Barn Owl

After several failed attempts I finally managed to grab some reasonable photo's one of the Barn Owls that frequently quarters the fields next to the house.  Here's the best of them.

Redwing Migration

I have been following the growing interest in monitoring birds migrating at night by making long running sound recordings and analysing the resulting sound files to see what species called while flying overhead. "Vis-mig" is fascinating and this has been a great week for it with ideal weather setting up perfect "fall" conditions on the east coast.  Huge numbers of thrushes and finches have been on the move with over 21,100 Redwing, 9345 Fieldfare and 2675 Brambling recorded at Spurn on Monday 22nd alone!  I had heard some Redwings flying over the house earlier in the week and thought it would be a good time to experiment to see what I could record.

I left a portable recorder with a built in microphone and a 4gb memory card outside in the garden for the evening.  The batteries went flat after about 4 hours but not before a 2gb sound file had been recorded. The file covered the period between 17:20 - 21:00 and using a freely available software program called Audacity I reviewed the file.  Audacity can display the spectrogram of the file which shows a picture of the sound by graphing sound frequency against time.

The picture below shows the call of a migrating Redwing flying over the house.  The red pattern at the bottom is low frequency background noise.  The Redwing call is the down-sloping red line between 8 and 6 khz. (I used another freely available program called Raven Lite available from Cornell Labs to print the spectorgram)

Redwing spectrogram recorded 25th October, Mellor, Lancashire

There were 25 Redwing calls recorded in the file over a three hour period as well as a Tawny Owl and some as yet unidentified sounds, some of which I think are high-pitched mammal sounds - such as mice and shrews - but some are other birds.

This is my first ever attempt at recording night migrating birds and my equipment and techniques will need some tweaking to improve the quality of the recordings, but i am more than happy with the first night's results.  Ultimately I'd like some way of automatically processing the large files to pinpoint the high-frequency sounds for further investigation.  Some programs have been developed to automatically identify certain American birds, so it would be interesting to see what's available for European migrants.

Brambling

It's been a good week in the garden bird-wise.  On Sunday I heard and then briefly saw a Brambling.  Unfortunately, I didn't get great views as it flew up into the tall Ash tree and was in silhouette against the setting Sun.  Nonetheless, it was the first Brambling of the year and a new bird for the garden.  Then on Tuesday, while sat at my desk, staring out of the window for inspiration I saw a Redwing fly into the beech tree at the bottom of the garden where it stayed for few seconds before flying off.  This caused me to pay at bit more attention to the activity around the feeders where there was the usual assemblage of common birds as well as...another Brambling! This one (if it was a different one) stayed around for a while and I took some respectable record shots of it.

Male Brambling, Mellor, Lancashire, 23 October 2012

Other interesting stuff in the garden this week included Tawny Owl, Sparrowhawk and Woodmouse.

Letter to Nigel Evans MP re: The Badger Cull

Letter to my MP Nigel Evans regarding the Badger Cull and upcoming debate in parliament on October 25th 2012.


Dear Mr Evans,

Over 100,000 people, myself included, have signed a petition that has resulted in the proposed pilot Badger Cull being given a parliamentary debate on 25th October 2012.  This is the first time the Badger Cull has been debated in parliament and is an opportunity for the government to by held to account for what is evidently a mistaken policy.

I am strongly opposed to the cull for the reasons below, however I must first state that my view is based on the science and economics and not in sentiment or emotion.

1. The scientific evidence does not support a badger cull. The final report of the independent scientific group on Cattle TB which conducted the Randomised Badger Culling Trials made the following conclusions and recommendations in 2007:

1. On the basis of our careful review of all currently available evidence, we conclude 

that badger culling is unlikely to contribute positively, or cost effectively, to the control of 

cattle TB in Britain (10.48 and 10.92).

2. We  conclude that there is substantial scope for improvement of control of the 

disease through the application of heightened control measures directly targeting cattle. 

Therefore, we recommend that priority should be given to developing policies based on 

more rigorous application of control measures to cattle, in the absence of badger culling 

(10.57 and 10.93).

2. Indeed there is strong belief in the scientific community that badger culling may make TB in cattle worse http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2012/oct/14/letters-observer

3. The cull will not provide value for money for the taxpayer either and the costs of the cull will exceed the benefits to the farmers: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19981171

4. The government is on the wrong side of public opinion as shown by this recent poll http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/agriculture/farming/9618598/Badger-cull-right-or-wrong.html and risks losing credibility in its wider environmental policy (remember this is supposed to be the greenest government ever).

5. Vaccination is the only long term solution to control Bovine TB in Badgers and thus reduce transmission to cattle and is being successfully trialled in several locations including Wales http://wales.gov.uk/topics/environmentcountryside/ahw/disease/bovinetuberculosis/?lang=en and Cheshire http://www.chesterfirst.co.uk/news/116790/cheshire-badger-vaccination-trial-hailed-a-success.aspx, although it is too early yet to observe any results.

Bovine TB is a serious issue and is devastating to the farmers whose cattle are affected by it.  Both they and the public deserve that government takes the issue seriously and gets the policy right.  Unfortunately, the government has chosen a policy that will fail to make any long term impact on TB rates in cattle, waste tax-payers money, give farmers false hope of a solution, divide communities in the areas where culling will take place, and cause unnecessary destruction of, and distress to, badgers.

The cull is a mistake. The debate in parliament on Thursday, which has cross-party as well as public support, is a opportunity for the government to reassess the evidence, stop the cull, and consider the more appropriate alternative of vaccination.

Regards

Steve Flynn

Jan 2, 2012

Lunch at the in-laws in Blackpool this morning, which just happens to be within 3 miles of the Tundra Bean Geese on Lytham Moss.  On arrival in Blackpool I was relieved to note that I had "accidentally" left my scope and bins in the car - how fortunate! Half an hour later Tundra Bean Goose was my first Lancashire tick of the year and as I was back at the table for lunch.

 The geese were at the back of the a field close to the road-side and adjacent to the runway landing lights of Blackpool airport.  The first thing I noticed was the Pink Foot as its lighter blue-grey back stood out amongst the Beans.  The light was excellent and I enjoyed several minutes of full power x60 views of these scarce Lancashire visitors, getting excellent view of the plumage and bare parts.  An approaching aircraft flushed the geese which then gave brief flight views before circling round and landing in the same spot.

A good start to the New Year bird list.

Gulls and Geese

Taking advantage of some free time over Christmas I headed up to Heysham where there has been a first winter Glaucous Gull in recent days. It was high tide when I arrived and I walked down the sea-wall in front of the power station from the Red Nab rocks stopping to photograph some close Kittiwakes and a not so close juvenile Little Gull.  Another birder arrived and he continued towards the wooden jetty where he found the Glaucous Gull loafing with some other large gulls.  The glaucous briefly flew close while my camera was still in its bag before heading back out to the end of the wooden jetty.  Along with eight species of gull there was also a couple of Guillemots on the sea, at least two shag, two Red-breasted Merganser and a few Pink-footed geese which flew over. While chatting with the other birder he told me that eight White-fronted geese had been reported from Rishton Reservoir, so I decided to head home while there was enough light to call in at Rishton.

I arrived at Rishton with about 30 minutes of daylight remaining.  The white-fronts were all in clear view on the far side of the reservoir with the Canada goose. flock. There were six eurasion white-fronts (two adults and four juveniles) and two Greenland race birds which are likely to be the two present before Christmas, (and which I failed to see one Saturday morning).  It was very educational to see both races together; the Greenland race clearly darker than the eurasians with the bill differences clearly apparent, even with the dull and fading light. Of note, the adult eurasions frequently showed aggression to the Greenlands if they came too close, but not to any of the Canadas.

Some photos of the gulls and guillemot below.  The Little Gull was rather distant but I've included it because is nicely shows the upperwing comparison with the juvenile Kittiwake; the Little Gull showing a dark secondary wing bar and the Kittwake showing umarked white secondaries.

Glaucous Gull in flight

Glaucous Gull on Wooden Jetty

Guillemot

1st winter Kittiwkae

Adult Kittiwake

1st winter Little Gull

January odds and ends

Family commitments and a bout of the winter vomiting bug kept me home most of the month but I managed a few free hours birding on Saturday 22nd January.  I headed for the Ribble marshes which were unfortunately severely fog bound.  An hour at Hesketh Out Marsh produced only an indeterminate number of Pink feet flying in an unknown direction which were heard but not seen, six Whooper swans, a few Teal, Wigeon, Curlew and redshank on the marsh, again mostly heard rather than seen.  The passerines around the car-park were limited to Linnets, Reed Buntings and Chaffinches.  With visibilty not much more than 50 metres I cut my losses and headed inland.

Calling in at Brockholes on the way home the day way rescued by a Barn Owl hunting by number one pit.  I only managed a dim photgraphic record shot in the murky dusk light. There were a few Redwing around the reserve along with about 100 Lapwing and small numbers of Pochard, Goldeneye, Gadwall, Mallard and Teal, as well as the ubiquitous coot.  Below is a photograph of the man made sand martin wall which is looking rather unattractive at the moment - a bit like the rest of the reserve it must be said. Still a few more weeks and all will be different.

On Saturday morning January 29th we had the pleasure of watching four foxes for nearly four hours close to home.  There appeared to be some sort of territorial behaviour going, with field boundaries being patrolled, and scent marking taking place. January is the peak of the mating season and also the time that last year's litter will be forced to disperse by the parents if they are still in the family group. There didn't seem to be any conflict between any of the four foxes but it seems likely that one of the foxes was a female attracting the attentions of at least a male.  Were the other two foxes last years litter or rival males?  Hopefully they will put further displays in the next few days and reveal more about their lives, maybe even revealing the location of this years den? 

Unfortunately one of the foxes was lame in the front right limb.  Although it wasn't apparent how serious the injury was, hopefully it will only be temporary.  The picture of the fox below in the field (not on the wall) is the lame one.

Visiting the in-laws later in the afternoon at South Shore in Blackpool seemed like a good reason to call in at Fairhaven Lake for the Red-necked Grebe that is still present.  It was duly found at the unfrozen eastern end of the lake where it did nothing for half an hour except drift round in the centre of lake out of range for any decent photos - it didn't even lift its head so I didn't even see its bill!  Most boring bird of the year so far!

The lame fox

One of the other three foxes

The soporific Red-necked Grebe

About six weeks before the new tenants arrive?