Warm, Wet, Westerlies...

Descending through woods in half-light, Robin song wells up from the lamp-lit village below, advertising their presence from scattered territories. Song Thrush repeated couplets ring loud whilst Tawny Owls still call from trees and woods. Just one melodious Blackbird warble heard to date; likewise a single Mistle Thrush belting out simple, wild notes from a tree-top across stone walled fields.

First Snowdrops hang in bud atop tight-packed, upright grey stems; summer Campanula still in flower in the wall behind. Metallic pink Ivy seeds scatter the wet ground; birds feeding on bunches of funereal grey capped fruit that cloud the wall top.

This winter has mostly proved warm wet & windy so far, but mountain tops showed white under a dark cloud this morning, stiff westerly and high tide blowing creamy foam up the slipway and white breakers over the breakwater.

On Tuesday, with time to check the bay with binoculars & telescope, a single gull worked methodically over windswept, khaki, silt-laden waves that lifted black Scoter in and out of view. Wide sweeps before the wind interspersed with tight turns and fast swoops down to patter and peck the surface between the waves; lifting off with a distinctive shiver to shed water before rising high on the wind to quarter the bay again; occasional wing-beats causing the body to rise and fall in light, buoyant, Tern-like flight.

No sense of scale in the vastness of the seascape, but seemed medium to small by the flight; head dark shaded & spotted yet wings lacked angular quality and silver and white bi-colour of Black Headed Gull, though trailing edge showed narrow white.

Tracking the bird carefully across the bay, distinctive features gradually became apparent: black bill; dark wing underside; no black tips; only the 4th Little Gull located in 14 years here.

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Evolution of Pursuit

Only remnant image of many weeks of wind and rain and dark morning starts is of the farm track gleaming grey and wet in the darkness ahead, a white form billowing over; call like squealing brakes as it drifts downhill into blackness.

Moonlit frosts and clear blue skies are welcome; white-bellied Great Crested Grebes and shorter necked Red Throated Divers now visible amongst parties of black Common Scoter scattered across a calm bay; stillness allowing incessant soft mewing of Scoter to drift over dunes to fields and estuary beyond.

Stopped on the causeway looking for Hen Harriers, the road ahead is submerged, waters still creeping inexorably up the tarmac: no brown shape quartering reed-beds; no upright forms atop fence posts or landing lights or on road markers projecting from waters ahead; nevertheless enjoying this twice daily cycle of inundation and draining of a wide, flat, winter landscape.

Peregrines are magnificent in their power and speed directed at killing; Redshanks are common on marsh and estuary, calls ringing across the water, as perfectly adapted for flight as the Peregrine for pursuit. Everything about them is slim, from thin, red-tipped bills through narrow, elegant, silver and white plumage poised delicately on eponymous long lipstick crimson legs. Always active, probing for food in shallow margins; always alert for danger, signalled by long, narrow wings lifted high to expose white undersides; bright white rump and wing panels and loud, ringing calls advertising flight.

Watching them speed away, hurtling wide across the winter landscape, jetting down to skim low and fast over the water on thin, swept back wings to alight in safer shallows enhances admiration for any raptor that can take them in flight as well as a greater understanding that, given fitness and vigilance, these birds are probably safe until these qualities fail.

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Winter Landscape with Raptors

Mid-winter with dark mornings and gloomy days of wind, rain, drizzle and mist, but summer Roses still bloom next to first spring Camellia blossom. Windfall apples gathered only a week ago remain sound for a final cider pressing and last clean taste of fresh-pressed apple. Checking ham and bacon in the cold smoker, smouldering oak lends the very best fragrance to the late autumnal conditions.

Driving across the flat coastal plain towards the tidal lagoon, we stop at every new vista across airfield and fields, checking fence-posts and projecting hangar beams for raptors. In still, moisture-laden air, a heavy, dark brown form winging its way low over the ground, too broad-winged for Harrier, proves Common Buzzard when perched, short tailed, in scrub oak. Airfield buildings frame a dark, vertical fence-post extension, telescope revealing pale-breasted, blue-backed Peregrine, glaring back; black-hooded executioner, master of the wide landscape.

Yellow silted water gurgles through piped drains under the causeway, filling creeks with reflected winter sky, salt-flat landscape fast diminishing between. Grey-backed Wigeon creep down the bank, leaving a larger, dark shape grazing salt-washed turf above: lone Brent Goose, scarcely larger than Mallard.

Scanning the wide salt-marsh whilst awaiting Harriers over the reed-bed, a small, upright, fawn-grey form rests on a wide cushion of grey Sea Purslane, telescope revealing diminutive Merlin surveying the landscape for unwary Meadow Pipits.

Sudden clamour behind as Greenshank zooms white and silver across a winter sky, skimming low and fast across a filling creek to alight in shallows. Panning back for the source of alarm, a familiar brown, long-winged, long-tailed form quarters low over reed-tops, hovering, swooping, side-slipping and swivelling, wings uplifted, narrow rump stripe flared white as it swoops low then up to sit tall and narrow on a fence-post, lifting a talon to clean or eat small prey.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Spring in Winter

Steady rain all night, bright-beaded on Mistletoe hanging over the porch door, silver thread suspended from one crushed, pallid berry, slimy innards stretched thin by raindrops. Slithering down a rain-sodden slope, rain pattering on hood and leaves, the air is not cold: Great Tit rings first two-note couplet from dripping woods; Song Thrush loud in first full song in the valley below. Each mild spell moves the season along: first bird song; Narcissi points, shiny green through turf; only buff Hazel catkins still tight and hard awaiting Spring.

Out on the causeway looking for Hen Harrier: familiar Buzzard watches from the airfield control tower; Shelduck graze bright white amongst sere sedges; dun Curlew stand tall pointing long bills, but nothing moves over reed-beds or fence line. Then one fence post is topped by a brown and pale shape, telescope confirming female Hen Harrier, just lifting off to hunt down the fence line, swaying and side-slipping low over tall grasses and dark gorse. Suddenly a Gull-like, black-tipped, pale grey form appears, swooping low from above and behind. The larger female flips over, talons stretched upward briefly towards those extended from above before flipping back to hunting flight.

On Tuesday, neither Harrier located, but driving back along the causeway a characteristic dark vertical form stands out on the flat salting: Peregrine, glaring fiercely back over slate-blue cope, black-hooded and white cheeked, yellow cere clearly visible before pushing off in powerful flight, low across the flats.

Thursday, and not a raptor in sight except the control tower Buzzard, but returning home, two, long-winged, long-tailed forms drift lazily over treetops in a cliff-formed up-draught. The Red Kites are joined by four Ravens mobbing a soaring Sparrow-hawk whilst simultaneously engaged in deep croaking aerial chases and flip-flopping display flights, rush of wings audible from below.

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Snow, Storms, Skua & Harrier

Street lamps gleam orange from puddles and wet road, village black under greying sky. A light coat of icy snow on cars and slate roofs; mountains loom white over dark woods and grey fields. First Buzzard mews overhead; Tawny Owls hoot from woods; Wood Pigeon coos softly; Robins trill and tic and Crows stir from roost.

High tides and storms bring tier upon tier of surf surging up the beach, back-swash rattling grey rocks and pebbles mixed with windblown foam and spindrift. Inland, only gulls make headway in wind slowed by dunes, banks and stone walls. Suddenly, a very dark, sharp-winged gull skims low and up over the Gorse and fence-topped bank. Almost overhead, characteristic tail projections give Arctic Skua, forced inland along with gulls it likes to harass.

In the lagoon, high tides force animals and birds to move as brown, choppy waters creep in, inundating salting, marsh and causeway. Skylarks and Pipits flit up in strong winds; Shelduck and Wigeon ride the chop, feeding intently on seed-loaded flotsam. Redshank hurtle fast and low, thin-winged grey and white over ruffled waters; long-legged dun Curlew stand amongst flooding sedges, lifting off heavily when too deep even for their long bills. Scanning flooding marsh and swaying reed-beds, a characteristic narrow white strip advertised a large brown bird alighting a projecting fence-post, long wings and tail shimmied into shape. By the time the telescope was set up, the post top was vacant. One Buzzard watched from the airfield control tower, another buffeted by strong winds over the runway, yet another sailing on up-draughts among the dunes before a long tailed, angle-winged form lifted into sight behind sere reed-beds, repeated again and again as the female Hen Harrier hunted, hanging and side-slipping low over massed feathery reed tops swaying purple in the wind.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Kites, Storms & Little Auk

From a lit kitchen, early mornings look black. Stepping outside, pitted lane, stone walls and sky are shades of grey; only owl haunted woods loom black. Robins signal daybreak with ‘tic, tic’ calls from lane-side shrubs and trees or flit up from the track, scarcely discernible grey flakes from almost underfoot. A single Song Thrush is practising a few bars of its part in the dawn chorus: just a taste of the sweetly rendered couplets ringing throughout the valley by March.

Red Kites are evident this past week: two separate birds flapping raggedly between ridge and woods in cold, descending, early morning air; a pair quartering stone walled improved pasture the windward side of the same ridge; another high over the coast road, utilising up-draughts from onshore breezes.

On the coast, high tides and heavy seas brought waves crashing over the breakwater, spraying white across choppy brown waters of the tidal lagoon. Boulders and pebbles rattle and grind in the surge and back swash of heavy waves.

On a calmer day, a party of black Scoter, totally absorbed in chasing, jousting and jockeying for status and mates, drifted right on shore, an opportunity to watch proceedings at close quarters. A wader flew directly down the beach, just offshore, dark head contrasted with white under-parts suggesting Turnstone, but wing beat suggesting smaller bird. As it approached, lack of characteristic bold flight pattern became apparent along with the realisation that this was not a wader but one of the Auk family comprising Puffins, Guillemots and Razorbills: too small even for Puffin and with tiny bill now clear in profile, this could only be Little Auk. Breeding in the high Arctic, this diminutive seabird is occasionally seen off north-east coasts with occasional ‘wrecks’ after Atlantic storms; a West coast sighting is a privilege.

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Tawny Owls & Goshawk

Still very warm for late November, winds generally from the south; only one frost to date despite occasional clear nights. Tawny Owls call from woods all around the house after dark, at least four separate long wavering hoots distinguishable in half-light the other morning.

Saturday morning is bright and breezy on the Maes behind the dunes: rabbit-grazed turf; scattered tussocks of Needle-Rush and Gorse clumps still in deep yellow flower. Though not yet requiring glasses, very often nowadays calls of finches do not result in the location of matching dark specks in bouncing flight overhead. Similarly, when gulls rise from mud and salting in a raucous snowy cloud mingled with ringing calls of dun Curlews and white panelled Redshank, the Peregrine is not always spotted.

Scanning wide waters and sands of the estuary lagoon with dunes and airfield beyond, a similar commotion arises from behind, inland: thin-winged Black Headed Gulls rise in a cloud from behind the low mounded drumlin and its grey stone farmhouse, bright white against the dark wooded escarpment, this time joined by black Crows and Rooks rather than estuary waders. Above cawing and croaking and harsh gull cries, an unusual dry bleating brings attention to a raptor working hard to gain height, hard-pressed by a determined, smaller black Crow: broad-winged for Peregrine; grey-brown and longer tailed than chocolate brown Buzzards.

As the female Goshawk sets course toward the northern end of the wooded scarp, more and more birds arise from fields and woods below, including many Wood Pigeons; staple Goshawk food, normally too busy feeding on the acorn crop to waste energy in flight.

No doubt evolved as an immediate visual signal for flight between the flock, the two wing bars, bright white over soft grey, must make a clear target for pursuing Goshawks and Peregrines.

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