November '21- River diary

 November 2021 was a fairly mild month, but near the end on the 27th it turned cold and started to sleet, in fat, wet flakes that soaked you through. I went out birdwatching at my patch, of course, because the number one rule of patch watching is 'go out in or after inclement weather for unusual records'. During thick snowfall from the Beast from the East in early 2018, I went to a previous patch (neighbouring water meadows), and recorded lapwing, snipe and meadow pipit, none of which I had ever seen there before. Sometimes birds move more in bad weather to try and find food, and sometimes it makes birds that were always there more visible. A thick coat of snow shows up a lot of things!

Nov '21 was hardly a thick coat of snow, or any at all, but the flakes falling and change in the weather were enough to bring out one new record for this patch that day, a snipe which I saw flying over. Luckily snipe are extremely easy to tell in flight, being small birds with short legs, a short neck and a completely out of proportion long thin beak. I haven't seen a snipe on this patch since that day, and possibly I only ever will on snowy days!

That day I also saw something amazing and surprising. When I looked across the river and fields to the footpath that crosses them, I saw in the distance a man walking the footpath, in the sleety snow, with a big white bird on his wrist. They were too distant to see well but looking through my binoculars I could see that the bird had lots of black barring, a broad body and big forward facing eyes. He was taking his snowy owl for a walk! I was mesmerised. I would take one snowy owl walker over a hundred dog walkers. I've since seen him out with her a few more times, always in cold weather, though this may be a coincidence- I would guess he takes her out in times when there will be less dog walkers. He doesn't fly her, just walks her slowly around to show her things, holding her on a falconry glove. I love seeing them together.

When I record results for my patch on the birdtrack app, I always add a note when the snowy owl was there, to indicate her presence might have had an effect on the wildlife, but in reality I suspect she is much less deterring than the many dogs who are normally being walked on my patch at any given time (and who I don't normally record because it would be literally every time). I do add a note if a dog does something really disruptive though, which thankfully is rare, but on 26th November I saw an off lead cocker spaniel racing around one of the scrub fields, chasing 3 roe deer who were panicking and trying to escape. I don't think it's illegal or against the countryside code to let your dog chase wild deer, and I understand sometimes it might happen unexpectedly for the owner, but it's surely unethical to not at least try to call the dog off, and I don't even know where the owner was while I was viewing this. The poor deer deserve better, honestly. Not to mention there were cows in the connected field.

Even though it wasn't that cold yet, in November '21 I saw the expected arrivals of larger numbers of redwings, with about 30 being recorded on 5th November, along with a single swallow, my last hirundine of the year. More swallows have been recorded staying the winter in southern England instead of migrating, but it's still very few and honestly I hope it stays that way, as this is a horrible harbinger of global warming! This swallow wasn't seen again so I'm sure it was just stopping briefly on its way. I saw the last butterfly of the year, a red admiral, on 17th November which also shows how mild it was. Goldfinch numbers grew, with a noisy flock of about 60 birds recorded on the 8th, their numbers swelled by grown youngsters, though no siskins were with them yet. They like the alder cones that can be found all over my patch and move constantly through the trees, sometimes joined by blue tits and other small birds, and hanging upside down to feed on the cones like blue tits too. Always a joy to see, but I still hoped for the siskins to be back soon, my number one favourite winter visitor.

 

 I wrote about the herons and their 'fishing hole' earlier in the year, and in November had several heron sightings, showing they were well and truly back after the breeding season. I saw the adult and also a 2nd winter bird, which look almost like adults but slightly duller coloured and with short crests. Grey herons take a while to grow up and it's nice to be able to spot the young birds for another year. Both these birds were seen at the fishing hole at different times, and I hoped the younger bird was the same bird as the 1st winter who discovered the spot in early 2021. It was pretty funny watching it bag the adult's fishing spot. But at the time of writing in January 2023 the flood levels are extremely high and the spot is probably not usable, as I haven't seen a heron there in a long time. Perhaps when the flood waters recede, it will be up for grabs again.

In November 2021 I had a regular swan pair on my patch who were seen on most visits. You could tell it was the same pair because one was unringed but the other had a ring on both its legs, a small silver one on the right and an orange 'darvic' on the left. A darvic is a large ring designed to be readable without having to catch the bird first, and there have been many ringed swans with orange darvics in my area over the years, all with black lettering with three digits, letter-number-letter. The swan from the November pair was T8V.

 

It's really nice being able to identify individual swans, and see parts of their story unfold. In the many rivers around my city over the years there have been many particular characters. There was F7F, who was rudely ousted from their family and replaced by another swan; to this day I have no idea what happened there but F7F hasn't been seen since. There was S7V, an older pen, which you could tell by the way her ring's colour had gradually faded to peach. And E7E, a huge cob who was S7V's mate. For a couple of years I knew where they nested, though I don't think they hatched any cygnets during this time. But then there are the sadder stories: like R4B, who was shot dead a few years ago with a pellet gun, along with her unringed mate, in an act of random human cruelty. And most recently, a swan with an orange darvic became the first death from bird flu I saw at my patch, in November 2022. I haven't seen any more dead since, so hopefully it didn't infect any other birds, but I never managed to read the darvic (of course I didn't approach the bird, and couldn't anyway as it was on the far side of the river) so I'll never know what number the swan bore. 

I don't know exactly how many swans were in this ringing scheme, but I've seen them all along the coast in these parts, and have seen many in the Keyhaven area especially with the faded rings suggesting they have had them several years. But in the past few years I've seen ringed swans around my city less and less, which suggests this ringing scheme isn't ongoing, and the original holders are dying. I try not to be too sad, because barring the above human intervention and disease there's no reason to assume these swans didn't live long and happy lives followed by natural deaths- swans already live considerably longer than the average British bird, which is what makes their lives so interesting to follow. There are many adult swans that can be seen in my town centre, all unringed whenever I check, and all with interesting lives I'm sure, the only difference is I can't tell them apart! If you ever see one of the orange darvic swans and want to know more about them, you can contact the ringing scheme here, and if there's a different darvic scheme in your area the wider website may have information on that as well.

Before I end, I will conclude the wildflower sketchbook notes, as November was the last month I made any entries due to the lack of wildflowers in December. I had at one point considered bringing it back for 2022, but decided against it. At some point I want to scan the images and put them online, but it's a big job as the finished book came to 98 pages! The final two additions for November were knotgrass, with its tiny understated white flowers that barely open, and shaggy soldier, a plant of wasteland and urban areas that looks like a tougher, fruitless wild strawberry. I think some of my favourite wildflowers are the ones that survive alongside human structures, springing up in building sites and wasteground, through pavements and along verges and the walls of houses, wherever the tiniest patch of dirt may be found. I love them, and this project gave me a new appreciation for the variety of species out there.

On November 29th 2021, on my usual lunchtime visit to my patch, I saw a beautiful thick-coated fox crossing one of the fields. I know foxes are around the area but it's pretty rare to see them, however all was not well with this fox. It was limping, and I realised it was missing a back paw. The Canada geese that are always hanging around looked a little unsettled by its presence, but it was slow and non-threatening and they didn't react. 

 

The injury looked fairly recent, and it crossed my mind that perhaps I should try and get a rescue organisation to pick it up, but I just couldn't imagine they would arrive quickly enough to catch it before it went somewhere else, as it was clearly mobile. Besides, what would the outcome be? If it could be caught, a horribly stressful experience for an injured wild animal and something people don't really factor in when they weigh up the benefits in this situation, then it would be kept in captivity forever. If it could not be treated, then it would at least have the benefit of euthanasia, but there's still the big uncertainty of whether it could be captured at all. And it was still getting around, so I told myself it could still forage and eat carrion even if it couldn't hunt. Being close to a residential area, perhaps it would be lucky enough to find one of the gardens where people passionately feed 'their' foxes every day (quite a few of those on a UK wildlife group I'm on). So I didn't make the call. To this day I don't know if it was the right decision.

October 2021- River and fields diary

 

 

Stuck inside with a cold currently and really missing my patch, so let's do October 2021

As I mentioned in the September post, autumn at my regular walk along the river can be a little quiet when it comes to birds, so I tend to venture out to the fields behind more often. The birds there increase during autumn, attracted to the fields where the farmer is turning the soil (not that I really know what's being done on the farm at any given time!), as the disturbed earth brings up invertebrates. It reminds me of a patch I had where I used to live which was all farm, it was frustratingly low in biodiversity at times but got a bit more interest from certain bird species in autumn. (This is all monoculture farming, and nothing like what farmland in this country would once have been like: I wrote a bit about that in the Knepp post here .) The birds I record in numbers are woodpigeon; black headed, herring and lesser black backed gulls; jackdaws and rooks, and the odd magpie, carrion crow, stock dove and feral pigeon alongside them. Pied wagtails and meadow pipits join the larger birds on the fields, and often feed alongside each other, while starlings line up on the telegraph wires and sometimes join the fray. I usually see a few linnets, stonechats and corn buntings on the margins too. It's hardly a wonderland of birds in either numbers or species diversity, but considering the climate of intensive agriculture we live in, I consider it a win. Especially the corn buntings, which have declined greatly in the UK and which my previous patch didn't have. I never saw them at all before I moved here.

There is one bird which I always feel incredibly lucky to see on my trips to the fields, as it's normally shy and can be elusive: the grey partridge. This is another bird that used to be very common in the UK and is now scarce due to changes in farming methods. In the pictures in field guides they look beautifully marked in orange, grey, russet and chocolate brown, but the name is more accurate to when you see them in real life- they appear as small, round, grey birds creeping over the fields. I first became aware that my patch had a covey of these lovely partridges in I believe 2020, and I was genuinely shocked- I thought for sure that if they were around, I would have seen them before. But that's the nature of these shy gamebirds. I'm lucky if I see them a couple of times a year.

On the 7th of the month, I had an incredibly good sighting of the partridges. There was a covey of five on the field alongside the usual flocks of corvids and gulls, and of the five a couple were smaller and were clearly youngsters from that year, so presumably grey partridges are breeding here too! The young birds were almost full sized but the male clearly hadn't calmed down yet from the breeding season and he was acting extremely territorially to other birds around. He puffed his feathers all the way up his neck and stood at his full height, showing off the large horseshoe marking on his belly, and ran around agitatedly. A couple of young rooks were feeding nearby, and he chased them off fiercely. They allowed themselves to be shooed away, but then when he wasn't looking they would creep closer again as if to annoy him. Corvids can be incredibly cheeky! I'd never seen anything like it, and never would have thought shy little grey partridges could be so confrontational!

 

 Pheasants on the other hand, I sort of knew were quite territorial but hadn't witnessed it myself until I saw some having a fight on the 25th that month. Two males squared up, mimicking each other's movements, and then began leaping up at each other threateningly. (Interesting, another adult male was nearby but completely ignored them, and they it.) It was like a dance, but potentially more dangerous given that each bird has a sharp spur just above the back of its foot. If you ever see a dead pheasant hanging up at a market, it's a good opportunity to take a look at these spurs.

October is a transitional time. It's when I start to notice that the numbers of swallows and house martins are dropping, though some will linger into November. (The swifts are long gone.) The dragonflies are dwindling in October too- I recorded my last dragonfly on 12th October in 2021, which is relatively early for the last one, but I wasn't very good at dragonflies that year. By the end of the month the first of the winter redwings start to arrive, so you get a crossover of summer and winter species. My favourite autumn thing, though, isn't a summer or winter species but an irruption, the word for when unusually large numbers of a certain species of bird are seen around the country. Websites like Birdtrack keep updates on interesting trends like this and compare them to numbers for the previous year. Examples of irruptive species are waxwings and hawfinches (a particular impressive winter for hawfinches was 2017-2018). The much more common jay can also be an irruptive species and it's one of my favourites, and the only one I'm ever likely to see on my patch! Sadly a jay irruption didn't happen for me this autumn (2022), but in October '21 I started recording jays almost every day all of a sudden, when they are rarely seen on my patch at any other time of year. Best of all was on the 7th where I counted a maxima of 10 jays, flying one after the other! I think it was the first time I'd ever seen so many together.

The leaves are changing, and colder months are ahead. (As I write this, we just came out of a fierce cold snap in December 2022!) The numbers of blooming flowers are dropping off fast, but despite this I did add a few more to my flower sketchbook in October '21: black/green nightshade, common poppy, dove's foot cranesbill, and the beautiful orange dandelion known as fox and cubs. So called not just because of its colour, but because on each cluster of flowers one tends to bloom while the others are still buds at its base (the 'cubs' waiting behind the 'fox'.)

September 2021- River diary

 

I put off writing this one for so long- maybe because autumn isn't a very notable or interesting season on my river. The frantic migration of the small birds often seems to pass it by, and with the breeding season properly over the number of species I see on each visit drops.

At the start of the month of September summer wasn't quite yet over, and I saw a large moorhen chick that was still a little downy (10th) and the last of the banded demoiselles on the 3rd- some dragonflies go on throughout autumn but not these beautiful, jewel like beasts. Every year I miss them when they are gone. Five buzzards were in the air together on the 24th enjoying thermals on a warm autumn day, and from their slightly antagonistic interactions and their numbers it seemed likely they were a pair with grown up juveniles. Young buzzards can be very noisy and demanding, and take a while to get good at hunting, so I wondered if the talon swiping I was seeing was the parents trying to get them to go away and hunt for themselves!

 

 

On the 7th I went for an evening visit, presumbly hoping to spot the barn owl, but had no luck. There were many bats though, who hunt over the rivers where the insects gather- still don't know what kind they are. Also, of an autumn and winter dusk around here you might look up and see dozens of gulls passing over, all in the same direction (I think it's south), in a series of loose, sprawling v-formations. I saw about 60 on that one evening visit, they are lesser black backed gulls and presumably are going to a roost. I wish I knew where it was.

I did manage to catch a glimpse of the barn owl in an evening visit on the 20th of the month, but just as a pale shape flying in the distance. I had some early rising barn owls on my patch in the autumn and winter period of 2018-19, who would regularly fly from mid-afternoon onwards, basically in broad daylight at times. Then for the next couple of years I continued to have regular prolonged sightings of hunting birds, including an incredible three at once in January 2020. But since then sightings have dropped off and my sighting of the preening bird in February 2021 was the last I saw really well, with only a few glimpses in the dark after that. I hope at some point I get early rising owls again! As of now (Nov 2022) I'm not even sure there's a barn owl on the territory at all.

The best thing about September at my patch is the return of the kingfisher. There's no suitable breeding sites on my river- they need a sandy bank for their burrow- so the kingfisher disappears every spring to find a good site and pair off. Then in September I'll hear that familiar whistle and see the little blue streak of this magnificent river bird whizzing past, back on its winter quarters. This stretch of river is clearly a territory for one kingfisher only (though of course it's likely to not be the same one each year), as I've seen the territory holder loudly and viciously chase off rival birds!

And that's all for September- not much to say! I haven't even talked about most of my dragonfly records, I saw a lot but my IDs are probably all wrong. I'm still not great at dragonfly ID but I was much worse last year! I will say that September can be a good time to watch fish on my river, as the sun is still shining on the water enough to see them and the river isn't fast and swollen enough to hide them. This month there were some sizeable spotted brown trout, a beautiful grayling male showing off his long rainbow back fin, and a small group of roach, including one with a fair sized sore on its back. I think I saw a documentary once about fish in the UK spending time in clean, running water to ease healing of sores and wounds, so I hoped my river was clean enough to help this roach heal.  

Flower drawings this month include some from a lovely trip to South Devon, so include some coastal ones: fleabane, lady's bedstraw, broad-leaved willowherb, red bartsia, redshank, thrift, sea campion, common catsear, scentless mayweed, greater knapweed, betony, toadflax, wall lettuce, hedge bindweed, creeping thistle, nipplewort, and a mystery hawkweed (mouse-ear hawkweed??).

 

August 2021- River diary

 

September's over and I'm still thinking about August! So much for doing these river retrospectives roughly on the month in question, a year later. Oh well, with the weather turning so wet and horrible, can you blame me for thinking of August right now?

August is changeover time, as some species are still finishing with their last brood while others will be thinking about leaving on their migration, and still more migrants popping in or flying over. Some young birds, especially birds of prey, will still be relying on their parents for food, or at least begging them frantically for it! As raptors tend to not be very vocal, late summer is one of the best times to hear the weird noises some of them can make- while adult buzzards make a mewing sound that's quite nice to hear, young buzzards make a horrible wailing sound which can come from the air or a tree, and sounds like something being tortured! Young peregrines make a continuous series of yells as they fly around which really carry- if there's a juvenile peregrine in the air above you, you will know. Both these noisy youngsters visited my patch in August 2021. At least one buzzard pair breeds here but the peregrines breed on my city's cathedral- their visits to my patch are unusual so it was great to see. 

 

Much quieter, and a little sadder, was a lone cygnet that came to my stretch of river mid-August. I hadn't seen a breeding swan pair in 2021, but all the rivers are connected so it could have come in from elsewhere. When I saw it on the 12th it was medium sized, downy and with no other swans in sight. I could hear it peeping softly, with no one but me to hear, which was a little heartbreaking. I wondered if it was recently separated from its family and was calling hoping to find them. I hoped it would too, with all my heart, but having also seen a family of goosanders raise themselves that year I knew it had a chance to go it alone. It would have had no problem feeding itself, and when a rain shower started I saw it sensibly take shelter and wait it out. Having parent swans around and safety in numbers with the rest of the family would have helped a lot, but I didn't count it out. I saw it a few more times that month, and it seemed to adapt to being alone. I do wonder how it got separated, and whether it survived winter 2021 and is now (October 2022) preparing to face its next one. I hope so, and I hope it makes its own nest in Spring 2023.

I wrote last time about the spotted flycatcher pair's second brood, which appeared at the end of July. Surprisingly they were gone pretty soon after that and I only had one more glimpse of a flycatcher, on 3rd August, and that was it for 2021. What had happened, had something terrible befallen the young family? Well, I don't think so and this is a theory I have- I reckon that once my spotted flycatchers had fledged the 2nd brood, they moved the whole family to a new place to enjoy a new feeding ground and also to start slowly moving south to prepare for migration. (I'm already pretty far south, but we aren't talking a big move here with the babies so small.) I'm basing this on the anedotal evidence of a surprising thing that happened on my old patch- I visited regularly for a year and had never seen a spotted flycatcher once, then suddenly in late summer there was a whole family one day, a pair of adults and young, streaky babies. I swear there is no way a flycatcher pair was nesting there the whole time and I didn't notice- as I mentioned before they are great about being noticable. And the family was gone the next visit, so it really seemed that they had just dropped in briefly. I've seen what seemed to be a suddenly appearing flycatcher family at a 3rd site as well. So that is my theory- they stick around with the first brood because they will be using the nest again, but after 2nd brood is out of the nest there's no need to stay, and they hit the road. Has anyone else seen this?

In late August and September, all these spotted flycatchers turn up in flocks with other migratory species such as warblers and redstarts. And round here the birdwatchers check the flocks carefully to try and spot a pied flycatcher, who in this season is not pied either, and sigh if they don't find one...but to me a spotted flycatcher is always a joy. I don't get these kinds of autumn flocks on my patch, and a pied flycatcher seems extremely farfetched. Large mixed tit flocks are regular (will get to that!), and I do get the odd special visitor like the willow warbler that dropped by on 3rd August. The most special visitor of all, though, was seen on the 19th. I had gone for a walk after work, and saw a large bird winging its way south. It had the long wings of one of the larger gull species, but a glance through binoculars showed a dark back, pale head, large hooked beak and a dark line above its eye- it was an osprey! They are great wanderers at this time of year, and could fly over anywhere, but it was very lucky I happened to be out walking at that time. I normally go on my lunch break but deciding to go after work instead that day made me cross paths with this wonderful bird. 

Non (wild) bird sightings of note: a racing pigeon spent the morning of the 15th resting by my river. You can always tell them by the large, brightly coloured ring on their leg. I wonder how long this one took to get home? I had a lovely visit from a water vole on the 3rd, I don't see them often here. And on the 18th I was surprised by a bright green, fairly small frog that leapt across the path in front of me. It was the first amphibian record at my patch and I haven't seen another since!

Let's check in with a certain little bugger. If you read the last one, I wrote about the marsh/willow tit that I recorded in July, and rather over excitedly decided had to be a willow tit, because it made a 'nasal, 3 note call' (my notes). This was partially based on what actually happened when I saw it, and partly on a BTO identification video I watched. The call is the best way to tell the two species apart, and the video started with a simplified version of a call comparison. The trouble is that each species has a large variety of different calls, and the marsh tit also sometimes makes a nasal, 3 note call. Its most distinctive call is often written in bird books as 'ptiou' or as sounding like a sneeze. On 12th August I saw a marsh/willow tit again and this time it was giving the distinctive call...of a marsh tit. At this point I was still pretty sure of my diagnosis of willow tit for the July sighting, so I was faced with the possibility that either I had been wrong, or there were now two birds in the marsh/willow tit vein on my patch. Given that previously there had been none, this would have been one hell of a coincidence! I think then I knew the truth, but I went back the next day after work to try and find the bird (or birds?) again. I did indeed find it again on the 13th, I had lovely views and watched the bird feed all up and down opposite bank of the river. I watched it for minutes on end, and during that time not a single call was heard!! And that is why I nicknamed it little bugger. A bird that is best told apart from its very similar cousin by its call has no business being silent that long. It is from a family of birds that normally calls pretty much constantly (even the BTO video said this!), and mine decided to be really annoying on what turned out to be the final day I would ever see it! I checked the tit flocks carefully from then on, but never caught up with it again.

The verdict- I think I got over excited, there was one bird, and it was a marsh tit the whole time.

Anyway, the flowers I drew in August 2021 for my flower sketchbook project: sticky mouse-ear, scarlet pimpernell, St John's wort sp., red clover, tansy, ragwort, woody nightshade, common mouse-ear, tufted vetch, agrimony, enchanter's nightshade.

And finally, late summer sees the start of the gradual return of one of the winter spectacles around here, the corvid roost. On autumn and winter evenings thousands upon thousands of jackdaws flock to a particular line of trees on my patch to roost, along with hundreds of rooks. (Note: my count is very rough, and the idea that there are less rooks than jackdaws mainly comes from how much noisier the jackdaws are. However the jackdaws' call is higher and more carrying so there may actually be equivalent or higher numbers of rooks.) In the breeding season these corvids disband, the rooks into rookeries and the jackdaws into pairs, and who knows how far afield they go. With the number of jackdaws my winter corvid roost holds, and the way they compete fiercely for nest sites, some of them may have to go a long way! But in August 2021 on one of my evening visits (fruitless attempt to see the barn owl), I saw the roost starting again. There were only a few hundred birds by the time it was dark, so not full numbers yet, but more and more must return each day. On a winter afternoon from about 3pm the sky around here is full of jackdaws constantly going over, masses of them, and all going to that small line of trees.

July 2021- River diary

An extremely delayed look back on July 2021! I'm getting behind on these retrospective posts but I still think they are worth writing so am going to continue, at least for now. I think this is sort of how I cope with the climate crisis, by focusing on the small and local. Because even as our world grows dangerously warmer, for now the swallows still come back in the spring. There's something comforting about that.

First, let's check in with our regular denizens of the river. Summer is the best time to watch insects, and the banded demoiselles were still zooming around throughout the month every sunny day, males chasing females up and down the patches of waterweed. In summer the butterflies at my patch are joined by a beautifully bright day flying moth called the scarlet tiger. In flight it appears to be a bright red butterfly, though no butterfly in the UK is that particular vivid scarlet so you can soon learn to tell them apart. If it lands you will see it has a series of creamy white spots on a 'black' background, that is actually a very dark green. Later in the month, the delicate damselflies are joined by one or two dragonflies, and wow is there a huge difference! Damselflies float daintily while dragonflies zoom up and down the river like they own the place, and the larger species are some of the biggest insects you'll see flying in the UK.

 

Though I didn't know it at the time, July would be the time I said goodbye to the three grown up goosander ducklings. Birds sadly won't tell you when they are leaving, but reviewing my notes from the future I can tell, and that's the advantage of looking back at records the next year. My last record of the little sibling group was on July 6th. They were young ducks by this point, fully feathered and sporting the handsome 'redhead' plumage worn by female and immature goosanders, complete with little punky crests on the backs of their heads. I assume they left because my part of the river becomes much shallower during the summer, and they wanted somewhere they could dive freely. I'm sure they found it, plenty of great spots around here. My admiration goes to these three little survivors, who raised themselves from tiny ducklings without a mother, and I feel I was incredibly lucky to have been able to watch even a snippet of their story. I may never know where the nest was, what happened to the mother, or where they went next, but I'm ok with that. Nature's stories are full of so many things we will never know. But I really hope the three survived the winter and perhaps spent this spring and summer with their own nests.

I tend to visit my patch less often in July because things naturally quiten down- the mid to late summer lull is well known in birdwatching. Songbirds are finished with raising their young and spend their days silently skulking around in the thickly leaved trees while they moult, leaving you realising how much you rely on sound to find them! I was still seeing the odd fledged baby being fed, and the occasional parent still busily catching flies. Watching young birds around their parents can be quite funny at this time of year because they may not realise the adult has decided to slow down or stop feedings altogether (it has to happen at some point!). I watched an adult grey wagtail catch a banded demoiselle and whack it on the ground to kill it, all the time bothered for its meal by two begging juveniles which it eventually chased away. That same visit, July 12th, an adult spotted flycatcher was seen completely ignoring two patiently waiting juveniles. The youngsters were about two weeks out of the nest at that point and were starting to look more like the adults, i.e. not spotted at all. Their parents clearly had other things on their minds now- on July 30th, I was greeted with the lovely sight of another set of streaky, furiously begging juvenile flycatchers! The second brood was here. They always have two broods, and the eggs only take a couple of weeks to hatch, but as one of the latest arriving migrants they start breeding later and are therefore one of the few birds still fledging nestlings in late July.

Now for a slightly confused story- July 22nd was the first appearance at my patch of the bird affectionately known by me as 'little bugger'. This bird was a marsh or willow tit, which are two species that are very difficult to separate by their appearance, and both resemable an American chickadee much more than they do our familiar blue and great tit. Older books will tell you the willow tit has a larger black bib and this is how you should tell them apart, but it has now been found that both species can have variably sized bibs. Little buggers, the lot of them! 'My' bird showed up in one of the mobile, roving tit flocks that form in late summer, and it was the first time I'd seen a marsh/willow tit type bird on my patch at all, so quite special no matter which it was. However, I should tell you that at this point the willow tit is quite a bit scarcer in the UK than the marsh tit. At one point I might have assumed that my visitor was a marsh tit, on the grounds of it being the commoner species, and left it at that, but this time that wasn't enough for me. For you see, I record all sighting lists I make on this site on Birdtrack, and that meant I really needed to identify my bird correctly as people would see my report. 

I knew that the only reliable way to tell a marsh and willow tit apart is by their call, but not what it was exactly about the call that was distinctive. This didn't matter though, as I told myself, because I would go home right away and listen to call recordings and species comparisons. So I heard the bird calling, or at least thought I did- it was with a number of other birds and it can be hard to tell calls apart in a flock. I certainly heard something that I didn't think was a blue or great tit call. (My notes say 'a nasal, 3 note call', but they were written after I had looked up the calls, so that could have influenced how I described it.) Satisfied I had heard the bird's call, off I went home to do a comparison check. A helpful comparison video from the BTO gave the call a marsh tit makes, which wasn't at all like the sound my bird (supposedly) made. Excitedly, I waited for them to play the willow tit call. It was....a nasal, 3 note call, which the video explained was distinctive to the species. Case closed! Surely 'my' bird was a willow tit, improbable though it may seem. Stranger things have happened though- experienced birdwatchers know that really anything can turn up anywhere. But there was more to the story than that unfortunately, and I will get to that next month....

This month's flower drawings: hedge mustard, brooklime, water figwort, fragrant orchid, smooth hawk-beard, ribwort plantain, marsh woundwort, bird's-foot-trefoil, and heartsease.

June 2021 bonus- Knepp rewilding project

Just over a year ago, a friend and I took a trip to the Knepp rewilding project in West Sussex. The day we had planned it turned out to be a wet one but we packed waterproofs and set out anyway, hoping the weather would improve on the drive. It didn't and we were perpetually doing that thing where every time it slowed to a drizzle we would say hopefully 'oh, it's clearing up!' (This was wishful thinking, but we did get a couple of dry hours towards the end of our time at Knepp.) As if to capture the wild energy of a rewilding project we listened to Heilung on repeat the whole way. 

 

Knepp isn't a tourist attraction and doesn't really have amenities, though you can walk the footpaths freely. Upon arrival we started one of the trails, as the grey rain fell. At the time I had only just started reading Isabella Tree's wonderful book Wilding, so I didn't know much of the science of the project while I was actually there, but I will say that on our rainy visit we saw more birds more easily than I have on nice dry days in some nature reserves. Birdwatching can sometimes feel like hard work, even in 'busy' times like migration season, because there are simply fewer birds than there should be for the size of our land. Birds that few non birdwatchers have heard of now would have been daily sightings for someone living in the countryside a couple of centuries ago, though they might have called them by a different name. Industrialisation of farming has been going on for so long now that few in living memory could tell us about the biodiversity we have lost, and if you transplanted someone from the 18^th century countryside into a modern field, they would be horrified at how quiet it was. The lack of insects everywhere and the complete absence of familiar bird species, and tiny numbers of the ones that have stayed- to them the land would feel dead.

On the scrub that presumably used to be arable fields we watched a whitethroat songflighting from a telegraph wire, two male yellowhammers coming to blows in a territory dispute, a linnet pair and a family of garden warblers. Many times we heard cuckoos sing their sinister song, and suddenly one floated past, its long tail and slim wings making it look like a falcon. In Southern England it's now very difficult to hear a cuckoo without making a special trip, and even then you might not be lucky enough, so nowadays most people don't know how beautiful and strangely graceful this famous nest parasite is when you see it on the move.

Best of all, as we entered a sparsley wooded area, we heard the beautiful purring call of a turtle dove, hidden in a thicket. Knepp is famous for its success with turtle doves, which seems to have been quite unexpected even for the managers of the land. For me the loss of the turtle dove feels very near and dear, as it's the only bird species I can point to as having declined significantly in just my adult years. I'm 32 and about 10 years ago I would have been able to take you to a reliable turtle dove site not far from my home, but records have declined to the point that only a single singing bird was reported there in 2017, and since then there have been none. Maybe a few still come and go unspotted and unheard, but it's also entirely possible that there really are none left returning there, and that breaks my heart. Hearing the turtle dove again after all those years made me tear up.

The people who manage Knepp have spoken frankly and realistically about their doves- while they are doing well now, they may not be there forever. It is possible that, for a number of reasons, the turtle dove will become extinct as a breeding species in Britain in my lifetime and become a scarce passage migrant only, like the red backed shrike before it. It will live on in other countries (not that countries mean much to this beautiful migratory being), but not in ours. This is one reason Knepp has resisted being designated as a nature reserve or taking on any specific targets, and funding, related to turtle doves- they suspect the slow but steady decline of the turtle dove in Britain may be inevitable, and if they became locked into an agreement to conserve a certain number of breeding pairs at Knepp, managing the land for the doves would have to become their main goal. Rewilding is about an entire web of organisms, from the earthworms to the dung beetles to the fungi that only lives on oaks over a certain age, and the beautiful birds from cuckoo to turtle dove are the happy consequence of that.

Thinking of those near silent fields again, it's common for birdwatchers in this country to visit poorer countries in Eastern Europe and then write about the incredible diversity and abundance of bird life in the countryside, similarity in the species there making it feel so familiar and yet so alien, an ancestral memory of fields of crop before full industralisation in the UK. I try not to travel abroad for environmental reasons so I don't think I will ever see this for myself, but I can't help but think if the richer countries of Europe have enjoyed the convenience and availability of food that comes with industralised farming, poorer countries deserve it too. So who knows what the future holds for other countries, but for us here, books like Wilding create an image of hope- things don't have to be hopeless for our wildlife, and wild cycles tend to sort themselves out if left alone for long enough. Livestock at Knepp are thriving, the animals raising their young untouched by human hands for the majority of their lives, fulfilling their natural function as managers of the land. They instinctively avoid the ragwort for its bad smell and eat around it- the problem is when the poisonous plant is unwittingly disguised in human-made hay. Their number is controlled by careful culling- as an island where all our native top predators have been exterminated, the only alternative is to let animals slowly starve in lean years, which is something that received considerable bad press a few years ago in Dutch rewilding project Oostvaardersplassen. Now rewilding projects seem to agree that culling is best, and at Knepp they sell the meat.

That's just some of the impressions I took from the book Wilding by Isabella Tree, which I highly recommend, and from my visit last year. I hope to visit Knepp again this year, to try and see their purple emporers, a beautiful and hard to see butterfly whose season peaks in early July. Wish us luck for better weather!!

June 2021- River Diary

It's time to return to last year's river (for you know you can never step in the same river twice!). June 2021 was often cloudy according to my notes, but when it was sunny, then it was insect time. A particularly noticeable visitor to any river in the Wiltshire and Hampshire area is the banded demoiselle, a lovely damselfly (the name given to the smaller, more delicate relatives of the dragonflies), and round here their numbers peak in June. In 2021 I recorded the first one on 25th May, a bit later than usual but it hadn't been the best weather, and they prefer to fly in the sun. By mid June you could see 20+ on one area of waterweed. The males range in colour from a deep metallic blue to dark green, and each has a large dark patch on each forewing, which looks black when they fly past quickly but is actually very dark blue. The female is shiny and green, even her wings are green tinged, but she doesn't have the dark wing patch. The noticeable males are pleasingly easy to identify in flight because of their wing patches, and can only be confused in the UK with the beautiful demoiselle, which has fully dark wings and doesn't seem to be as tied to rivers.

Fun fact: my blog title comes from the name for the flying form of the dragonfly, damselfly, butterfly and moth- this final phase in their lives is the imago. I was especially thinking of the banded demoiselle when I chose it, that special and beautiful insect that reminds me of my home rivers. So when the imagos emerge from their larval form, which doesn't need to spin a cocoon but just pulls itself out of the water when it feel the time is right, they will soon be looking for a mate. When it comes to the actual mating act it can be quite noticeable to humans, as it's normal for dragonflies and damselflies to remain connected afterwards like in my picture. The male escorts the female to their species's preferred type of water for egg laying, and is still holding on as she lays their eggs- if you ever see two dragonflies joined while one dips the end of its tail in the water over and over again, that's an egg laying female. They can and do fly around while connected, and each species seems to make a different shape- as you can see the banded demoiselle's shape is almost like a heart. I got to see this interesting situation on 15th June, but every time I visited on a sunny day there would be damselflies busily flying all over the place.

Now for the update on the intrepid goosander ducklings- June saw the number I was seeing at one time drop to four, and then three by mid-month. It might have been predation, but possibly they were just starting to drift apart and be more independent from each other, I'll never know for sure. I feel a little guilty for downplaying how much they might need their mother, after watching little families of ducks and geese this year and how they huddle around their parents. Also I've seen photos of goosander mothers giving their babies a ride on their back when they are still small enough to do so, one of the most adorable things in the world and not something you'd see a mallard do. My goosanders had no choice but to make their way in the world alone, but despite this setback they were thriving and growing large. They were starting to get little feathers and approach full size. Every time I saw them I was delighted, and so pleased they happened to be in my river- it's certainly not an every year thing. (No goosanders are currently on my area of the river as of late spring 2022.)

June is not really a time for migrating birds passing through, but it can be a time when birds you don't normally see arrive looking for a good food source to feed their young, so unexpected records are still very possible. On June 13th on a gorgeous sunny day I saw a hobby over the industrial estate, catching insects with the swallows and martins. My partner was staying at the time and he was there when we saw it, I was so excited that I failed to explain what a hobby was for a good while! Better late than never- it's a small insect eating falcon that looks like a slim and agile peregrine, with long tapered wings like a swift's. A very delightful first for my patch! 

Towards the end of the month one of the patches of mature trees was full of agitated calling, mostly the cackle of magpies but then the unmistakeable sound of a jay. Jays are quite unusual visitors to my patch, despite it apparently having all the right habitats (that's the weird thing about patch watching), so it was great to hear one. I caught a few glimpses through the trees, but unless flying in the open their soft muted colours are surprisingly hard to see. I suspect it was attempting to raid some nests in the trees but got seen off by the magpie pair, who of course are known for their nest robbing but the jay shouldn't be overlooked in this regard! Most corvid species in the UK will rob a nest, and so will many other birds at this time of year that you would not expect- it's a normal part of nature.

I was away for a week towards the end of this month, and it's amazing how much things move on in the breeding season while you're gone. I wrote about my spotted flycatcher pair and their courtship in the May post, but on my first visit back after my time away, 28th June, I was delighted to see a little flycatcher family. complete with very new fledglings! The babies are speckled all over, living up to the spotted name, and I saw the adults bringing them freshly caught flies.

 

I didn't take my flower sketchbook on my week away in case it got rained on and ruined, but this month managed to add to it: white helleborine (a wild orchid species my mum had found near where she lived and proudly showed me!), white clover, herb bennet, herb robert, wild strawberry, smooth (?) sow thistle, spotted medick, cut-leaved cranesbill, water crowsfoot sp, water forget-me-not and hop trefoil.

Will leave you for the month on a funny note- on June 16th while walking by the river I heard a loud splash near where the trees overhang- at first thinking it might be an otter or a water rat, or even just a plain old regular rat, but I was not expecting to see an extremely bedraggled and unhappy squirrel swimming frantically for the bank! It must have fallen from a branch, though I don't think it fell far and I watched it safely climb out with nothing but its dignity injured.