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.
