A Glimpse of Winter. (Water, Weather, Waders and Wildfowl)

Where one season ends and another begins can be a matter of much debate, September can be the beginning of autumn and another year it can be late summer. Seasons can blur, switch around for a few days, not like a cold day in midsummer, but a day in the transition between seasons when the incoming takes a grip over everything for a day before letting its predecessor back in for a while. Sunday 24 October had much of winter about it. It couldn’t tear all of the leaves from the trees, but it put a hard frost on the ground, a layer of ice on the bird bath and brought bright blue skies with face-numbing cold.

Having bought another 20kg sack of bird seed, we stopped off at Eyebrook Reservoir. It’s always important to take the scope to Eyebrook, many of the birds congregate beyond the reliable reach of binoculars. A scan around revealed a winter view. Winter wildfowl; wigeon and pintail, the former adding their short, urgent whistling to the cold landscape. Among the usual strung out mass of mute swans, a family group of 5 whoopers, 2 adult, 3 juvenile swam and huddled. Arrived safe from Iceland.

On the mudflats growing numbers of lapwings and, I noticed a number of golden plover. Another sign of winter. When the two species took to the air, the plovers flew faster, higher, with more purpose and tighter choreography. Not a huge number, a very rough estimate being somewhere around 100 or so. Lapwing and golden plover flying together, provides one of those spectacles created by massed flocks, best viewed by unaided eyes, even when, as today the numbers are not huge. The lapwings gently swirl on bouncing wings set against the green and bare red clay fields climbing behind the reservoir. Taking to the air, loosely together, breaking into smaller flocks, turning from black to winking white as they change direction, they numbered a few hundred. As one group shows black another turns and changes appearance. The groups cross paths and hold a rough shape only. As if each has its place, but they don’t concern themselves with being overly regimented, before gradually the loose association breaks down into a wandering mêlée of gently meandering black and white birds. The comparatively small number of plover fly in one group, sprinting through the sky with sudden twists not dissimilar to a flock of pre-roost starlings, becoming slightly strung out, at one point heading off to the other end of reservoir, before returning to mix with the lapwings. And having taken off maybe not quite as one, they decide it’s safe to land and glide in to resume their communal feeding.

 

By Tuesday, rain had set in, a grey, heavy autumn day. But winter has shown its hand, a taste of the life it brings together, as birds flock to see out the cold together.

Little Things

I’m ill. Messing up job interviews, not going to work, drinking tea instead of coffee type of ill. And on the TV they were saying that this weekend will be a good one for bird watching with the autumn migration in full swing. I won’t be going anywhere.
But from in here, there are still things, little things, to see and to comfort me that I’m not totally missing out. Eight in the morning, starlings fly over the houses gathering in their feeding flocks. Among one such flock is a smaller bird, finch size, keeping up, before breaking away, presumably on realising that it’s joined the wrong group. A small number of starlings continue to use and argue over the hole in our storm porch (I like the name ‘storm porch’, I wish other parts of the house could have names that promised such excitement). As one of the small developing flocks passes over, a starling on the gutter dips then flies off to join the others, the sudden change from hopping and squabbling to direct flight indicating this starling has more important things to do. A flight that seems to recognise the promise of a new day, this it what it has been waiting for.

And in the back garden things are starting to happen as well. Fifteen species this week, and they’re all welcome. Yes, even the almost universally derided woodpigeons. Their small patches of colour shimmer in the light. And the demonised magpie. Imagine how people would marvel at its proud posture, its exquisite shape and markings if it weren’t so common. The starlings bicker at the fat balls, robins, goldfinches and blue tits bring colour. Delicately shaded collared doves open their wings to show their palate of greys in flight. Then there’s the joy of discovery, scanning among 40 odd house sparrows in a feeding frenzy to find that are two of their number are in fact tree sparrows. Tree sparrows don’t get pushed around. Even when so outnumbered they seem to get plenty of feeding perch time. The house sparrows wait their turn, only occasionally and usually unsuccessfully trying to oust these close relatives. And at night I have heard disembodied contact calls of incoming redwings.
From time to time all the birds on the hedge drop down among the thin twigs, as if a network of trap-doors has been simultaneously opened. Sometimes the birds have misidentified something large and harmless as a threat, sometimes a dark shape that is certainly sparrowhawk banks and beats its brief passage through the garden, trying its luck along the hedgerow.
Small things, brief glimpses, but all things that make being indoors not so bad, as  long as I’m near a window.
 
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