Category Archives: Birds of prey

Owl Outing to Burwell Fen

Posted on April 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

The short eared owl is resident in northern England and Scotland where breeding populations reside, but in my part of East Anglia,near Cambridge, they are only seen in winter time when migrants from Scandinavia arrive.

A really good place to see short eared owls is Burwell Fen a few miles to the east of Cambridge. it’s a wide open scrubby space bordered by farmland and by Wicken Fen which is managed by the National trust and is itself an important nature reserve.

I went there with some friends who hadn’t seen a short eared owl before and were excited at the possibility, and as with all things natural, even though I was reasonably confident we would see one, there’s never any certainty. We met up there one afternoon in early January and within 5-10 minutes one appeared hunting over the grassland.

Short eared owl – Asio flammeus – quartering the Fen

I don’t know if the cattle that were grazing the Fen were flushing the voles that the owls feed on but this one seemed to be spending a lot of time hunting around the cattle.

One owl taking exception to a second one encroaching into it’s space

As we watched over the Fen for the next couple of hours at least 3-4 owls were in the air, and here’s photographic evidence that were at least two!

It was a bright sunny winter afternoon in January and because of the time of year the sun was low in the sky all day and the light was spectacular. It lit up the Fen, which can appear grey and featureless on a cloudy winter day, in gorgeous pink and orange hues. It was beautiful to look at but challenging to photograph! And before the sun sunk below the horizon a barn owl also appeared to hunt small rodents.

A ghostly barn owl – Tyto alba – appeared just before dusk, the night shift replacing the day shift

And shortly after the sun sunk below the horizon in a polychromatic blaze of colour…

By now it was too dark to see the wildlife, and too cold to linger, but it had been a wonderful introduction to the Fen and to short eared owls for my friends!

Springtime Fenland birdlife

Posted on June 8, 2020 | 4 comments

After my last post, my long time blogging friend, Scott, mentioned in a comment that he was reading a book set in my part of the world, viz the fenland of East Anglia. And that reminded me that during the Covid lockdown we’ve beeen allowed to drive a few miles to exercise outdoors, and back in April I ventured over to a local fen for a walk with my camera.

The Fens are a unique ecosystem characterised by lakes, reed beds and low scrub which create habitat for a wide range of wildlife and they’re a great place to see flowers, birds, mammals and reptiles. It was a glorious sunny day when I was there and the wildlife was abundant, including this male reed bunting who posed beautifully for his portrait:

Reed bunting Ouse Fen 18 Apr 2020_3015 Reed bunting (Dansk – Rørspurv, Latin – Emberiza schoeniclus)

Cuckoos (Dansk – gøg, Latin – Cuculus canorus) were cuckoo’ing all around the Fen – it’s apparently a good year for cuckoos here in the UK, and I heard one for the first time ever in the village a few weeks ago – and bittern (Dansk – rørdrum, Latin – Botaurus stellaris) were booming. The bittern is a smallish brown heron which lives and breeds in reedbeds and is extremely rare in the UK, only 191 males were recorded in the UK by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) in 2017. Their booming call is an amazing sound and it can carry for over a kilometre. It’s difficult to find a recording that really does it justice but if you click on the link this one hopefully gives you a good idea of what they sound like. Even though when they boom they’re very disticntive and easy to hear, they’re not easy to see unless in flight as they blend in perfectly with the background of the reedbeds. But one of these days I hope I can post one of my own pictures of a bittern to show you.

However, one bird that is easy to see is the marsh harrier:

Marsh harrier Ouse Fen 18 Apr 2020_3040 Marsh harrier (Dansk – Rørhøg , Latin – Circus aeruginosus)

The marsh harrier is another one of the British birds of prey whose numbers have recovered significantly since the 1960’s presumably after the pesticide DDT was banned, and this one is a male hunting small mammals or birds over the low scrub of the fen.

The marsh harrier is a constant on the Fen, and it seems the bittern may be coming one too, which is fantastic. But the cuckoo isn’t, they’ve laid their eggs for the host species to rear and will soon be heading back on the perilous journey to the rainforests of sub-Saharan west Africa, hopefully to return to the UK next year to fill the spring air with their wonderfully distinctive call.

4 Comments

Posted in Birds of prey, buntings, fen, harriers, Herons, Migrants, Ouse Fen, Pesticides, reedbed

Tagged bittern, cuckoo, DDT, marsh harrier, Ouse Fen, Pesticides, UK birdlife

The mighty osprey

Posted on June 30, 2018 | 2 comments

As well as the ducks in the previous post, other water birds were in abundance at Rutland including the coot (Fulica atra, Dansk – blishøne):

A coot returning to the nest to incubate its single egg

And the great crested grebe (Podiceps cristatus, Dansk – toppet lappedykker):

But the one Rutland migrant I really wanted to see was the osprey (Pandion haliaetus, Dansk – fiskeørn). The osprey makes the monumental migration from sub-Saharan west Africa every year to breed in the UK and one of the locations it regularly breeds at is Rutland Water. And I wasn’t disapointed:

The osprey takes 3 weeks or so of flying time to get from west Africa to the UK and according tho the BTO can cover up to 430km in one day. It stops off en route for a couple of weeks to refuel on its way south, but only for a few days when heading north to try to arrive early at the breeding grounds. It’s a fishing eagle which plucks fish out of the water of lakes, rivers or coastal seas, but alas I wasn’t lucky enough to see one hunting. Despite the lack of hunting activity, as this was the first one I’d seen in England (I’d only ever previously seen one at Loch Garten in Scotland) this was very special indeed!

2 Comments

Posted in Birds of prey, Eagles, Lakes and rivers, Migrants, Rails and crakes, Rutland Water, water birds

Tagged coot, great crested grebe, migrant, osprey, Rutland Water

The great grey shrike

Posted on April 20, 2017 | Leave a comment

Back in January there was a report of a great grey shrike at Wicken Fen and I’d never seen one before so I decided to go and have a look.

A distant tree across the reedbeds through the thick early morning mist

It was a very grey morning and not really one of those that gives me high hopes of seeing much wildlife, but the shrike put in the very briefest of appearances, probably less than 2 seconds, so short I couldn’t photograph it, but it was a striking bird! It was bigger and paler than I thought, and with its piratical black eye stripe it was completely unmistakeable. And despite my initial pessimism there was lots of birdlife around that morning.

Fieldfare (Turdus pilaris, Dansk: sjagger)

The Tower Hide at Wicken Fen is usually a good place to survey the area and see the local birdlife, and as the shrike had appeared very close to it I climbed the stairs to see if it would reappear and pose for a portrait. Unfortunately it didn’t, but all the following pictures are from the top of the Tower Hide:

Redwing (Turdus iliacus, Dansk: vindrossel)

The redwing and the fieldfare are winter visitors in the UK, making the flight here from Scandinavia as the weather turns cold there for the winter.

A pale male bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula, Dansk: dompap)

This male bullfinch may have appeared a little more washed out than he actually was. Or he may have been a youngster or waiting for some warmer weather to change into his sumptuous breeding regalia.

Long tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus, Dansk: halemajse)

And finally…

A kestrel (Falco tinnunculus,Dansk: tårnfalk)

The drops of condensate clinging to the twigs around the kestrel give a fair indication of the prevailing weather – it was very cold… and very damp!

Rainham shorties

Posted on January 8, 2017 | 13 comments

This is the last post from my trip to Rainham Marshes, and as I promised in the last one, here are a selection of the best short eared owl shots from that day. The shorties are winter visitors to the UK from Scandinavia so the east coast is a good place to look for them, and it was a wonderful way to spend a couple of hours, as numerous owls were flying past at very close range, making it pretty easy to get some good pictures as they quartered the reedbeds and the beach:

These are my favourite images from that trip to the marshes of estuary Essex and it was a tremendous way to spend a day, all rounded off with the best display of owls owls I’ve ever seen. Hope you like them too! And as this is my first post of 2017, a belated happy new year to you all too

13 Comments

Posted in Birds of prey, Owls, Rainham Marshes

Tagged Asio flammeus, Essex, Rainham Marshes, short eared owl, Thames estuary

More Rainham wildlife

Posted on December 27, 2016 | 8 comments

The terrain at Rainham Marshes is fairly varied with beach, river, lakes, reedbeds, scrub and grassland amidst the industrial conurbation of the Thames Estuary. And with varied terrain comes varied birdlife including wader, ducks, birds of prey and passerines:

A lone black tailed godwit (Limosa limosa, Dansk: stor kobber-sneppe) amongst a group of teal (Anas crecca, Dansk: krikand) at the lakeside with reedbeds in the background

As well as godwit a small flock of lapwing (Vanellus vanellus, Dansk: vibe) would occasionally lift of the ground as an alarm was raised over some perceived threat, circle around for a minute or two before returning to where they were flushed from. I’ve seen that kind of behaviour before in response to the sighting of a predator such as a peregrine falcon, but I didn’t see any predators of that ilk so maybe an unseen ground predator such as a fox was in the vicinity.

And across another section of reedbed was the raised Eurostar train track and a transport depot full of trucks just beyond

And I love this image of another stonechat craning from the top of a bulrush to keep a wary eye on what we were up to:

We had heard a report that at the far end of the reserve toward the landfill hill there were short eared owls in the area, and later on in the afternoon we decided to wander down that way to see if we could find them. And it didn’t take long…

Short eared owl (Asio flammeus, Dansk: mosehornugle) patrolling the reedbeds

And that heralded the start of probably the best display of owl activity of any species that I’ve ever seen. And I’ll post some more shorty pictures next time. But isn’t this guy a beauty?!

8 Comments

Posted in Birds, Birds of prey, Ducks, Lakes and rivers, Ornithology, Owls, Rainham Marshes, reedbed, UK wildlife, Waders, water birds

Tagged Anas crecca, Asio flammeus, black tailed godwit, ducks, Essex, Limosa limosa, Rainham Marshes, Saxicola rubicola, short eared owl, stonechat, teal, Thames estuary, waders

Rainham Marshes

Posted on November 11, 2016 | 10 comments

Normally when I head out into the wilds I like to get to somewhere where there is little or no evidence of humans, my benchmark for a good place is the complete absence of human noise. And that’s not usually easy to do. But on this trip back in December I found myself in a place that was everything I’d normally avoid!

A view across the marshes to the hill in the background which is an enormous landfill site, full of Londan’s waste

I was at the RSPB reserve at Rainham Marshes which is in that part of estuary Essex I’d only normally visit if I had to, but apart from that it was bordered by industry on one side, landfill on another, a motorway and the Eurostar trainline on the third side and the River Thames providing the boundary on the fourth, southern, edge. But despite my original prejudice it turned out to be a brilliant place to see some great wildlife and bizarrely it was actually enhanced by the hubbub going on all around.

Stonechat (Saxicola rubicola, Dansk: sortstrubet bynkefugl)

On entering the reserve, just beyond the visitor centre a male stonechat was perched on a twig close by, and I like stonechats – they’re very smart birds – so I took it as a good omen that I would see lots more wildlife. And the little guy was indeed a harbinger of things to come. Despite its green conservation status and being a resident in the UK, I don’t see stonechats very often, so I was pleased to see this one so close by.

The terrain at Rainham is interesting. It’s a combination of marshy reedbeds, small lakes, grassy scrub and in the middle is a disused military shooting range which I think dates back to the world wars. But altogether it’s a little oasis of wilderness in the midst of the industrial devastation that dominates this part of the Thames estuary to the east of London.

Reeds, wigeon, lake, lapwing and in the distance a marsh harrier perched on a fence with an oil storage facility in the background

The marsh harrier (Circus aeruginosus, Dansk: rørhøg) is a magnificent bird of prey which I see fairly frequently as they quarter the low lying fenland that prevails to the north and east of Cambridge and the occasional one drifts through over the fields where I live, and here was a female showing her prominent golden crown, hunting over the marshes at Rainham. This species of harrier is another bird of prey which was virtually driven to extinction in the UK but has recovered in the last 40 years, presumably as the use of DDT ceased. And in the foreground on the island in the lake were wigeon (Anas penelope, Dansk: pibeand), lapwing (Vanellus vanellus, Dansk vibe) an unidentified gull and what I think may be starlings.

The lapwing take flight in front of a pair of huge wind turbines

May be there were so many species and numbers here because they were hemmed in to a small area of suitable habitat, but further east along the estuary, deeper into Essex, there are huge areas of tidal mudflats on the Thames and other river estuaries, so this could be the western extremes of that expanse of habitat. Either way, the diversity of the birdlife here on the marshes was remarkable.

A male shoveller looking resplendent and with that enormous beak to the fore

I said further back up this post that the southern boundary of the reserve is the river Thames, and to make the point, beyond the dyke which provided protection from the coastal tides of the river, a ship headed out to sea…

It really is a diverse and fascinating place! And somewhere I’m hoping to visit again before the winter is over.

10 Comments

Posted in Birds of prey, Ducks, harriers, Rainham Marshes, UK wildlife, Waders

Tagged birds of prey, lapwing, London wildlife, marsh harrier, Rainham Marshes, River Thames, shoveller, stonechat, waders

Fenland falcon

Posted on January 30, 2016 | 9 comments

A few Saturdays ago in January I made a trip to Burwell Fen, which is separated from Wicken Fen by the Burwell Lode. The whole area is a great place to see birds of prey in winter, and it’s not unusual to see buzzard, marsh harrier, short eared owl, barn owl, sparrowhawk, peregrine falcon, occasionally hen harrier and in the summer hobby. And it’s also not unusual to see 4 or 5 species in one visit. On this trip I saw marsh harrier, buzzard, short eared owl and sparrowhawk. And there were kestrels hovering over the fenland the whole time I was there.

A male kestrel (Falco tinnuculus, Dansk: tårnfalk)

Kestrels are renowned for their ability to seemingly hover. In fact they’re flying into the wind at the same speed as the wind is moving, so I guess it’s not technically a hover, but either way it’s impressive to watch. Incidentally, there were strong winds in my part of the world last weekend and I saw a buzzard which looked to be doing a reasonable impersonation of a kestrel… which gives you a good idea of how strong the wind was!

I’ve seen kestrels described as the ‘motorway falcon‘ because many sightings are of them hovering above roadside verges. This has created the impression that kestrels are very common and that the countryside between the roads must be full of them. But alas, as with most things, that’s not so. It’s not the presence of other raptors which has forced them to the roadside but the large swathes of agricultural devastation which has depleted habitat and rendered the farmland barren as a source of food for them. Consequently, they’re nowhere near as common as they may seem.

This male kestrel was perched on top of a telegraph pole and I’d been keeping an eye on him for several minutes to see what he might do. It was a beautiful sunny morning with good light for some photograsphs if I could get myself, the sun and the subject all in the right place relative to each other.

And after a few minutes the kestrel took off from his post, looped around and did a low altitude, high speed fly past. At his closest he was no more than ten metres or so away and less than a metre above the ground, like he was posing for his picture! He executed his fly past and then swooped up higher and zoomed off over the fen on a hunting trip.

It was a remarkable twenty seconds and I don’t know why he looped past so close to where I was. It almost looked as though he was checking me out, and in the last picture he was definitely looking in my direction. It made my morning too, kestrels are spectacular and beautiful highly specialised predators, and it’s rare to see one in the air so close.

9 Comments

Posted in Birds, Birds of prey, Burwell Fen, Countryside walks, Falcons, Ornithology, UK wildlife

Tagged Burwell Fen, Falc tinnunculus, kestrel, unusual bird of prey behaviour

Celtic Damsels

Posted on December 19, 2014 | 7 comments

This will be the last post from my trip to Scotland in 2014 during which we made an early morning visit to the osprey nest at RSPB Loch Garten to hopefully catch a glimpse of one of these magnificent predators. There was an adult on the nest but without more magnification than I had I couldn’t get up close (but it looked spectacular through binoculars!):

An adult osprey , Pandion haliaetus, Dansk: fiskeørn, perched on the nest

The ospreys overwinter in sub Saharan West Africa and are another great conservation success story. Despite that they’re conservation status is still amber with only 200 pairs in the UK. They can cover up to 275 miles a day on migration and they stop off on the way south for a couple of weeks to feed up, they also stop on the way north, but only for a few days,to ensure they arrive at the breeding grounds as early as possible to maximise the length of available time for the actual breeding.

Whilst at RSPB Loch Garten we got an excellent steer from one of the RSPB girls on a couple of pools in the forest where we could find dragonflies. It had been a grey morning, but as we arrived at one of the pools the sun emerged, and with it, the dragons. I’ve already posted dragon pictures from these sites in an earlier post, and here are some more images of mating damsels:

Northern damselfy pair, Coenagrion hastelatum

The northern damsels are in tandem, the blue male is clasping the female prior to escorting her around the pool to find suitable egg laying sites. Large red damsels were also mating over the pool at the same time:

Large red damsels, Pyrrhosoma nymphula, in the process of egg laying under the water

I think this picture of the large red damsels is the best insect photo I’ve ever taken. I like it because they’re in motion and in the process of doing something, and the shadows are cool! The large red can only really be confused with the small red, but the small red has red legs and doesn’t have the yellow bands which can be seen on the female in this picture.

I also like this floating spider:

I don’t know what species the spider is, I’ve never seen one like it anywhwere else. The markings are distinctive and it may be the same species as the one in the previous post, but I was assured by the experts at the British Arachnological Society that it could only be unambiguously identified by microscopic examination after dissection.

The majestic Scots pine trees of the Abernethy Forest

The two dragonfly pools were in the Abernethy Forest. I think it’s difficult to convey the atmosphere of a forest in photographs because the temperature and humidity, the sounds and the smells, all contribute to the feeling of a forest, and none of these can be captured in a photograph. Even the light is difficult to capture because the camera settings required to give a good quality image don’t necessarily recapitulate what it actually looked and felt like. So the picture above of the Scots pines of the Abernethy Forest is the best I could do, but having said all that stuff, in the absence of all the other sensory inputs it does convey a little bit of my memories of the forest. I hope you know what I mean and I hope you like it!

As I mentioned at the top of this post, this is the last installment of my ‘Cairngorm Chronicles‘. It was a fabulous trip and we saw some breathtakingly beautiful places and lots of wildlife. I can’t wait to go back and see more creatures peculiar to that part of the world such as grouse, ptarmigan, capercaillie and red deer, as well as the ones I missed on this trip such as crested tit and crossbill. So much to see and so little time…

7 Comments

Posted in Birds, Birds of prey, Damselflies, Eagles, Forest, Insects, Loch Garten, Pine forest, UK wildlife, Zygoptera

Tagged Abernethy Forest, arachnids, Cairngorms, damsel flies, large red damselfly, migrant birds, northern damselfly, osprey, photography, pine forest

Tyto alba

Posted on March 18, 2014 | 28 comments

A few posts ago in ‘The Owl and the Woodpecker‘ I mentioned that a pair of robins may have started getting fruity in my garden as early as the begining of January. And then last Friday I saw another robin feeding a fledgling on the grass outside work, so it looks as though the avian breeding cycle may have been able to start early this year. I hope it has, and that it allows other species to recover some of their numbers too.

Also in that post, I talked about our local barn owls, of which we had two breeding pairs in and around the village last year. And one gloriously sunny evening in July myself and my daughter, Sophie, set off across the fields with a portable hide, binoculars and a camera to try to see the owls and take some photographs. I know where the owls nest so we tried to get in position to see them heading to and from the nest site via a circuitous route to avoid disturbing them.

A barn owl, Tyto alba, heading out on a hunting mission

We eventually found a spot at the top of a drainage ditch between two fields around 150m from the shed where the owls had built the nest, and we didn’t have to wait long for them to appear. Truth be told I’ve always had a thing about all owls, but especially barn owls. I think they’re beautiful and iconic creatures, and very reminiscent of warm summers evenings in the English countryside. It’s always an exciting moment when I catch sight of one.

And the other thing that struck me as we sat and watched these was how they are incredibly efficient predators:

…and heading back again clutching the booty

We sat and watched them coming and going for about an hour and in that time they arrived 6 times with prey. So on average every 10 minutes one of the parents returned with a meal for a youngster, this one was carrying a rodent in its talons which it delivered to the nest, spent a couple of minutes with the youngsters, then departed on the next foray.

And another meal being delivered

And they carried on hunting into the dusk at which point we upped sticks and headed for home. I don’t know how long the owls carried on hunting but the parents seemed to be so successful that they may not have needed to carry on for much longer, after which they would have spent the night at a roost site separate from the nest with the youngsters in.

It was a glorious evening and Sophie was beside herself as one of the owls flew right overhead and looked straight at her, as barn owls are wont to do, as she looked straight at it. A memory that will stay with me, and her I hope, for a very long time!