The Ultimate in LOCAL ...

I've never done a garden birds year list.  Being so restrictive with limited scope its not something I've really considered before, until now. So, just for a change, 2024 will be my first attempt. I mean. how hard can it be, you just total up what you bump into when hanging out the washing or doing the moth trap or weeding or whatever.

My own rules are - I will count all seen or heard from within my home boundary. We have a good radius view South West around to North for about a kilometre, but North around to South is more obscured at maybe 10 to 50 mtrs or so ( of course on a clear night I can see across several million miles but you know what I mean). At night there is little noise pollution so calls along the coast can be heard if it is still.

My all time garden list stands at  143 with Common Sandpiper missing although I think I have heard one? and Hawfinch that I saw once from the back hedge across the field that had I been on our drive I could have seen it. But I wasn't.

Last year I had Quail, Siberian Stonechat and Firecrest as highlights but some years there aren't any.

Grey Partridges in the back field over our wall.

My 2024 list so far stands at 46 sp. - 

1. Grey Partridge 8 lekking in the back field on 08/02/24
2. Pheasant
3. Pink footed Goose regular parties going to and fro over the house.
4. Greylag a few back and forward as with Pinks.
5. Feral Pigeon Yes I am counting it. They're more wild here than the Pheasants.
6. Woodpigeon
7. Collared Dove
8. Golden Plover heard several nights calling as they head into field to feed.
9. Snipe 1 heard 'scraping' close behind our garden last night.
10. Woodcock 1 at dusk on 15/01/24 flew along just outside our drive.
11. Curlew flying over to coast and back on feeding missions.
12. Redshank 1 a rare bird for the garden flew in to the flooded corner of the back field early Jan I forgot to note it down.
13. Black headed Gull
14. Common Gull
15. Herring Gull
16. Great black backed Gull, gulls are daily flying from the sea inland. 
17. Buzzard 
18. Tawny Owl very active since new year calling in and just outside our garden.
19. Great spotted Woodpecker male and female regular on our feeders.
20. Kestrel one flushed our feeders during Big Garden Birdwatch in January.
21. Magpie
22. Rook
23. Jackdaw
24. Carrion Crow
25. Coal Tit
26. Blue Tit
27. Great Tit
28. Skylark small numbers over now starting to sing.
29. Long tailed Tit 6 regularly on our feeders.
30. Goldcrest 1 wintering around our feeders picking bits of dropped fatball scraps.
31. Wren Resident in the garden.
32. Starling daily, small roost in next doors conifers maybe 100 birds.
33. Blackbird resident.
34. Fieldfare a few seen, 1 in off overhead last week, one this morning with Starlings.
35. Song Thrush singing every morning now.
36. Redwing few seen as with Fieldfare
37. Mistle Thrush one in song behind garden.
38. Robin Resident
39. House Sparrow Resident
40. Tree Sparrow up to 30 winter in the garden. Several pairs breed.
41. Dunnock Resident has bred.
42. Grey Wagtail 1 has been on house rooves seen from the garden.
43. Pied Wagtail as above.
44. Chaffinch Resident
45. Goldfinch Resident has bred
46. Siskin a few over none at feeders yet.

This is the Back Field boundary. It is the view west from our house, you can see it is uninterrupted for some way.  

This is the view towards our house from the North facing SSE. You can see how close the sea is, but we can't see it from home!

The above few shots taken during lockdown 2020.

 

 

A light in dark times...

 I hope everyone had a good Christmas? Things were pretty much as usual at chez Boulmer Birder, which is something to be grateful for. In today's trouble ridden times it is a big thing to have our health, food and a roof over our heads when a lot of people in a world run and bled dry by a litany of greed fueled oligarchs, billionaires and liars have none of these things. 

Now that Omicron is set for global domination I can't help feel that its shadow is creeping up on us all. Not being a very social animal these days, hopefully it can be avoided for a while longer.

Today the weather was pretty miserable, maybe that's the inspiration for this post, being heavily overcast with rain for most of the daylight hours making it uncomfortable to be out in the open. This is what drove the decision for what to do on today's final birding session of 2021.

I met up with John in near darkness at 8am in tipping down rain. On any other day it would likely have been written off as hopeless, but as it was going to be the birding finale of '21 we headed for a very quiet Seaton Point, where an unused holiday chalet veranda gave us a dry place to watch the sea over the early high tide. Its a bit like the tale of Goldilocks and the three bears where we half expect an irked owner to arrive and turn us out on our ear - 'Who's been seawatching from MYYYY shed?' Luckily for us we came and went like church mice with no one any the wiser of our presence, that is providing they don't read this!  

The sit and watch paid off. From 08.30am - 10.30am we had a reasonable 2 hours for this time of year.

Red throated Diver 74N 3S

Red necked Grebe 1N

Great crested Grebe 2 N

Gannet 1N

Wigeon 40

Common Scoter 5N

Velvet Scoter 1 drake and 1 duck N very close in.

Red breasted Merganser 1 drake N.

Bonxie 1 N an unusual winter record here.

Kittiwake 1N

Grey Plover 15N

Bar tailed Godwit 8N

Knot 4 N

Purple Sandpiper 16

The view from our watch point.

Yesterday there was a nice garden birding surprise. There is an area of water forming just over our back wall in the field that was recently ploughed for oilseed rape. Since the flower rich grassland was obliterated, there is significant rain run off into the low corner, forming this flash. 

Recently it has been favoured by two or three Redshanks but today one flew and with it a smaller bird? Dunlin was suspected, an idea that was soon confirmed by a scan with the bins. This is the very first sighting I have had of a Dunlin from my garden, although I have had a couple of nocturnal birds calling overhead. Dunlins while common down the road at Boulmer are not so easy on the home rocky coast line where to get one for a year tick they are usually flying past on a seawatch. There was no sign of it today, but it was almost like finding a rare bird to see it from our drive. Maybe the flash will attract other new garden birds if it lasts? Water Pipit, Wood Sand or Little Ringed Plover would be mega here!

Garden mega!

 

A garden surprise.

Yesterday morning as I sat outside counting the moth trap, a niggling little sub-song was going on in the front garden. I thought it might be a Garden Warbler, its a long time since I had one on patch let alone in the garden, but often I think this, to find on investigation that the songster is a new starting Blackcap before he gets in tune.

I went back to the moths. I popped inside for a new pen and said to Jane, 'you know, there's a bird out there singing a bit like a Reed Warbler, I am hoping its a Garden'.,..

As the moths were done and dusted I went quietly to the gable corner with my bins for a look. The singer was in our dying currant hedge, the home of numerous sparrows making finding a warbler difficult. Then, a still or slightly moving shape caught my eye. A drab bird, back facing me, bent over right preening its shoulder. Mmm, looks good for Garden Warbler. Some spuggie nonsense followed and my target jumped along the hedge towards me and began singing, this time in open dead twigs.

It wasn't a Garden Warbler at all. It was only a goddamn REED WARBLER! In my garden! What on earth? I was just thinking out loud when I said to Jane the quiet song was like Reed Warbler, I never thought it actually would be one. We have no phragmites for 6 miles around me and in Northumberland Reed Warbler is a scarce breeder, as you would imagine, fixed to the few reed beds we have.

The Reed Warbler then flew up into a tall sycamore of all places. I wondered about Marsh Warbler but the song had no mimicking in it. Marsh would possibly be just as likely as Reed here. I rang my neighbour Geoff Sample who is a known wildlife sound recordist to have a listen. The bird 'chug-chug-chug, chit-chit-chitted' He confirmed that it was a bog standard Reed Warbler. Later it returned to the hedge and sang on and off til about 11.10am when it was not seen or heard again afterwards.

Reed Warbler is garden tick #135. One in an autumn fall would be more likely but a spring singer, I'll take it!

Week 6..

Sometimes I wonder if the planet is actually facing the apocalypse? I know the population has survived serious pandemics before, but maybe the collapse of the economy is what does it, not the disease? In the great Spanish Flu pandemic of a century ago, people didn't have much anyway and there was not the share holding consumerism of today.

On the News this week airlines are reporting that they are haemorrhaging money and may go bust, the hospitality industry looks like it will be in tatters and all of this impacts on other things too such as property ownership and renting etc plus all of the small businesses reliant on these larger sectors. The Government cant pay all of this forever...

Maybe the plug has been pulled and we are slowly spiralling our way down the drain...

On that cheery note, birding crack seems a bit frivolous, but here it is.

This week I have added ...

Sandwich Tern. On call only, though it is already on the garden list from sight records. I had seen 6 birds fishing just off our coast path and when I got home I realised I could hear them calling as they chased around!

Reed Bunting 1 female was on the wires along our drive. I wonder why they and yellowhammers don't come to my feeders that border the back field? Birds fly overall the time and are present only a hundred metres away in hedges. Youd think the flock of sparrows would pull them in, but I haven't had one at seed for about 7 years!

Moorhen. I heard the kek-kek-kek call clearly about 3 or 4 times while I was in the bathroom at 11.30pm. Coot was my first reaction until I listened to some nocturnal calls on xeno-canto that clearly showed my caller to be a Moorhen. I've never seen a moorhen in or from my garden, but at least I did hear it so its going on the list.

This takes my full list to 134 species seen or heard from the garden. I have had 3 new garden birds during lockdown, with Teal, Moorhen and White tailed Eagle added. I also took, retrospectively, Guillemot on call ( not on the lockdown list). That's not as bad as it sounds because every August I can hear the fledged juvvies calling for the adults on a calm sea nearby, I've just never thought of them as garden birds before. But, as long as there are folk ticking scoter from a recording, I'm having it.

What a Moorhen 'tick'should look like...

I also have to confess to something.

This week I have had two seawatches. 'What!' You exclaim. 'You're not following lockdown rules there!'

Well, I have been noting that birders across the land are out all day long 'excercising' tens of miles from home and just happening to take in any good bird that has been around, so I thought sod it, I am going for a look at the sea.

For me this involves walking 540.63 mtrs or, in old money, a third of a mile. Measured on Google Maps as accurately as possible. As the crow flies, or as the guillemot calls, the shortest distance from my garden to salt water is 236.82 mtrs. I then sit down a slope, alone, for 1 hour and walk back. Cullernose Point can wait til autumn.

Two decent spells this week had 15 Black tailed Godwit N ( patch mega), 2 Long tailed Ducks N, 1 Arctic, 4 Common and 9 Sandwich Terns N on one visit and on the other 4 Scaup S , 1 Puffin N, 2 Red throated Divers N plus good numbers of Gannets and Razorbills with many more auks further out. Not bad for spring.

For a while I forgot the shitshow taking place around us and enjoyed some normality. 

Stay safe all.