead? Usually the result is a blurry picture of empty sky. I got lucky with this grey heron at Anderton Country Park.
Of course, the lighting is pretty impossible, and it’s nothing like the great shots done by the pros with their expensive equipment and oodles of stalking time (this was during a walk with my Panasonic TZ200 pocket-size superzoom). Just try this great blue by Ted Jennings or this one. Follow him!
After Mrs Blackbird’s bath it was her partner’s turn the other day. The technique involves dipping the tail in, then dipping the head in, and then the wings, each time splashing furiously.
I really wanted to see his eye more clearly, so crept round the garden to get the sun behind me. He flew off, but soon came back to complete his ablutions. A bit of a show-off really.
Click twice to see an image full screen. In the last image the tail flicks water up as the beak submerges.
The female blackbird keeps coming back to our garden to gather muddy nesting material from the side of the pond. The male is around, but stays on the fence, probably keeping watch.
These black bellied whistling ducks were hanging out as usual in a private pond near to the Terry Hershey Trail and Buffalo Bayou in Houston. Piercing whistles show that they fully deserve their name. This is a popular spot for birds. Here they were joined by cormorants and then a snowy egret.
The great blue heron is a very large bird, the biggest heron in North America. We seem to come across the odd solitary bird fairly frequently when in Houston, in typical expectant pose waiting for signs of fish. These examples were in Archbishop Joseph A Fiorenza Park and beneath the bridge taking the I10 freeway over Buffalo Bayou. Amazing that this bird happily fishes while hundreds of cars and lorries thunder overhead.
The Audubon site gives good information on the vulnerability of this and other birds to climate change. Assuming that food sources hold up, they should still be around Houston for future generations.
American White Pelicans and cormorants hang out together on what we have come to call Pelican Island at Archbishop Joseph A Fiorenza Park in Houston.
This flotilla of birds of both species appeared to be following a shoal of fish, progressing quite speedily across the lake in formation.
Then maybe they were not keeping up, so the pelicans took off.
What photogenic birds!
‘Welcome to America’ sang this northern mockingbird with a magnificent trill. What joyful singers they can be in the spring. Who needs great body colour when you can sing like that?
Mockingbirds are best known for the habit of mimicking the songs of other birds and other creatures.
Another greeted us at Archbishop Joseph A Fiorenza Park, alighting nearby on the path.
Although maybe he was more interested in the caterpillar.
On a recent short visit to Rutland Water Nature Reserve, there was a good variety of water birds to be seen, but mostly at binocular distance, rather than within my limited zoom range.
The best picture I got was of this blue tit, from a hide.
Yes, we have them in the garden at home!
This reed bunting was an unusual visitor to our garden today. In summer, these birds are more brightly coloured, the male has black head and bib, and they frequent reed beds and marsh grasses. In winter they can’t afford to be so choosy and are often seen on farmland and gardens.
These birds are similar to sparrows, which we never see here these days (although they are around elsewhere in Knutsford). The notched tail, dark head and bib and white collar and underside confirm the rapid identification by my resident expert.
Quality of the photos is not wonderful. We spotted the bird through upstairs windows, and it was preferable to grab quick zoom shots through the panes, rather than open a window, which would almost certainly scare the bird off.
There were several of these birds hiding in the bushes, and coming down to feed on the grass field at Brereton Country Park, whenever there were no dogs nearby. They look a bit like large thrushes, but are actually fieldfare, members of the thrush family. These are regular winter visitors to the UK, and are said to congregate in groups and feed together – similar to the behaviour of redwing.
You can clearly see the characteristic white underside.
It was almost exactly one year ago that we previously saw fieldfare on the same field. See earlier post. It would seem that they are creatures of habit.
The Panasonic TZ80 in my pocket gave a slightly better zoom image than the TZ200 used last time. In theory, the TZ80 gives stronger zoom, and the TZ200 has a better sensor. For practical purposes there’s not a huge difference!
I spotted this silhouetted curlew on the rocks, against the backdrop of this sundown picture at Crosby, Merseyside.
The sun is not yet low enough to produce the longer wavelength reds and yellows, but as we drove into Southport, a bit further up the coast, these colours had become quite magnificent, but for only a short while.
Quite a difference!
The metropolitan borough of Sefton extends from Bootle, on the edge of Liverpool, up the coast as far as Southport.
Taking a short break while looking for raptors out over the Dee estuary at Parkgate, we took the dog for a short walk and happened across a largish group of (maybe 20) birds running about and feeding in a grassy field. They turned out to be redwing, easily identified by the reddish underwing.
Click twice to see an image full screen.
As is suggested by their shape and patterning, redwings are distant relatives of thrushes. These would be winter migrants to UK. According to Wikipedia, they often form loose flocks of tens or even hundreds of birds in winter, often feeding together with other types of bird. We did notice a few starlings mixed in with them.
Neumann’s Flash was formed when a salt mine collapsed in 1873. The Northwich salt mines had expanded rapidly without due safeguards, so inadequate supports were left to hold up the ground overhead.
A chemical industry developed around the production of salt, so the enormous holes created by this collapse, and the even more dramatic collapse of the nearby Ashton’s Flash in 1880, were in the 1950s used to dump lime waste. After dumping ceased, nature gradually began to recover and since the 1970s the area has been gradually developed into a country park, now part of the Mersey Forest initiative. Yes nature will recover, if given half a chance. See the story here.
Today, this is a great area for walking and birding, joining up with the nearby Anderton and Marbury parks.
The picture shows Neumann’s Flash from one of its three hides, with a fair sprinkling of birds on the water, as the sun slowly sinks towards the horizon.
The featured image is a crop of the central area.
We love going to WWT Martin Mere in the autumn to see the wonderful proliferation of wildfowl – thousands of migrated pink-footed geese, whooper swans, and many more ducks and geese attracted to the plentiful food that is available. These photographs give a small sample from our recent visit.
To see an image full screen you will need to single click twice.
These WWT reserves now play a valuable part in the global ecosystem. Such has been the human impact on the planet that we must now help the remaining wildlife to continue into future generations.
The featured image shows whooper swans and others in profile, shooting into the setting sun.
Most of you will be aware of much of the following from Cornell Lab of Ornithology: seven simple actions to help birds. But if you’re like me, you’ll realise that, although you are aware of them, you may not be doing enough. In the modern world, birds are absolutely dependent on the sum of the actions of all of us. With bird populations in decline, it’s vital that we each do all we can.
Here is a quick summary of the seven things – but do go read at the link above. Sorry it’s US-centric, but the principles apply everywhere.
1. Make windows safer – so many birds fly into them.
2. Keep cats indoors. They are frighteningly effective predators of small birds.
3. Reduce lawn, plant native species to provide food and habitat.
4. Avoid pesticides entirely. They kill natural things, all the way up the food chain.
5. Drink coffee that’s good for birds (shade grown).
6. Stop using throw-away plastics.
7. Watch birds and share what you see.
I’d add
8. feed local birds, and
9. provide nesting places and materials.
No doubt you can think of more… Go to it.
Featured image is from the Cornell article.
No, I’m not swearing at the duck/goose known as the common shelduck. We saw this pair of a different variant, the ruddy shelduck, while in transit at a park in Chauvigny, near Poitiers.
The pair kept well out of the way of the large number of more common birds on the lake, including mallards and coots.
Also known as the Brahminy Duck, these birds are common in Asia. This is not the case in France, and these are probably escapees.
We saw this single bar headed goose recently in Trier.
This is an Asian species, not commonly seen in Europe.
