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.
