I haven’t written much about my local patch of Stanwick Lakes for a quite a while. You might think I’ve stopped going out birdwatching but, to the extent that anything does, my regular walks around my regular patch are some of the things that keep me sane and reasonably relaxed.
I was up at 5am this morning and had done quite a bit of work by 7am so I went out for a walk.
It was a nice morning – cold but no wind, so it didn’t feel too cold even though the puddles were iced over. And the birds thought it was spring. There was quite a lot of bird song; not just the Song Thrushes, Dunnocks, Robins and Great Tits that have been singing lots for weeks but also Reed Buntings that have suddenly found their not very impressive voices (although there are still two male Reed Buntings and a female hanging around in my garden from time to time).
There was another sign of spring too – a pair of Oystercatchers together on a potential nesting island.
But there were lots of Goldeneye (some of which were displaying) and Wigeon and Teal that show that it is still winter.
Perhaps the most interesting birds were – well I’ll tell you in just a moment. You wouldn’t have given them more than a quick glance but I was really interested to see them. They aren’t rare – I probably see them and hear them around my home every day, but here, just a couple of miles away, at Stanwick Lakes, they are a little bit unusual. And here were two of them together, near the car park, in fact in the kids’ playground today. Thank to the wonders of Birdtrack I can now tell you, because I’ve looked it up, that these were my first Stanwick Lakes sightings of this species since June last year, and only my 16th sighting ever (since 2005). Most of those sightings were made in 2005-2007 and there have been only three, including today’s, since 2011. So they were interesting, up to a point, although I fear you may be less than enthralled to learn that they were Collared Doves.
Yes, a common species, which maybe I ought to see more often if I kept my eyes open at Stanwick Lakes, but an unusual species on my patch and one which has noticeably declined over the past 13 years or so.
Having a local patch and getting to know its wildlife makes the otherwise dull, strangely interesting. Well, I think so anyway. I thought you’d like to know.
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I wonder if Collared Doves have succumbed to completion in gardens and around farms from Woodpigeons? Certainly Woodpigeons have increased in numbers as Collared Doves have declined.
I think Collared Dove has to be the country’s most dismal bird species. It easily outscores Linnet in that regard. It’s one of the very few birds that gives me virtually no pleasure at all. Even the noise they make is dull. I imagine it would have been very different just a few decades ago when they were starting to colonise but, honestly, I wish they hadn’t bothered.
Oh dear, Ian! I feel the need to start a ‘Collared Dove Appreciation Society’. A very overlooked bird and, given its explosive range expansion, a real survivor. I saw some of the very first arrivals when twitchers would fall over themselves to add it to their lists and now I have it as a year round garden breeder which rewards close observation. But, yes, I understand it’s not one of nature’s most exciting species.
I’ll be the first one to disagree with Ian.
Collared Doves, with their delightful wing slapping display, usually grace my 6.5 mile cycle to work and add to the cycle bird list I keep every morning.
Ian needs to explain why he thinks they are dismal and dull 🙂
I’m not sure really. Perhaps the fact that they occur pretty much only in human dominated habitats. There are only here because they have been able to exploit these so effectively – but then you could say that about lots of other more appealing species. They don’t ever seem to do anything interesting other than loaf about on tv aerials and overhead wires. The song is dreadful. And they must hoover up lots of food that would otherwise help out some of our more deserving farmland birds.
Deserving? So we’re now categorising some species as worth more consideration and food than others?
I think this kind of unwarranted criticism does not help birds in general.
Marian – my comments were at least partly tongue in cheek though it is a bird I find hard to get excited about. I guess we all have our own favourite species and, by extension, species that don’t give us so much pleasure. Luckily we have the red listing exercise in the UK to tell us which species we should be most concerned about and Collared Dove is (thankfully) not one of them. If it started to seriously decline then I think our attitudes (and the red listing) would change. Mine definitely have towards birds like Starling and House Sparrow. These were formally birds that most people battled to keep away from their garden feeders so they wouldn’t steal food from the birds we actually wanted to help. But I bet most people are happy to see and feed them these days.
Must admit the Collared Dove population in my garden has dipped considerably over the last four years.
What I find scary about this exchange is that in the early 70s, looking back at my notes, I had similar thoughts – only about Turtle Doves.
I get up to 20 Collared Doves on my window feeders. Their voice is beautiful, but their call is boring. The plumage has a pink tinge.
They were the first ‘large’ bird to learn to feed from my tube feeders, now copied by large numbers of Jackdaws.
They are tougher than Magpies. I watched a single parent protect its nest from two attacking Magpies for half-an-hour. First one Magpie would attack, and then the other, alternately trying to exhaust the single, defending Collared Dove. It would beat them back with its wings at every attack. When the Magpies joined forces in a combined attack, it simply stood its ground. It never gave an inch.
In the end the Magpies gave up. Only when they flew away did a spectating Wood Pigeon ‘join in’ to help by flying aggressively after them.
Easy to understand how they spread? Intelligent and brave.
Keith. Nice one:
Magpies collared by Collared Doves.
I had a look at our records in the BTO GBW database to check out the status of Collared doves in our garden. From 1997 to 2008 there is hardly a week without a record of their presence, not many but at least one pair. From 2008 until now there is a great variety of sightings (occasionally slanted by my lack of recording!), in 2010-11-12 in less than ten weeks per annum, 2015: 18/52. 2016: 32/51. 2017: 14/50. most weeks present so far this year.
There is some evidence that this variation follows the decline in greenfinches with trichomoniasis in our garden for the same period. I believe that doves and pigeons are particularly susceptible to this infection but I can’t confirm having seen a case.
As well as those wigeon and teal (not to mention the glacial temperatures) there are still plenty of redwings and fieldfares to remind us that winter is not quite over yet.
Jonathan – indeed, although around here there are lots of Fieldfares and rather few Redwings. If I remember correctly, that is what the BTO says happens! Redwings move further west.
I always really enjoy reading when you write about the wildlife you see! =)