Tag Archives: Cambridgeshire

Summer songbirds mainly, especially linnet

Posted on July 4, 2011 | 1 comment

The summer solstice was a couple of weeks ago, the weather is warm and sunny and the evenings are light until after 10pm. For the last week I’ve been heading out across the fields in all hours of daylight and the wildlife has changed significantly. Until a few weeks ago there was alot of bird activity around the nests and I could watch whitethroat and blackcap in the same place for several weeks before that.

Common whitethroat about to head for the nest

The birds are still around but they have dispersed and a tad more legwork is required to see the same species I was seeing 2-3 weeks ago. But now, the first broods of the next generation have all fledged and while my garden has played host to families of starling, great tit, and goldfinch – the fledglings easily distinguished from the adults by their lack of a crimson face – further afield, the hedgerows are thronged with linnet, whitethroat, reed bunting, corn bunting and yellowhammer.

An adult goldfinch and two fledglings on the niger seed feeder in my garden. The speckled brown and lack of a red face makes the youngsters easy to identify.

Another finch of which there are many adults and fledglings in the countryside are linnet. Linnet are one of my favourite birds for several reasons: they are delightful to look at with their cerise breast patches, they have a lovely song as they fly overhead and as long as I don’t do anything daft they will often sit tight and let me get really close to photograph them.

A cock linnet, underlit by the late evening sun, showing several diagnostic freatures including the cerise breast, grey head and pale grey grey cheekspot and the crimson spot on the forehead

Rather interestingly the taxonomic nomenclature is Carduelis cannabina, which approximately translates from the Latin as the ‘cannabis finch’! The linnets diet consists of small seeds so I imagine the name derives from the days when hemp was grown to make rope and they were seen in numbers feeding on the seeds.

There is a field of oil seed rape on the edge of Histon which I had always imagined to be devoid of wildlife but in the last few weeks families of linnet, reed bunting, greenfinch and whitethroat are regularly perched on top of the rape plants.

Greenfinch male in the middle of the rape field

The rape seed pods are full of small black seeds and if you squeeze one seed between your fingers there’s enough oil in it to make the ends of your thumb and forefinger really greasy, so it’s easy to see why rape is a lucrative crop and why it is a good energy source for songbirds.

Female linnet perched on top of a hawthorn tree at the edge of the rape field, she doesn’t have the cerise breast patches of the male, but lovely colours none the less

Linnet are migrant and resident breeders and passage and winter visitors. In the winter they can be seen in flocks of several hundred over farmland and often mingle with other finches. There conservation status is red due to population decline over the last forty years even though the European population numbers between 10 and 30 million pairs! Despite the overall numbers, along with a multitude of other bird species they are the victims of habitat destruction and the systemic use of herbicides which kill off their food supplies.

Cock linnet perched on top of an apple tree also on the edge of the rape field…

… and another one sitting on power lines. Look at the colour of that breast – they’re beautiful birds!

So if you can’t think of anything else to do this weekend and you feel like some gentle excercise and peace and quiet take a walk in the countryside and keep your eyes open for all the songbirds.

Many species of butterfly including large and small white, red admiral, small tortoiseshell, ringlet and small skippers were flapping lazily around the hedges on Guns Lane this morning, basking in the warm sunshine and I saw the first gatekeepers of the year today too:

A gatekeeper probing for nectar in ragwort flowers

All in all, it’s well worth a trip to the countryside armed with a pair of binoculars!

1 Comment

Posted in Birds, Butterflies, Buxhall Farm Histon, Countryside walks, Garden birds, Uncategorized, Walks around Cambridge and Histon

Tagged birdlife, blackcap, butterfly, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, cannabis, Carduelis cannabina, common whitethroat, corn bunting, garden birds, gatekeeper, goldfinch.fledgling, greenfinch, hemp, histon, Lepidoptera, linnet, oil seed rape, ragwort, reed bunting, songbirds, whitethroat, yellowhammer

Orange tip

Posted on May 9, 2011 | 3 comments

I am of course referring to the butterfly, not an unsightly medical condition. I’ve spent plenty of time chasing them along hedgerows waiting for one to settle on a flower, but in vain, and you may recall that in a previous post I said that the orange tip was extremely difficult to photograph because they rarely settled.

That was until last weekend when, the weather was sunny, warm and calm so I went for a walk on Guns Lane to the north of Histon. I was rewarded fairly soon into my walk by a male orange tip settling on a plant on the edge of the pathway and allowing me to encroach within just a few inches:

Male orange tip. I think his underwings are exquisite, and it’s perfect camouflage when he’s perched on a cow parsley flower head.

This fellow was a good omen. Several hundred metres further along the path where the dense hedgerow thinned out into more open territory lined with cow parsley there were many male and female orange tips and they were all intent on mating on this particular morning.

Another male orange tip, this time with his wings open. And the colours on top are gorgeous too.

The female of the species doesn’t have the orange tips but is still distinctive from the other white butterflies:

Female orange tip. She is aware of the presence of males and is pointing her tail in the air in preparation for mating…

…and a few seconds later a male flew within a few centimetres and her reproductive organs are clearly visible opening up here in response to his presence.

The female above didn’t mate in this instance, but:

This pair were mating on the ground close by

And another female sits on a leaf as the male beats a post-coital retreat top right

I promised some pictures a few weeks ago of orange tips in the post ‘Local Lepidoptera’ so I was very pleased to capture this series of the mating behaviour so soon after.

3 Comments

Posted in Butterflies, Countryside walks, Insects, Walks around Cambridge and Histon, Wildlife favourites

Tagged Anthocharis cardamines, biodiversity, butterflies, Cambridgeshire, Guns Lane, histon, insects, Lepidoptera, Nature, orange tip, reproductive behaviour, wildlife

Nocturnal newts

Posted on May 3, 2011 | 6 comments

I was in the pub last Friday with a good friend of mine enjoying a few pints but despite what you might be thinking this post is about amphibians. Mostly. We were talking about butterflies and other wildlife when he mentioned that he knows of a pond which is good for newts. So on our way back from the pub at around midnight we picked up torches and my camera and made for the pond.

We weren’t disappointed. As we shone the torch in the water we could fairly soon see two of the three species of British newt: the great crested, Triturus cristatus and the smooth or common – Lissotriton vulgaris – which looks a bit like a small great crested. The third species is the palmate newt, Lissotriton helveticus, which in the breeding season is fairly distinct from the other two species but is apparently uncommon in the east of England.

This great crested newt headed for the cover of some pondweed in response to our torchlight

And shortly after made for deeper cover with a flick of his tail. The ‘great crest’ can clearly be seen here

Great crested newts spend most of their time on dry land where they rest up under rocks or logs during the day and emerge at night when they feed on land or in water for worms, tadpoles, snails and insects. They return to the water to breed where the female will lay several hundred eggs over the course of 3-4 months. The juveniles and non-breeding adults live a predominantly terrestial existence where they hide up during the day in undergrowth or other cover and emerge to feed at night. They reach breeding age at 2-3 years old when they begin the cycle of aquatic and terrestrial life.

The smooth newts were not dissimilar in appearance to the great crested newts but are only up to 10cm long – considerably more diminutive than their great crested cousins. Both male and female great crested and smooth newts become rather more distinctive during the breeding season when the colours, spot patterns and crests are at their most flamboyant.

A pair of male smooth newts

I originally thought these were a pair in the throes of courtship, but I’ve since been informed by a reader, see Duncan’s comment below, that they are two males.

The palmate newt is approximately the same size as the smooth newt but the colouration of the palmate is rather more subdued. All three species of newt in the UK live a terrestrial lifestyle outside the breeding season, but at this time of year they all head to the water to breed.

Female palmate newt – the male has a smooth crest along his tail with a distinctive filament on the end. He also has webbed feet which this one doesn’t.

All newt species are protected in Europe, including the UK, with varying levels of protection. The great crested newt is considered to be the most in danger and therefore has the highest level of protection such that disturbing them or habitat where they are known to be, killing, possessing and selling live or even dead specimens, is illegal.

I’d never seen a newt of any species until this so it was great to see them and be able to get a few photographs too, after spending the evening prior in the pub in pursuit of the obvious topical simile!

6 Comments

Posted in Amphibians, Countryside walks, Great crested newt, Newts, Palmate newt, Smooth or Common newt, Wildlife favourites

Tagged amphibian, Cambridgeshire, common newt, great crested newt, Lissotriton helveticus, Lissotriton vulgaris, Newt, palmate newt, Salamandridae, smooth newt, Triturus cristatus

Fen Drayton nature reserve

Posted on February 12, 2011 | Leave a comment

Before I tell you about my outing to Fen Drayton here’s a short update on the forest sell off. After denying they are backtracking, the Government has said they may reduce the amount of forest they are getting rid of. Plans to lose 15% of the 258,000 hectares of publicly owned forest are on hold whilst the government ‘re-examine the criteria‘ for the sale. I’m hoping this is government style smoke-and-mirror speak for ‘we’re deciding whether we should proceed at all‘. Time will tell. I think any reexamination is good news and maybe a sufficiently loud public outcry will force the powers that be to sit up and take notice of the vox populi on this issue, and maybe a few others too.

I didn’t manage a wildlife post last week, other events overtook me including the weather, which was blowing a gale at the weekend so I was struggling to see anything through binoculars and photography was completely out the question! So apologies for the omission. There were a few highlights from last weekend though: in a tree in the middle of a field behind Abbey Farm north of Histon I saw a pair of kestrels copulating – which is a fairly unusual sight but it’s good to know the local kestrel population should be increasing this year. Further round towards the Girton road was a big mixed flock of around 50 starling, a similar number of redwing and around 200 fieldfare feeding on the ground and as I was counting these a little egret passed over. I’d been told by a dog walker a couple of weeks ago there was one in that area but this was the first time I’d seen it for myself. Egrets are a comparatively recent addition to the fauna in the UK and they are slowly finding their way northwards in England. The first time I saw them was in the fish market in the middle of Victoria, the capital of the Seychelles, so they have very exotic associations for me and it’s great to see them so close to home.

I set off fairly early in the morning yesterday with my friend to head for Fen Drayton nature reserve which lies between Cambridge and St Ives. It’s a former gravel pit consisting of twelve lakes and ponds which is currently managed by the RSPB. There is a big area of water here interspersed with grassland, scrub woodland, some older more established trees and plenty of reedbeds. So it has a diverse range of habitats that are managed for wildlife and is therefore a good place to see birds.

Far Fen lake showing the varies habitat at Fen Drayton

Despite raining on the way up the A14, by the time we got to the reserve the rain had stopped, leaving complete cloud cover, so the light was very grey as you can see from the landscape shot above. Otherwise the conditions were good: mild, gentle breeze and the occasional, albeit brief, moment of sunshine.

The omens were good too when on the way to Fen Drayton we saw a hare running across a field, and on the approach to the reserve three bullfinch including at least two males were flitting along the hedge just in front of the car. When we were getting out of the car in the car park we could here a cetti’s warbler singing and three green woodpeckers rose up off the ground in quick succession just in front of us.

As we stopped to look at a group of tufted duck on the small pond north of Holywell Lake a jay which we had watched fly across the field appeared in some dead trees on an island in the pond and started stripping big chunks of bark from the tree, possibly looking for food it had stashed there previously. Jays are amazingly good at stashing and are aware that their fellow jays do the same and so will keep a look out to see if they are being watched. If they see another jay paying attention to their activities they will pretend to stashe and then fly off and hide the swag somewhere else.

Four tufted duck – one female and three males on the pond north of Holywell Lake. Note the piercing yellow eyes and the crest

Tufted duck are resident on lakes and we also get migrants visiting in the winter when they stop over on rivers and estuaries too. They’re omnivores and feed by diving to the bottom to sift food from the mud. I think they’re handsome birds especially when they turn their yellow eye to look at you.

Constant companions throughout our walk were chaffinch and great tit. They were present in numbers in almost every tree or bush I looked in.

Chaffinch male in a tree singing for a mate

There were a plethora of other small birds including blue tit, wren, dunnock, robin, goldfinch and long tailed tit. On a bright day it’s now a good time of year to look for and photograph birds because they are actively seeking mates and there are no leaves on the trees to conceal them.

One of a flock of around 7 long tailed tits whizzing through the trees – they’re fiendishly difficult to photograph like that so this is as good as it got!

There was almost a full house of the five common crows – jay, carrion crow, rook – but no jackdaw. There were quite a few magpies though:

This chap was bouncing around the car park

Coot abounded on all the lakes but the stars of the day were the ducks of which there were many species including our common or garden mallard, shoveller, tufted duck, gadwall and wigeon…

A single male wigeon on Oxholme Lake

… but the real star of the show was the goldeneye. There were displaying male goldeneye on Far Fen Lake but alas they were much too far away to get a photograph. They are also resident breeders with migrants arriving in the winter months too.

Mute swan were present on several of the lakes and a couple came over in flight too:

The A380 of the avian world…

And as with all good nature reserves the wildlife wasn’t solely ornithological. This beautiful little fungus was on a stem next to the path.

Dacrymyces chrysospermum – unfortunately I couldn’t find a common name for this resupinate fungus but its sumptuous colour against the green lichen on the tree stem is striking.

All in all Fen Drayton was a great venue for a Saturday morning wildlife adventure and I’ll be posting from here again before too long.

Buntings abound: 29th and 30th January 2011

Posted on January 29, 2011 | 1 comment

This weekend my meanderings took me to the open fields Histon and Cottenham, an area I haven’t properly explored for quite a long time. As I set off early on Saturday morning the weather was murky and very cold and consequently I was feeling pessimistic about encountering the local wild creatures.

Fortunately I was mistaken. The wild creatures were there aplenty. Flocks of mixed gulls, rooks, Corvus frugilegus, (N.b. I’m planning to make a taxonomic index of Latin names for the species on an adjacent page so I can avoid writing them here), and in particular, wood pigeon, Columba palumbus. Wood pigeon can often be seen in flocks but on this occasion there were many flocks, the largest containing thousands of individuals. They are a farmers curse as they can devastate fields of new shoots, hence the sound of shotgun fire punctuating my progress. My father told me stories of my grandmother being given wood pigeon during World War II – a valuable source of free meat – and when opened up the crops liteally exploded as they were stuffed completely full of fresh green shoots. Multiply that up by several thousand birds and the damage they can do to crops is obvious. Still, they’re impressive to watch in those kind of numbers.

My aforementioned pessimism was tempered by the sight of hazel trees, Corylus avellana, covered in catkins, the first suggestion of approaching Spring time.
Hazel saplings festooned with the first catkins of 2011 – Spring is imminent!

And indeed, a friend told me on Monday morning she had seen daffodils shooting in the village. So I reckon that makes it official. In the same hedgerow as the catkins – the Merlin Hedge – (click here for a sketch map of my walk route), were a flock of greenfinch, Carduelis chloris, and a small group of fieldfare, Turdus pilaris, feeding on the ground. The greenfinch were manic, chasing each other as a flock around the fields either side of the hedgerow.

Turning right at the end of the hedge heading past the Yellowhammer Hedge – which didn’t contain any yellowhammers, or indeed any other birdlife – a big fox, Vulpes vulpes, was standing in the middle of the field beyond watching me and the dog:

A fox taking a keen interest in what me and the dog were doing

The fox was around 300m away and the quality of the image gives a good idea of the murky grey weather condiitions. Doesn’t convey how cold it was though! This one has a distinctly grey coat and I’ve seen foxes in this area before with similar coloration, so it could be the same one or one of his offspring. He’s close to where foxes reared a litter of cubs last year so he could be one of that family. After the excitement of seeing the fox, I was scanning the adjacent field for any other signs of life and spotted a second fox – it could have been the same one but he’d have had to move very fast to get to the second location. And as it disappeared through a hedge a group of three roe deer, Capreolus capreolus, entered the same field.

Roe deer bounding across a field – and a bird taking to the air somewhere between me and them

The dog spotted the deer as soon as I did and immediately pricked his ears up, he was around 25m away from me and in order to avoid any dog/deer interaction I called him and the deer instantly turned to look even though they were around 300m away. They have incredibly acute hearing.

Between us and the deer were a flock of skylark, Alauda arvensis, on the ground (it could be one of them taking off in the photograph). It was impossible to count them accurately as they were whizzing around at very high speed close to the ground where their camouflage rendered them almost invisible, but I estimate there were between 10 and 20.

I’d been hoping to see yellowhammer, Emberiza citrinella, and I’d spent some time peering at the Yellowhammer Hedge and the surrounding fields but without seeing many birds at all. Then as I approached the end of the hedgerow leading to the Owl Shed I could see a flock of small birds flitting between the hedge and the Fallow Field and they turned out to be a mixture of reed bunting, Emberiza schoeniclus, and yellowhammer:

Mixed group of reed bunting and yellowhammer

Female yellowhammer
…and a male of the species. What a glorious colour!

Both species were numerous and could be seen flying around the hedge all the way along to the Owl Shed and dropping down onto the ground to look for food and to hide from me.

Reed bunting male

Young male reed bunting

The remainder of my Saturday morning sojourn was not quite so lively but numerous fieldfare, redwing (Turdus iliaca), chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs) and a kestrel (Falco tinunculus) were busy around the pig farm.

On Sunday 30th January the weather was brighter and more mild so I set off again towards the Owl Shed to try to get some more photographs. Despite the improved weather there was nowhere near the amount of wildlife around I’d seen the day before, although a hare (Lepus europaeus) appeared in the field where I first saw the fox. And fortunately the reed bunting and yellowhammer were still in the end of the hedgerow where I’d left them on Saturday, although not in the same numbers. So I got my pictures and then had to rush home to get off to my nephews 18th birthday party.

A very enjoyable weekend all round, and in particular the Emberiza species congregated in the Owl Shed Hedge.

1 Comment

Posted in Birds, Buxhall Farm Histon, Deer, Walks around Cambridge and Histon

Tagged birds, Cambridgeshire, Carduelis chloris, catkin, Cervus nippon, chaffinch, Columba palumbus, Corvus frugilegus, Corylus avellana, Emberiza citrinella, Emberiza schoeniclus, falco tinnunculus, fieldfare, fox, Fringilla coelebs, greenfinch, hare, hazel, histon, introduced species, kestrel, Lepus europaeus, Nature, redwing, reed bunting, rook, sika deer, Turdus iliaca, Turdus pilaris, Vulpes vulpes, wildlife, wood pigeon, yellowhammer

Avian East Anglia

Posted on January 22, 2011 | Leave a comment

I’ve just got back from a walk around Milton Country Park, on the northern edge of Cambridge, which was enjoyable and cold in equal measure. Of which more subsequently. And now I’m sitting watching our resident robin chase a dunnock around a bush in my back garden whilst pondering the diversity of birdlife in our area.

Avian diversity in East Anglia was the subject of a slideshow I saw last week organised by the local Cambridge RSPB group entitled ‘Birds of East Anglia’. The speaker was Bill Baston who is a highly accomplished bird photographer living in Suffolk, and has probably photographed nearly all the birds we see in this region. Bill has a very good website, www.billbaston.com, where he’s posted many excellent images from his travels to many parts of the world. For the photographers amongst you he uses Canon hardware with a 500mm telephoto lens.

East Anglia is an excellent place to see birds due to it’s proximity to mainland Europe and the North Sea. Many rare and sometimes exotic visitors can arrive here by mistake or due to being blown off course whilst heading south on the winter migration. The European bee-eater (Merops apiaster), the northern subspecies of long tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus caudatus) which is immediately distinguishable from our regular British long tailed tit (A. c. rosaceus) by its completely white head, and the unmistakeable hoopoe (Upupa epops) can all occasionally be seen by the vigilant spotter.

Aswell as such visiting rarities it’s usually not necessary to travel too far to see our normal indigenous species, amongst which I include regular migrants. There is a large diversity of habitat in East Anglia, from the tidal mudflats of The Wash in the north of the region, famous for it’s enormous flocks of overwintering waders and geese, the Brecks on the Norfolk/Suffolk border where nightjar (Caprimulgus europaeus – the generic name from the Latin for ‘goatsucker’ as a result of the archaic, and mistaken, notion they suck milk from goats!) can be seen and heard ‘churring‘ on summer evenings, to the Blackwater estuary in Essex at the southern end of East Anglia which is also a great place to see large numbers of waders and other sea birds. In between these extremities lie the Norfolk Broads, the UK’s largest protected wetland and National Park, Wicken Fen near Ely and Grafham Water near Huntingdon.

This is a small sample of all of the lovely places to see wildlife in this region. But if you don’t find yourself anywhere near these, parks, gardens, hedgerows and fields are all worth a glance – you never know what you might find.

North Histon field walk

Posted on November 9, 2010 | 2 comments

Most of my meanderings are across fields adjoining Histon on the northen edge of Cambridge, UK. Farmland here stretches almost unbroken, with the exception of the Cottenham to Landbeach road, and a few minor lanes, for 6-7 miles to the Wilburton to Streatham Road and is interspersed with scrub and plenty of mature trees offering shelter and food for the local wildlife. I’ve been keeping a wildlife diary since the middle of 2009. The 2010 edition is here and I’ve drawn a map of the Histon north fields area which is a little bit ‘Lord of the Rings’ style but it shows where all the locations mentioned in the diary are in relation to each other. Of course, all the location names are figments of my imagination from two years ago, so none of them would be found on an official map!

The photographs below will hopefully help you visualise the places and habitats I’m describing. I have lots of pictures of the landscape features taken at various times of year, but all the pictures below were taken late in the afternoon, 3-4.30pm, last Sunday (7th November, 2010) and I’m using these because the sun was low in the southwestern sky making the colours wonderfully vivid. There are no animals or birds in these shots, unless you’ve zoomed in and have spotted some that I haven’t. So if you wanted to see animals I apologise, and if you find any please let me know! The pictures start and finish with my favourite poplar tree and get progressively darker, and the light more blue, as the sun dipped below the western horizon:

Linnet Hedge heading towards the Poplar with South Bean Field on the left

Entering the fields from the B1049 I walk along the Linnet Hedge where in the summer numerous linnet appear most days perching on the power lines and feeding in the fields immediately adjacent to it. Not just linnet though, there are dunnock, house sparrow, blue tit, great tit, chaffinch, greenfinch, goldfinch, blackbird, wren, whitethroat, yellowhammer, blackcap and kestrel regularly sighted in or around it.

Heading east-south-east towards the Poplar Tree I turn left and head towards the sycamore tree at Hedge End along West Ditch to the Merlin Hedge.

Poplar Hedge on the left leading to the small sycamore at Hedge End where it becomes the West Ditch, Middle and North Bean Fields on the right, Merlin Hedge at the end of the track. Lone dog walker in the distance.

West Ditch is a great place to see all kinds of wildlife. Apart from being full of many wild flowers from Spring through to Winter, it is full of birds too, such as wren, linnet, goldfinch, reed bunting and corn bunting. One evening this summer at the far end of the West Ditch I was distracted by the buzzing of an insect which turned out to be a privet hawk moth. Alas, it was too dark for a photo, but they are black and pink and up to 12cm wingspan, so an impressive sight. Common darter dragonflies also patrol up and down here.

Ditch running northwest to southeast between the sycamore tree at Hedge End and the farm

The Merlin Hedge is so called because not long after I started walking there I was half way along it when a merlin approached at quite incredible speed flying 2m off the ground and as it crossed the hedge, 10m in front of where I stood, it dived to catch a swallow which proved too elusive so it veered back on course and went on its way. All that lasted just 15-20 seconds or so but it was immensely exciting to watch.

Merlin Hedge running southeast towards the Bonfire and a machine store

At the end of the Merlin Hedge I usually double back round the wooden post down the other side of the West Ditch towards the sycamore tree, turning right down the southern edge of the Beet Field:

Southern edge of Beet Field looking west to the back of the gardens of the B1049

At the end of this track a left turn takes me along the back of the gardens, allotments and horse paddocks to the South Fallow Field at the far end of which I cross the B1049 and head for home. But I can’t finish without including this picture of the Poplar Tree across the PX Field:

Poplar tree in the late afternoon sun. I love the colours in the sky!