Jack Snipe study.

Recently, when the weather has permitted, I have been trudging around suitable local habitat looking for Jack Snipe. I know that they are around but they are not always easy to locate. Common Snipe, too, have been thin on the ground. I've had a couple of birds shoot out of the vegetation but the pointy wings, white trailing edge to the wing, characteristic zig-zag flight and silly squeaky noise all point to definite Common Snipe. I was explaining to a mate that Jack Snipe have a different flight when flushed and that they only flush when almost crushed under a welly when he asked what was the best ID feature when they are on the ground. Having a few O.K. photos of Jack Snipe I thought I'd use them to try a little ID feature to help.
This first photo of a Jack Snipe's head shows the quite detailed head pattern. There is an obvious split supercilium i.e. two buff lines bisected by a rich brown line above the eye. Common Snipe lacks this feature as you can see in  photos 2 and 4. There is also a brown crescent running under the eye of the Jack Snipe which meets the brown eye-stripe behind the eye. If you look at photo 4 you can see that the brown mark under the eye of Common Snipe is obvious but does not extend upwards behind the eye.


Jack Snipe Lymnocryptes minimus showing deep based bill and head patterning

Snipe Gallinago gallinago showing the pale median crown stripe

Some guide books suggest that Jack Snipe has a dark loral patch but I think that Common Snipe also has a dark loral patch so this is not much use as an identification point in the field. What is striking is the green glossy back and the obviously straw-yellow tramlines of the Jack Snipe which can be seen well in these photos. The Common Snipe has whitish stripes on a more subdued brown mottled back.

Jack Snipe Lymnocryptes minimus showing the all dark crown without median crown stripe.

These two pictures show the difference in the length of the bills. The Common Snipe has a very, very long bill that, to me, always looks a bit unwieldy whereas the bill of the Jack Snipe looks a lot more sensible as it is much shorter and thicker at the base. Both of the pictures of Common Snipe show that the breast and the flanks are quite heavily barred. The Jack Snipe shows streaking in these areas but you can't see this in these photos as the bird stubbornly refused to turn around!

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The famous bobbing-up-and-down feeding action of the Jack Snipe is not much use if the bird you see is not feeding and to be honest I've never seen one feeding, they are always flying away or pretending to be totally invisible in the vegetation.
Back to that flushed flight...if it takes off silently from under your boot, frightens the bezeesus out of you, has a very pointed tail and then shoots back into the vegetation not too far away it's almost certainly a Jack Snipe. On the other hand if it's flight is really erraitic, it squeaks and zooms off over the horizon chances are it was a Common Snipe.

Pheasants and Buzzards: Pt 2


A few weeks back I posted a piece on the shooting of buzzards and the increased pressure on this species imposed by pheasant rearing landowners and keepers. You may remember that towards the back end of last year the government proposed and then rapidly withdrew a a plan to "sub lethally" control buzzard populations to limit losses of pheasants. Last week I was handed a paper on this subject and I think it makes for interesting reading. Titled "Pheasants, buzzards and trophic cascades." and written by A. C. Lees, Ian Newton and Andrew Balmford it was released about four months ago. I'm not sure where I stand re. copyright but I would like to quote some of this paper.
The Abstract sets out the discussion quite succinctly: " The partial recovery of large birds of prey in lowland Britain has reignited conflicts with game managers and prompted a controversial U.K. government proposal to investigate ways of limiting losses to pheasant shooting operations. Yet best estimates are that buzzards are only a minor source of pheasant mortality - road traffic, for example, is far more important. (How many road kill pheasants do you encounter on an average rural drive?) Moreover, because there are often large numbers of nonbreeding buzzards, local control of breeding pairs may lead to their replacement by immigrant buzzards. Most significantly, even if successful, lowering buzzard numbers may directly or indirectly increase the abundance of other medium-sized predators (such as foxes or corvids) which potentially have much greater impacts on pheasant numbers.


Buzzard Buteo buteo. Guilty of a minor impact on pheasant numbers

When Wildlife Minister Richard Benyon suggested that buzzard numbers could be controlled by nest destruction and translocation the general public and conservation NGOs were not pleased. When he changed his mind (not a U-turn!) it was time for the Countryside Alliance and similar outfits to get annoyed. Between 20 and 35 million pheasants are released by the shooting industry annually, adding to the wild bred stocks. The paper uses a case study of 486 reared pheasants that found that 37.5% were shot and 36% predated or scavenged - principally by foxes. "In this study, raptors were implicated in the deaths of <1% of individuals." Another study in Dorset found that 5-13% of pheasants are killed on the roads.

Conceptual map of interspecific interactions taken from the paper by A.C.Lees et al.

"It is estimated that for each paired buzzard in southern Britain there are up to three additional non-breeding birds (Kenwood et al 2000)" So get rid of your local buzzards and more will soon move in. "Two recently prosecuted Shropshire gamekeepers discovered the extent of such immigration for themselves when they illegally killed over 100 buzzards on one estate in less than six months (Evans 2008)" Over 100 buzzards in less than six months!! Anyone who likes to see a buzzard soaring overhead will no doubt have a strong reaction to news like this.

Ring-necked Pheasant Phasianus colchicus 20 - 35 million released in Britain every year.

An interesting point made by the authors is that : "Although buzzards may have a minor negative impact on game populations by direct predation, this may be more than compensated by buzzard predation on other predators such as corvids which, through nest predation, may have significant impacts on the reproductive success of the wild breeding stock of pheasants." The authors go on to point out that rabbits cause damage reckoned at £180 million annually - and we know what buzzards do to rabbits! Removing buzzards may impose subtle economic penalties on land-owners as well as leading to increased numbers of foxes, which kill at least four times as many pheasants as do buzzards.

Fox Vulpes vulpes. The main predator of Pheasants

The main concern of most people who are not stakeholders in the pheasant business was that the Benyon proposal: " would inadvertently give the greenlight to wider raptor persecution - this at a time when illegal persecution already looks set to drive Hen Harriers Circus cyaneus to extinction in England." I believe that this would definitely be the case. The current laws are already ignored as it is by some.

Common Buzzard Buteo buteo

The paper makes no bones about its findings stating that: "By ignoring their population biology and interaction with other species, ad hoc local control of predators such as buzzards could just as likely exacerbate losses of pheasants as reduce them. In the future, effective game management interventions will require far more rigorous analysis of the ecological, conservation, and economic consequences of maintaining supernormal densities of introduced game species than has been achieved so far."
I'd like to bet that this will not happen. Money talks!


Common Buzzard Buteo buteo

The paper ends, as expected, with a comprehensive list of references but, it does not give a link to an online version and I only have a hard-copy.

 

A Birding Weekend in Norfolk

I spent the whole of last weekend birding in Norfolk trying to find wintering species and at the same time trying to keep as warm and dry as possible. On Friday morning I drove down to Thetford and met the rest of the guys in the car-park at Nunnery's. The first target bird was the long-staying Black-bellied Dipper Cinclus cinclus cinclus. This bird is an example of the nominate north European race with the black/brown underparts (as can be seen in the picture below). The mainland British race, gularis, has a strong chestnut area below the white breast. It was easy to find but not so easy to photograph as the light was really poor and, stupidly, I had not brought a tripod. So hand-held, 400mm lens whacked up to 1600 ISO and I could only manage 20th sec. Hence slightly blurry shots. Still, good views of the bird and a good start to the weekend's birding. Jay, Kingfisher and Marsh Tit also put in an appearance to add to the list.

Black-bellied Dipper Cinclus cinclus cinclus Thetford

A real bonus was a sighting of an Otter working its way down the bank of the river Little Ouse (I think!). It was more-or-less permanently underwater but by following the bubble trail it was possible to follow the beast underwater and plan ahead to take a picture when it momentarily broke the surface. Again the light was poor and so is the photograph.

Otter Lutra lutra on the Little Ouse in Thetford.

After Thetford it was off for a couple of hours walk around Lakenheath Fen RSPB reserve on the Suffolk-Norfolk border. A brief sighting of Bittern and a lone Whooper Swan were good to start with but we failed to see any Common Cranes. There were swift views of Bearded Tits, a couple of Stonechat and at least five Marsh Harriers hunting over the extensive reed beds. A powerful Peregrine Falcon belted along the river hoping to catch an unwary Teal or wader and so were we! But there weren't many waders to be seen apart from hundreds of Lapwing on the move - as were Fieldfare. After a good period of grubbing about at Lakenhath it was time for the mini pork-pies and then the drive to north Norfolk to our weekend's accommodation.

Whooper Swan Cygnus cygnus. The lone bird at Lakenheath

By the time we arrived at our digs it was getting dark so that was the cue to start worrying the wine that needed tackling before setting off to the local boozer for beers and food. Then it was back to do damage to the Talisker single malt!
The following morning saw a bitingly cold and strong wind with rain in the offing. But being as tough as commandos on a mission we were up and at it down at Titchwell RSPB reserve fairly early (After a leisurely full cooked breakfast, coffee, juice toast etc. - commando food) It was freezing and spitting with rain but we managed to rack-up a number of species including a female Red-crested Pochard, a good number of Brambling but unfortunately not a lot on the sea. Sea-watching was difficult as the sea was cutting-up and the wind was whistling in from the North-east blowing optics and people all over the place. It didn't seem to bother the birds though as this shot shows:

Oystercatcher  Haematopus ostralegus battling against the wind and waves at Titchwell

After Titchwell we drove down to the beach at Holme to search for a flock of approximately 80 Snow Buntings that had been reported from there. It didn't take long to locate these birds as they were very flighty and there were a lot of walkers about. We finished the day at Holkham trying to see Woodcock and Tawny Owl before heading back to the digs for more wine and more whisky.
Sunday and the wind was colder and stronger than yesterday and it was bloody freezing. Still being commandos we were out at Choseley drying barns early morning (after a leisurely full cooked breakfast, coffee, juice toast etc. - commando food). This was a good decision as we had great views of a Merlin as it came zipping through the fields and we passed a flock of at least 5 000 Pink-footed Geese searching for suitable feeding fields - a great spectacle as they flew over us in the early morning light. The hedges held good numbers of Yellowhammer and Brambling and there were a few Corn Buntings hanging about.
From Burnham Overy Staithe we walked the sea wall out to the dunes and saw virtually nothing apart from a couple of Common Scoter and a couple of Red-throated Diver out at sea. So we set off for Holkham Pines to look out from the Tower-hide for White-fronted Geese - duly found; Rough-legged Buzzard - not found and Barn Owl - found. There were at least seven Marsh Harriers competing for food over the marsh as well as three Common Buzzards, a Sparrowhawk, a couple of Kestrel and a Barn Owl. Who'd be at the bottom of the food chain?!
We twitched a Purple Sandpiper feeding in a pool in a field at Cley. Strange habitat for a Purple Sandpiper we thought but apparently feeding in freshwater pools by the sea is a well-known feeding strategy of these birds.
On the way back we had great views of a Barn Owl feeding by the side of the A149 and a number of cars had pulled over to enable the occupants photographic opportunities. So we joined them. Again poor lighting and poor photographic skills prevented me from securing some decent shots.

Barn Owl Tyto alba feeding by the side of the A149

We had to cut the birding short as the pub was calling...as was the Talisker and yet more wine. We popped into the supermarket at Wells for some milk and came out with three more bottles of wine...just in case.

Pink-footed Geese Anser brachyrhynchus - Part of a flock of at least 5 000 birds near Choseley

The tally for the weekend was 114 species which was not bad considering the iffy conditions. We had seen anumber of mammals too and quite a lot of dead things!

Pheasant Pluckers!

I am reading 'Adventures Among Birds' by W. H. Hudson. First published in 1913 it celebrates its centenary this year. It is remarkable and very sad how so little has changed or improved in a century!
The book contains 27 chapters, each a memoir or a musing or a series of anecdotes or idle meanderings amongst the world of birds. One such chapter is entitled 'The Sacred Bird'. You would not know by the title that he is discussing the Common Pheasant Phasianus cochicus. The title is ironic. To most this bird is not sacred at all but to shooters, landowners, gamekeepers and their ilk it is the most sacred bird. So sacred that all other living creatures need to be extirpated to ensure the Pheasants' happy survival...so that it too can be shot! Hudson talks of the desire of landowners to make the bird artificially abundant so that an estate which yielded a dozen or twenty birds a year to the sporstman would be made to yield a thousand. This necessitated the destruction of all the wildlife supposed in any way and in any degree to be inimical to the pheasant.

Male Pheasant - Feeding in our garden

He talks of a keeper 'Who shot all the local Nightingales because their singing kept the pheasants awake at night'. Another case is 'of an old heronry in a southern county, in the park of a great estate. On my last visit to this heronry at the breeding season I found all the nests hanging empty and desolate in the trees and was told that the head keeper had killed all the herons because their cries frightened the pheasants. They were shot on the nests after breeding had began.'


Male Pheasant - In the garden!

And I have to quote this passage: 'Another instance...throughout a mid-June day I heard the sound of firing in the woods, beginning at about eight o'clock in the morning and lasting until dark. The shooters ranged over the whole woods. I inquired of several persons as to the meaning of all this firing, and was told that the keeper was ridding the woods of some of the vermin. More than that they refused to say; but by-and-by I found a person to tell me just what had happened. The head keeper had got twenty or thirty persons, the men with guns and a number of lads with long poles with hooks to pull nests down, and had set himself to rid the woods of birds that were not wanted. all nests found, of whatever species, were pulled down, and all doves, woodpeckers, nuthatches, blackbirds, missel- and song-thrushes shot; also chaffinches and many other small birds. The keeper said he was not going to have the place swarming with birds that were no good for anything, and were always eating the pheasants' food'.
Now I suspect things have altered very little. I was enjoying a few pints of the local bitter in a pub in North-west Norfolk last Sunday evening talking to an acquantance who lives there. I had been out walking during the day and I had seen upwards of five Ban Owls Tyto alba and I had just finished mentioning this fact when he informed me that he had erected a Barn Owl box in his garden but was getting little joy out of it due to the local jackdaws moving in. Furthermore he was becomoing increasingly concerned about the number of Barn Owls being shot by local farmers because they were suspected of tacking pheasant chicks. I didn't know that his was happening...was it even legal? I love to see Barn Owls, I'm not too bothered about the semi-domesticated Pheasant. Then I was told that this same farmer had killed 46 Foxes last year. 46!! all caught in snares. When he was asked if this was legal the farmer replied that it was, so long as the snares are checked every 24 hours. I couldn't believe what I was hearing!

Close-up of greater coverts of a dead Jay's wing
 

The following day we went for a walk around Holkham Park - we were there for three hours and the sound of guns going off never stopped. We only came across one shooter wandering home carring his dead pheasants. But we did find a recently deceased Jay Garrulus glandarius lying at the edge of a field. There were no obvious signs of how this bird had met its end. It clearly had not flown into anything, it had not been attacked... we suspect that it had been shot. Was it vermin? Was it a danger to the sacred pheasant chicks or was it just a laugh to shoot it!

Short-eared Owl study

There have been up to five wintering Short-eared Owls Asio flammeus on a disused pit top in Gedling, Notts over the past couple of weeks and I had been toying with the idea of a visit for a few days when a phone call from a mate last night gave me the impetus I needed. I arrived at just past 09.00 this morning and there were a number of dog-walkers enjoying the frozen snowy conditions. However, it did not take me long to locate two birds and they provided me ample opportunity to take some photographs.

The Atlas of Wintering Birds in Britain and Ireland published in 1986 by the BTO opens the account of Short-eared Owl thus: 'Floating low down with a wavering and rolling flight, punctuated by occasional glides before banking and wheeling high on stiff narrow wings, the Short-eared Owl provides a welcome winter encounter'.

This is a perfect description of the flight of these two birds this morning. They appeared to be quite tolerant of the dog walkers and me, plus camera but they did not seem to be actively hunting for food.

 

Both birds frequently landed next to tufts of dead rushes or sedges until eventually both of them settled down out of sight and out of the way of the dogs.

 

 

 

It is known that a variable but frequently large number of these birds arrive from the continent each winter. Arrival can begin as early as late August but most seem to arrive in November. A lot of our own home birds move off to the coast and into mainland Europe so it is possible that the bird on Gedling Pit-top are continental ones.

This site is pretty reliable for wintering Short-eared Owls and as it is known that communal roosts on the ground amongst tall coarse grasses, heather, sedges and scrub are used over many years this site is likely to hold a few of these birds for a few more years to come.

A few years back it was also possible to see up to six birds wintering in the scrub land near to Netherfield Lagoons, just a few miles from this site. I haven't seen any there for some years. Perhaps birds moved from there to the Pit-top which is now the prime site.

 

Although these birds are opportunistic feeders taking and eating whatever prey they are able to catch their main food item is the field vole and I suspect that there are plenty of these here. However, I shouldn't imagine that thick snow and hard ground would help the Owls' cause much.

The Breeding Atlas says that the mid-winter population of Short-eared Owls is likely to be in the range of 5,000 - 50,000 individuals for Britain and Ireland which is only a tiny fraction of this bird's world population.

 

The black patches around the distinctively yellow eyes are clear on this individual as is the pale face. The Collins Field Guide says the bird has a 'mean expression'...more quizzical I'd say. Notice the white trailing edge to the wing on this bird - this is a good way to distinguish Short-eared Owl from Long-eared Owl which lacks this feature.

Don't rely on length of ear tufts - short and long - as these are practically invisible in flight in both species. No sign of any tufts on these birds as you can (not) see!

The photo above shows off the very long, narrow and fairly pointed wings and the obviously rounded head. Another good feature by which to tell the two species apart, which is clear in this photo, is the almost solidly black wing-tip with only one clear bar inside the tip. Long-eared have evenly barred wing-tips with several distinct bars. Notice that the belly is un-streaked and the breast is streaked - another good way to distinguish the two species as the Long-eared Owl tends to have the streaking extending over the belly

 

During the time I was present neither bird made any sound and this is what I have come to expect of this species during the winter. I suppose that if your main hunting technique is to hear your prey it pays to keep silent!

 

 

 

Furthermore!

Warming to my subject I'll continue.  I grant that there needs to be more than just two species of gull. What of the rare gulls not mentioned in the previous post? I was coming to that. As well as the super-species of Tip Gull Larus refusicus, and Seagull Larus briney I propose that we lump all or nearly all of the rarer gulls into a single species to be known as: Vagrant Gull Larus properlostitis. Here be all of those North American jobbies that look the same (Franklin's/Laughing!!) and the northern white-winged birds and those that you only ever see somewhere near Oban. We can lump these with those from the Med. i.e. Med...and Slender-billed and Audouin's. Now we have three species of gull!

Vagrant Gull!

Another Vagrant Gull

Tip Gull!

 This leaves the highly dodgy gulls. Those that turn up at London reservoirs and landfill sites late Tuesday evening and have disappeared by first light on Wednesday. They are often called Flaky-backed or Streaky-backed Gull or Glaucous-thinged Gull. These just don't exist. I suggest we call them Gullible Larus easilytakeniniwas. No more driving through the night to reach some shoddy, dodgy wet patch or tip to look for iffy gulls. No more struggling with primary mirrors, secondary windows, assessing grey tones (which, let's be honest are grey). Moult strategies, feather-wear, colour abnormalities and bare-part colouration can all be lobbed in the bin. Not needed anymore.

                                                                                    A pair of Very Vagrant Gulls

                                                                               More Vagrant Gulls

Identification will be straight forward. If you're on a boat or falling down a cliff or off the end of a pier and you see a gull it's guaranteed to be a Seagull. If you are near a dump, an industrial estate or eating fish and chips and you see a gull it's a Tip Gull. If you are lost on the west coast of Scotland  it's a Vagrant Gull.  If you are anywhere near London it's a Gullible.There no problem!

 

Tip Gulls

When I was very, very young I went through a dodgy period of 'stamp collecting.' It was a worrying time as I became more and more engrossed in amassing a collection of 'Decimal Definitives.' These are the everyday stamps you used to stick on letters way before texts and emails made such a form of communication virtually obsolete. Now there were loads of these...enough to keep the most anal-retentive collector happy for years. The good old P.O. kept issuing ever more as the cost of postage rose. However, it all got a bit out of hand when 'Proper' collectors started paying a premium for stamps with different glues. I kid ye not. Some stamps were different because they sported Gum-Arabic on the back instead of Bostick, or Prit-stick on the reverse instead of super-glue. The latter were the most expensive due to their rarity as they stuck fast to your tongue when licked or some such. So I sold them. Now I think the same applies to gulls. As a rule I'm all in favour of splitting...more ticks means more goodness. But gulls...come on! How far can it go? I remember with fondness pre-Caspian/Yellow-legged/American/Armenian/Kumlien's times. Before these birds were born. When a Lesser Black-backed Gull was just that, not a fuscus/intermedius/graellsii job. And when there were just Common Gulls and kamtschatschensis wasn't invented. I can't keep-up and worse still I can't identify all of these when I see flocks of gulls. So I have a suggestion. Lumping!

Mixed flock of Tip Gulls -' Larus refusica'

I suggest that taxonomists or cladeists or whatever look very closely at similarities between gulls and begin to lump them back together to ease landfill-site identification. A good start would be to stick all the truly pelagic gulls such as Kittiwake and Sabine's together under the old moniker 'Seagull.' Next up would be the mainly land loving gulls, basically all the rest. These I would lump as a new species: Tip Gull - Larus refusica. You could have a few subspecies viz: Big Black Tip Gull, Greyish Tip Gull and Small Blurry Tip Gull.

More Tip Gulls

If this happy situation came to pass I would not have to spend time out in the freezing cold as I did today looking for a first-winter Glaucous Gull amongst a gabillion other gulls constantly flapping about. The sky seemed to be full of gulls wheeling about and I spent all the time mentally saying "What's that?" "What's that?" and "What's that?" I'd know what they were... they'd all be Tip Gulls!

Yet more Tip Gulls

No I didn't find the Glauc.