I was out of the house at 05:40 this morning to do the Late visit to my other BBS square.
There were a few drops of rain, hardly any, but the sky was dark enough to make me wonder whether this afternoon’s forecast thunder storms might arrive early – they didn’t, and they still haven’t actually.
Birds were presumably thick on the ground – they’ve all been nesting like mad for months – but I recorded very few. There was little bird song and even Woodpigeons were in short supply. This is the first year I haven’t recorded Bullfinch on either visit and there was no Yellow Wagtail this year. And the last reed Bunting I saw here was in 2014, but I reckon that is because of aq reduction of use of oil sed rape in these fields in recent years – it’s almost wall-to-wall cereals.
Looking at my run of surveys for this particular BBS square, I see that this is the sixteenth year of data and the previous 15 years recorded 24-30 species per year; this year there were a mere 21 species.
I think it feels like an early year for nature this year, everything got off to an early start this spring and so the summer slump may have come early. Maybe? I wonder what the results, if there have been enough visits made to generate results (in England only probably, because of movement restrictions) will look like.
I saw no other people, as usual, so social distancing wasn’t too difficult. Two Rabbits were my only mammal sightings (but I notice that I saw a Red Fox here in 2014 (I’d forgotten that)).
When I got home soon after 8am I had breakfast and then entered the BBS data online.
I’ve had three phone calls during the rest of the day, two involving the World Land Trust and another talking to a writer friend who now regards themselves as a far more radical anti-driven grouse shooting advocate than they regard me. I shall start calling myself the moderate abolitionist soon.
And that reminds me, I spoke to a regional journalist the other day about Wild Justice heading to the courts over Pheasant and Red-legged Partridge releases who said that he’d had a press release from BASC on the subject where he noticed they called us extremists. I took the opportunity to ask him how that made him think of us and he said ‘A lot more interested in you, which is why I’ve phoned, because they obviously are worried about you if they start name-calling about taking a legal case.’.
Carry on BASC, you are turning public opinion all on your own with your nastiness.
Your mention of Bullfinch reminded me that last year a couple were great fans of our copious Forget-me-Not. We put it down to confusion on their part, but no, back they were this year. Who knew?
We were up before you this morning Mark – my wife Erica wrote the following:
Dear All thought you would be interested in our encounter this morning. It was a very hot night last night so we had the bedroom windows open. The Tawny owls had been calling very noisily all night ( with two almost fully grown young we think) and about 4am the blackbirds started alarming and I looked out of the bedroom window to see the Pips (we have 330 mothers in our maternity roost plus young) returning and flying in circles low in front of the room. I went to have a look at the roost and they were all coming in and swooping round, it was such a magical sight I woke Tim up to come and have a look. As he went back to bed he just peeped through our bedroom curtains and called me in to see a tawny owl, sitting on the extension roof but it had taken off when I peeped out, I went back to the spare room to watch the bats and to my utter amazement the Tawny was sitting on the boot room roof just below the roost, and just below the window I was looking out of, with its head swivelling round as the bats swooped in. It reminded me of famous commentary during the Falklands war “ I counted them all out and I counted them all in” A female Thrush with a beak full of food was also sitting on the roof! She obviously has a nest close by but did not appear to want to go to it while the Tawny was there. I was less than a meter from the Tawny and at some point moved and the floor board creaked and it gave me the evil eye for a few minutes but carried on watching the bats intently. All of a sudden it took off, caught and carried off a low flying bat which came too close, into the Yew tree by the gate. The blackbirds were alarming like mad. The Thrush moved pretty fast then! I would almost bet my life, that it knows where the roost is and this is a daily ritual. I am going to try and capture it on my phone. What an interesting encounter!
What a lovely spectacle to watch from your bedroom window!
Cop for this horror story, Mark…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/26/cyanide-bombs-wildfire-services-idaho
Definitely don’t want to play BBS Top Trumps but…I managed my late (and only) visit yesterday on a beautiful day. 3:45 start…bit of a drive (now allowed up here). Golden plover and dunlin highlights of the survey and dozens of mountain hares. I do hope they don’t go into decline now they’re not to get shot.
Nice to get a sea eagle drift around but not in the square, and not during the survey.
Best bit of birdwatching all year.
Bimbling – excellent! Congratulations!
Mark,
I have recorded a few less birds ( except Wrens singing in record numbers) on my local surveys even though I feel that there are, if anything, more rather than less birds around this year. So I think that your suggestion that it was in general an early breeding season is valid.
One of my surveys covers an old railway line, now a pedestrian and cycle path. This has been extra busy this year with lockdown and I think that it has made the Reed Warblers in the ditches each side sing less. I pretty much rely on song to record them.
I couldn’t manage a White Tailed Eagle but a Great White Egret was a first, albeit not in the survey area.