nature notes

Do you just have a brief phase of earwigs with wings, as you do with ants?? I've never seen one with wings...?
 
I saw my first flying crane fly of the year yesterday evening, so I guess it's about to be cranefly season too...
 
Been getting lots of crane flies in the moth trap for the last week, still the hens enjoy eating them
 
On going attempt to learn some birdsong. Although maybe a strange way of doing it, it has been a very thorough introduction to go through about 250 files of common song and label them like in the picture (its a sort of song type/shape/frequency shorthand). Anyway, I found a Marsh Warbler in the files after hearing it at Hampton Wood the other day from a label search that narrowed it down to 6 files. Its working better than I thought it might!
The Black Headed Gulls have just arrived back in Leamington this week along with lots of Canada Geese and a single Graylag in the gang (like how does that happen?!)
Screenshot from 2020-09-24 19-42-55.png
I just found this on Wikipedia - Bird vocalisation:
"Konrad Lorenz demonstrated that Jackdaws have "names" identifying each individual in the flock and when beginning flight preparations each of them say one other bird's name creating a "chain". In his book King Solomon's Ring, he describes the name he was given by the birds and how he was recognized several years later in a far away location following WWII."
Whoa!!
Jackdaws have found a hole in the side of a chimney over the road and have been excitedly exploring it. Several of them go into the hole and then pop out again a few minuets later. Have been doing it for days. Goodness knows what that sounds like in the house and I cant help thinking its a good job they are black as it must be pretty sooty in there!
 
I guess the Greylag has just ended up on a lake with Canada geese, and just stayed with them, or it was a mixed flock that flew off in two directions and he went with a flock of Canada Geese.
Marsh Warblers are amazing mimics, had several on the marshes over the years and the mimicry is amazing, one had over 30 different songs in his repertoire, ranging from Swallow-Oystercatcher, you suddenly wonder what an Oystercatcher, or Woodpecker is doing in a reed bed, also had a few birds from his overwintering in Africa.
Also read that birds have regional accents also.
Rick, there is also their migration calls for when you start doing nocturnal migration with a sound recorder or noc-mig as it is called. really taken off in the last couple of years, and one thing people found out the Common Scoter, migrates over land, being a sea duck people assumed they went along coasts
 
Its really fascinating BYM - I can imagine how noc-mig would become highly addictive! I'm getting better at hearing the different behaviour sounds of the common suspects around here and having a better guess with the unknown. I heard a Jay last week and thought 'Ooh Jay!' - I'm not sure I've seen one before, briefly perching before flitting through the trees, and it was the call that did it.
I'm sure it was a Marsh Warbler as I saw them (not singing) on the next visit around the same area. But if they are going to pretend to be something else - well that's not playing fair!
 
A huge skein of geese went over our house yesterday afternoon. They were too high to identify but most likely pinkfoots from Iceland. They rest in the fields opposite before tackling the Minch and they navigate via Loch Erisort out over the Minch and end up on the east coast of Scotland at places like Caerlaverock. Usually a few stay here and go back to Iceland in the spring.
 
We’ve recently talked about our contempt for twitchers but commonplace birds can be breathtaking. Big flocks of starlings at roosting time, gannets diving for fish, a shag perched on a rock in bad weather - all can transfix you.
 
That's one of the few things I miss about my last "proper" job Hen-Gen. My office window faced west & beyond the car park & thick conifers, before the motorway, were fields & a river. I'd see lots of lapwings, & before the sun set, hundreds of starlings would murmerate. It was a sight that never failed to distract me... The sunsets were pretty amazing too.
 
I must admit, living by the coast would be awesome! We are not far from Meriden here which is reckoned to be exactly in the middle of the island and about as far away from the birdie hotspots as you can get. A cormorant uses a tree on the island in the river as a winter home every year (just the one) but is always magnificent. Corvids we have in spades. Fortunately I love them to bits and I can watch rooks bodding around in their ragged trousers for hours during which time lots of fairly common but very interesting farmland, woodland and riparian characters usually show up.
 
:-)12 Pretentious, I know, but down my drive is a long fence on which I have created a poetry wall. None are my feeble efforts. Here is one called Wren.

*****
When wren whirrs from stone to furze
the world around her slows for wren is quick,
so quick she blurs the air through which she flows, yes-

Rapid wren is needle, rapid wren is pin-
and when wrens song is sharp song,
briar-song, thorn-song, and wrens flight
is dart flight, flick-flight, light-flight, yes-

Each wren etches, stitches, switches, glitches, yes-

Now you think you see wren, now you know you don’t.

*****

And also clever because if you take the first letter of each verse it spells ....... !
Other poems subjects are shags, starlings, thistles, sheep, love and one humorous one by e. jarvis thribb.
 
That's lovely Hen-Gen and so descriptive.

I had a Grey wagtail in the back garden, a Great Tit, Blue Tit and what was possibly a family group of Long Tailed Tits in the tree at the front. There were lots of juveniles but I couldn't see any adults. First time I've see a Grey Wagtail here, it's usually the Pied that I see.
 
dianefairhall said:
A huge skein of geese went over our house yesterday afternoon. They were too high to identify but most likely pinkfoots from Iceland. They rest in the fields opposite before tackling the Minch and they navigate via Loch Erisort out over the Minch and end up on the east coast of Scotland at places like Caerlaverock. Usually a few stay here and go back to Iceland in the spring.
Click to expand...

Lot of Pinkfeet coming in this week, sure sign of autumn, I love the "wink wink " type of call, you can look it up on Xeno Canto, so soft , unlike the harsh calls of Canada geese or the bark of Whitefronts. Down here we get the Brent geese with their distinctive ronk ronk call.
We like Norfolk in January, get to Holkham just before dawn and watch the thousands of Pinkfeet head out for the day, or watch them come back at sunset. Trip to Welney to watch all the Whooper and Bewick's swans come into roost, magic
 
Beautiful! I haven't seen a wren since the spring but that's probably just me not looking enough. - Oh no I think I saw one flitting from fence to bush and complaining in the strongest terms at me for standing there and watching too long.
Today we went to Batsford arboretum to buy a memorial Acer palmatum for the garden (Carol's dad who spent a lot of time out there** and we dont have much room for anything larger.) While looking around the selection outside the shop - to be fair I think they have had a strange year for moving stock but all the specimens were looking pretty ropey for the price - a robin appeared right next to us. I know they do that but this one was very forward indeed and was singing in a whisper! It was a bit spooky! So maybe: "Help! I've eaten too much cake from the cafe (he was a big chap) You look like you might have some scratch?", or "Don't buy this stuff it's rubbish!", or ... goodness knows!
We came away with a decent looking but small 'Orange Dream'. Has anyone else heard a robin sing (like a full, complex song not pip, pip, pip) in a whisper? (I may, of course, be losing the plot - another distinct possibility.)
... **In the far east that is, not in our garden.
 
They do sing like that in Autumn. It’s the sound of the end of the year - especially this year. I loved the wren poem, HenGen, who wrote it? And the idea of the poetry wall.
 
It was written by Robert MacFarlane, Marigold. Of the eight poems I’ve displayed two are by him, two by Norman MacKaig, one by Ted Hughes and two that I can’t attribute. I had them printed on all weather, aluminium signs by Vistaprint.
A poetry wall? Inspired by everything from sculpture parks to Banksie. Poetry has enriched my life so why not share it in an accessible and no charge way. Hopefully others will do so as well.
But just to show my love of inanity here is the ridiculous one:-
*****
I wandered lonely as a Trotsky
Not a Blotsky or a Grotsky
But a Trotsky

by e. jarvis thribb
(courtesy of Keith’s mum)
*****
This is for old Private Eye readers.
 
I've got lots of thick hedges here. A massive hornbeam hedge (which I'm now letting grow) which has several other trees incorporated into it including oak, hawthorn, willow, elder. One huge leyandii hedge which tbh, I would love to take out, but my neighbours plead with me to leave it because (a) it would expose them to the frequent gales we get and (b) it's absolutely alive with birds of several kinds! Hundreds of common little sparrows and we also have lots of wrens, robins, tits of various kinds, chaffinches, goldfinches and of course, blackbirds & starlings. The hedges are all extremely thick, so underneath makes great wildlife "trails". And there are also various trees and things dotted around which have lovely sheltered areas underneath. There's a large witch hazel which you could probably live under! And an enormous stand of honeysuckle, with a support frame underneath, so it's got a short of sheltered "tent" effect. There are times that I worry a little about all these, because they are all planted on my septic tank drain field! Apparently, there was something like 200 tons of stone put in out there for the drain field. My late husband planted all the trees and things, it was just an empty, wind blasted field when we bought this house. Now, there's a little micro climate out there!

There is also, out in that area, a defunct polytunnel. (fox destroyed the plastic, there's a fox sized hole in the side!). I don't need or use the polytunnel. But, I was thinking what could I do with that area? And I'm wondering... would it be possible to start a sort of "living shelter", using the tunnel frame as support, and planting with willow/hornbeam/hazel (I've lots of hazel and willow growing here too!) and then shaping it over the top? Or, alternatively, how about using it as support for something like thornless blackberries/raspberries/loganberries? Would something like this be feasible? Opinions please!
 
No opinions on what you should do with the poly tunnel but I love the sound of your field. Sounds like a wildlife paradise. Is it a closed canopy or do you have lots of woodland flower too?
 
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