271 : Puffin

Puffin - Fratercula artica

I am having one of my guilt ridden weekends alone where I realise that I have completely drifted away from The Task - despite having a laptop full of birds photos 2013 is looking pretty dire in terms of progress. If this was the Daly Bird we would be looking at something like 7-800 birds posted on this site by now. Its all just time. A post can take me an hour dependant on the bird.

But its easy to pick up and I have 300 to push for and the century retrospective in which I might allow myself a Top 15 !!

So what a bird today !!

Above a very poor picture of 5 sad Puffins on Bempton Cliffs taken abut a month ago when I had a weekend trip back to the UK to see Jane and the boys. We have better photos in the house but none taken by me or with me present - Puffins in line ups, Puffins with purple heather in their mouths and shiny fish, Puffins dancing in the sunlight. All taken by Jane on family pilgrimages to Mull. I will definitely have to come back to this post in the future given that these are one of Britain's best looking and best loved birds. Truly the Sea Parrot. I have to make my trip to Mull one of these days so that Puffins can be properly shared.

Quite a lot of people haven't seen a Puffin. It does require a trip to a breeding colony as in the Winter they simply melt away into the ocean. They are much smaller than people realise - perhaps just the size of a 1 pint milk bottle. When they fly they give the appearance of a bumblebee with whirring wings. You cannot see the detail on the faces here so I've blown up one slightly blurred picture to give a better view.

Its the red, yellow and blue banded beak, yellow gape with its downturned smile and the blue detailing around the eye like a clown's makeup that lift the bird from another black and white Auk to something approaching a living relative. And the calls - the "Ohh ! s and Ahh ! s". There can be nothing sadder in the world than a Puffin at times. Bewildered, resigned, stoic - loved ! Ohh ! Ahh !

Clown wasn't the first comparison drawn. The latin name Fratercula means little Friar. They would have associated with the cold windswept islands where hermitages abound and the overall plumage does have something clerical about it. So little monks they are in their North Atlantic or North Sea Hermitages.

Puffins nest in burrows on grassy slopes. And here's a Puffin fact thats slightly odd. The chick is housed at the end of a tunnel slightly longer than a man's arm and is fed for the first few weeks in darkness. Parents and chick never see each other and after the adults abandon the chick it makes its own way out of the burrow and into the world. It consequently never sees its parents. Its first flight down to the sea is taken and alone its first attempts at fishing and so on. It will never recognise or know its parents in the same way that a duckling or even a small ostrich might in the safety of a creche for the first couple of months.

So its the sad comical bird that made its own way into the world to stand looking out to sea - perhaps they are looking for Mum and Dad and never quite got over that sense of loss. Or perhaps we layer too much pathos on these little tubby characters because nature has dealt them an oversupply of charm because of their looks and lifestyle.

There are a million pairs still in the British Isles but they are moving North following the sand eels who are also moving North. There have been tales of Puffins choking their young trying to feed them pipefish and other fish unsuitable for small beaks. They have had a good year in 2013 by all accounts but their have been some bad year's in recent history. For some reason some of the press in the UK wants to deny climate change. As a birder I can tell you that Puffins leaving and Little Egrets arriving is as good a sign as anything. Cetti's warbler - there's another one - even Bea eaters seeking out nests in quarries. It might be a degrees difference in the waters around the UK but it has a significant effect on the fish. There was a bloke I used to talk to in Manchester at the rugby club who had a little boat on the North Wales Coast - Aversock I think. He had always been fishing with his father and so on there. He told me he could track the arrival of different fish that he'd never caught as a boy - types of bream and things further North than they were usually found. So thats a birder and a fisherman. I guess an oil company or Daily Mail columnist cannot look at the same data - or its all just a natural cycle. We'll see won't we in my lifetime  one way or the other if some scientists are right. As long as there is room for Puffins somewhere.

Puffin, Fratercula artica
Bempton RSPB, North Yorkshire
July 2013

270 : White Bellied Bustard

White Bellied Bustard - Eupodotus senegalensis 

I think 3 classifies as a collection so we are now starting a Bustard collection. We can tuck this away with Black Bellied and Kori's both seen in the Serengetti last year. Other favourite collections include my Hornbills, Barbets and Jacanas.

Again this picture was taken in Ruaha national park on one of last game drives. Unfortunately I had been taking some arial shots so I had the exposure compensation wacked up (otherwise a bird in a bright sky will just turn out black as the average metering for a DSLR camera will try and drag the image back and expose less as its all bright blue sky. You need to therefore over expose for a bird in the sky (even though its a bright sky) in order to get some detail. It seems counter intuitive and I have to really think about it to do it. If however you forget to turn the camera back to its normal position the next shot you take in normal conditions will be hideously over exposed. I have then 30 of so White Bellied Bustard shots that look like this !

I have had to to fiddle an awful lot to resurrect this Bustard. They are not the most natural looking shots but good enough is good enough.  It is shame because for a bird that spends its life wading through tall grass this individual decided to show himself quite well. Cakes in the rain and all that.

So I was smugly taking shot after shot all terrific but over exposed.

The bird was full view and then even stepped into open !

As things stand I have a series of very odd coloured picture that look like something from a 70's magazine.

So whats the rule !! However excited you are check after 2 or 3 and set back to your basic settings after each stop - ISO 100, F8, exposure compensation to zero, centre spot focus, slow continuous etc. What I need is a button that "returns to home" - perhaps  another button to to take it to the set up for an arial shot. That would would make life easier and save this from happening again. You have to keep your cool and work through it. Hard when you are looking at a bird you have never seen before in your life, its in a great position to photograph and you are not sure how long it is staying for.

White Bellied Bustard, Eupodotus senegalensis
Ruaha National Park, Tanzania
July 2013

269 : Wren

Wren - Troglodytes troglodytes

Often known as the smallest bird with the longest latin name - and certainly the loudest voice ! Male Wren's live in a daily competition for territory.  A war that ends with defeat and possibly death or victory and the opportunity to pass genes on to the next tiny generation. These are the UK's most abundant bird species with probably several million pairs carpeting the islands. So mark out a circle of perhaps 20 or 30 m in diameter in your garden and your likely to have a wren territory - adjust its shape to fit the reality and like a jigsaw piece attach the next territory and so on - covering Europe - millions upon millions of pairs. Somewhere there must be a few lucky wren's not constantly on border patrol, singing loudly and fitfully to ward off would be suitors to their mates. Perhaps they live in perfect isolation - a small island in a river !

I took this picture of a male bird holding territory at Loggerheads Country Park near Wrexham. The male was singing from a typical vantage point at about my waste height. He must be a ventriloquist as he was able to keep up his aggressive song while clasping this small caterpillar in his beak to demonstrate his prowess as a "gourmand" and provider - these soft small caterpillars presumably bing ideal food for chicks.

So a tiny skulking bird with a colossal presence eeking out a living on grubs, insects, skulking down low in every small patch of vegetation that provides an opportunity.

I am in the UK for 2 weeks now catching up with my family and family in general at the mid-point of of the Summer. I am off to Anglesey today so I'll see what I can pick up there.

Having left Dubai behind me for two weeks all I can say is that the world is green !!

Wren, Troglodytes troglodytes 
Loggerheads Country Park near Wrexham North Wales
7 July 2013

268 : Tree Sparrow

Tree Sparrow - Passer Montanus

This is not just your run of the mill House Sparrow. This is a rural specialist which has different requirements - half a chance for example. Unfortunately numbers in the UK plummeted by 94 % from 1970 to 2004. It needs year round seeds, insects to feed its chicks when it breeds and nest holes. There are according to breeding surveys perhaps just 60,000 pairs left in the UK. That may seem a lot but compare that to the million that existed in 1970. It was a common farmland bird.

They breed in small colonies - these birds were nesting in boxes and eaves provided by the information centre at RSPB Bempton. I have seen them before at a country in park near Nottingham and there is also a small colony at Beddington Sewage farm of all places in South London. I would drive down there on an annual basis when I lived in Balham to get my tick for my year list.

You can tell them apart from a House Sparrow by the warm chestnut brown  cap (as opposed to a grey cap) and the black spot on the cheek (absent on a House Sparrow).

The RSPB doesn't just create reserves to protect birds it actively engages with farmers to encourage wildlife stewardship. There are a network of advisors who visit farms to explain wildlife friendly policies and these days grants. You can see some information for the Tree Sparrow here. I gave money many years ago for a project called Hope Farm - an experiment in effect to take a farm and adopt every best practice possible to demonstrate what could be achieved. Its a working farm but it sets out to encourage back the farmland birds that have been persecuted at all levels by intense agricultural, monocultural more like practices. Spraying crops that kills insects, ripping out hedges to create bugger and bigger fields - everything too tidy. The practices have then been developed on Hope Farm have been cascaded out and the government and EU  lobbied over funding issues.

Farmers have the chance to really earn money now to encourage wildlife and I was pleased to see that the government is continuing to support this. You can read about some examples of farmers who benefiting themselves and wildlife here.

The retirement dream for the Crossleys is a country cottage and small holding either in the UK or France. Wherever it is I am going to have some fields and grow weeds - bundles of them ! The neighbours will hate it but the birds will have a field day. Weeds and a big pond. I'll let a small area be gardened properly but then it will be so nice to have a transition into something thats supports a good crop of breeding farmland birds.

Tree Sparrow, Passer Montanus
Bempton RSPB
June 28 2013

267 : Gannet

Gannet - Morus Bassanus

I was chastised by a good friend for my lack of productivity of recent. There is no excuse and I have  a heap of new birds to post up after a Summer of travel and more to come.

I'll kick off with a rockstar of a bird. The Gannet or Solan Goose in Scotland or Seth ("arrow") if you were an ancient Celt. Capable of flying thousands of miles over water and coming to land for a few short months each year. Plunge diving onto fish at 60 miles an hour - regulary making forays to collect food to feed their single chick of 300 miles in a day. These are big birds with I think 5 or 6 feet wingspans at full stretch.

I made a trip back to the UK last weekend to break up Summer (and Ramadan) a bit - my wife and kids have returned for the Summer leaving me in Dubai to eat bad food and stay up too late. I rented them a holiday barn/cottage in North Yorkshire and 3 generations of family enjoyed the coast there and particular Bempton RSBP which is the only mainland Gannet colony in England. Stunning.

There are good viewing platforms right opposite the nesting cliffs which are home I think to 20,000 birds during Late April-August. I was actually just up above the birds as they were landing on their nests. Noisy, aggressive birds they cluster together a metre apart building small plinths of seaweed and guano to rest their single eggs.

A constant cycle and rotation of birds landing and heading of to feed.

These birds are restricted to the North Atlantic and Britain and its islands are home to 60 % of the world's population so each breeding site is critical. Gannets first breed when they are 4 or 5 years old spending their initial years in a club next to the colony. For the first year they travel down to West Africa or the Mediterranean for the Winter. Generally the birds all move South during the Winter months but the first year birds go much further South for some reason to learn their fishing trade. Its a tough life for a young Gannet with only 30 % surviving that first year, starvation being the biggest killer.

I have never been so close to these birds before - I have marvelled at them some way offshore before - a distant site in binoculars wheeling and diving or cruising along with barely a wingbeat. They just remind me of the English Summer so much - holidays in Devon or on the Welsh Coast when the boys were much younger.

They are absolutely majestic. Living until 40 years of age they could fly a million miles in a lifetime.

Gannet, Morus Bassanus
Bempton RSPB, Yorkshire
June 28 2013