Skip to main content

The spring migration flood gates open with Pied Flycatcher, Garden Warbler, Ring Ouzel and Wheatear and a bonus local Black Necked Grebe at Grimley

 

Northern Wheatear
Thursday was the kind of day that I’ve been dreaming of all winter, bright and sunny without a hint of wind with summer migrants flooding in. So  anything other than a full day out birding was simply not an option! I like to go out and see Ring Ouzels, the Blackbird of the mountain, at this time of year. They are quite faithful to hilly stopping off points on their migration to their more northern breeding grounds. Locally Bredon Hill, the Malverns and Cleeve Hill are reliable spots for them. I do like going to places I have never been before so I decided to try Clee Hill just 30 miles away in Shropshire where there had been regular reports of up to 7 birds. They tend to move on overnight but are hopefully replaced by new birds spending a day breaking their journey.

 

The Ring Ouzels were located at a place called Tittertone Clee Hill just outside of Clee village. A long windy road took me up to the summit car park where I met a lady birder you told me that the Ring Ouzels had just been flushed by some numpty and had flown over the hill! Ring Ouzels tend to be quite skittish and are easily flushed so I settled down to view their preferred flat area of grass at some distance hoping that they would eventually return. The site was surrounded by the tumble down ruins of derelict buildings from an old and long abandoned quarry. This provided perfect habitat for 3 Wheatears, my first of the year, and a female type  Black Redstart. I had taken my new piece of equipment along with me, a Cannon 100-500mm zoom lens with a x1.4 converter. I will write up a separate blog on my experience with this lens and my rational for buying it in a subsequent blog. The Wheatears provided an excellent opportunity to try out the new lens and, as usual, I took much too many photos. The Wheatears looked very dapper in their summer plumage, much smarter than the washed out plumage of the many autumn birds I see in Shetland every year but all is not what it may seem here. The bright spring feather colouration is produced by something called feather abrasion. The birds moult only once, in late summer, and the change to summer colours is achieved by feather abrasion (basically wearing). The fresh autumn feathers have buff edges which slowly wear away to expose the bright breeding plumage underneath.




After maybe another hour a birder I had been chatting to earlier called me over to the ridge where a cracking male Ring Ouzel was sat atop a gorse bush. Another male and female then appeared over the ridge and the three of them settled down on the grass for prolonged although distant views. Over the next hour or so there were +3 birds intermittently on the grass around the derelict buildings.


  


Distant Clee Ring Ouzel


A closer one at Cleeve Hill  couple for years back for comparison 

For the afternoon I decided to loop back to the Wyre forest to see if I could find any new migrants. The afternoon is a quite time for birding, particularly so I find in the forest but it was a lovely warm spring day and  a long slow forest walk felt very appealing. I thought the small Dry Mill Lane carpark might be full so I parked in the larger Hawks batch car park on the other side of the forest and walked down towards the stream. The song of Blackcaps and Chiffchaffs, which seems omnipresent at the moment, accompanied me on my walk. At the stream by the outdoor bound centre I heard a Garden Warbler singing and I soon located it near the top of a tree where it was too obscured for any photography. This is the same spot that I’ve had Garden Warbler over the past three years. I guess its either the returning individual or its prime real estate for them and attracts different ones in. This is my earliest Garden Warbler by some margin, everything seems to be early this year.

 

The Dippers were very busy zooming up and down the fast flowing rocky stream. They nest early and are almost certainly feeding youngsters now. Up at the nest boxes I could here a male Pied Flycatcher singing but it took me ages to get by bins on the somewhat distant songster. You would think a black and white bird would stand out with sparse spring vegetation on the trees but it never seems to work that way. I believe I’m right in saying that the males arrive back before the females, presumably to establish territory before potential partners start checking out what they have to offer.

 

On Friday I made a quick morning visit over to Grimley where a smart summer plumage Black Necked Grebe had been found the evening before. It showed quite well but photography was problematic with the morning sun directly behind it. An evening visit would have worked better. This is a bird that goes through a complete spring metamorphizes into stunning summer plumage as per below.



     


The Grimley bird in summer plumage and a winter plumage bird for comparison 


I love Spring – its my favourite time of year!


Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!  

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Albert the Albatross

  What is more improbable -   a)     England’ football team    beating Germany in the knockout stages of a major competition   b)     Seeing an Albatross in England   Actually the answer is a) because it has not happened since 1966 rather than b) as Albert the Albatross, as he is affectionally known, has made a number of passing visits to the UK since 1967!   On Monday evening reports started to emerge of Albert associating with the Gannet colony at RSPB Bempton Cliffs in Yorkshire, almost one year after his    last brief visit to the same site. During the intervening period there have been a number of sightings of Albert across Europe, particularly from the Baltic Sea where he appears to have spent much of the last 12 months. In fact there were reports that he had been attacked and killed in the area by two eagles.    Reports of his death were clearly greatly exaggerated!   The Black-browed Albatross is ci...
2 comments
Read more

The Hawfinches of the Forest of Dean

   Hawfinch - Forest of Dean, winter 2017 A highlight of my winter birding is my annual trip to the Forest of Dean to see Hawfinches. I was unable to go last year due to the post-Christmas lockdown so this year’s visit was even more richly anticipated than normal.   Parkend in the Forest of Dean is my usual chosen location for watching Hawfinches. Here the proven technique of using your car as a hide normally works well. I must also say that,  after a number of quite strenuous twitches recently, I was also looking forward to a much more leisurely birding session!   The story of Hawfinches in the UK is, to my mind at least, a fascinating one. It is what is known as an eruptive species meaning that it occasionally erupts from its traditional breeding grounds to invade on mass countries much further away. This is thought to be driven by a combination of breeding success and local crop failure resulting in not enough food to go around.    Records indi...
3 comments
Read more

A visit to see a controversial Canvasback and thoughts on its provenance

   Canvasback ( its the one with the long black beak) curtsey of Nick Truby   Ornamental ducks are perhaps the most difficult and controversial birds that are on the current  British bird list. They are widely kept in collections and as such differentiating a genuine wild vagrant from an escapee is extremely challenging and sometimes impossible. I’ve discussed the issue of proving a birds provenance before, see here , but in summary a ring or isotopic analysis of a sample are required to prove beyond all doubt that the bird is a genuine vagrant. In the absence of this objective evidence of origin much more subjective factors are used to prove that the bird is “probably” a genuine wild bird. You could, however,  strongly argue that in the absence of the definitive evidence above, none of these ornamental ducks should be on the UK list of accepted wild birds   The Canvasback is the North American cousin of our common Pochard and is kept in some UK o...
1 comment
Read more