Man-flu

A combination of man-flu and work meant no patch birding for Ipin this weekend :-(

And now the clocks have changed, my patch efforts will be confined to weekends until March...

Goldcrests and spiders

I was contemplating catching up with some chores around the house late morning when reports came in of birds arriving at coastal spots -firecrests, ring ouzels, Lapland buntings and more yellow-browed warblers... The chores could wait.

Arriving at 1145, I checked the plantation, plenty of goldcrests but little else and then wandered up through the bushes. There were small parties of goldcrests everywhere, some mixed in with a tit flock, some on their own. I checked them all for firecrests, yellow-brows or even an early Pallas's warbler but to no avail.

My highlight was a single female brambling by the Budge screen.

There are a lot of spiders this year, maybe the mild autumn has helped them? Several webs had been strung across my path by garden spiders. I came across one, setting to work on a newly caught bluebottle and documented (mostly poorly as I had the 100-400mm lens on the camera) the battle that commenced.

A second spider arrives at the battle commences

The two spiders do battle, forgetting about the fly

Losing height, they fall to the ground

Meanwhile the poor fly is left dangling

The victor climbs back up the web to deal with his prize

starting to wrap the fly

The fly puts a brave fight 

Which pays off as it manages to struggle free and fly off, leaving the garden spider with nothing

 Such is life...

Another garden spider which caught my eye

148 Brambling

Fog-bound

The weather forecast predicted light winds this morning, but it didn't mention thick fog, which Druridge Bay was cloaked in for most of the day.

Luckily,  it was the 'dry' type of fog, not a wetting fog which makes ringing impossible as the nets and therefore the birds, get wet.

So, dry fog and no wind, meant good ringing conditions.

As I was putting the last of the three nets up that we were going to sue, I flushed a long-eared owl for the nearby bushes, it flew off, silently...

Our first net-round only yielded a couple of birds, both retraps, until we checked the last net. The long-eared owl had obviously returned to its roosting spot and was now in the net, quickly extracted, we returned to the car to ring it.

Long-eared Owl

Fantastic eyes! - click for bigger image

Long-eared owls can be sexed quite easily, this was a female, told by having less white about the face and the 'ground' colour of the underparts being more buff than white. This bird was in active moult, growing a new fourth primary feather on both wings, making it at least a 2nd calender year bird.

This is the third long-eared owl we have caught over the years at Druridge, the last one was last year, a breeding female, which was sadly found dead by a member of the public only 12 days later.

After the excitement of the long-eared owl, we continued to catch steadily throughout the morning until the fog lifted and wind picked up in the early afternoon.

It was obvious that the last two dry and sunny days had encouraged the migrants that had arrived on Tuesday and Wednesday, particularly the thrushes, to move on. We caught 40 birds in total, the only warblers were blackcaps of which there four, three juveniles and a retrapped resident female that we ringed with a brood-patch in August.

 This is a male Blackcap, told by the black crown, but you can still see some of the brown juvenile feathering in the crown.

Three goldcrests and a song thrush were 'passage' birds. We also caught 12 of the huge goldfinch flock that is hanging around Druridge, making the most of the bumper thistle crop, there are a few lesser redpolls in the finch flock and we caught two of them.

Whilst putting up the nets first-thing, a yellow-browed warbler was calling but was not relocated and later a couple of great-spotted woodpeckers put in an appearance by the car.

Throughout the morning, at least until 11am, there was a virtually constant sound of pink-footed geese flying over. Mostly, they appeared to be going south, but we couldn't see them for the fog, some of the groups sounded quite numerous.

Ringing session

I've got lots of things going on at the minute so I am finding difficult too get our birding never mind finding time to update my blog. This lack of time means that I still haven't seen yellow-browed warbler on the patch this autumn, there's been plenty of them!

I did find the time for a ringing session today. The weather has been great for ringing the whole week and it has been really frustrating not being able to get out, so it was good to get a session in today.

It was calm and cloudy this morning with no fog or heavy dew like previous mornings, it was nice not have to wear waterproof trousers all day. The wind has been out of the east, but the calm, dry conditions hasn't dropped any migrants onto the east coast, other than the yellow-browed warblers.

goldcrest (male)

We caught a few migrants including song thrushes, robins, chiffchaffs, a blackcap and a few goldcrests. We caught some of the huge goldfinch flock that is moving around Druridge at the moment (which also contains greenfiches, siskins, redpolls and linnets) and a tit flock.

A first autumn male reed bunting with a ring on it was interesting as it wasn't one of our rings, a quick check with Ian Fisher confirmed that he had ringed as a juvenile at East Chevington back in August.

Reed bunting from East Chevington

Whilst ringing there was a few small skeins of pink-footed geese, mostly headed south and group of five barnacle geese headed north. A couple of vocal mistle thrushes were noted, a proper autumn bird on the patch.

At least two different yellow-browed warblers had been seen, one by a visiting birder just off the track to the Oddie hide and Jonathon Farooqi had found on in the plantation.

The forecast for the week ahead is interesting with some rain and south-easterly winds and then the tail end of hurricane Joaquin may or may not come our way.

Ringing on Saturday

The weather forecast for last weekend went a bit wrong, Sunday was forecast to be quite windy from the west  whilst Saturday was due to be calm, but bright.

Saturday was calm and bright. Sunday started very calm and was overcast but the wind picked up later.

On Friday we worked to clear some vegetation from our net rides and it was obvious then that there were very few birds around, other than a large number of goldfinches. Migrants were particularly thin on the ground with a only a few 'wheeting' phyloscs and one or two goldcrests, but quite a few robins.

robin

 So on Saturday we decided to try a ringing session despite the forecasted sunshine and the lack of any migrants (the clear, calm night with light westerlies would not drop anything new in). As predicted we didnt catch many birds, only 20 in fact. We caught a few robins, goldcrests, goldfinches and a nice juvenile siskin. This whitethroat was our only warbler, it was carrying a lot of fat so was obviously on the move.

migrant whitethroat caught and ringed

There was some vizmig going on, with a few skylarks headed north, a grey wagtail over (always a autumn bird at Druridge) and a few siskins and lesser redpolls moving through or joining the goldfinch flocks.

Car problems have prevented any further visits to the patch.

Back to the patch

Back to the patch (proper) this evening after a trip down to Tarifa for migration. I say 'proper' because I did run briefly onto the patch on Wednesday evening to tick the red-footed falcon.

After watching tens of thousands birds migrate through the Straits of Gibraltar and then coming home to a red-footed falcon on the patch, the patch was going to have to conjure up something spectacular not to disappoint - it didn't

Adult male honey buzzard roosting in gale-force winds in La Janda near Tarifa

There was a few good birds reported from Holy Island and the Farnes today, so it was always going to be worth a look through the bushes. All I found was a few willow warblers and blackcap, it was getting on for dusk and quite breezy.

There was a migrant hawker flying around the bushes, it didn't land, but this common darter did.

Male common darter

So no scarcities at Druridge tonight but the forecast for the weekend through to Monday looks a bit tasty and will hopefully drop some birds in.

PATCH TICK!!!!

Red-footed Falcon on the patch today is a FULL, FAT, PATCH TICK!

As I turned up with no scope or camera, I've nicked this from Tom Cadwallender (cheers Tom)

I was in Warkworth this afternoon watching the Tour of Britain cycle race come through the Northumberland Coast AONB, as I was leaving I got a phone call from Frank Golding who said "I think I might have had a red-footed falcon over Hemscotthill Farm"  - Frank had also been watching the TofB but had put his camera away when the bird cam by and he hadn't seen where it went.

I had some more work to do, but I drove by that way on my home, checking fence-posts and overhead wires as I went, not seeing anything.

An hour or so later, I got a phone call from Dave Elliott to say he was watching a male red-footed falcon just north of Bell's Farm. I was soon on the scene (without a scope or camera, luckily I had my bins) to watch a fantastic male red-footed falcon sitting on some straw bales by the side of a field that was being sown, eating a worm.

Not technically on the patch, but the rules of PWC are that if it is seen from the patch - it counts. So off I ran, up the road, with Janet's scope, to watch it from my patch boundary.

We watched it for a half an hour or so, getting good views as it flew from the straw bales to the fence and back. There were two generations of feathers in the wing and it was in active moult, showing it to be a second-calender-year male. - A stunning bird!

A good handful of county-listers came for it, but a lot hadn't arrived when the red-foot was flushed up by a passing marsh harrier. It flew off, north... right over the patch (so it is a proper patch-bird now) and just kept going. It was last seen heading over the plantation towards Low Chibburn and Red Row.

The addition of red-footed falcon to my patch list takes it to 237. I did wonder whether I would see any new birds on the patch this year after an incredible five new species last year.

R-FF was also a new bird for Northumberland and Britain for me.

Big thanks to Frank and Dave!