February 2024; Birds Galore!

After the trials and tribulations of my poor attempt at keeping the diary up to date last year, it obviously means that this year's has gotten far behind as well. But I will keep striving to keep it full and complete even if the actual events are so belatedly recounted. So here's my second monthly review of 2024. I'll try to be brief.

Saturday 3rd February; Birds Aplenty at Slimbridge

An early year visit to the WWT at Slimbridge is essential to see wintering species before they disappear back north for the summer breeding season. Normally we'd have been there in the first week or so in January but there hadn't been anything unusual at the site next to the River Severn reported. However, Slimbridge always offers up a lot of birds and also allows for good views, especially if the weather is fine, as it was forecast to be on this Saturday.

In the event, it was as quiet as it could be. Nothing rare turned up and nothing out of the ordinary happened but we relaxed in the week winter sunshine and enjoyed good views of the wintering Geese, Ducks and Swans. Of course, being so early in the year, we still added twenty new species for our year list, which will be kept but we are not attempting a third successive "Big Year".

 

Brent Goose & Barnacle Geese

Pintail (male)

Pochard (male)

Pochard (female)

Bewick's Swan

Barnacle Goose

Wednesday 7th February; Work….

Work is a necessary evil, useful for gaining money to spend on days out but gets in the way of birding! I'd been working outside on a patio, in a village near Woodstock and had been admiring the number of birds visiting the garden feeders. The owner of the house also has resident Barn Owls that use a box attached to the house for breeding and have successfully raised many offspring there.

I used my break time to photograph some of the more common birds. It was a bit concerning though to see quite a few Chaffinches suffering with the dreaded papillomavirus which covers the legs in wart type growths.

Greenfinch

Long-tailed Tit

Blue Tit

Chaffinch (female)

Friday 9th February; A Lucky Spot!

I'm always on the lookout for birds whenever I'm out and about and often spot stuff when driving to and from work. On the Wednesday evening after work, I passed an overgrown field and noticed a Short-eared Owl stood on top of a public footpath marker post. For once, because I'd been photographing my clients garden birds, I had my camera with me and could grab a record shot.

Short-eared Owl

Two days later I returned to the site with Mrs Caley and went for a walk along the footpath. It took a while but we lucked upon a Short-eared Owl again. The site also held a hunting Barn Owl. Definitely a place to watch regularly.

Saturday 10th February; The Long and Short of it!

A journey to Eldernell in Cambridgeshire to see Owls has become an established fixture on the Old Caley calendar. On a good day you can find all five breeding British species, or so I'm told since I've never seen a Little Owl at the site. The most sought after species though is Long-eared Owl of which there may be as many as ten using the thick hedges as roost site.

The day was beautifully sunny and we walked contentedly along the raised riverbank wall. I could see a few birders stood with optics trained at a section of hedge where some Long-eared Owls usually roost. Before we reached the spot the other birders had moved away so I'd have to find any roosting Owls myself. Last year I found one but only after much scrutiny, since the Long-eared Owl was very well secreted within the brambles and thorny hedge. This time, it took seconds to see one. This Owl was almost, but not quite, in plain and clear view! I took a couple of photos from the preferred viewing spot on the raised bank. As we watched the Owl, a dog-walker and his charge decided to obliviously walk right next to the hedge where the Owl perched. This exhibited an alarm posture from the Owl, although that was as disturbed as it got. The Owls very wisely choose a hedge on the far bank of a stream so have an extra safety barrier between themselves and the public.

Long-eared Owl

We walked on. A few hundred metres further on we stopped at a spot where there is a small copse on the opposite side of the river. One of the trees there provides refuge for a pair of Tawny Owls. One of the Tawnies was lazily sunning itself.

Tawny Owl

A pair of Cranes, with their offspring in tow, noisily bugled as they flew gracefully past. The whole of the levels is an excellent area for waterbirds. We had good views of Whooper Swans, Marsh Harriers and many wading birds such as Black-tailed Godwits and Golden Plovers.

Common Crane

Black-tailed Godwit

We chatted to a fellow birder about the Owls. I told him where to find the Long-eared Owl. He asked if we'd seen the Short-eared Owl that was also in the hedge about a hundred metres from the carpark. We hadn't, so made it a priority on the walk back. How I had missed it on the way out was beyond me. The Owl couldn't have been any more noticeable! It just shows that sometimes, it is easy to get blinkered when there is a target bird in sight.

Short-eared Owl

We travelled from Eldernell to Frampton Marsh, mainly with the intention of reacquainting with the Lesser Yellowlegs that we'd seen so well at the end of 2023. The bird in question, which showed at very close quarters last time, was showing even better this time. I took hundreds of photos, helped this time by illuminating sunshine. I intend to produce a "Photo Blog" of this bird, a new idea of mine to showcase some of my better photos when I don't have time to write a full blog. Watch this space but you could be waiting for a long time though, based on my past record. The photo below is an example of images obtained, and one that gained me a "Notable Photo" in the BirdGuides weekly merits. I don't get many of those these days.

Lesser Yellowlegs

Later on that afternoon we were lucky to watch both a male Hen harrier and a female Merlin hunting on the salt marsh. Views were distant but those two birds were every bit as thrilling to see than anything else that day. And it had been a very good day.

Hen Harrier (male)

Sunday 11th February; Ducking & Diving

On a typical grey and drab day with little wind to blow away the gloominess, we spent a few hours at Draycote Water. Our main target was a mottling Common Scoter that had been present for a while. It was a Black-throated Diver though which gained our initial focus, even though it required all the zoom of our scope and my camera to get even a record shot. The white midships flank patch helping to aid in the ID.

Black-throated Diver

Goosanders are always present at Draycote in the winter, and they are usually close in to the banks. These large ducks are one of my favourites of all wildfowl. They are superbly adapted for hunting under the water and I wouldn't want to be a fish when there's a hungry Goosander around!

Goosander

It took us a while to find the Common Scoter which was too far out in the middle of Farnborough Bay to give any decent views. However, after we'd had half an hour of standing shivering in the cold drizzle, the young duck obliged us by swimming in close enough that I could get some photos of the curious dappled brown & black plumage pattern of the moulting bird.

Common Scoter

At its closest approach the Common Scoter appeared to laugh at us. Unsurprisingly too, since there was nobody else daft enough to be there on such an inclement day.

Even the cafe was empty so we enjoyed warming bowls of soup and mugs of hot chocolate in blissful silence for a change.

Little Grebe

Monday 12th February; More Owling Around

After work, I returned with Mrs Caley to our newly found Owl hotspot. This time we walked further along the footpath. Our friend and ace photographer, Craig, was also there so I knew for sure now that I'd stumbled across a great place for Owls. The afternoon light was good, and in the last hour and a half of the day we were treated to three Short-eared Owls hunting over the rough grassland. I did misjudge my positioning by viewing and photographing from the wrong end of the field which meant that I had the sun against me and a fence spoiling many of the shots, but it was great to watch the Owls at such close quarters and so close to home. Saves tripping out to the Cotswolds for them.

Short-eared Owl

Saturday 17th February; Birds from the Cold Brighten Up a Cold Day

Winter had been with us all week and had suitably brought some birds from more northern climes into the country. One of those, an Iceland Gull had been frequenting a small pool in the West Midlands. We visited the small pool at Stubbers Green but in reasonably fine conditions could only find our more common species.

Common Gull

We decided to head further north to Derbyshire to get our annual fix of an increasingly rare resident bird. However, while taking lunch, I noticed that just a few miles away at Middleton, was a particularly large flock of Waxwings. This flock, which at times had numbered as many as two hundred and fifty birds had been present in the area for some time, and had been ranging along a disused railway. The amount we saw, eating a variety of berries from different host trees, was probably around a hundred or so. They provided great entertainment, as Waxwings always do, even though the weather had deteriorated, and we even had some snow at times.

Waxwing

I spent far too much time trying to get closer to the flock which wasn't easy because they were so flighty. Everywhere the birds went we followed but the conditions thwarted my best efforts at gaining some nice shots. When I finally pinned some of the Waxwings down to a puddle that they were drinking from, and some nearby bushes, I was derailed by a pair of horses being ridden down the track.

Luckily once the horses had passed, some of the Waxwings resumed feeding in the berry bushes. It was almost dark by then but I was still game to try taking photographs.

There wasn't much time for us to see our target bird so we were pleased when we found at least four Willow Tits frequenting the feeders at the Millfield Carpark at Carsington Water. This has become a dependable place at which to see these birds, now extinct in Oxfordshire. Also present were a few Tree Sparrows, another hard to see species locally at home. 

Willow Tit

Sunday 18th February; Too Much of a Good Thing?

When you have some particularly good birds close to home then it becomes difficult to resist going back and watching them again, and again. So it was, using the excuse of walking off our Sunday lunch that we walked into our local Owl hotspot again. This time we were in for a real, and very unexpected treat when we walked past a group of large leylandii conifers. We had suspected that those trees could be the roosting spot for the Short-eared Owls that we'd been watching since they always appeared from that area. As we passed under the last conifer, a commotion from above us alerted us to a Shortie exiting the tree and flying over us and out over the field. The trees stand next to a public footpath and we'd walked that path, along with countless other folks, frequently already so the Owls should have been used to folk passing by now. The trees themselves are densely foliaged and there is no way of seeing into them either. It must have just been pure luck that an Owl decided to leave its roost exactly at the time we walked past. Our real moment of good fortune came when the Owl did an about turn and flew back to the tree. It flew directly past us, probably no more than ten feet above our heads! I took as many phots as I could but many were ruined because the bird was just too close to focus on or fit in the frame.

Short-eared Owl

After that thrill, it was back to the normal waiting game for the next two hours. Then, when an Owl did appear, it wasn't a Short-eared but a Barn Owl that we noticed stood atop one of the fence posts. We watched the Barn Owl hunt for a while after, in the dying embers of the sunshine. 

Barn Owl

Short-eared Owls only appeared again when it was almost dark, and then they went straight to a tall tree and sat there. But we'd already had the earlier excitement so we left quite happy once again.

Friday 23rd-Sunday 25th February; Myrtle Warbler Weekend!

A mega rare Myrtle Warbler had been discovered feeding in a small garden in Ayrshire, Scotland. We travelled up via Lancashire and back the same way taking in Twite, Purple Sandpiper, a Richard's Pipit, a Glossy Ibis and a Ring-necked Duck as well as getting amazing views of the American visitor. Read the blog here. 

Myrtle Warbler

Wednesday 28th February; A Brief Success

Certain birds have to be "collected" at certain times of the year. Planning is everything when it comes to catching up with the more elusive resident breeding species and winter visitors. Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers are unfortunately declining in numbers and many former sites for them are now unproductive. The closest reliable place that I know for them now is the RSPB reserve at Middleton Lakes near Tamworth. So, on a cold misty and drizzly morning we headed there in the hope of getting some views of our smallest Woodpecker. 

We succeeded but only had brief views of the diminutive bird as it travelled from tree to tree. Helpfully it called frequently and had a short drumming session. That I managed any photos at all was remarkable considering the conditions.

Lesser Spotted Woodpecker

After a decent breakfast in the nearby cafe, we returned to Stubbers Green in another attempt to see the Iceland Gull that had eluded us a fortnight before. Initially the "white-winger" was missing again but fortunately it arrived with a small group of other Gulls and then loitered on the edge of the pool. Another difficult bird added to our year list which now stood at a hundred and forty, some twenty-five less than when we went for the Big Year in 2023.

Iceland Gull (foreground)