Category Archives: water birds

More bird diversity from RSPB Titchwell

Posted on May 29, 2023 | Leave a comment

RSPB Titchwell has a ‘linear’ layout encompassing various habitats and that make it a good place to see a diverse range of bird species. Following on from my last post here are few more waders, wildfowl and geese that were in residence when I was last there in November last year.

Shoveler pair – Spatula clypeata

The shoveler inhabits shallow lakes and marshland where there is open water and it can be seen all year round in the UK. It breeds in the UK before heading south for the winter when the breeding population is replaced by visitors migrating south from Scandinavia and eastern Europe. The size of the UK breeding population is around 1100 pairs.

Brent geese – Branta bernicla

The distribution of brent geese in the UK is interesting because their are three separate overwintering groups which migrate here to the UK. They come from Canada, Svalbard and Russia and overwinter primarily in Strangford Lough in Ulster, Lindisfarne in the UK and the rest of the UK respectively. There are 100-110,000 birds recorded annually in the UK but in the case of the Canadian and Svalbard visitors it’s easy to see how human activity could profoundly affect those very local populations. As these individuals were seen in Norfolk I guess they from the Russian cohort.

A flock of lapwing – Vanellus vanellus and golden plover – Pluvialis apricaria

Golden plover have a distinctive black face and breast stretching down to its legs in the summer but which fades to pale brown to white in the winter so the birds in this group all have their winter plumage which I would expect as this was in mid-November. The golden plover is resident all year in the UK with 33,000 breeding pairs in 2016 according the BTO and 410,000 individuals recorded in the winter of 2006-7 as the population swells in autumn as migrants arrive from the north.

The lapwing is for me an iconic bird and a sign of summer and I remember seeing big flocks of them over the farmland close to where I grew up in Northamptonshire. It’s now rare to see such flocks inland although I still see mixed flocks of lapwing and golden plover over the Cambridgeshire fens in the winter time. And that is refected in this mixed flock on the ground at Titchwell and it’s interesting to see the species separation on the ground.

RSPB Titchwell is a great place for a day out to see lots of wildlife in summer and winter. There is always something wonderful to see including migrants at the right times of year and I consider myself very lucky to live close enough to it to be able to make day trips there.

Fenland floods

Posted on April 24, 2022 | 2 comments

Because the land is very flat to the north of Cambridge there is a lot of infrastructure to deal with flooding and that includes extensive flood relief around Earith. A couple of weekends ago there were lots of waders and ducks making the most of the flood waters there including black tailed godwit and blue winged teal (Spatula discors), an unusual visitor from north America.

**A flock of black tailed godwit (*Limosa limosa*)**

The birds were too far away to photograph individuals but we estimated there were 2-300 in total. There were many other birds on the water and mixed in with this group were teal (Anas crecca), redshank (Tringa totanus) and the ubiquitous black headed gulls (Chroicocephalus ridibundus). We didn’t see the blue winged teal but the regular teal, shoveller, redshank and godwit more than made up for that.

Right at the start of the walk there were two coot nests, one was being sat on and the other was in the final stages of construction.

**Female coot (*Fulica atra*) busily building her nest platform above the water**

And whilst the female was occupied with home making, the male was otherwise engaged defending his territory and squaring up to another male:

Unfortunately all this mating activity was to no avail, on the same walk a week later the flood water had receded and both the coot nesting sites were left high and dry and were deserted. But there is a huge area here which is suitable breeding habitat for coots so hopefully they found somewhere a tad more permanent

It was a bright and sunny spring morning and the route was regularly punctuated by the song of chiffchaffs which could be seen flitting around the trees. And then this little chap popped up right in front of us on a bramble just a few feet away

**Chiffchaff (*Phylloscopus collybita*) posing for a portrai**t

The chiffchaff has a distinctive song from which it gets its name and is one of the first migrant warblers to arrive back in the UK from its winter feeding grounds in north Africa. It can be heard as early as late February and at this time of year there are many of them singing in the tree tops.

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Posted in Ducks, Fens, Ouse Fen, Waders, water birds

Tagged black tailed godwit, chiffchaff, coot, ducks, Earith, flood water, waders, water birds

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 courtship of the great crested grebe

Posted on December 26, 2018 | 2 comments

Last year I went to Rutland Water to see osprey, but the real stars of that day were this pair of great crested grebe (Podiceps cristatus, Dansk: toppet lappedykker) performing their courtship ritual.

Many birds have sophisticated courtship displays and the grebe is one of them. They paddled away from each other then turned about and paddled rapidly together:

And when they met they reared up and neck sparred after they had both reached down into the water and plucked a beak full of weed to offer as a gift to their partner.

I’d never seen this display before and paddling furiously to stay high in the water this pair put on a terrific display of mutual weed waggling.

And it seemed to pay off as they were still paired up after all the frenetic courting activity…

The ospreys were magnificent but this humble pair of grebes stole the show!

2 Comments

Posted in Birds, Grebes, Rutland Water, water birds

Tagged bird courtship display, great crested grebe, Podiceps cristatus, Rutland Water, toppet lappedykker

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!

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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 most understated of ducks

Posted on June 29, 2018 | Leave a comment

I like ducks because they’re often easy to find, often colourful, and therefore also relatively straightforward to identify. And I always prefer it when I know what I’m looking at.

Last April (2017 that is) I spent a really gorgeous spring day at Rutland Water which is about 45 minutes north west of Cambridge and is an enormous U shaped reservoir and nature reserve. There was lots of wildlife to see including ospreys(!) of which more in a later post. But first off I wanted to post this picture of the humble gadwall (Anas strepera, Dansk – knarand). At a distance on a dull grey winters day they can appear drab – understated even – the duck equivalent of an ‘LBJ‘. But on a bright sunny day when they reveal themselves in all their finery I think they’re really handsome birds:

A pair of gadwall – the male on the left and the female on the right

Being springtime the birds were also feeling fruity and this blackheaded gull was being a tad over ambitious when he tried to surprise his lady while she was perched on top of a narrow post:

Amorous, but ultimately unsuccessful, black headed gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus, Dansk – hættemåge) on final approach

Not surprisingly all he ended up with was somewhere to perch

A pair of tufted duck (Aythya fulligula, Dansk – troldand)

Tufted ducks are a species of diving duck which are resident here throughout the year and are relatively unfussy about their habitat, so consequently they’re fairly ubiquitous in this part of the world. They also have a prominent crest which unfortunately neither of this pair were displaying. But as with a lot of ducks, easy to see and easy to identify.

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

Conder Green

Posted on September 9, 2016 | 10 comments

A few weeks after the outing to Norfolk I wrote about in the last few posts, I found myself in a place called Conder Green, which lies on a small tributary of the River Lune in Lancashire, with Morecambe Bay to the west and the Lake District to the north east. I stayed in a hotel which was on the Lancaster Canal and surrounded by farmland, and there was lots of wildlife in the immediate vicinity.

Little egret at dusk on the Glasson Branch of the Lancaster Canal (Egretta garzetta, Dansk: silkehejre)

The little egret, or indeed egrets in general, were birds I had always associated with more exotic parts of the world. The first time I saw them in numbers they were perched on fish stalls in the market at Victoria, the capital of the Seychelles. Their numbers have been steadily increasing in England after they first began to colonise here in 1988 having moved across the water from France, where they had also been expanding their range northwards. But to see one in Lancashire reminded how far north and west they have migrated compared to the location of my first sighting!

Moorhen (Gallinula chloropus, Dansk: grønbenet rørhøne)

Goldeneye female on the Lancaster Canal (Bucephela clangula, Dansk: hvinand)

The moorhen and the goldeneye were on the canal adjacent to my hotel, and in the field next to that was a hare which appeared at first sight remarkably unfazed by my presence, until I got just a little too close, and then common sense prevailed and it did what hares do best, and ran:

The European brown hare (Lepus europaeus)

I was pretty happy with these two shots, I’ve previously got some good pictures of hares by creeping up on them very slowly when they’re sitting tight, but I’ve never got a good picture of a hare in full flight before.

The hare is a member of a taxonomic group called ‘Lagomorphs‘ along with rabbits and pikas. It’s a group that has been around for 90 million years, so hare-like creatures may have been running around with dinosaurs. The modern version evolved in central Europe but only since the UK split away, geologically that is, from mainland Europe. So it is thought that it was introduced to these islands around 2000 years ago by the Romans.

Wigeon (Anas penelope, Dansk: pibeand)

Just a short walk from the field where the hare was is the River Lune, which appears to be tidal as it’s so close to the coast of Morecambe Bay, so when the tide’s out there are extensive mudflats for waders and ducks including these wigeon, and I’ve also seen teal and curlew here:

Curlew (Numenius arquata, Dansk: storspove)

This bird, with its unfeasibly enormous beak, was one of a flock of around 100 curlew, and that’s an extremely unusual sight these days.

10 Comments

Posted in Birds, Conder Green, Ducks, Farmland, Lancashire, Migrants, Morecambe Bay, Ornithology, Seabirds, Tidal mudflat, UK wildlife, Waders, water birds

Tagged Conder Green, curlew, ducks, goldeneye, hare, Lancashire, Lancaster Canal, little egret, moorhen, shorebirds, waders, wigeon

More ducks and more waders at RSPB Titchwell

Posted on September 6, 2016 | 5 comments

This is the final instalment from my trip to Norfolk when I ended up at the RSPB reserve at Titchwell. Even though it was in the middle of January and it had been ferociously cold at 6.30am before the sun rose and warmed the earth, by midday it was a bright, sunny and warm day. Perfect conditions really for a trip to the coast to see the wildlife.

A raft of shovellers (Anas clypeata, Dansk: skeand)

The reserve at Titchwell consists of two fresh water lakes separated from the sea by a high dune. And to the west lies an expanse of scrubland which provides more space for wild birds and animals to exist unmolested. Consequently, and because of its location on the north Norfolk coast, it’s a very good place to see many water birds some of which can be rare sightings, such as the spoonbill.

There were no spoonbills to be seen on this trip but there were plenty of other species including shoveller, whose Danish name ‘skeand‘ translates as ‘spoon-duck‘ for reasons easily divined. Another of my favourite ducks, because of it’s gorgeous colours, is the diminutive teal:

Male teal (Anas crecca, Dansk: krikand)

The teal is about half the size of the chunky shoveller and there are around 2000 pairs breeding here in the summer. I like etymology, so the collective noun for teal – a ‘spring‘ (because of they they rise en masse almost vertically when flushed) – is a fun one. Both the teal and the shoveller, which has 700 breeding pairs in the UK, are amber listed. But a ray of hope for these threatened water birds is that huge areas on the east coast of England have been opened up to the sea and allowed to flood as a mitigation of the worse ravages of the effect on the oceans of climate change, and this will hopefully create homes for hundreds of thousands of resident birds and migrant vistors throughout the year.

Ringed plover (Charadrius hiaticula, Dansk: stor præstekrave)

There are 110-180,000 pairs of ringed plover in Europe and around 4% of them breed in the UK, but the numbers and range of these have been steadily declining, so this species has earned red conservation status in the UK, although it is a species of least concern in Europe as a whole. Hopefully the new coastal habitats being created here will help to reverse this trend.

The next four pictures are of birds which appeared in the previous two posts and were photographed at Snettisham, but one of the great things about Titchwell is that it’s possible to get close to the wildlife. And as they were there too I’ve included these images in this post because I like them:

Lapwing (Vanellus vanellus, Dansk: vibe)

Black tailed godwit (Limosa limosa, Dansk: stor kobbersneppe)

I really like the ripples and the reflections of the godwit in this image.

Curlew (Numenius arquata, Dansk: storspove)

Grey plover (Pluvialis squatarola, Dansk: strandhjejle)

Another thing that I like about this collection of pictures is that it demonstrates the importance of mudflats for these birds to find the molluscs and crustaceans they need to refuel. It doesn’t make for the most interesting background for a wildlife portrait, unless there are some photogenic reflections, but I guess it focusses the eye on the subject!

There was no image of this small seabird in the previous, at least not on it’s own, but there may have been significant numbers mixed in with the huge flocks of dunlin:

Knot (Calidris canutus, Dansk: islandsk ryle)

The knot is another of those truly magnificent creatures that breeds in the northern Arctic (a real feat of survival in it’s own right) and then migrates to its winter feeding grounds as far as south Africa, south America and Australia. And then a few months later they do the same journey in reverse. I wonder how many miles one of these little birds can cover in its whole lifetime – and all under it’s own steam? I can’t help but have immense respect for them!