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| Humbug! |
With nothing to motivate me to get in the biscuit tin (aka the garage curtsey car) for a long drive, local birding has again been the name of the game since my last blog.
Some non-birding villagers told me that there used to be Nightingales in some of the small local woods in Pirton. Given that Worcestershire’s main breeding population is not too many miles away this certainly seemed plausible. So I’ve been making evening visits to some of the local small and very overgrown woodland. Although the habitat looks ideal and I’ve stayed to near dark, there was no sign of any Nightingales. What there were, however, were lots of biting midges! The info came from villagers who have lived in the village for a long time so it is quite likely that there used to be Nightingales there but sadly no more.
Today I spent a few very chilled out hours at Grimley and Upton Warren.
It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve been to Grimley when the first few Reed Warblers had just arrived. Today there seemed to be Reed Warblers singing from every patch of reed and their chaotic discord song was the background track playing the whole time I was there. Cuckoos are often seen and heard at Grimley this time of year and a male was calling from a nearby tree. The abundance of Reed Warblers nests must be very attractive to this very able brood parasite.
It was very pleasing to see a large flock of Swifts hawking over the water and fields and I spent some time just watching them marvelling at these true masters of the air. When the young fledge from the nest in June they will not land again until they return to breed themselves next May. Even at night the birds do not land to sleep but they are said to fly up high, close one half of their brain down entering a state of semi sleep while drifting down then rising again to repeat the processes.
Its aways a delight to see my first humbugs of the year, humbugs being a very descriptive nickname for Great Crested Grebe chicks. They really are the most adorable little things which have the very endearing habit of hitching a lift on their parents back. As I watched them being fed by their parents I wondered what quirk of evolution had led to their strange Zebra-like first plumage, quite unlike the adults. Nature always has a reason for things but I really struggled to understand the evolutionary advantage that this strange costume provides. It certainly doesn’t hide them when on the parent’s back, quite the opposite they stand out a mile off! Their black and white humbug colouration is set off by a rather peculiar red bare knob on their head. They are precocial meaning that they can swim and dive almost as soon as they are born. Incredibly, Great Crested Grebes were almost hunted to extinction in the 19th century for their head plumes which were used to decorate ladies' hats and garments. The RSPB was founded in 1889 by Emily Williamson to help protect this species, her all-women movement being born out of frustration that the male-only British Ornithologists Union was not acting on the issue!
After Grimley I drove the short distance to the Upton Warren nature reserve. I walked right around the reserve which is well equipped with hides mainly overlooking the freshwater scrapes. I heard the strange punk like song of Cetti’s warblers on a number of occasions but, as usual, failed to see them. They never seem to sing from the same place twice and as you try to see them where the male last sang, he will sing again from another location often a few tens of meters away. They really are experts at moving through the vegetation unnoticed. There were a number of active Avocet nests and at least one pair of Ringed Plovers. I was told there were perhaps only half the number of Avocets compared to last year, strange as the numbers seem greatly increased at Slimbridge this year, perhaps that’s where they have all gone!
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