After the storm

It is good to be able to slip from the house at dawn and to enter a world that is finally still. The biting and bracing wind has passed and the air holds the carrying notes of song thrush and woodpigeon, both of which hint at the approaching spring. February is a dark month. Part of winter’s realm, she carries not the new year hope of January but instead sits belligerent and brooding. A troublesome month of storms, of rain and rising waters, of a wind that never drops. Will spring ever come?

These final days of the month, however, give hope and the calm that greets this dawn suggests a season soon to change. While I have seen these false hopes before, the hints of spring snuffed out by a weather system bringing chill winds from the north or squally rain from the west, the blooms of snowdrop, aconite and winter heliotrope offer a glimpse of the season to come. And there, among the brash that needs clearing from around the pond, I find a female brimstone. Her yellow-green sulphur proclaims life amid the blacks and dirty browns of rotting wood and leaf. Tenderly, I take her folded wings between thumb and forefinger and place her within the green ivy that coats the ancient wall. She will be safe and sheltered here, ready to stir with the first run of truly warm days.

The small tortoiseshells wintering in our unheated upstairs toilet have already shown their restlessness. On warmer mornings, when the sun’s rays push in through the small window, these wintering house guests can be found fluttering around the upstairs of the house. Come evening, when they are perched on curtain or net, I return them to ‘their’ room.

Droppings in the side passage, both on the flagstones and stuck to the wall, reveal that the brown long-eared bat has also been active. There are few moths coming to the lighted windows at night, so he may be better off remaining in whichever cavity he has chosen for the winter. Perhaps, as it is with me, these stirrings are a response to the changing weather, the lengthening of the days and the turning of the seasons.

He calls thrice over

Each morning I wake to the repeated notes of a song thrush, a bird that has made a perch of the old apple tree, ivy covered but still producing fruit, that sits next door. It is, it seems, his favourite song post. It is here that he starts and ends his morning chorus, shifting only rarely to other perches close by. By listening hard you can just about make out the songs of his rivals, distant and several streets away, elsewhere within town.

The song thrush has a reputation for repetition in his song, often repeating the same note ‘thrice over’. His song is more complex than this, however; the series of notes shifts and morphs as he dips into his repertoire to deliver tasty morsels of sound. The notes have a shrill edge, more cutting than those of the blackbird, whose own notes carry a richness – ripe and plump like the berries of autumn on which he feeds. The resident blackbirds start up their own chorus on the milder mornings but they lack the persistence of this song thrush, who sings no matter how crisp the day’s beginning.

There are plenty of opportunities for this particular individual, should he attract a mate. Thick ivy covers many of the old flint walls and clambers over the shrubs on the scruffy bits of waste ground cut off by road, path and housing. The male’s song both proclaims his ownership and advertises his suitability as a mate. The diversity and range of notes delivered reveals much about the singer; in some species a diverse repertoire is a sign of a high quality individual and one, therefore, worth mating with.

The first song thrush eggs are usually laid in March but earlier nests are sometimes found and the mild start to 2014, if unchecked, will almost certainly deliver a scatter of early nests this year. The nest itself will be placed in thick cover and lined with chewed up wood – which has the appearance of chipboard – and it is onto this lining that the beautiful blue eggs will be laid. For the next few weeks I can expect the song thrush to continue his chorus, his notes repeated ‘thrice over’.

A solid lining

I can see the nest ahead of me, wedged between the flat panel of a fence and a horizontal limb of blackthorn. The nest itself is a melon-sized construction of moss, grass and dead leaves, the work of a blackbird or song thrush. It is only when I get to peer inside that I will be able to tell which of the two species is responsible for its construction. The problem for me, however, is that there is a thick stand of blackthorn between me and the nest, the branches characterised by long thorns which are quick to impale, the tips breaking off and leaving a painful reminder buried in your skin.

Having weighed up the situation, and keen to add this nest to the list of those thrush nests being monitored locally this year, I work out that I can crawl ‘commando style’ under the lowest branches and, with a good deal of care, get to my feet within a metre of so of the nest. Armed with a video borescope, of the sort used by plumbers to check the inside of narrow pipework, I should be able to get a view inside the nest.

In addition to being able to record the nest contents, I will be able to make a firm identification of the species involved. The eggs of blackbird and song thrush are different but equally useful is the difference in nest construction. In blackbird, the outer foundation of moss and grass is followed by a lining of mud to form a cup, inside which is a final layer of finer material. In song thrush, the foundation of moss is followed by a layer of rotten wood that has been smoothed and bonded with saliva. There is no further lining, the song thrush laying its eggs directly onto the avian ‘chipboard’ that it has created. It is thought that the solid lining may reduce the impact of nest parasites but if this is the case, why isn’t the behaviour more widespread? Surely, there must be some additional cost of dispensing with a soft lining.

Once in position, I extend the snake-like cable of the borescope, camera at its tip, and inch it through the thorns to a position just above the nest. The small video screen reveals four bright blue eggs on a smooth and solid lining; it is a song thrush after all and a valuable record for the BTO’s Nest Record Scheme. I reverse the process and slowly inch my way back out from under the tangle of vegetation, before making a note of the nest, its location and its contents. I’ll be back out this way in a week, when another check on the nest is due.

A slow start to spring

Despite the tantalizing period of exceptionally early spring warmth, it has been something of a slow start to the season. There have been some early nests, with young Robins, Song Thrushes and Blackbirds evident in many gardens across the county, but other individuals were held up by the returning cold conditions. Now, however, it feels as if the pace is quickening.

We have seen a succession of arrivals, as returning summer migrants have been quick to settle on favoured breeding territories and deliver song. The Chiffchaffs were the first of these to be noticed here, around the brecks, followed by Woodlark, Blackcap, Willow Warbler and, most recently, Whitethroat. Early Reed and Sedge Warblers appeared late-month, with numbers of these reed- and sedge-bed songsters now increasing. The hirundines (swallows and martins) were slow to return in numbers and my first sightings of these summer visitors were behind those of recent years.

We have also had a smattering of passage migrants, in particular a good arrival of Ring Ouzels. These striking thrushes resemble a large Blackbird but with beautiful sculptured plumage markings and, in adult males, a white crescent around the throat. We have also seen some less common visitors in the shape of at least two Hoopoes, continental breeders that have overshot their breeding grounds off the back of southerly winds. They won’t linger, however, and will soon reorientate to return south. One of the most fascinating aspects of the unfolding migration has been the return of the Cuckoos, fitted with satellite tags by the BTO. Regular updates on their progress continue to appear on the BTO website (www.bto.org/cuckoos). The five tagged last summer, were all captured in East Anglia and it will be interesting to see if they return to the same sites.

The pattern of activity seen in our birds has been mirrored in the county’s butterflies, with a good number of early reports of species that overwinter in the adult form, followed by several lean weeks in which few sightings were forthcoming. Other species are now being reported on the wing, including Orange Tip and Holly Blue, so it does feel as if the butterfly season is now properly underway. Other insects have been taking advantage of early season nectar, with good numbers of bumblebees foraging in my garden and quite a number of hoverflies as well. The changeable weather that we see at this time of the year does deliver something of a stop-start feel and while it can appear that spring is here to stay one morning, the next can suggest a return to winter. It is a great time of the year to be out and about though as each new sighting delivers a thrill.

Thrushes gather and turn to apples

It is only within the last few days that the birds have turned to the piles of apples, half-hidden by snow, that have sat in the garden practically untouched for weeks. The combination of snow, still several inches deep here in my parent’s garden on the Sussex border, and the berry larder now stripped bare, has driven the thrushes to seek out other opportunities, drawing in Fieldfares and Redwings from the frozen farmland fields and empty hedgerows. There must be a couple of dozen birds in and amongst the low bushes and the long dead architecture of summer’s growth. Blackbirds dominate numerically but it is the larger, more robust, Fieldfares that will have the ultimate say in the pecking order. The small, dark Redwings, with their prominent white eye-stripe and soft call are the birds that catch my eye though. I have fond memories of handling dozens of these Nordic visitors whilst ringing at a Norfolk orchard near Ashill and they are a very rare visitor to my Norfolk garden.

The Redwings are true nomads; pushing south in autumn from their northern breeding grounds they can be heard at night, their soft calls a much-stated omen of the approaching winter. The numbers wintering here are variable, reflecting the changing patterns of food availability and the vagaries of the weather. An individual wintering here in one year could just as easily be found wintering in northern Italy the following year. Because of their size and their preference for soil-dwelling invertebrates, Redwings can struggle when the winter weather is at its worst. Hard frosts and snow cover prevent access to favoured foods and, once the berry crop has also been depleted, they can struggle to find food. It is then that their mobility comes into play, the birds moving further south and west in search of food and more favourable conditions. Those that remain here will increase their use of orchards and gardens, with rural gardens more heavily used than suburban ones.

In with the Redwings there is a single Song Thrush, a species which has been seen less often over recent weeks if the reports that I have received are truly part of a wider pattern. Of similar size to the Redwings, the Song Thrush might also have been struggling with the unfavourable weather conditions. Again, individuals could have been forced south by the weather but some may have remained and succumbed to the bitter cold. We will have to wait for spring to find out.

The apples have become the focus of attention because there is little else left accessible. As birds jostle for this sweet resource, it is reassuring to know that this part of the apple crop has found a good home

On the move

When you think of bird migration you tend to think of summer or winter visitors, such as Swallow, House Martin or Redwing; birds that are only with us for a small part of the year. This means that many of the birds that are on the move during autumn or spring go unnoticed, simply because they happen to belong to species that you would normally see throughout the year. For instance, birds as familiar to us as Song Thrush, Chaffinch and Goldfinch all either have a migratory component to their British breeding population or to a population elsewhere within wider European range.

While most of our breeding Song Thrushes and Chaffinches are rather sedentary in their habits, some winter abroad in France, Spain, Ireland or Portugal. At the same time, Britain also receives Song Thrushes and Chaffinches arriving here to overwinter, or passing through en route further south during the autumn months. A visit to the Norfolk coast soon after dawn may well reveal some of these visitors. On Sunday morning, for example, I saw and heard good numbers of Chaffinches and smaller numbers of Song Thrushes passing overhead at Kelling Quags, together with other autumn migrants – including Brambling, Siskin and Meadow Pipit.

Both Meadow Pipit and Chaffinch are diurnal migrants (migrating during the day), and the birds I saw may well have been continuing journeys initiated in Scandinavia over recent days. Some of these birds, notably the Brambling, will have made a direct crossing of the North Sea but others, like the Chaffinch, will have avoided the crossing altogether by taking a longer route around the North Sea coast, through the Low Countries and then making a short hop across the English Channel. Such a convoluted journey will have required some nifty navigational skills along the way, given the change in compass direction needed at different stages of the journey.

Another interesting aspect of Chaffinch migration (at least for the birds leaving the northernmost part of the breeding range) is the difference in timing between males and females, and adults and young. Females Chaffinches tend to move before males (and migrate further) and the same is true of young birds, when compared with adults. In the case of the Song Thrush, individuals from different parts of the breeding range show variation in their movements; those from the northernmost populations tend to move the furthest south, with some birds even reaching North Africa. What amazes me about all these movements is not simply that such small birds can undertake such large movements but how individuals of the same species can behave so differently depending upon where they were born, what sex they are or whether they are a young bird or not.