The Naturephile

Happy Easter

Posted on April 11, 2020 | 4 comments

It’s Easter Saturday and the thermometer is reading 27 degrees C, it’s a really beatiful day. Yesterday was the same and blossom is well underway on my apple tree, and maybe at least partially as a result of the Covid-19 lockdown my garden is being frequented by a stream of butterflies. Which makes me very happy! Some of them such as the comma (Polygonia c-album) and the holly blue (Celastrina argiolus) are regular visitors at this time of year:

4910330906_498b77ab24 Comma

5681704530_8f2f56a391_w Holly Blue

But there have been a couple of first sightings, both yesterday, which was great to see; the brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni) and the orange tip (Anthocharis cardamines):

7895409316_3abe55fe8b Brimstone

5681166601_54ddff5bb7 Orange tip

I love orange tips but they’re really tough to track and photograph because they seldom settle. But when they eventually do settle and close their wings the underside has the most exquisite green lacework which also functions as perfect camouflage, they’re virtually invisible when they sit tight and don’t move.

One other treat I’ve had whilst working from home during the Covid-19 lockdown is my resident wren who appears just outside the window at least once a day and just occasionally sings his heart out. It’s amazing how so much lovely song emanates from such a tiny bird, and at such high volume! I’ll try to get some wren pictures in the next few days and post them here.

In the mean time have a lovely Easter weekend and stay home and stay safe!

4 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged brimstone, butterflies, comma, Covid-19, Easter, holly blue, orange tip, wren

The fragile nature of Green Belt

Posted on April 23, 2019 | 2 comments

Over the last year and a half or so I’ve been working with a group of people from my village to try to limit the development of our Green Belt land. ‘Green Belt‘ is undeveloped green space encircling built up areas which has legal protection from development in order to limit urban sprawl and provide places where people from towns and cities can go for relaxation.

One of our areas slated for development is Buxhall Farm, which is around 300m from where I live. It’s in the Green Belt and I’ve posted about it’s wildlife on numerous occasions. On the face of it it’s a flat and boring piece of arable farmland with little value for wildlife. Or so you might think. Closer inspection shows that it’s home to many species of birds as well as wildflowers, butterflies moths, mammals etc. All you have to do is look…

Linnet (Linaria cannabina, Dansk: tornirisk)

All the picures here were taken on Buxhall Farm over the Easter weekend from 19th to the 22nd April and at the end of this post is a full list of my sightings there from that weekend.

The linnet is a ‘red listed’ bird in the UK which means it’s of maximum conservation concern. This listing is usually due to falling numbers which is often the result of habitat destruction. Linnet are present at Buxhall all year round and breed there.

Dunnock (Prunella modularis, Dansk: jernspurv)

The dunnock isn’t red listed… yet. It’s a common sight round here and it has a rather lovely song, and some interesting mating habits.

Skylark (Alauda arvensis, Dansk: sanglærke)

The skylark is red listed due to declining numbers, largely due to intensive farming methods. I spoke to the farmer earlier in the week and he told me that he leaves wide field margins to encourage the wildlife and farms his land accordingly. So hats off to him, it shows that it’s possible to make a living from the land without destroying all the wildlife.

Female reed bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus, Dansk: rørspurv)

Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella, Dansk: gulspurv)

Over the last three winters there have been flocks of around 50 yellowhammers (also red listed) at Buxhall Farm and this is an important number of these lovely birds. They are one of those iconic farmland/hedgerow species whose numbers have plummeted in recent decades, also due to intensive farming methods, but we still have a healthy population in my neck of the woods.

Peacock butterfly (Inachis io)

All in all I saw at least 7 species of butterfly. There were many whites, but only one species that I could identify as it flew close and slow, but there were probably large whites and green veined whites too, both of which I see there every year. Butterflies are a very good indicator of the health of a habitat so to see so many species so early in the season was wonderful.

Long tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus, Dansk: halemajse)

Long tailed tits are normally fliting from tree to tree in small flocks but this time there were only two and they seemed local to a particular tree, suggesting they’re a breeding pair using it as a nest site.

Small tortoiseshell butterfly (Aglais urticae)

Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis, Dansk: stillits)

Land designated ‘Green Belt’ has historically not been developed to retain those green areas for local people to get away from the city. But under current planning legislation an authority can simply take land out of Green Belt and develop it as it pleases. Combined with the massive curtailment of funding from central government to local authorities there’s now intense financial pressure for those authorities to try to develop an income stream from the land they own. It’s perfectly understandable that cash strapped councils need to raise funds but I don’t think this is a good way to do it, but it’s what’s happening around my village and what we are trying to minimise.

The full list of sightings on Buxhall Farm between 19th-22nd April 2019:

Species Number

Great tit                    1
Blackbird                 5
Greenfinch               1
Skylark                     17
Wren                         4
Dunnock                   4
Yellowhammer        4
Long tailed tit          2
Carrion crow            3
Goldfinch                  8
Rook                         21
Starling                     2
Reed bunting           8
Corn bunting           2
Whitethroat             2
Swallow                    2
Magpie                      2
Blackcap                   1
Linnet                       1
Blue tit                     2
House sparrow       3
Buzzard                    1
Robin                        1
Wood pigeon           3
Collared dove          1
Songthrush              1
Green woodpecker 1
Kestrel                      1
Chaffinch                 1
Butterflies:
Peacock                    2
Small white              1
Holly blue               1
Orange tip                1
Brimstone                 1
Speckled wood         1
Small tortoiseshell 1

It’s a really great place for wildlife and I hope we can help to ensure it remains as very well managed farmland and doesn’t get destroyed by developers building houses.

2 Comments

Posted in Agriculture, Butterflies, Buxhall Farm Histon, Farming and wildlife, Farmland, farmland birds, Ornithology, UK wildlife, Uncategorized

Tagged Buxhall Farm, farmland birds, Green Belt, spring butterflies

Mad Marketing and Migratory Birds – the next instalment

Posted on April 23, 2019 | 1 comment

Following on from my little rant about crap marketing by a well known purveyor of sports equipment at the end of December last year, I thought I’d check and see if the same gloves were still on sale and if so, whether the sales pitch had changed.

Imagine my disappointment to find that the offending text was still in situ in an unabridged form:

Designed for standing at post on big game drives in cold weather. Also suitable for hunting migratory birds.

Either they didn’t actually pass on my comments to the relevant people within their organisation, in which case they fibbed to me. Or they did, and it got lost in the ether – in which case they’re incompetent, or they did and then decided not to change it, and in that case they’re scumbags.

Suffice to say I shall be voting with my feet and my credit card and source my sports kit elsewhere. Bastards.

But that’s enough of that and I hope a picture of a spring butterfly will lighten the mood a tad…

This is a holly blue (Celastrina argiolus) which is usually the first butterfly I see in springtime when it emerges in March/April; after which it disappears for a while. But it has a second emergence in June – August (the technical term is ‘bivoltine‘), and this image was taken in the summer in my garden. And it makes me smile when idiot marketing people conspire to ruin my day!

1 Comment

Posted in Butterflies, Insects, Lepidoptera, Marketing, Migrants, Uncategorized

Tagged butterflies, holly blue, Marketing, migratory birds

Mad Marketing and Migratory Birds

Posted on December 27, 2018 | 6 comments

I try to avoid too much political comment and opining in this blog, but just occasionally I stumble across a piece of corporate loopiness which makes me spit feathers and has to be commented on… . So apologies in advance, but here goes.

I’ve never had much respect for marketing, it seems to me it’s simply a way to convince gullible people to part with their hard earned cash for something they don’t need and may not even want. And today whilst looking for some gloves I came across this description for a pair of convertible mittens on the website of an internationally well known purveyor of sports equipment:

“Designed for standing at post on big game drives in cold weather. Also suitable for hunting migratory birds.”

Also suitable for hunting migratory birds. Really?! I’m sure I won’t be alone in finding this piece of marketing nonsense completely bonkers. Will someone really read that and think to themself “I must buy those because if I don’t I’ll be less well equipped to shoot a willow warbler”?

And to illustrate my point, here is a small selection of our migratory birds:

Migratory bird 1 – waxwing

Migratory bird 2 – fieldfare

Migratory bird 3 – short eared owl

Frankly, I’d rather have cold hands.

But in the interest of fairness I must point out that I contacted the company to voice my disquiet and they came straight back to me to say they had passed on my concerns to the relevant people within the organisation. So now I’m waiting see if anything changes… . I’ll let you know what transpires.

6 Comments

Posted in Birds, Marketing, Migrants, Ornithology

Tagged fieldfare, Marketing, migrant birds, short eared owl, waxwing

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

A northern hemisphere bird of paradise?

Posted on December 24, 2018 | 2 comments

Driving around the countrside at this time of year the hedgerows are full of red haw berries and rose hips, which in turn means that they’re full of our Scandinavian visitors, redwing and fieldfare. But every now and again, when the winter weather’s particularly brutal in Norway we get a visit from the most spectacular visitor from that part of the world, the waxwing…

Waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus, Dansk: silkehale)

Last year, they were here making the most of a long hedgrow full of rosehips, at least it was full of rosehips when they arrived, but after a couple of weeks the hips were somewhat diminished.

A pair of waxwing harvesting rosehips on the Cambridge Science Park

I think of these birds, with their prominent crests and beautiful colours as being our birds of paradise and there are few that I enjoy photographing quite as much, and not least because they also have a distinctive song, particularly when they are singing together in flocks.

And the inevitable consequence of a diet consisting solely of bright red rose hips

2 Comments

Posted in Cambridge Science Park, Cambridgeshire, Migrants, Songbirds

Tagged Bombycilla garrulus, waxwing, winter migrants

The Common Crane

Posted on December 11, 2018 | 7 comments

A couple of weeks a go I was on an early morning train heading out across the Fens near March in Cambridgeshire where I saw a group of 30-40 cranes in a field next to the train line. I’ve only ever had one fleeting glimpse of a common crane in the UK before so it was properly exciting to see such a large group of these statuesque birds. So much so that two days later I drove to the vicinity of the first sighting to see if I could find them again. And after a little driving around this is what happened…

14 common cranes (Grus grus, Dansk: trane)

These 14 birds were part of a group of 19 that flew right overhead and it was a quite incredible sight! According to the BTO the common crane is amber listed after being hunted to extinction four centuries ago. It has recolonised East Anglia naturally since 1979 and according to the Weekly News from BirdGuides a record 54 pairs of an estimated 180 birds were counted this year in the UK.

After this sighting I headed on to the Ouse Washes where this group formed part of a larger group of 40-45 birds, so I saw approximately a quarter of the UK population. They were too far away to get a photograph but captivating to watch in the distance through binoculars. They were a mile or so off to the left and straight in front, several miles away, was Ely Cathedral:

Which even though it was made by humans is also a majestic site on a sunny morning across the flat expanse of the Fens.

7 Comments

Posted in fen, Fens, Ouse Washes

Tagged Cambridgeshire Fens, Common crane, Grus grus, Ouse Washes, trane

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 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.

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)