Tag Archives: migration

Late autumn migrant

Posted on November 30, 2014 | 5 comments

The autumn and the spring are the best times to be keeping a look out for migrants which, in the case of Cambridge, are often passing through on their way to a destination further north. The summer visitors such as swallow and swift are usually on their way to Africa by mid autumn, as the winter migrants such as fieldfare and redwing are beginning to arrive here to escape the freezing winters of Scandinavia.

A couple of years ago I saw a black redstart on Cambridge Science Park, which is a very rare sighting in this part of the world, at least for me. It was here for less than 24hr before heading further north and west. And this autumn my unusual sighting was a female wheatear:

Female wheatear (Oenenthe oenanthe, Dansk: stenpikker)

Wheatear are handsome birds and this one was the first one I’ve seen in the fields in Histon. I only had the one sighting, and as it was in the third week in October she wouldn’t have tarried as she wended her way back to overwinter in Africa.

Last year I saw a small group of wheatear in a field near Wicken Fen, this time it was in springtime so they were on their way north, including this beautiful male:

I think that as we head into December all the winter visitors that are coming this way may already be here, and I’ll hopefully be able to share pictures of other wanderers in the near future.

5 Comments

Posted in Birds, Buxhall Farm Histon, Cambridgeshire, Countryside walks, Histon, Migrants, Ornithology, UK wildlife, Walks around Cambridge and Histon, Wicken Fen

Tagged black redstart, Buxhall Farm, histon, migration, Oenanthe oenanthe, Phoenicurus ochruros, summer migrant, wheatear

Flowers and foliage

Posted on October 10, 2012 | 24 comments

The greatest thing about a sodden Springtime was the abundance of bloom that resulted. So I spent alot of time this year recording the wild flowers and foliage that flourished in the wake of the deluge.

Some years ago I attended a lecture in which the speaker said that due to modern farming methods which involve the use of mechanisation and toxic chemicals to create a sterile monoculture, verges and drainage ditches have now become an invaluable seed bank where many of our wild flowers can still prevail. Without these unpolluted conduits criss-crossing the countryside the flora seeking refuge there would be even more threatened. This idea seems to be born out in my local area as the drainage ditches are indeed full of wild flowers year on year.

Hedge woundwort – Stachys sylvatica

Hedge woundwort has lined the field margins and ditches in greater abundance this year than in previous years, its delicate purple flowerheads, growing up to around a metre tall, poking over the top of the ditches. It’s a lovely flower and it gets its name from its preference for hedgerows and because the crushed leaves were traditionally applied to wounds to stem bleeding.

Hawthorn flowers lined all the hedgerows ealier in the year and heralded a glut of berries which are currently providing rich pickings for the birds, and will continue to do so well into the colder months.

Hawthorn blossom – Crataegus monogyna

The October 2012 edition of British Trust for Ornithology’s BirdTrack reveals that the migrant redwings (Turdus iliacus, Dansk: vindrossel) should be arriving here from Scandinavia any day now and will be followed closely by the fieldfare (Turdus pilaris, Dansk: sjagger), and the hedges fulls of haws will help to replenish their fat reserves after the migration across the North Sea. I think I saw my first redwing over Histon on Sunday, they have a characteristically undulating flight during which they fold back their wings and form a teardrop shape, which is what my sighting today was doing. So the fieldfare should be along soon too, according to the BTO.

Oxeye daisy – Leucanthemum vulgare

Oxeye daisies are my Mother’s favourite flower and she has been pestering me to publish a picture of one. This year they lined my cycle route to work alongside the Cambridge Guided Busway in their thousands so I’m finally able to complete my commission. So, Ma, this one’s yours!

The wild flowers have been spectacular but the leaves and some of the trees have also been contributing their own splash of colour to the countryside such as the cluster of oak leaves below.

(Dramatic interlude: Wow, the first goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis Dansk: stillits) arrived on my niger seed feeder a couple of days ago after being absent through the summer and until a minute ago there was an adult and a late fledgling feeding there. I just caught a blurr out the corner of my eye as I was writing this post and looked up just in time to see a sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus, Dansk: Spurvehøg) swoop through a gap in the buddleia bush next to the feeders, the goldfinches fled but it all happened too fast to see if the hawk was successful. It was all over in less than a second!)

Back to the oak leaves though, they were lovely colours, almost autumnal. Oak trees are amazing organisms, in fact they are substantially more than organisms, they are ecosystems in their own right. They live to be several centuries old and when coppiced or pollarded (pollarding is pruning back a tree to the top of the trunk to promote new branch growth, compared to coppicing which is pruning it back to ground level), but there are numerous examples of oaks living for 1000-1500 years. And they become home to hundreds of other species of fungi, lichens, insects, birds and mammals.

Oak leaf cluster – Quercus robur – the English oak

And right next to the oak was this gorgeous, delicate field rose. The field rose, Rosa arvensis, grows in hedges and has white to cream coloured flowers and lovely golden yellow anthers. It flowers later than the dog rose (Rosa canina) which has pink flowers and the leaves are smaller. Later in the autumn the flowers turn into bright red hips which provide food for birds as well as humans. When I was a kid we used to have rosehip syrup which was sweet and delicious and I’ve been toying with the idea of trying to make some. If I succeed in creating something pleasant I’ll post the recipe here.

Without doubt my favourite wild flower is the field scabius (Knautia arvensis). I think they’re utterly beautiful and if I have a camera to hand I struggle to walk past one! Fortunately for me the field margins around here are replete with them so I’m rarely short of photographic opportunities.

The glorious flower of the field scabius

And from side on:

The hue of the flowers can vary from a pale pastel shade to quite dark purple. Each flower contains male stamens which can be seen protruding from this flower from between the female florets. The stamen consists of the filament (the stalk) and the anther (the pollen bearing part at the end of the filament). The stamens die back before the female florets mature in order to prevent self-fertilisation. Field scabius is named afer the German botanist Dr Knaut and has historically been used to treat skin ailments such as scabies and eczema.

24 Comments

Posted in Birds, Birds of prey, Buxhall Farm Histon, Countryside walks, Flora and fungi, Garden birds, Hawks, Ornithology, Songbirds, Trees, UK wildlife, Walks around Cambridge and Histon, Wild flowers

Tagged Accipiter nisus, agrochemicals, bird of prey, BirdTrack, British Trust for Ornithology, Cambridge Guided Busway, Carduelis carduelis, coppicing, Crataegus monogyna, dog rose, drainage, English oak, field rose, field scabius, fieldfare, flora, goldfinch, hawk, hawthorn, hedge woundwort, herbal remedy, Knautia arvensis, Leucanthemum vulgare, medicinal herbs, migration, migratory birds, Nature, oak, oxeye daisy, pollarding, Quercus robur, redwing, Rosa arvensis, Rosa canina, rosehips, seed bank, sjagger, sparrowhawk, spurvehøg, Stachys sylvatica, stillits, thrushes, Turdus, Turdus iliacus, Turdus pilaris, vindrossel, wild flowers, wildlife

Geddington swallows

Posted on September 19, 2012 | 23 comments

A couple of months ago I was at my sisters place in Geddington, a small village in the Northamptonshire countryside which is right next door to one of the original release sites for the reintroduction of red kites into the UK. Consequently, one doesn’t have to look too hard to see red kites there, but on this particular trip it was swallows that were the stars of the show.

Geddington is a very old village and the cottages in the middle, one of which is occupied by my sister, are built from Northamptonshire ironstone, which is a gorgeous building material. Not only is her house built with it but so is her very substantial shed. She leaves the door to the shed open all the time because there are bats roosting there, and in the summer swallows use nests built in the eaves there.

A brood of swallows on the verge of fledging

Swallows (Hirundo rustica, Dansk: landsvale) migrate here from South Africa in the Spring and they generally arrive back around the second weekend in May. They return to the same place every year and often refurbish an old nest which can be used year after year, and there are records of the same nest being used for decades.

I usually get an excited phone call from my sister in the middle of May to tell me her swallows have returned. They come back again and again and she comes over all maternal when the first one arrives.

A pair of very recent fledglings which haven’t yet plucked up the courage to venture outside

They have now done all their breeding and feeding up and are congregating on roof tops and power lines and contemplating the enormous feat of flying down through Europe, across the Mediterranean and the Sahara desert before crossing the rest of sub-Saharan Africa to South Africa. Where they will spend the next 6 months before doing the whole thing again in reverse. Awesome!

23 Comments

Posted in Birds, Migrants, Ornithology, UK wildlife

Tagged birdlife, Geddington, Hirundo rustica, Landsvale, migration, Nature, Northamptonshire, ornithology, swallow

Turn of the century

Posted on April 6, 2012 | 28 comments

After 20 months of posting this is the 100th episode of The Naturephile. The original plan was to post once a week wherever possible and I’ve averaged around five a month, so that stayed roughly on track. I thought I may struggle to find enough subject material and to acquire sufficient photographs of the necessary quality to post as often as I wanted too, but that hasn’t been a problem, so far.

When I started off writing The Naturephile, the idea I may reach a hundred posts never entered my mind, so to mark the moment I’ve trawled back through the archive to find my favourite posts to give them another airing. I’d anticipated it would be a straightforward venture but of course I’d rather underestimated the amount of subjects/species and photographs I’ve written about. But the number of posts was eventually whittled down to 14.

1) At the end of September 2010 one of natures more brutal rituals was played out right outside my back door involving garden spider courtship. Like other spiders this can easily end up in the death of the male as it did in this case. ‘Araneus diadematus‘ posted on 2nd October 2010:

I really love you… . Male on the left, Shelob on the right

2) A little farther afield are dragon flies, the most common species I encounter are common darters and migrant hawkers. This Common darter appeared in a post on 19th October 2010. I like the symmetry of the fly and the seedhead and the red colour of this male darter against the brown grass.

3) A few years ago when my sister lived in a house (she lives in a kennel now. Only joking, she lives on a narrow boat ;-)) they were digging the garden and this piece of rock turned up. It’s an Acheulian hand axe made from flint and the marks on it are where it was worked with a deer antler. It dates from around 400,000 years ago which means it could have been made by a pre Homo sapiens hominid! It fits beautifully into the palm of my hand and after that many years the edges are still sharp. Even if I was blogging about topiary or book binding I’d have to find a way to slot this in.

4) The winter of 2010/11 was known as a ‘waxwing winter‘. Every winter a few waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus, Dansk: silkehale) migrate to our shores from Scandinavia to overwinter. But occasionally the weather up there is fearsome so the waxwing migrate in large numbers and we then have a ‘waxwing winter’. And I hope you’ll agree the waxwing is a beatiful bird:

A group of waxwing perched at the top of a rowan tree in north Cambridge

5) Another consequence of the bitterly cold winter of 2010/11 was that most stretches of open water were frozen over and our herons (Ardea cinerea, Dansk: fiskehejre) were starving because they couldn’t access their normal food supplies. During this winter a hungry heron appeared in my friends garden and taking pity on its plight he fed it some fish. And of course one fish supper turned into rather more than one so the heron came to expect it, and if dinner was late it came and tapped on the window to complain to the management.

6) Sea mammals of any description are always a delight to see and photograph and one of my favourite places on the planet for doing that is the Farne Isles situated just off the Northumberland coast.

Atlantic grey seal in the North Sea off the Northumberland coast

Our holiday last year was to Northumberland and I can’t go there without taking in a boat trip to the Farnes where hundreds of Atlantic grey seal were basking on the rocks and generally taking life easy in the water.

7) Closer to home, April last year was hot and sunny and a great time to see songbirds in the countryside. One of my favourite birds is the yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella, Dansk: gulspurv) and they’re regulars in the hedgerows around Cambridge.

Yellowhammer male – what a gorgeous colour!

8) A creature I’d never encountered before last year was the great crested newt. My friend told me of a place where they could be found so we ensconced ourselves in the nearest pub in preparation for a nocturnal newt hunt after closing time.

It was a very successful trip, a few pints followed by finding not only the great crested newt but the other two species of UK newt, palmate and smooth newts.

9) As the year rushes headlong into summer and the butterfly season really gets underway I can spend many an hour chasing our Lepidopterans round the fields trying to get that perfect picture. One of my favourites is the common blue and this is about the closest I got to that perfect picture:

Common blue male sipping nectar – one of the best photographs I’ve ever taken

10) As well as being a top location for marine mammals the Northumberland coast is also home to huge numbers of seabirds so it’s a very happy hunting ground for me!

Just poking your head over the seawall at Seahouses can reveal lots of seabirds including oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus, Dansk: strandskade), knot (Calidris canutus, Dansk: islandsk ryle), eider (Somateria mollissima, Dansk: ederfugl), turnstone (Arenaria interpres, Dansk: stenvender) and this redshank (Tringa totanus, Dansk: rødben).

11) RSPB Fowlmere, to the west of Cambridge is famous for its water rail. On a trip there in December 2011 I was tipped off by a local that a particular hide was good for water rail (Rallus aquaticus, Dansk: vandrikse) and one had been seen there that morning, so off I went to try and see it.

My informant was correct. There was just the one bird there, but it scoured the mudflats in front of us for a whole hour before disappearing into the reeds, giving me plenty of good photo opportunities. I was very pleased with the primeval feel of this image with the bird face on infront of the horsetails.

12) In January this year the weather was absolutely freezing causing a small group of red-legged partridge at Tubney Fen, east of Cambridge, to seek the warmth generated by a mountain of dung:

13) My favourite bird of prey is the kestrel (Falco tinnunculus, Dansk: tårnfalk) and they are always to be seen hovering in the skies over the fields around Histon. I love watching the highly specialised hunting techniques all birds of prey in action, but the kestrel beats them all in my opinion:

A male kestrel showing off all his hunting hardware: talons, flight feathers, eyes and aquiline beak

14) And lastly, I couldn’t write a post like this without including my battling blackbirds. Of all the bird species that visit my garden these are the ones that provide the most entertainment:

My garden gladiators locked in aerial combat

These were a few of my favourite posts, favourite for various reasons: the stories attached, the rarity of the sighting or simply the exquisite natural beauty of the subjects. I hope you like them!

And lastly, I’ve been stunned by the numbers of people from all round the world who read The Naturephile and like it enough to follow it or click the ‘Like’ button. Thanks to everyone for stopping by and enjoying a read, I love sharing the nature from my corner of Cambridgeshire with you!

28 Comments

Posted in Amphibians, Anisoptera, Anthropology, Arachnids, Birds, Birds of prey, Butterflies, Coastal walk, Countryside walks, Darter dragonflies, Dragonflies, Falcons, Farne Islands, Fowlmere, Garden birds, Great crested newt, Insects, Marine mammals, Migrants, Newts, Northumberland, Ornithology, RSPB reserves, Seabirds, Seahouses, Songbirds, UK wildlife, Waders, Walks around Cambridge and Histon, water birds

Tagged Acheulian hand axe, arachnids, Araneus diadematus, Ardea cinerea, Atlantic grey seal, bird of prey, blackbirds, Bombycilla garrulus, buntings, butterfly, common blue, Common darter, dragon flies, Emberiza citrinella, falco tinnunculus, falcon, Farne Isles, fiskehejre, garden spider, great crested newt, gulspurv, heron, hominid, Homo sapiens, kestrel, Lepidoptera, migrant hawkers, migration, Northumberland, overwinter, palmate newt, Rallus aquaticus, rødben, red-legged partridge, redshank, RSPB Fowlmere, sea mammals, seabirds, Seahouses, silkehale, smooth newt, songbirds, tårnfalk, Tringa totanus, Tubney Fen, Turdus merula, vandrikse, water rail, waxwing, waxwing winter, yellowhammer

Roesels bush cricket

Posted on July 9, 2011 | Leave a comment

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting at my dining table gazing out the window when I spotted this silhouette throught the blind:

So I snapped a picture and I really like the detail through the blind. It’s clearly a cricket, and a male (it lacks the long pointed ovipositor of the female which would be protruding from the back end) and its very long, very fine antennae are visible too.

So I popped around the other side of the blind to take a proper photograph, which unfortunately had to be through the window:

The markings on this creature suggest he’s a Roesels Bush Cricket

I went on to do some research on the Roesels bush cricket, Metrioptera roeseli, and it turns out it’s quite an interesting creature. It is a European species, named after the German artist and entomologist August Johann Rösel von Rosenhof, which found its way to England in the late 19th century where it established a toe hold in the far south east, in Kent and Sussex, where it remained for several decades. In the last few decades, possibly assisted by climate change, it has spread over much of south east England and the Midlands.

The migration of this species may have been assisted by the road network which could provide conduits for travelling further afield. There are two forms of this insect, the macropterous or long winged form, and a short winged form. It is reasonable to imagine that the long winged cricket would migrate further and faster, but even though Cambridgeshire appears to be towards the northern periphery of their range this short winged individual has arrived here too.

Roesels bush cricket is distinguished from all other bush crickets by the yellow/green edge to the hard cover of the thorax – the ‘pronotum‘ – and the light spots immediately behind the pronotum. One other similar species, the bog bush cricket, also has a light edge to its pronotum but it doesn’t extend all the way round as it does with Roesels bush cricket.

I’d never heard of Roesels bush cricket before I started trying to identify this individual, and then a few days later I was rooting around in the undergrowth of a field of scrub, also here in Histon, and I spotted a creature which I thought was a very green grasshopper. I managed to fire off a couple of photographs and when I uploaded the images it turned out to be a cricket not a grasshopper:

The macropterous form of Roesels bush cricket

And it was another male Roesels bush cricket but he clearly has the long wings of the macropterous form which extend well beyond his abdomen. So it appears I’ve found both forms of this colourful creature within a week. It’s amazing what can be found by poking around in the long grass!

Toad migration

Posted on April 2, 2011 | 1 comment

It’s the time of year when our resident amphibians are mating and heading for the nearest stretch of water to spawn. I find it a particularly stressful phenomenon due to the number of frogs and toads that need to cross roads and don’t make it. In my vicinity the completion of the guided busway running into the north of Cambridge has imposed an impassable barrier to thousands of common toads, Bufo bufo, which hibernate in the woods and hedgerows along the northern edge of the busway.

Pair of toads, the lady is the larger one underneath doing the legwork

It’s clear from the picture that the toads stand little or no chance of negotiating the sheer walls at the side of the busway – and even if they did they would have a further three to climb on the way to the lake and all four again on the way back. All this whilst numerous pedestrians and cyclists are making their way to school in Histon and work on Cambridge Science Park. It’s an extremely hazardous operation.

A pair that made it on their way to the water

When they make it to the water toads lay strings of eggs, as opposed to the gelatinous mass of eggs laid by frogs, and their tadpoles are slightly shorter and fatter than frogs. They feed on vegetable matter and absorb oxygen through their skin. As they grow they develop lungs and come to the surface to breathe. Eventually the tadpoles metamorphose into adult toads and the tail shrinks away at which point they leave the water as immature adults and will only return to the water to breed.

Adult toads differ from frogs in that they don’t hop, they walk. The colour of toads is also rather different, they have light ot dark brown warty skin with darker spots and frogs have more homogeneous green and smooth skin. And the eye colours of the toad is gorgeous – a lovely deep reddish gold. I like toads, they eat garden pests including slugs and are consequently good things to have around.

As with alot of creatures with the word ‘common‘ in their name, this is something of a misnomer, because of habitat destruction and the best attempts of predators including domestic cats they are no longer common. They secrete a toxic irritant through the skin but some predators are immune to this so they still get eaten.

It’s a real struggle being an amphibian in modern Britain so if you see one heading for the water – or on the return trip – please rescue it and help it on its way by placing it out of the way of humans, cars, cats etc.