Bird news and more
Publishing this rather nice photo by Bob Bullock of the singing male Wood Warbler, present for its third day today at South Wood near Corby, seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up. Wood Warbler is a scarce spring passage migrant in Northants with between two and four records annually. There are a handful of autumn records and the species has occasionally bred.
Arriving at Summer Leys’ Screen Hide on Sunday, 8th May, morning, Bob Bullock and I were confronted by this Jackdaw, clearly one of a pair, both of which were gathering food.
It clearly exhibits a silvery collar on the side of the neck – a variable feature associated with ‘Nordic’ Jackdaw, the nominate race, monedula, which breeds in southern Scandinavia and is a scarce, though regular, UK winter visitor. In all other respects it is, however, just a ‘Western’ Jackdaw, lacking the greyer underparts and contrasting black throat of ‘Nordic’ Jackdaw. Compare it with a typical ‘Nordic’ Jackdaw, photographed also
by Bob, at Hayle, Cornwall in April 2008. Our British and western European Jackdaws (spermologus) have been known to interbreed with ‘Nordic’ Jackdaws in eastern Europe so is it a ‘Western’ Jackdaw with Nordic genes or just a ‘Western’ Jackdaw with notable feather wear?
Let’s face it, 1st May 2011 provided a great start to the new birding month – if you were at Summer Leys, that is. At 6.35 AM a Spoonbill flew west but was seen only by local photographer, Ben Harrold, who has very kindly agreed to my using one of his splendid flight shots here. Arriving at 6.40, as I did, I was clearly too late for the Spoonbill but from
Pioneer Hide I shortly located a stint feeding among the sparse vegetation on the recently exposed mud of the scrape. Against the bright, early morning sunlight it appeared dark-legged, grey and looked for all the world like a winter-plumaged Little Stint but its crouching gait and creeping feeding action had subconsciously sowed the seeds of doubt in the minds of some of the observers in the hide and should have set alarm bells ringing. Viewing conditions from the Paul Britten Hide were far better in terms of lighting, however, and it became immediately obvious that this was actually a Temminck’s Stint, sporting dull, olive-green legs and the rather drab, subdued upperparts characteristic of this species in summer. The stint soon transfered to ‘the slips’, where it was joined briefly by a Turnstone in almost full summer plumage, a Greenshank and, a few moments later, by 20 Siberian Bar-tailed Godwits, which came in low over the reserve from the south-west before dropping in for an hour or so, allowing the assembled birders to appreciate the variation in size, bill length and plumage. The slightly larger, longer-billed females, which rarely approach the males in terms of rufous-chestnut summer plumage, were readily apparent and one in particular almost towered above nearby males,
with the difference in bill length being clearly evident. All the Bar-tailed Godwits passing through Northants at this time are of the Siberian race taymyrensis, which winters in equatorial west Africa, leaving there in late April to undertake the approximately 7000 km flight to breeding grounds far to the north-east. Satellite telemetry has proven this species capable of undertaking long, non-stop flights which cover around 1000 km per day. The record is held by a female, which flew non-stop from Alaska to New Zealand – a distance of 11,400 km – in just 11 days. Amazing to think that just three days previously, these 20 birds would have been in Mauretania, Guinea-Bissau – or somewhere in between – before their appearance at Summer Leys!
Northants birds 