Pied Wagtails

During this week I noticed my first Pied Wagtail of the year but it was topped by today's sighting of 12 of them together in one place in Westhoughton.  I've never seen a group of so many before, only usually managing a pair at most.  It was shame I didn't have my camera with me because I may not see this sight again.

One more for the Year List I started for the first time on the 1st of January and which has now reached 44.

A Quick Walk Round Tyldesley

On a quick walk round our housing estate in Tyldesley on our way to Meat Mart this afternoon, Sarah and I saw the following birds:

• Blackbird
• Chaffinch
• Magpie
• Carrion Crow
• Sparrowhawk
• Great Tit
• Pink-footed Goose skein - distant but clear
• House Sparrow
• Woodpiegon
• Collared Dove - a large roost of 30+ birds, the most I've ever seen together
• Starling
• Robin - several singing very loudly to proclaim their territory

On our way home we were presented with the best sighting of the lot - a sparrowhawk sitting on a rooftop aerial.  The bird stayed longer than any sparrowhawk I've seen, allowing us both a good look through binoculars.  It was just a shame the light wasn't better and that I didn't have my camera with me.

Rindle Road Feeding station

Well, after all the snow over Christmas and the following week of leaden overcast skies, I decided to go out today for the first time in nearly a month.  I wasn't overly impressed by the quality of my photographs today, but I did record sightings of a few new birds for my growing list including this first ever picture of a Jay which I took in my back garden before I left for Rindle Road.

Here's a few of the better photos I took at the feeding station on Rindle Road:

Tree Sparrow



Yellowhammer



A small flock of Tree Sparrows



Reed Bunting

 

A flock of Jackdaws in Silver Birch trees on the edge of the Moss

Willow Tit

Chaffinch

Clifton Country Park

I'd not been out birding since returning to work after New Year, and so when the weather brightened up today I decided to try a new location to which I'd never been before.  The main aim of going to Clifton Country Park in Kearsley, Salford was to see the rare Red-headed Smew that had been regularly mentioned on the Manchester Birding Forum recently.

I was very pleasantly surprised by the Country Park, which included a small visitor's centre and a large free car park.  The lake (which is sometimes called Clifton Marina) is the flooded remains of a gravel pit which was excavated to provide material for the construvtion of the nearby M62 motorway. Today it was mostly frozen, with just a small pool of water available conveniently in front of the viewing platform.

As I was getting ready to leave the car I, a fellow birder called Keith Mills passed by and so we had a quick chat. Keith had also come see the Smew and so we both made for the viewing platform where another female birder was already taking photos.

Goldeneye

Smew on ice

Smew

Smew

Cormorant over

Cormorant

Mute Swan on ice

Mute Swans landing

Male Tufted Duck

Female Tufted Duck

Two white Mallards ?

Duck melee !

My New Birding Books and CD

I treated myself to some early Christmas presents this week - well no-one else was going to get them for me so I might as well buy them myself!  I started with an audio book companion to 'How to be a Bad Birdwatcher' by Simon Barnes which I've mentioned in a previous post and which thoroughly enjoyed reading.  This is not just the book read aloud by the author but contains his description of 50 common British birds along with their calls and song.  Now I can enjoy this book in my car as I drive to and from work everyday!

My second choice was 'Bearded Tit' by Rory McGrath, another humorous book on birdwatching and life at university, subtitled - a love story with feathers.

My Garden

I recently decided to make an open bird table for my garden similar in size to the ones in the Bunting Hide at Pennington Flash and today I finally got round to doing it.  I'd got some metal legs off a broken school chair that was being thrown out and I found a suitable board with a lip around it from an old wardrobe shelf in my garage.  All I had to do was drill some holes to attach the board to the legs and hey presto, an instant bird table - it didn't take too long.

When I'd finished I positioned the table in amongst some vegetation whilst still being in view of my back window.  I put a variety of bird food and seeds out on the table including sunflower hearts and kernels, peanuts, tangerine segments (don't know if birds will eat those), hazel nuts and mealworms.  As soon as I'd done that my pesky cats got interested and even started eating the mealworms.  It was then that I realised that the table was a little low and the cats could easily get on it - ah well, I'll have to see how it goes.

Just after I'd finished and was clearing up, my sunflower seed feeder was visited by six Goldfinches, which is a record for my garden.  Firstly, Goldfinches don't usually stop off in my garden although they do fly over and into neighbours gardens fairly often in the spring and summer.  And secondly, I've never had more than two at once when they have been on rare occasions in the past.

My wife Sarah and I spent quite a while looking them through binoculars, and it was only when they seemed to be stopping for a while that I decided to try and take some pictures.  Of course, as soon as I got my camera out they were off and I only managed to get a few blurry pictures of a group of four of them. Later a single bird did return for  a brief visit and I got some slightly better shots but they were still far from perfect. Nevertheless it was a pleasing sighting.

Other birds in and around my garden today included:

• Blackbird
• Blue Tit
• Great Tit
• House Sparrow
• Robin
• Collared Dove
• Wood Pigeon
• Starling
• Gulls (over)

Can't wait to see what might be on the bird table tomorrow - I'm keeping my cats indoors for the whole morning.

Rindle Road -2 degrees Celsius

Just a quick list of what I saw today so I don't forget:

• Fieldfare
• Redwing
• Tree Sparrow
• Dunnock
• Robin
• Blue Tit
• Great Tit
• Long-tailed Tit
• Chaffinch
• Greenfinch
• Kestrel
• Greater Spotted Woodpecker
• Jackdaw
• Carrion Crow
• Magpie
• Blackbird
• Starling
• Woodpigeon

And boy, it was cold.

Waxwings and all that Jizz

I've just finished reading the book called 'How to be a Bad Birdwatcher' by Simon Barnes, a funny and often philosophical book about the joys of birdwatching and what it can bring to your whole life.  In a recent chapter I read about jizz, which is a word used to describe the general characteristics of a bird and it's behaviour.

Birdsong is probably the best all round ID characteristic but also the hardest with which to get to grips.  Visual ID of size, colour, shape and form is also obviously very good for many birds, and what we all hope to do, but there are many birds which look similar (particularly LBJ's - Little Brown Jobs) or which are difficult to get a good sighting.

Jizz can help identify a bird even when you don't get a clear view of it or hear it's song. The origin of the word is a little unclear, but I favour the explanation that it comes from the term GISS, which the military use to describe the General Impression of Shape and Size, in relation to spotting enemy targets such as aeroplanes, tanks and other vehicles.

In birding terms jizz also includes it's behaviour and that's where today's Waxwing come in.  When I met Charlie Owen last week he explained how the Waxwing fly around in a tight flock for a while looking for a tall tree in sight of some berries, often the red or orange berries of the Rowan tree.  Whilst in the air they look quite like a flock of starlings and it's hard to tell the difference.

Then they congregate on a suitable tall tree top, sit in it for a while and from this high vantage point eye up the tree with the berries.  When the coast is clear of other birds such as blackbirds and thrushes defending the berries, they descend rapidly and raid the berries for 30 seconds to a minute, before returning to the tall tree.

This behaviour as well as their stocky body shape, distinctive head crest and coloured wing tips are all part of the bird's jizz. Fortunately, Waxwing are easy to identify if you get a good look at them and there is no need to rely on jizz, it just helps in understanding the bird's behaviour and how they live.

And today I saw exactly what Charlie meant as I returned to Ramsbottom Road in Horwich to try to get a decent photograph of the Waxwing which have been here for well over a week.  The birds followed the routine mentioned above at least three times whilst I stood in the freezing cold with Adrian Dancy and Ivan all trying to get a good shot.  Both these chaps were dressed in camouflage gear with tripods supporting large 500mm prime lenses on their DSLRs, and so I felt quite inferior standing next to them with my physically smaller second hand 500mm Sigma zoom - yes, I know - lens envy! Ray Ashcroft of Hope Carr Nature Reserve fame also showed up a little later but didn't stay too long after the birds flew off the first time.  We did have time for a quick chat though, which was nice.

The locals must have got used to all this fuss by now and indeed one bloke confirmed this to me as he took his supermarket shopping out of the car and to his house.  Unfortunately there was no-one offering cups of tea and toast today (as reports in the past week have suggested) on a day when really could have done with some.

My photographs are quite disappointing in spite of having some good views of the Waxwing.  It was a very bright, crisp and sunny November day, but the houses on Ramsbottom Road shield the low sunshine from the berry trees.  Therefore they were all in the shade in the morning, and nearly all my photographs are too dark and shades of blue.

I struggled with various exposures, trying to cover as many variations as possible so that I would get a least one good shot, but a combination of the cold weather (I can't operate my camera in gloves and I thought my fingers were going to fall off) and time constraints (I had to pick up Robert and Adam from badminton at Bolton Arena) led to less than satisfactory result on the photographic front.  It was only when I got home that I discovered that I'd had the wrong white balance setting due to fiddling in the dark last night trying to take pictures of Jupiter and it's moons.  Ah well, it's all part of the learning curve I suppose.

That said, I had a very pleasant hour or so chatting with other birders and seeing the Waxwing again.  The trickling chorus made by the 50 strong group of birds whilst sitting in the tall tree before descending to the berries is a favourite memory of the day. Maybe I'll pop down again a little later in the day and try for some more photos.

Waxwing in Horwich

Earlier in the week I'd posted a tongue-in-cheek message on the Manchester Birding Forum asking if someone could tell me where the elusive Waxwing would be appearing next in Greater Manchester so that I could be prepared, knowing full well that predicting where some would turn up is nigh on impossible.  They definitely like berries and those of the Rowan tree in particular, and they seem to go shopping at a supermarket somewhere at least once a week!  But as to where they'll make their next appearance, well it's anyone's guess.

However this week the Waxwing seem to have been spending a lot of time in Horwich near Bolton, and somewhere along Ramsbottom Road more often that not, and so I decided to go and have a look for myself this morning.  Before I left I checked the Forum and sure enough there was a sighting here at 9:30am about half an hour before I set off.

When I arrived I met a small party of other birders who had seen them in the trees near the junction of Ramsbottom Road with Victoria Road, but at that moment there were none about.  After chatting to a couple of people for details of their sightings today. I set off towards the Leisure Centre but here I only came up with a Thrush and a few Tits in the trees.

So I headed off back down Ramsbottom Road where I could see two other birders looking into the trees.  On the way down I met two more people who were looking for them and they asked me if I'd seen them, to which I'd replied, "No not yet, but I'm still hopeful."  At this juncture the lady pointed up into a  tree at the end of the road and said, "Aren't they the Waxwing?". I looked through my binoculars and replied, "Oh yes" being most embarrassed not to have noticed them, as I thought they were leaves.

I approached the tree slowly and took a few distant photos just in case they flew off.  One of the other two birders had a scope whilst the other was just using binoculars.  I approached a little closer and took some more shots - the light wasn't very good and I was looking straight into the sky, so the birds were more like silhouettes.  And then the whole flock suddenly took off and flew around in formation that could easily have been a flock of starlings.

At first I thought it might have been my movement that had spooked them, but then we noticed a raptor high in the sky above the tree - it was a Kestrel and the Waxwing had obviously seen it.  I took several shots of the Waxwing in flight as they passed overhead and then, all too soon, they were gone.  Well at least I saw them and got some record shots - another one for the list.

I started talking to the two birders who had been watching them - one of them turned out to be Charlie Owen, a very well known and respected birder round the Leigh and Pennington area.  I talked to Charlie about all sorts of things as we walked back up the road towards the Leisure Centre.

He told me about his Canon cameras and lenses (he doesn't do digital you know) and the hide he operates for birders to take closeup pictures of birds such as Jays and Nuthatches.  He's a very interesting bloke with a lot of birding experience and I know he is thought of very highly by people such as John Tymon and Dennis Atherton.

Charlie and I then headed back down Ramsbottom Road. We didn't find anymore Waxwing today, but I'm sure they'll still be around for a while and I probably come back next weekend for another look.  Nice meeting you Charlie, see you again sometime.