Pulborough Brooks

Carrion Crow preening.

Carrion Crow alert.

Moorhen

Moorhen again.

Okay maybe I lied about getting up to date with the posts but there we go. Right. RSPB reserves and particularly Pulborough Brooks that I went to yesterday. It is a large reserve in the village of Pulborough with wet grassland, ponds, woodland, hedgerows, meadows and marshland. The grassland is managed by grazing cattle and rabbits that keep back the scrub and keep the grass short. There are herds of Fallow deer (does and older fawns at the moment) that roam the place, hundreds of Lapwings (Northern Lapwings, Peewits, call them what you will), many Mallards (males in eclipse are the most numerous at the moment), Shovellers, Pintail, Shelducks, lads of other wildfowl, Goldfinches, tits, Redshank, godwits, Snipe, Carrion Crows and Rooks Moorhens and Coots and all sorts of epic legend including the MARSH HARRIER, one of Britain's RAREST BREEDING BIRDS. No, I didn't get to see a Marsh Harrier but they are there. My highlight therefore was a Hobby chasing dragonflies. There is a fantastic shop where you can try and buy (unexpected rhyme) scopes and binoculars as well as tripods to put them on. There is this big ENOURMOOOOOOOOOOUS thing looking like a pair of giant white binoculars out side the shop that you can look through. You can buy bid food including live mealworms, feeders, nesting-boxes and inevitably the souvenirs like the Singing Bird plush toys that sing that bird's song when you press them. I became a MEMBER OF RSPB PHOENIX (that's the teenagers bit of the RSPB) which is epic. Sorry about the pictures being all wonkaloid. They didn't want to go in the proper places. BYE and make sure you go to one of the RSPB reserves this year. :)

Hobby and a plane.

Hobby over the hedge.

Fallow does.

more Fallow does.

The Hampshire County Bird Recorder

Hey peeps! Two days ago me and my dad were just walking down the promenade on Southsea beach with my dad, not for seawatching or anything, I hadn't even brung my bins and camera, just scoffing ice-creams and rock. A flock of Black-headed Gulls were feeding on the beach just next to South Parade Pier (we tried going on the Pier but some idiot has closed it down so only people who pay to go fishing on there are allowed on. You can't go under it anymore either.). I had noticed an evident distributional change in gulls: On and around the Canoe Lake (where we were about an hour before) was dominated by Herring-gulls (and a tonne of Feral Pigeons) and only very occasionally would a Black-headed Gull appear, whereas by the sea the scene was dominated by the Black-headed Gulls, among which I found this:

These photos were taken with my dad's phone camera (crap) so are not very clear. So, what do you make that bird? It's bill was muddy so I couldn't really see the colour. I was thinking either Common or Ring-billed Gull. I was secretly hoping Ring-billed (no offence Common Gulls) but either would be good because Common Gulls are not actually common (you get them only generally in Scotland and Northern Ireland) and Ring-billed Gulls are an American species that are regular vagrants to the UK. I emailed the Hampshire Bird Recorder (see the BTO website to find your county's Bird Recorder) Keith Betton about my "find". He accepted my format of conveying the information:

Species: Larus canus, Common Gull

Quantity of individuals: one single bird 

Age/sex: fully adult (showing no juvenile plumage), sex unknown

Plumage: full breeding plumage

Location: just beside South Parade Pier, Southsea, Portsmouth

Other: among Black-headed Gulls, fairly heavy wind blowing inland, overcast sky, no sign of breeding/attempted breeding

Date: 15/08/13

The thing is, I forgot to put the date on there originally so I emailed it to him afterwards. He emailed back with this photo attached:

Keith Betton with a Red Kite chick.

If you are thinking what I was thinking you would be thinking "wow that's legend". Even more legend is he said this:

 I'm very lucky to get this close to a chick. If you'd like to see them close next year I can try to arrange it.

Too right I want to get close to them! Well next year look out for a post about Keith Betton and Red Kites! Then on Saturday (or Caturday if you're feline or Saturdog if you're canine) I went to Reading to see some of my family (my aunties and cousins and second-cousins all live in Reading) and there were Red Kites flying all over the place! They say they can just chuck chicken bones and the like on the lawn and the Kites swoop down and take it off! Lucky people. They say "oh yeah, the kites. They are everywhere aren't they?" No! Conclusion of today's post: Reading is awesome because of it's Red Kites.   

Bye peeps! I'll post again soon. 

Eggs and Nests - Two Waterfowl and a Rail

Sorry for not posting for ages peeps. The following information on the Mute Swan at the Millpond is from when I started this post about two months ago (I know, I am pretty lame at updating the blog) so is not really relevant now but hey-ho. Time for another Eggs and Nests post, this time with waterbirds that you can see on almost any patch of British freshwater. Two waterfowl and a rail - the Mute Swan, the Mallard and the Eurasian Coot. On the Emsworth Millpond (this place featured in one of my earliest posts entitled "A Trip to the Mill Pond") a pair of Mute Swans (I say a pair but I never really saw the cob. I think he died :( but I hope not) nested. They made their nest out of the vast amount of litter around the area because there was not much else. I got a good few feathers from there! The brood originally consisted of five cygnets but now only one remains and is still fairly small, probably due the relative lack of aquatic vegetation there on which swans feed. A pair of Coot (I have seen both of these) also nested on the Millpond, right in the middle though! The photos of the Mute Swans and Coot on the Millpond are by me. Here comes nest facts!

Mute Swan eggs by David Green

A more typical Mute Swan nest. Photo
by Michael W. Richards.

The Mute Swan and her nest at the
Emsworth Millpond where the nest
is partly built from garbage because
this is more plentiful
 than vegetation there. :(

Cygnus olor - Mute Swan nest/eggs

One of the cygnets from the "Millpond
 Five" when all of them actually existed.
The other four were on the other side
of their mum.

The Mute Swan has a very large "volcano nest", a high  mound of vegetation with a  "crater", a shallow depression, in the middle. This crater is where the eggs (up to ten) are laid. It is lined with down for warmth and is slightly larger than the pen's body. The cob provides the materials for the pen who builds the nest from them. They share incubation and brooding duties. The eggs range from pale cream to light
brown. the cygnets when they hatch are dingy brown and white below. When an all-white cygnet pops up as they sometimes do, it is known as a "Polish" cygnet and will grow up into a white so-called "Polish Swan".

Occasionally a Mallard will
nest in a treehole as this photo
by Alan Pulley shows. Take
a look at his blog Birds 'n Such.

Anas platyrhynchos - Mallard nest/eggs  (yes the text went a bit weird because of the stupid picture placing thingumabob)

The nest of the Mallard is well-concealed in vegetation, though can be out in the open if cover is not available. The nest is a cup, roughly-made from straw, grass, twigs and leaves. It is lined generously with down plucked from the duck's breast. Clutch size varies from approximately 8 to 13 eggs. The eggs are fairly variable in colour, ranging from very pale green to turquoise or blue. We all know the beautifully maternal and quite frankly adorable sight of a mother Mallard leading her few-day-old brood of black and yellow pompoms  out into the water in a perfect 

line. AWWW SQUEE!

Mallard nest with 14 eggs by Mike Wilkes.

A Mallard leading her brood out
into the water by John Cancalosi.

Fulica atra - Eurasian Coot nest/eggs

Coots can be encouraged to nest on
artificial nesting-platforms.
 Photo again by Paul Dooley.

Coot clutch by Paul Dooley

Coots will build piles of vegetation on open water. This one
is like the one at the Millpond that the lost photo is of. Paul Dooley.

Okay, how annoying, I can't find my Coot nest photo :( so I had to find someone else's. I found Harefield Wildlife Images by Paul Dooley. Every photo here comes from his post "Four Different Coots on Four Very Different Nests" which focuses on the variety of places Coots can nest in. Coots build nests of dead reeds and water vegetation (or out of garbage where it is more readily available) in the variety of places in the photos. They lay up to 10 white speckled eggs and may lay and raise 2 or 3 broods a season, reflecting the high mortality rate (a Coot chick is a welcome snack for various herons and raptors).  Coots can be brutal with their young in a time of food shortage. If one of the smaller chicks (that isn't getting any food because the parents always give it to the big strong ones) begs his mum for food, she will either be very generous and give him something, bite him until he stops begging and starves to death or bite him until he dies so he won't want more food.

A tidier Coot's nest than the open-water mound, hidden in the reeds.
If I were a hen Coot (and what a beautiful bird I would be!) I would
personally prefer this nest, no offence to the other Coots who build
mounds in open water; your handiwork (or more "beakiwork") is still
very fine. Paul Dooley.

The most typical view of a nesting Coot, well-concealed
in Bulrushes (Great Reedmace) or
other waterside plants. Paul Dooley. 

 Thanks for reading the blog peoples! I will get a bit more up to date with the posting and stop doing such immensely long "Bird Facts!"! Because of my mentally over-the-top brain, what was meant to be a one-sentence fact about birds with a photo to go with it has turned into some mega info post thingumabob! :-| BYEEEEE!