Tag Archives: curlew

Coastal waders at Titchwell Marsh

Posted on May 8, 2023 | 1 comment

RSPB Titchwell Marsh is a reserve I’ve posted about several times before and it’s a great place to get close to a lot of bird species. It’s on the north Norfolk coast and it includes various habitats from woodland scrub to fresh water lakes, reedbeds, salt marsh and the BIG beaches that make that part of the country so spectacular. It’s home to bearded tits, which I didn’t see on this visit in November last year, but I saw many other species of goose, duck, wader etc.

The increasingly elusive curlew – Numenius arquata

The curlew is Europe’s biggest wader, with it’s very long downturned beak and distinctive call it’s easy to recognise. Alas, as with so many other species it’s endangered in the UK with big losses in numbers, approximately 80% decline in the last 50 years or so, due to habitat loss. The east coast of the UK is a globally important feeding and overwintering station for migrating birds, and there’s increasing realisation of the importance of protecting it as climate change threatens to encroach and flood low lying coastal areas. To mitigate against that, there are initiatives underway in East Anglia to allow the sea to reclaim tidal land which will provide a buffer against the potentially catastrophic flooding that rising sea levels could bring, as well as providing huge amounts of habitat for the creatures that rely on these tidal mudflats. I hope that projects like the one to create habitat using the spoil from the London Crossrail development at Wallasea Island in Essex will help to redress the balance and enable stabilisaton and even increases in populations of the visitors that rely on it for sustenance during their arduous journeys.

Another wader which was present in numbers at Titchwell was the bar tailed godwit:

Bar tailed godwit – Limosa lapponica – showing it’s magnificently long beak

The bar tailed godwit, like the curlew, is also one of the bigger waders with a very long beak, but in the case of the godwit the beak isn’t curved downwards and it has a pink root extending a long way along it’s length. The tip of a godwits beak is also prehensile, enabling it to better find it’s prey of shellfish, snails and worms buried deep in the mud of it’s coastal habitat. They breed in the summer in the high Arctic and head south in the autumn to feeding grounds that include the UK coasts and the British Trust for Ornithology estimate a population of 30,000 individuals.

A pair of bar tailed godwit

The bar tailed godwit is an amazing bird and in 2020 a youngster broke the record for the longest recorded non-stop flight when it migrated from Alaska to New Zealand in one hop – a flight of approximately 12,200km (7,625 miles)! It’s well adapted for long distance travel, with long, pointed wings and the ability to store a lot of energy and the whole journey took 11 days at speeds up to 88km/hr (55mph). It’s a phenomenal feat of endurance and navigation.

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Posted in Migration, Ornithology, Tidal mudflat, Titchwell, Waders

Tagged bar tailed godwit, curlew, RSPB Titchwell, RSPB Wallasea Island, UK winter migrants

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.

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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!

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Posted in Coastal walk, Ducks, East Anglia, Migrants, Norfolk, Seabirds, Titchwell, Waders, water birds

Tagged blacktailed godwit, curlew, ducks, East Anglia, grey plover, knot, lapwing, Norfolk, ringed plover, RSPB Titchwell, shorebirds, shoveller, teal, waders

Ducks and more waders

Posted on September 3, 2016 | 10 comments

I wrote a couple of posts a while ago about a trip to the north Norfolk coast in the depths of winter, but I didn’t get round to completing the story. All the wader (‘shore birds’ in N.America) images in that post were taken on the beach at Snettisham, and as I was leaving there at around half past nine in the mornng to head along the coast a short hop to the RSPB reserve at Titchwell, the sun had risen and more birds were discernible on the previously invisible small lakes immediately behind the beach.

A handsome male goldeneye (Bucephela clangula, Dansk: hvinand)

The goldeneye is a diving duck which has recently colonised Britain and there is an annual breeding population of around 200 pairs but it’s also a winter visitor when around 27,000 individuals arrive here to seek sustenance on lakes, rivers and tidal mudflats.

A lone redshank poking around for molluscs and crustaceans in the tidal mud (Tringa totanus, Dansk: rødben)

Also prominent on tidal mud flats is the redshank, or ‘the sentinel of the marsh‘ as it’s often the first bird to raise the alarm when a disturbance occurs, is amber listed in the UK although there are 24-25,000 breeeding pairs and up to 130,000 winter visitors. As with many other birds, encroachment by humans and habitat destruction has limited their range and therefore numbers in the UK. But despite their struggle with humans I always expect to see redshank when I visit the coast, and the other wader that I’d be very concerned if I didn’t see is the unmistakable oystercatcher:

A few members of a big flock of oystercatchers passing overhead (Haematopus ostralegus, Dansk: strandskade)

Despite high expectations of seeing some of the 340,000 wintering UK oystercatchers their conservation status in the UK is amber, the European status is ‘vulnerable’ and globally they are ‘near threatened’ due to recent population decline. But there are still good numbers of them in the UK so I hope their numbers can be stabilised.

Another amber listed wader in the UK is the grey plover:

Grey plover (Pluvialis squatarola, Dansk: strandhjejle)

The grey plover is a truly global bird, it breeds on the Russian tundra and in northern North America but can be found as far afield as southern Asia, Africa and even Australia – it has a huge annual range! So it’s remarkable to think that this little guy came from Canada or northern Russia to feed on a Norfolk beach – and also that some of its relatives may be in Australia. It seems that many of our birds are struggling, including the statuesque black tailed godwit which is faring even less well than the grey plover and is red listed in the UK.

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

According to the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) the taxonomic name derives from the Latin word ‘limus‘ meaning ‘mud‘. In order to name such a handsome bird ‘Muddy muddy‘ I can only imagine that particular taxonomist was having a bad day. It deserves better! The black tailed godwit also breeds in the north and like the grey plover can also be found in southern Asia, South Africa and Australia. Another accomplished globe trotter.

Curlew (Numenius arquata, Dansk: storspove)

The largest European wader is the curlew which can be easily distinguished by it’s enormous downcurved beak and it’s equally unique call. Alas for the curlew, it is also red listed in the UK with 66,000 pairs recorded by the BTO in the UK in summer 2009. Even though it’s numbers are declining it’s still not unusual to see one or more on an outing to the coast.

At this point, between 9 and 10am, I decamped along the coast to Titchwell, pausing mid way where another iconic winter visitor was patrolling an adjacent hedgerow:

Fieldfare (Turdus pilaris, Dansk: sjagger)

It’s pretty depressing to report that the fieldfare is also red listed, but fortunately this is a local UK phenomenon and it is a species of least concern in Europe and globally. It’s our most colourful thrush and visits the UK from Scandinavia in the winter when it can be seen in large flocks in fields and hedgerows, often mixed in with redwing – another Scandinavian thrush which overwinters in the comparatively warmer climes of the UK.

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Posted in Coastal walk, Ducks, East Anglia, Migrants, Migration, Seabirds, Snettisham, Tidal mudflat, Waders, water birds

Tagged black tailed godwit, curlew, ducks, East Anglia, fieldfare, goldeneye, grey plover, migrant birds, Norfolk, oystercatcher, redshank, Snettisham, tidal mud flats, waders

Morecambe Bay

Posted on March 25, 2016 | 9 comments

Since my posting rate plummeted a couple of years ago, due mainly to the increased pressure of work, I’ve still been out and about accumulating a lot of photographs so now I’m going to try to get some of them into posts.

In early spring 2014 I found myself at Morecambe bay in Lancashire which is famous for its vast tidal mudflats that constitute a well stocked larder for a multitude of seabirds, and maximum danger for the unwary beach walker. The Irish Sea tides race in and swirl about at incredible speed and there are areas of treacherous quicksand too.

A pair of shelduck (Tadorna tadorna, Dansk: gravand)

The bay is so enormous that when the tide’s out it’s not always easy to see much wildlife, but by the pier in front of the Midland Hotel there were shelduck, curlew and oystercatchers and I also caught a tantalising glimpse of a distant red breasted merganser.

A curlew on full power for take off (Numenius arquata, Dansk: storpsove)

As I didn’t have my camera with me and I’d never succeeded in getting a picture of a merganser, I returned to the same spot very early the following morning with the relevant optics. It was the end of February and the weather was filthier than a Springbok in a ruck (which as any rugby fan will know is as dirty as it gets!) – it was freezing cold and blowing a gale, so I sat on the ground with my back to the wind, and waited.

Despite what I said earlier, there were a good number of birds in the vicinity including curlew, shelduck, redshank and this oystercatcher who landed right in front of me and every so often he popped up into view as he mined the crevices in the rock for his breakfast.

An oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus, Dansk: strandskade) landed close by on the rocky shoreline

And I didn’t have to wait too long before not one, but a pair, of red breasted merganser appeared in the water just 20 or so metres away, which justified getting out early and braving the elements:

Male (dark headed) and female (brown headed) red breasted merganser (Mergus serrator, Dansk: toppet skallesluger)

I think these are spectacular birds. They are generally resident breeders on the west coast of England and winter visitors on the east, so these were probably residents. They are one of two species of saw-toothed ducks, the other one being the goosander, which are resident in the UK. They have serrated beaks which they need to grasp their fishy prey which they can catch by chasing them under water. According to the BTO there are 2200 pairs in the UK in the summer and their conservation status in the UK is green suggesting the population is stable at least in this part of the world. The only other time I’ve seen a merganser was a month ago down on the south coast at Keyhaven, so they’re an uncommon but splendid sight!

9 Comments

Posted in Beach walks, Birds, Coastal walk, Ducks, Morecambe Bay, Ornithology, UK wildlife, Waders

Tagged curlew, ducks, Irish Sea, Morecambe Bay, oystercatcher, red breasted merganser, shelduck, tidal mud flats, waders

Bamburgh birdlife

Posted on September 20, 2011 | 2 comments

I spent the last week of August on holiday in Northumberland. I like it up there for a number of reasons, the main one being the great variety of wildlife. I was based in Bamburgh, which apart from having a spectacular castle, is right on the coast with miles of huge beaches which are thronged with birdlife.

A young knot, one of a mixed flock of knot (Dansk: Islandsk ryle) and turnstone on the beach at Bamburgh. The peachy brown colour on its breast gives it away as a youngster.

…and a turnstone (Arenaria interpres)

These two species were numerous on all the beaches and flew low over our heads in small flocks as we were bodysurfing the waves. The Danish name for a turnstone is a ‘stenvender‘ which translates directly as ‘turnstone‘, so it’s tempting to think that our Nordic ancestors brought the name with them when they arrived here over a millenium ago!

The turnstone is exclusively coastal and is very aptly named as it flips stones of all sizes in its search for insects and other invertebrates lurking beneath. It is also a scavenger and its entry in the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) Birdfacts reveals it has been known to feed on corpses! It breeds in the high Arctic and is a passage and winter visitor to UK shores and is one the worlds longest migrators, turning up as far south as South Africa. Consequently it can be seen in many parts of the world as it overwinters in Africa, South America, southern Asia and Australia.

Knot, Calidris canutus, are also coastal passage or winter visitors in the UK. They breed in Greenland and Siberia where there habitat is wide open tundra. They feed on insects and plants in the summer and in wintertime on molluscs from the intertidal area of beaches, from which it’s specific taxonomic name ‘canutus‘ is derived from the name of the Norse king Canute, so this species has a definite Viking link (Danish ‘Islandsk ryle‘). Outside the breeding season they can flock together in enormous numbers, 100,000+ (I’m not quite sure how they’re counted though!)

This pair of knot are living up to their name, running through the surf

The beaches were home to lots of waders in Bamburgh but the rest of the village was also home to non-marine species, most notably swallow, house martin, pied wagtail and linnet.

A swallow stretching its wings on the garden fence. A couple of weeks later it will be heading south and then on to South Africa

Our garden played host to flocks of swallow and house martin who were busy hunting insects over the adjacent meadow, and pied wagtail (Dansk: hvid vipstjert) which are resident in the UK and are ubiquitous in parks and gardens picking invertebrates from the grass.

A pied wagtail youngster, above, and an adult…
The adult has a white face and black cap and breast which the youngster hasn’t yet acquired

A walk around Bamburgh Castle and the playing field at the foot of the castle was accompanied by lots of linnet. Linnet are resident in the UK but their conservation status is red due to decline in the breeding population so it was good to see them in such numbers:

Linnet male looking for grass seeds on the cricket pitch under Bamburgh Castle

There was a family of linnet on top of the castle walls with the adults feeding the fledglings and on the playing field beneath this imposing superstructure was a mixture of numerous wagtails and linnet.

I think the chap in the photograph has some unusual colouration. He has the fading pink breast and red forehead spot of a cock linnet approaching Autumn, but the greater covert feathers on the wings (the ones at the top of the black primary flight feathers) are dark brown. I’d expect them to be the same lighter brown colour as higher up the wing and back. Maybe that happens at this time of year too.

Other highlights around Bamburgh were a flock of approximately 100 lapwing over the fields between bamburgh and Seahouses and on another day a flock of around 50 curlew (Danish ‘storspove‘). And to the north of Bamburgh lies Budle Bay which when the tide is out plays host to large nubers of waders, gulls and other seabirds.

A curlew (Numenius arquata) on the tidal mudflats of Budle Bay

As well as curlew there were oystercatcher, black headed gull, redshank, knot, turnstone and mute swan all visible from the side of the road. I was guilty of one of my more scatterbrained moments on this trip as I forgot to pack my binoculars. I’m fairly sure that with some ocular assistance I’d have found alot more species out there.

A pair of mute swans on Budle Bay after the tide has come in