The Undercoverts of Birding 2: Bulldogs and Barn Owls

Years ago apparently people genuinely wondered where swallows went in winter, with some believing that they might have gone to the bottom of ponds.  Today some may similarly wonder where chavs go in winter.  Those tattooed vest-wearing numskulls that infest our town centres and country parks in summer, but are noticeably absent in winter.  Where do they go?  Well I know, they stay at Chester’s Hotel* in Skegness, opposite The Pier. 

I booked it online as a base for this month’s winter bird survey of East Lincolnshire.  It boasted wi-fi (it has, but it doesn’t work), breakfast (yes, but its not included, you have to pay extra), and it made no mention of the multitude of chavs actually living in the place, courtesy of the council.  Every other room has a family of them ensconced within, complete with a shoal of children and the obligatory bull terrier or bulldog.  When one barks they all follow suit, and then when the dogs join in too its hell!  I cannot remember previously staying in a hotel where there was a dog in every room.  I may as well, and might have had more peace, if I had lain a sleeping bag down in a boarding kennels.  The parents all had a crafty plan to stop the kids making a noise in the rooms though, let them play in the corridors and landings, all of them, together.  Someone remind me again how lucky I am to ‘get paid for watching birds’.

Talking of which I did see a beauty today.  Walking along a verge a barn owl lofted over the hedge right by me.  It flew almost over my head, a few feet to my left.  I stopped and stared, it was just gone noon and quite an early sighting.  We made clear eye contact and then it veered away but what a brilliant moment.  It almost balances out a stay at Hotel Chavsters on its own, but may need some help from other sightings too I feel.

Incidentally a quick Ragwatch diversion is relevant here.  The Daily Excess carried some interesting statistics today.  One was that David Attenborough’s seminal Blue Planet series has been seen by 500 million people in 245 countries.  Its very inspiring that a natural history programme should be so popular, but other stats were decidedly depressing.  That the human world population increases by 132 million people every year was a stark one.  Flooding the planet with our kind is ecological suicide, and as supposedly the most intelligent species we will surely realise this.  A look round the hotel and a glance in The Pier though and I am not so sure.  I can only take solace in yet another quote from the Daily Excess, one from Abraham Lincoln:  “The best thing about the future is that it happens one day at a time”.  Great words Abe, I wonder if he ever stopped at The Chesters?

'What a Great Idea', yeah but I've got a better one!

*name changed

Bird's Eggs and Goldfish

An 'obsessed' bird’s egg collector came under suspicion of the West Yorkshire Police last year.  After monitoring his behaviour the National Wildlife Crimes Unit was called in.  They and officials from the RSPB searched the man’s home and found around a thousand eggs, one of the largest collections discovered in recent years.  The haul included many owls, raptors, rare British breeders like spoonbills, declining species such as tree sparrows, and a range of seabirds from Flamborough Head. 

For taking these eggs the full force of the law was brought down upon the miscreant this week.  He was tried and convicted in court, and fined the princely sum of, er, absolutely nothing!  His lawyer argued that a harsh sentence could cause him to lose his home and job, so magistrates instead gave him a two-year conditional discharge.  The condition is of course that he realises he has been a very naughty boy and must not do it again.

Meanwhile another criminal’s two year probation has just ended.  Joan Higgins is a 68 year old pensioner from Manchester who runs a small pet shop.  In 2010 she was caught red-handed by a council official selling a £1 goldfish to a 15-year old boy.  Apparently since 2006 only someone over 16 can buy a goldfish.  

Mrs Higgins was duly tried, convicted, and fined £1000, given a seven week curfew and fitted with an electronic tag.  She can now reflect that she could have avoided all that if only she had indulged in a more innocent activity, like stealing rare bird’s eggs.

Kirklees Court, staffed by eejits

 

Ragwatch 1: Newts In The News

I have noticed that from both sides of the political chasm our daily rags are spouting the most inaccurate tosh about the environment.  One such this week from The Daily Telelaugh about newts was the best so far.  They are all at it though, The Indirrelevant, The Garbageian, The Daily Fail, Daily Excess, they’re all at it.  I will begin to highlight the choicest nonsense here under the title ‘Ragwatch’.

So first up is that classic snippet from The Daily Telelaugh.  Under the title ‘No Newts Is Good News’ we were told that great-crested newts are holding up the construction of a new shopping centre in York, featuring a Marks & Spencer and a John Lewis store.  “Under protection laws”, we are told, “each one of the newts must be rehomed before work can begin”!

The inference is obvious, that newts are unimportant, the building of a new supermarket is a far more important thing, and the world would be a better place if there were indeed ‘No Newts’.  This is a matter of opinion, that is theirs while mine is that there are quite enough supermarkets around already.  What is unforgiveable though is the ludicrous claim that every single newt must be accounted for and rehoused before work can begin. 

If a development cannot be altered to incorporate the pond in question into the design, some mitigation is required.  This includes exclusion fences and pond creation to trap as many newts as possible for translocation to another suitable site. This does not need to be particularly large, and therefore several can often be incorporated or created close to the development site as part of its landscaping plan.  Not every newt will be caught, but enough will be so that the population survives.  The developer must bear the cost of this work of course, but it is necessary to adhere to several laws like the Wildlife and Countryside Act, and most are happy to be seen exhibiting their green credentials.  Without such laws more wildlife would likely disappear under digger and dumper wheels.

What seems to be irking The Daily Telelaugh is that the contractors could start now, but the inconsiderate newts are currently hibernating from the winter weather that would otherwise kill them.  It will be a few months before translocation can begin.  In the meantime I am sure there is a TESCO, Nisa, Spar, ASDA, etc, etc, nearby to ensure local people do not starve to death, and somewhere else they can buy a pair of trousers.

 

The Undercoverts of Birding 1: The Flying Childers.

Perhaps more than any other hobby (or compulsion?) birding takes us all over the country, possibly from one end to the other in a good twitching weekend.  Thus we discover hidden hamlets and unknown lanes, meet interesting characters and have unexpected experiences that our non-birding friends, loafing at home with their sedentary hobbies, never do. 

Such travels have associated tales worthy of telling that never get told, not strictly about birds they get no mention in the news-stand birding glossies.  So here they are given a home and a name, for which a birding reference is requisite.  Something to infer the background of birding activities, and so The Undercoverts of Birding is born. 

The first undercovert concerns a pub we all whistle past on the way to Frampton Marsh or Gibraltar Point in Lincolnshire.  It is The Flying Childers at Kirby Bellars, which looks like a spelling mistake.  Was it supposed to be Guilders, or Builders?  Or Chilblains or Cinders?  Unfortunately none of these things are known for flying around showing aeronautical prowess so it cannot be them.

A look in the dictionary tells us that ‘childers’ is an old fashioned name for children, but ‘flying children’ makes no sense either.  They are no more known for flying around than builders, or badgers.  In fact the childers-children thing is just a coincidental red herring.  There is a clue on the pub’s sign though, a racehorse in full gallop and indeed the pub is actually named after a horse, a very special horse.

The Flying Childers was a racehorse who was the first foal sired by the Darley Arabian, one of the three founding stallions of the Thoroughbred breed imported to Britain in the 17^th Century.  With such illustrious genes it is hardly surprising that Flying Childers won every race he was ever entered in, by the proverbial country mile.  His owner, The Duke of Devonshire, had to turn down an offer to buy the horse for its weight in gold!  To be frank he would have left Frankel eating flying divots, but still the question remains, why ‘Childers’?  Why was that a name for a horse? 

It was simply his breeder’s name, one Colonel Leonard Childers.  Intrigued by the name I looked it up on ancestry.co.uk and found that it hails from Norfolk, and a long gone village called Childerhouse.  This is the root of the name Childers, and comes from Old English ‘Cildra’ (child) and ‘Hus’ (house), as apparently there was a home and school for children there.  So the red herring is not so much of a red herring after all, more of a pink one really!

So the next time you are squashed into the back of a car on the way to Frampton to twitch an oriental pratincole, you can break the customary pre-tick tension with tales of Flying Childers and pink herrings as you scream through Kirby Bellars.  On the way back with the bird safely ticked and travelling at a more sedate and law-abiding pace you could even call in for a pint!

The Flying Childers - lots in a name!

The Industrial Revolution Rabbits

The navvies that dug canals, hewed coal and generally powered Britain’s Industrial Revolution with elbow grease had an awesome reputation.  They each excavated an average of 20 tons of earth a day, just using picks and shovels.  Human endeavours are often mirrored in nature if we care to look, and one such smacks us in the face at Draycote Reservoir.

On the occasion of Nuneaton Birdclub’s Christmas walk there we were introduced to the amazing power of rabbits.  Rabbits can reputedly dig at a rate of up to two metres an hour, but at Draycote it is not the speed but the substrate that is impressive.  The bank at Draycote was clearly built of rubble topped with good stone hardcore, and finished with turf.  Presumably not the easiest place for rabbits to dig, but look at the pictures below.  Great mounds of stones lie like cairns around burrow entrances all along the bank.  It almost defies belief that two of those wee lucky charms some people have on their keyrings were all that were used in making these mounds.  The hole size, proximity of each, and the tell-tale piles of rabbit raisin droppings on each one reveal their makers identity though - Oryctolagus cuniculus, the humble rabbit. 

There is the adage about if a flea was the size of a human it could jump over a house.  Well looking at these rabbit cairns I wonder if a rabbit was the size of a human what could it do.  Shifting twenty tons of earth a day, without sissy picks and shovels, would be just the start of it.  I imagine a few human sized rabbits, fuelled with sufficient carrots, could have blasted out the Grand Union Canal in a couple of days – the hard part might have been getting them to stop!

Anyway, it continued to be a day of surprises with the birdwatching.  The first was that the ticket machine had broken down, so we were forced to keep our £2.50.  Our second surprise surfaced in front of us along the bank in the shape of a fine male smew.  Its black and white plumage made it look like a sort of water skunk as it dived repeatedly, smoothing all its feathers back.  I almost regretted year-ticking a redhead two weeks earlier as the male really is one of our most striking birds.

There was not a high species count but high counts of some species.  It was a coot-lovers paradise, and I counted 512 altogether.  There were also 278 tufted ducks, and a very pleasing 164 lapwings.  My favourite spot , and third surprise of the day though was a bird numbering only one.  On the boardwalk I heard a pig squealing, and then remembered that Draycote doesn’t have pigs roaming about, and so that this was surely a water rail.  Homing in on the noise I caught movement in the reeds but was disappointed to see a moorhen reveal itself.  Then it ran at another bird and I got a classic glimpse of a water rail, a thin bird with long blood-red bill darting between reeds and it was gone!  Bob Wale appeared and I whispered what I had seen.  We both looked for about 10 minutes and enjoyed some cracking views …of the moorhen!  Then moving around some scrub and looking back we were almost about to give up when it squealed again.  This time we both had a brief good view as it sprinted back into deep cover.
After circumnavigating the reservoir, a tidy walk of 5 miles, we sprinted into deep cover too, the lounge of the Bull Inn at Brinklow for a feed and a pint.  A fine end to the day, and out of respect for their impressive stone-shifting endeavours everyone resisted ordering the rabbit pie!  

Stone creations by Isambard Kingdom Bunny...

...and Thomas Thumper Telford

Rabbit raisins, and the odd sultana

Birding In The Blue

Some envious birders I meet seem to think I have their dream job.  ‘An Ecologist, specialising in bird surveys?’  ‘Aye’.  ‘A professional ornithologist’ they emphasise,  in case I hadn’t realised.  ‘Yes, I suppose so’.  ‘So, you get paid….to watch birds!’ they persist, just to make sure I really haven’t missed their point.  I haven’t, but its not all milk and honey buzzards, there are the reports of course, and the B&Bs.

Last week I was in Lincolnshire doing a wintering bird survey.  I booked four nights B&B and the first two were brilliant, clean, warm, cosy, just the job.  For the last two I had booked at a hotel near the coast where I would be doing low tide counts.  I pulled up outside Santa’s Grotto, a myriad of pulsating blue fairy lights lit up the front and most of the town.  A sign declared ‘Cabaret Entertainment’, and another ‘Curry and Chips - £3.99’, (Phoenix Nights meets Las Vegas!).  Thunderous drum and bass belted out of the six feet square mega-woofers in the bar, just below my room.

The room itself had a novel take on the notion of ‘en suite’, with the toilet down the corridor and the bathroom down another corridor, round a corner and through some double doors.  In the room there was a sink though, but it was to this that I traced the hissing noise I first feared was a gas leak.  The cold tap leaked and would not turn off any further, the water dribbling out with a loud hiss. 

Back downstairs blue floodlights bathed the bar in a ghostly hue.  Shouting over the music I discerned from the eerily blue-faced barmaid that no they did not do evening meals, nor breakfast as it turned out, yet another interesting take on the concept of B&B!  Miles from anywhere else, having prepaid and with time ticking on I went out to see if there was anywhere else open.  The only place was an Italian restaurant and I became its only patron, eating pasta while waited on by three staff.  Afterwards they directed me to a general store that would ‘definitely sell maps and things’, named ‘Yabba Dabba Doo’s’.  I went partly just to see if it really was called that.  It was but it did not sell maps after all, just all the tat that Poundland would be embarrassed to have on its shelves.  A plastic frog on a stick?  How did I ever get by without one!  The bored women behind the counter asked what I wanted maps for, so I told them I was doing some survey work.  “Ooh science stuff, well what do you think about this?” one asked, waving one of those hideous tabloids at me.  “NASA plan trip to Mars, what use is messing about up there when there’s so much wrong down here?”  Slightly taken aback by this unexpected line of enquiry I could only reply, “I don’t know love, I just count birds”.  Going out of the door I heard her say to her colleague, “Well what use is that either?” a dispiriting comment to hear!

Back at the Blue Hotel the drum and bass boomed on until midnight, less than ideal with my alarm set for 5.30 a.m.  I was going to do a high tide count of waders and the Moon takes no account of birders when deciding what time to slam the tide in.  The corresponding evening high tide would be completely in the dark so the morning it had to be.  Needless to say I procured a refund for my second night’s stay, and moved to a different hotel in a different town! 

I am guessing those envious birders would not fancy swapping places on nights like that, but the days make up for it.  I had the beach to myself next morning, well not entirely, there was one other occupant photographed below.  Just me, him, and the sanderlings sprinting through the backwash, and the common scoters riding the waves, and the great black-backed gulls marauding past like stealth bombers.  Later that morning I was treated to a 250-strong flock of lapwings wheeling over the fields, emitting that evocative call like someone tuning in an old radio.  Yep, it is a great job and I’m definitely not for swapping!

'Morning Maddox', 'Hello seal'

 

A Sandpiper on a Tightrope

As I was back in Warwickshire for the weekend the white-rumped sandpiper at Drayton Basset Pits (nice to see the old name being used on Birdguides) proved too much to resisit.  Time was short, I had to drive back to Surrey later, so it was going to be a classic twitch – arrive, see bird, go home!  I can hear them booing now from the stalls but I don’t care.

I timed myself walking from the car park to Fisher’s Mill Bridge, 7 minutes, better than I thought and very pleasing because the bird of course was apparently on the North Pits.  Typical, not on Fisher’s Mill Pool, all nice and detoxified by the RSPB, no it was on the filthy old north pits, poking around in the dirty sludge.  Still, I got a bustle on and arrived at a gaggle of twitchers 8 minutes later.  A quarter of an hour from car park to north pits, surely a record!

My pleasure was short-lived when I learned that it had not been seen for an hour.  I had it on good authority too, John Harris told me “It was feeding just here, but I turned up an hour ago and its not been seen since”.  I reminded myself for the second time in a week that ‘correlation does not imply causality’, and thanked John for the info.  Some other birders were adamant it had gone out of sight behind some long mounds and would emerge ‘eventually’.  Mindful of my impending long drive I did not want to wait, and decided to somehow make my way round to the other side of those mounds.

Such a move is fraught with danger of course, a tightrope walk along the line between genius and idiot.  If you relocate the bird, and a place where people can view it from, you are the hero genius; startle the bird so it disappears into the sky and you are a blithering idiot and may be pushed in or burnt at the stake, depending on the level of rarity you just flushed.

Aware that I was being observed I put on a peerless display of fieldcraft, every tuft of grass was potential cover.  I dropped into the undergrowth and disappeared like a Ghurkha, emerging hundreds of yards further on.  I came up behind a willow, and after a brief scan found myself looking at only the third white-rumped sandpiper I had ever seen.  It was on its own and feeding busily away on goodness knows what in the murky water.  I enjoyed some good views, took a pointless mobile phone ‘record’  photo, then dropped back down among the phragmites to begin my return.  I came up again among the assembled twitchers and gave them the news.  I accepted the plaudits, gave them directions and watched them go off to see it too.

I was in good spirits walking back, which were raised further by the presence of a long-tailed duck on one of the pools, the first of the winter.  Back at the car I realised the whole episode had been executed in an hour and a half, a master-twitch!  :D

Quite possibly the worst photo of a white-rumped sandpiper ever!