Tag Archives: summer migrant

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.

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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

Returning songbirds

Posted on May 10, 2012 | 22 comments

There’s a particular spot in my local meadow where there are some large clumps of brambles which are home to numerous species of bird including songthrush, blackbird, linnet and house sparrow. And in the summer chiffchaff, willow warbler, blackcap and common whitethroat are all there too. Chiffchaff have been here for a couple of months now, and willow warbler almost as long but I hadn’t yet seen a whitethroat, so I set off last Monday in the hope of seeing the first one of the year.

A cock robin singing to the ladies

There were many species of songbird in the meadow including the robin (Erithacus rubecula: Dansk: rødhals) and the house sparrow (Passer domesticus, Dansk: gråspurv) and the air was alive with the song of all these species.

House sparrow female

Robin and house sparrow are resident species in the meadow and I see them all year round there, but not the chiffchaff:

The chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita Dansk: gransanger), which is a warbler, and willow warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus, Dansk: løvsanger) can be very difficult to tell apart if only seen at a glance, but they can be distinguished by their song, of which more in the next post. This chiffchaff was one of a pair which were calling to each other and flitting around the bushes passing within a few feet of me on several occasions and seemingly unfazed by my presence.

Cock linnet

Resident in the UK is the linnet (Carduelis cannabina, Dansk: tornirisk), they disappear from the fields around Histon in the Autumn, presumably to congregate at a winter feeding ground, and they reappear in the Spring. And they have recently turned up in the meadow. Also resident, and present all year round, is the dunnock…

Dunnock, Prunella modularis, Dansk: jernspurv

… and the chaffinch:

Cock chaffinch, Fringilla coelebs, Dansk: bogfinke

There were no whitethroat back in the meadow last Monday but as you can see there were plenty of other birds. In the last week I’ve also seen kestrel, sparrowhawk and buzzard, blackcap, green woodpecker, jay and magpie.

I recce’d the meadow again this weekend and the whitethroat are now back from wintering in Africa. They are very distinctive and both sexes are easily identified by their strikingly white throat, and the males display by singing from the top of a bramble thicket or a sapling and flit 4-5m vertically into the air and then descend to land in the same spot. They’re lovely little birds, with a very distinctive song, and I’ll hopefully have some pictures to show you in the near future.

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Posted in Birds, Garden birds, Migrants, Ornithology, Songbirds, UK wildlife, Walks around Cambridge and Histon

Tagged Accipiter nisus, birds, blackbird, blackcap, bogfinke, Buteo buteo, Buzzard, Cambridge, Carduelis cannabina, chaffinch, chiffchaff, common whitethroat, dunnock, Erithacus rubecula, falco tinnunculus, Fringilla coelebs, Garrulus glandarius, gransanger, gråspurv, grønspætte, green woodpecker, histon, house sparrow, husskade, jay, jernspurv, kestrel, løvsanger, linnet, magpie, munk, musvåge, Nature, ornithology, Passer domesticus, Phylloscopus collybita, Phylloscopus trochilus, Pica pica, Picus viridis, Prunella modularis, rødhals, robin, Rowleys Meadow, sangdrossel, skovskade, solsort, songthrush, sparrowhawk, spurvehøg, summer migrant, Sylvia atricapilla, Sylvia communis, tårnfalk, tornirisk, tornsanger, Turdus merula, Turdus philomelos, willow warbler

Birds and bee(flie)s

Posted on April 3, 2012 | 18 comments

The day after the cold weather put paid to my snake hunting exploits I decided to take the dog for a quick run in the afternoon. He had just had a small tumour removed from his back leg and so he had a lampshade on his head to stop him chewing his stitches and consequently this walk was only meant to be a short one, and I wasn’t even going to take my camera. But on the way out the door I decided because it was very sunny and very warm I would take my camera. And I’m glad I did because there was wildlife in abundance.

Peacock butterfly, Inachis io, sunning itself on the path

The air was abuzz with insects including butterflies. I really like photographing butterflies and peacocks are good because they present a medium sized challenge. If you approach with stealth and don’t cast a shadow on them they let you get to within a few feet. The peacock is a species that can be seen at any time through the winter as it can wake in response to warmer weather, but they emerge in spring around the end of March/beginning of April, so the timing for this one was spot on. As I was photographing the peacock a sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus, Dansk: spurvehøg) flew past at high speed, much too fast to enable a usable photograph, it’s always good to see a bird of prey because I think it suggests the prey species are in good order too.

Long tailed tit, Aegithalos caudatus, Dansk: halemejse

The field where I found the peacock butterfly has a corner which faces south west and it was sheltered from the wind and bathed in spring sunshine. It was really warm when I arrived there, so I stood still and watched and listened while the dog went off to explore, and the trees around were full of birds including the long tailed tit, above, and a song thrush, below.

Songthrush, Turdus philomelos, Dansk: sangdrossel

While the birds were capturing my attention in the trees, butterflies weren’t the only insects there. In my corner there were also beeflies buzzing around. I was keen to try to photograph them in flight which is a tad more challenging as they would hover for a few seconds before darting off at very high speed in zig zag lines. But they were making the most of the shelter from any breeze that prevailed in this sheltered spot and I spent a good hour trying to photograph them.

Beefly, Bombylius major

The beefly, as the name suggests is a bee mimic. It has a very prominent proboscis which is used to extract nectar, and the fur is part of the bee disguise. It is a very good pollinator but is detrimental to other pollinators.

It is detrimental because it parasitises other bees and beetles. And the way it achieves that is another of those bizarre evolutionary adaptations that even the most imaginative science fiction writer wouldn’t dream of. It mimics bees in order to get close to their burrows where using its legs the female will flick her eggs into the hole where it hatches and attaches itself to the host. Then the gruesome bit: it lies dormant until the host commences pupation and then becomes an ‘ectoparasite‘ which means it remains on the outside of its host but extracts the body fluids to fuel its own growth. After draining its host dry it reaches the pupal stage which can vary hugely in length and they have been known to overwinter before emerging as an adult the following year.

Beeflies have appeared in several blogs in the last week or so and there are some more very fine images here:

http://www.leavesnbloom.com/2012/04/bombylius-major-bee-fly-aerodynamics.html

Rosie from ‘leavesnbloom’ has a wonderful collection of images of Bombylius major and Harlan from ‘The Roused Bear’ has also captured one in Iowa in the U.S.:

http://therousedbear.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/a-fuzzy-bee-fly/

They can be found across the whole planet except Australasia.

More birds which appeared in the trees around while I was chasing beefly were the common or garden greenfinch and chaffinch:

Greenfinch male pecking at a twig
Chaffinch male just taking it easy

Both greenfinch (Carduelis chloris, Dansk: grønirisk) and chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs, Dansk: bogfinke) are common or garden, but are both beautiful birds, and they can be seen here in the U.K. all year round. But a species that isn’t here all year round and returns after its winter migration to north Africa is the chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita, Dansk: gransanger):

The chiffchaff, named after its characteristic song, is a warbler and despite being a small bird they are tough. Their migration takes them south across mainland Europe, across the Mediterranean Sea and into north Africa, to retrace their flight four or five months later in the spring. And despite the hardships associated with such a gruelling endeavour, according to the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), there are around three quarters of a million territories in the UK. They are one of the first migrants to arrive back in the U.K. and can be heard singing as early as late February. But this my first one in Cambridge on the first weekend in April.