Zillions of Taddies

The sun warmed the tadpoles in the garden pond today - loads of them. Slugs beware, your days are numbered!

Ain't ponds brilliant!

Gold

Picked up a couple of patch year ticks today, a single Stock Dove in a field near to St Mary's and a couple of Red-legged Partridge on Whitley Bay golf course.

Goldfinch tucks into a Willow catkin at Druridge Pools (couldn't find Garganey, again)

Hip, Hip, Hip, Hooray

Wall to wall sunshine was the order of the day, just the ticket for a trip along the coast to St Mary's and then onto Druridge Pools and Cresswell.  And just as well as the breeze off the sea kept temperatures pinned down to a chilly 10 deg C. The weekend migrants of Garganey, Avocet and Yellow Wagtails were all conspicuous by their absence. The same couldn't be said for easter holiday makers.

Sand Martins were hawking over the wetland at St Mary's and over the pools at Druridge. I saw my first Sandwich Terns of the year at Cresswell and I finally bagged Stock Dove for 2010 in fields between Druridge Pools and Widdrington. A lone Wheatear was seen from the Budge hide at Druridge and Tree Sparrows were seen on the path down to the hide at Cresswell and in hedgerows along the fields west of Druridge.

Lapwing on nest

Stock Dove at last - pic ruined by heat haze!

Home sweet home

An early morning visit to St Mary's was as far as I ventured out today. The reported Garganey was long gone but picked up a Little Grebe for a patch tick for the year. Back at the ranch I had a play with my new toy, a Canon 7D camera. Here's some of the mugshots taken in my garden.

Exactly a week ago I estimated another 25 days till the frog spawn

 would become tadpoles. Wrong! The warm weather has speeded things up.

A queen White-tailed Bumblebee (Bombus lucorum) searches for a nest site.

A Lace webbed spider (Amaurobius similis) 'lurking' in the shed.

White-shouldered House Moth (Endrosis sarcitrella) in our living room.

Moth Virgin No More

Caught my first moth in the trap last night. A beautiful Hebrew Character (2190
Orthosia Gothica).

Sorting the Chiffs from the Chaffs

When I was a lad, all you needed to do to ID a Chiffchaff was to look for dark legs and listen for either it's song, chiff-chaff or it's call hweet, hweet ........simple. But that has all changed.

Advances in taxonomy, thanks to birdbrains at the London Institute of Bird Science, now means that there are several different types of Chiffchaff. And what's more it takes more than a few good field notes to tell them apart. Now you'll need a Chiffchaff testing kit.

Portable Chiffchaff testing kit

The testing kit enables the birder to clearly ID; Common Chiffchaff, Siberian Chiffchaff and Iberian Chiffchaff.

Last Monday I came across two Chiffchaffs feeding in trees along the Brierdene in Whitley Bay. Luckily I had my testing kit with me.

First lets look at the evidence collected at the scene:

Video



Call


Sonagram

The upward inflection of the call is diagnostic of Common Chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita) but what I found interesting was the first note is immediately followed by a second at a slightly lower frequency. Checking the Xeno-Canto website showed this to be quite normal - take a look - http://www.xeno-canto.org/species.php?species_nr2=6598.00

Conclusion: Common Chiffchaff

Another ornithological mystery solved.

Now just for fun, can anyone suss out what this is?


References:
'Siberian Chiffchaff' Phylloscopus collybita tristis: discussion and photo gallery.
http://www.btinternet.com/~deanar/tristis/tristis.htm

Identification of vagrant Iberian Chiffchaffs – pointers, pitfalls and problem birds
J. Martin Collinson and Tim Melling
http://www.club300.de/...iberian_chiffchaff/2008_Ibe_Chiffchaff_British_Birds. pdf

One last thing.......

While watching an episode of Columbo, 'Murder in Malibu' I noticed something rather odd.  The cigar puffing detective goes up in a cherry-picker to observe the early morning flight of crows near the murder scene. He watches a flock of crows fly past, which become an important clue as the explanation for sounds heard during Wayne Jennings’ telephone message, placing him at the scene.

They might sound like crows, but guess what.........they're fruit bats!

Trim & Proper Wildlife Garden

When we moved into our house some nine years ago the first task was to dig a pond and the second was to plant some ivies. The third was to unpack. The pond is thriving, brimming with frog spawn and this year's first Palmate newts (Triturus helveticus) were seen yesterday.

10 days since spawning and tadpoles are developing well.

 I estimate another 25 days till they 'hatch'.

The ivy is well established, a bit too established, so yesterday, after twitching the Great White Egret (Ardea alba) at Bells Farm (just thought I'd slip that in), I went up the ladder with the secateurs to get pruning. While I knew there had been at least one blackbird nest in the ivy last year I was pleased to find another old nest. A singing male nearby suggests this year could see a third.

Can you spot the two nests?

I also found this little fellah.

Two-spot ladybird (Adalia bipunctata)

Ivy is fantastic for many insects, and of course birds. Why not plant some? Hedera helix is the native species to go for. It flowers late autumn attracting butterflies well into October and the fruit is eaten by birds during the winter.

PS. Don't make the mistake I made a couple of years ago, pruning ivy in shorts and a t-shirt. The sap gave me one hell of a rash!

Less is more

Not much to waffle about so here's a pic of Lesser Black-backed Gull taken yesterday on route to dipping the White-tailed Sea Eagle at Prestwick.

White-Tailed Sea Eagle - Man Arrested

A model plane enthusiast from Newcastle was in police custody late last night after flying one of his creations, a life like White-tailed Sea Eagle, near Newcastle International Airport. The police said that he had caused a serious threat to aviation.

His actions were also reported to have created chaos on the ground as local bird enthusiasts chased it around Prestwick Carr and beyond.

A police spokesperson said that to anyone looking closely it was obviously a fake as a receiver could clearly be seen coming from the back of the 'Eagle'.

A local landowner was also taken in by the hoax and, believing his lambs were in danger, brought the 'eagle' down with a single shot from a 22 rifle.

Experts told us that the radio-controlled eagle is what's know as an ornithopter. Investigations are continuing.