Category: Birds

UPDATE: 22nd May 2025 – Several Red-footed Falcons recorded locally this year at RSPB Ouse Washes, RSPB Fowlmere, NT Burwell Fen, Swaffham Prior village, Bluntisham village and nearby RSPB Ouse Fen (among lots of Hobbies), as well as Etton-Maxey Pits (north of Peterborough). None so far at RSPB Fen Drayton as there had been in 2024 and the year of this post 2020. Indeed, Birdguides does not have any local sightings for 2021-2023. There have been quite a few around England this year and in all previous years going back to the date of my original post in June 2020.

The red-footed falcon, Falco vespertinus, is usually found in eastern Europe and Asia but its numbers are falling because of habitat loss (what a surprise) and hunting (ditto). It is usually migrates south to Africa in the Winter. Occasionally vagrants are seen in western Europe in the summer.

Interestingly, one has been hanging around this last week or so at RSPB Fen Drayton, which is close to a village not far from us here in Cottenham. It’s apparently a first-year female so obviously not the same bird that has been seen on the same patch in previous years. We paid a visit to the reserve today and although light levels were poor for photography and the bird was perching on fence posts about 400-500 metres away from the guided busway that runs through the site, we got a good view of her and a few photos for the gallery. A first summer male was seen at Grafham Water.

The whole time we were watching, a Cetti’s Warbler was calling noisily from the trees behind us and there was a cuckoo doing its cuckoo thing not much further along the line of trees parallel to the busway.

Once home again, I heard on the birding grapevine that a Fulmar (a seabird many kilometres away from its normal range, although they do breed in Hunstanton in North Norfolk, apparently) had been seen flying over the woodland that nestles in the farmland between us and our village neighbour. There is also a Marsh Warbler showing nicely at NT Wicken Fen. This species usually spends the summer in Continental Europe (not Iberia, France, nor Italy though) and is another interesting vagrant to this area. One has to wonder whether lockdown and our changing habits and reduced activity over the last few weeks is changing the habits of some of these avian species.

Just a few shots of the juvenile startling starlings fighting for fatballs. The adults have fledged about eight noisy juveniles into our garden so far, I estimate.

Random selection of Curlew photos I’ve taken over the years, none of them anywhere near Barnard Castle, but some on the coast in the North East, others in Norfolk and Suffolk.

While we’re still allowed out of our homes for a period of exercise each day, have a listen out for some of the birds that are singing and calling right now, various migrants and others you may not have noticed above traffic noise even in the countryside previously:

Swallow

Whitethroat

Buzzard

Reed Bunting

Yellowhammer

Kingfisher

People often tell me they don’t know what that bird is they can hear singing or calling but cannot see. There’s an international crowd-sourced project called Xeno Canto that has the calls and songs of almost every bird around the world. But, for local friends and family who might want to know what they can hear in the gardens, here’s a small selection of some of the more likely in England:

Chaffinch

Greenfinch

Robin

Blackbird

Great Tit

Blue Tit

Dunnock

Wood Pigeon

Collared Dove

Starling

House Sparrow

Most of these birds will have a song and a call, some of them seem to improvise or do abbreviated versions of their songs and calls. The sound files you can listen to above are just a starting point for learning how to identify birds you might hear in your garden and then associate them with a visual ID.

As regular Sciencebase readers will be well aware, I often work from my laptop in the garden in the summer time, when the weather is fine…I reach right up and grab a camera sometimes…

Showing well today, a rather bold Wren, Troglodytes troglodytes, munching on grubs and caterpillars from various bushes and not worrying too much about my presence. I’ve been making efforts to let the garden go a bit wild, without it simply turning into a couch grass, thistle, and nestle patch. Lots of wildflower seeds are in, the pond is buzzing. Red Valerian and Green Alkanet are thriving, foxgloves are about to burst into bloom (hopefully). There are bird seed (mixed, sunflower, nyjer) and fat (suet) feeders aplenty.

Fans of the Facebook page may have seen the various Live broadcasts I’ve done in the “Watch” series, all very tongue in cheek and an excuse for me to broadcast some of my music or offer some relaxing video – there’s been PondWatch, LawnWatch, FeederWatch, and the fascinating ShedWatch.

Today, I once more put my phone on a tripod and pointed it at a feeder hanging in our apple tree for SuetWatch. Robins, Erithacus rubecula, have been pecking at this all week. I hoped to catch them on video. I don’t think I did, but when I went to terminate the video I noticed for the first time a nest in an old homemade nest box hanging on the shed. I wondered whether it was the Robins, so pointed the phone camera there and stepped back so as not to disturb the birds.

A quick scan through the video revealed a Dunnock, Prunella modularis, sitting on top of it at one point, so perhaps most likely that bird’s nest rather than that of the Robin.

The footage is awful and the bird activity so brief I won’t bother posting it. But, do take a look at my Facebook as there will most likely be more in the Watch series coming soon…

Dave Bradley on Facebook here.

I mentioned noc migging at the end of last year as something I planned to do in the spring of 2020. “Nocmig” or Night flight call (NFC) recording as the Americans know it, is basically making an audio (or indeed video) recording of the sky above you at night with the aim of plucking from the audio the calls of birds flying overhead as they migrate.

We’re coming into the main migratory season in the UK with a few of our summer visitors already here, many more heading this way and crossing the Iberian Peninsula and other parts of the continent lying between their winter holiday homes further south and The British Isles. Of course, the wintering birds are also returning to their summer roosts and mating grounds further north, in the far reaches of Scotland, Scandinavia, Siberia, and The Arctic.

So…I just need to waterproof a microphone to stick out of the window and setup some audio recording software to run overnight. I’ll use my music software as it has lots of options for cleaning up the sound. With a “tape” in hand it can either be scrolled manually looking for bursts of sound in the waveform and these sampled out to be analysed spectrally or it fed into a second bit of software such as a spectrogram to filter out barking dogs and vehicles and other non-avian noises. Cornell University then has an app – Raven – that can take the cropped analysis and identify the birds from their calls in your recording.

I’ll keep you posted…

Back in the pre-covid good old days, when you could take a countryside or woodland walk and chat to others on the highways and byways, the conversation would almost always turn to birds, especially if one of you were carrying a set of bins or a camera with a big lens.

If you reveal any sort of knowledge about which bird is which, people are even more surprised if you know which call or song you can here. I’ve not counted how many birds I recognise from their songs and calls but a few of the ones I know for definite would be: Blackbird, Robin, Dunnock, Wren, Song and Mistle Thrush, Magpie, Jay, Rook, Raven, Carrion Crow, Jackdaw, Blue, Great, and Long-tailed Tit, Buzzard, Goldcrest, Treecreeper, Yellowhammer, White Throat, Black Cap, Chiff Chaff, Reed Warbler, Reed Bunting, Bearded Reedling, Green and Great Spotted Woodpecker…I’ll stop now…

Anyway, there’s a crowdsourced website called Xeno-Canto where you can hear recordings of the calls and songs of birds from around the world.

But, as we’re all at home now, here’s a selection you might hear from an open window in your self-isolation.

Chaffinch – song, call

Blackbird – song, alarm call

Song Thrush – song

Robin – song, call

Dunnock – song, call

Wren – song

Great Tit – song

Chiffchaff – song

You can find the complete tick list for our garden birding here.