Red Kite, Picture of the Week 5 March 2014

Red kite photographed on 3 March 2014, soaring above a multi-storey car-park in High Wycombe, Berkshire.

Three hundred or more years ago red kites lived throughout Britain and Ireland and were a common sight even in cities. Shakespeare wrote of them as stealing underwear from clothes lines! Kites have diverse appetites, eating small birds, rodents, frogs, insects, earthworms and carrion. Where they scavenged on man made rubbish and carrion they were often welcomed as useful in cleaning the streets.

 

But one hundred years ago the picture was very different. Only a handful of red kites were left, in the West of Wales. Elsewhere they had been shot and poisoned out of existence, mainly by landowners, farmers and gamekeepers. Other birds of prey were treated with the same arrogant brutality, but most survived in larger numbers than the unfortunate kites. 

 

Today the kites are back. Once they were protected, the Welsh population began to expand. In England, Scotland and Northern Ireland they have been re-introduced in groups, sometimes using birds originating in Scandinavia. In England the reintroduced birds can be found in the Buckinghamshire/Oxfordshire area, Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire, Yorkshire, Gateshead, Northumberland and the Newcastle area and Grizedale Forest in Cumbria. The Scottish population is centred around the release sites in Dumfries and Galloway, Stirling-shire and west Perthshire, around Black Isle in Ross-shire, and on the outskirts of Aberdeen City.

 

All the re-introduced groups have formed breeding populations and the total number in the UK today is around 1,600 pairs, according to the RSPB, who keep a close eye on them. Still not a lot of birds, but where they live, they are quite visible and not afraid to fly over towns and cities. The first kite for 150 years was seen in London in 2006 - http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/shakespeares-red-kite-returns-to-london-after-an-absence-of-150-years-522771.html



Big Garden Birdwatch - Long Tailed Tits, Picture of the Week 2 February 2012

Every year the RSPB conduct a huge survey of garden birds. This is done by taking a snapshot of the birds people all over the UK see in their gardens during the last weekend of January. The first survey took place in 1979, the most recent was last weekend. This year the first birds I spotted were three redpolls, which wasn’t surprising as they’ve been regular visitors since I hung a nyger seed feeder on the clothesline. They were followed by blackbirds, magpie, great tits, a nuthatch, chaffinch and blue-tits and my favourites, the long-tailed tits, who gathered on the fat balls. But there were fewer species this year, no sparrows, starlings, siskins, goldfinch or great spotted woodpecker.

Duck! In all directions. Picture of the Week 7 December 2012

Can you spot any two which are looking in the same direction?
And where's Wally?

Sowerby Bridge Geese, Picture of the Week for 15 September 2012

One way and another, the West Yorkshire town of Sowerby Bridge is well endowed with geese.  There's Goose Nest Lane which runs from Long Lane to Hob Lane and the Hobbit Hotel.  And then there are the actual geese.  The Ryburn, a small river which feeds into the River Calder in the town, provides an inviting environment for a flock of twenty-five or thirty white geese, who remain all year round.  They share the stream with duck and other wildlife right in the centre of the town.

If they stayed in the Ryburn, the geese might be universally popular, but they regard the town as their territory and wander en-masse all over the place.  They intimidate small dogs and children.  They stop traffic.  They pooh outside the pubs, shit by the sports centre and defecate by... well you get the picture.  Whilst they aren't a totally wild species they aren't domesticated either, belonging to nobody, so some town councellors and residents want to get rid of them. 

Redpoll, Pictures of the Week for 29th February 2012

Male Redpoll in my garden, Grimescar Valley, Huddersfield, photograph taken this week. He is one of a group of six redpolls which seem to keep company with four siskins. He looks a bit like a linnet but I believe his small size and yellow beak confirms him as a redpoll.

lesser redpoll eating nyjer seed

The redpolls I see in my Pennines garden are very small birds, although my bird books describe redpolls as the same size as a goldfinch. My books are of course out of date, the newest is 18 years old. The native redpoll has been re-classified as the Lesser Redpoll, with visiting Common/Mealy Redpolls from Europe. These redpolls visiting my garden are certrainly smaller than the goldfinches, which often arrive at the same time. They all like the nyjer seeds in this feeder.

Redpolls are classed as finches but have a finer beak than classic finches such as the goldfinch.

This photograph shows a goldfinch on the washing line above the seed feeder, with female siskin on the left and female redpoll on the right. Male and female goldfinch have the same colouring, whilst with the siskin and redpoll the female has less bright colouration. The RSPB website implies that the Lesser Redpoll is an uncommon bird. I have once identified a mealy redpoll on the same feeder and it is noticeably larger than the Lesser redpolls. I feel quite priveledged to have these delightful little visitors to my garden.



I haven't altered or enhanced the colours in these photographs. Comments would be welcome, I am new to photographing and identifying these small birds. It's quite difficult, they live in different time to us, their lives and movements are very quick. I do also sometimes see wrens and goldcrest, haven't managed to photograph them, they lurk in the bushes and the conifers. 

The Twite is a Pennine bird I've never seen, they are rare. My friend, poet Char March, has been artist in residence at the Pennine Watershed Project, which led her to involvement with the Twite Recovery Project, to encourage this once widespread bird. The twite is slightly larger than the redpoll with a pinkish area on the lower back, no red on the head or chest.

Char's lovely book, The Cloud Appreciation Society's Day Out, was written after she found inspiration from both projects. It includes a poem called "The A - Z of Twite."  Her poems have in turn inspired me to put my redpolls into a poem, of sorts -

A Mature Garden

Missing

a Cacophony of kids

a Decapitation of frogs

a Nurturing of tadpoles

a Brazening of sausages

a Suckling of willows

an Ascension of Leylandii

a Cheerfulness of sparrows

a Murmuration of starlings

Extant

a Remembrance of rosemary

an Absence of skateboards

Tidings of magpies

an Arable of grass

a Sisterhood of cats

a Clambering of blackberries

an Eden of fruit trees

and blackbirds, bluetits, redpolls…