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Archive for December, 2010

More Waxwings

Posted in Birds, tagged , on December 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »

A few days after I went to see the waxwings in Woburn the flock finished eating the berries on that particular tree moved on, so I saw them at just the right time.  Mind you, there have been reports of waxwings from all across the UK, so this definitely seems to be a ‘waxwing winter’.  I came across another flock myself a couple of days before Christmas, 30 or so birds in a tree by the industrial estate on the A507 in Flitwick, Bedfordshire.  Unfortunately the snow and ice made it impossible to stop (and it is a busy main road), but it gave me a quiet sense of satisfaction to have found my own flock.  Following the paparazzi is one thing, but finding your own flock of waxwings is somehow better.

On the same subject, one of my fellow watchers in Woburn found the post and got in touch.  Richard has taken some absolutely stunning pictures of the Woburn waxwings, and with his permission I’d like to post them up here.  Click on the pictures to see the larger versions – you won’t be disappointed, these really are excellent photographs of truly stunning birds.  The copyright of these pictures belongs to Richard Gleave.

Waxwing by Richard Gleave

Waxwing by Richard Gleave

Waxwing flock in Woburn by Richard Gleave

Waxwing flock in Woburn by Richard Gleave

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Happy Winter Solstice 2010!

Posted in Background on December 21, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Happy Winter Solstice! - Robin in SnowWell, here we are again.  The shortest day of the year.  And it really does feel like midwinter with the snow and the deep frost outside.  It’s definitely a night for staying inside in the warmth and light, for celebrating turning the corner of the year. From tomorrow, the days start to get longer again.  After summer is winter, and after winter summer.

However you celebrate it, season’s greetings from Tales from the Wood!

Scarlett - Dreaming of a wild christmas

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Tawny Owl in the Snow

Posted in Birds on December 21, 2010| 5 Comments »

Look at this.  You wait ages for a post and then three come at once…

I’ve just driven home from the station after a particularly bad commute on the train from London.  I’m driving Mrs BWM’s Ford Fiesta at the moment while she uses the executive motor (she has further to drive).  How come a little car like this can cope with the snow perfectly well, yet the full engineering resources of First Capital Connect trains are utterly overwhelmed?

Now I’ve got that off my chest, what I wanted to say was that my journey home was brightened up when I arrived home.  There, on the hedge by the driveway, sat a tawny owl.  We have a lot of tawny owls around here but you hear them much more often than you see them.  I drove my car right up to this one, so we sat looking at each other for a minute from a distance of no more than three feet until I pulled into the drive and it flew away.  What a magnificent bird to see up close on a dark and snowy night.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be too pleased though.  This was obviously not normal behaviour, otherwise I’d see owls on the hedge much more often.  It got me thinking about how owls cope with the snow and the cold weather.

We feed the birds in the garden.  Mrs BWM and I regularly sit on the sofa and look out at the bird table – it’s better than the TV a lot of the time.  We have three robins (Mrs BWM knows each one by sight – they have some territorial issues but they seem to have come to a truce to share the bird table at the moment), blue tits, great tits, the odd greenfinch and chaffinch and a regular ‘charm’ of goldfinches.  The bird table is popular at the moment, and so it should be – the birds seem to get more expensive food than I do!  But we’re happy to feed them and happy to watch them, and they’re happy to eat the food we put out, so everyone benefits.

But what about owls?  Tawny owls mainly eat small mammals.  When there is four inches of snow on the ground these must be hard to find.  They’ll either be keeping underground or, like voles, they may spend their time tunneling under the snow.  Either way, with their main prey out of sight a prolonged period of snow must be a lean time for an owl.

If I put out food for the other birds, can I put out food for owls?  And what would this be?  Would I need to get hold of some mice and leave them on the bird table?  Is this ethical?  And where do you get mice from anyway?

It was good to see the owl this evening but it has got me thinking.  If anyone knows anything about feeding wild owls, please do let me know.

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Fieldnotes: 19th December 2010 – The Woburn Waxwings

Posted in Birds, Fieldnotes on December 19, 2010| 4 Comments »

Waxwings in Woburn

Waxwings in Woburn

So the snow fell yesterday and it’s still here today.  The warmest it got was minus 4 degrees at midday, so the snow is still crisp and powdery.  I took Scarlett for a quick walk to the field behind my house this morning.  There were the usual rabbit tracks and quite a few fox tracks, but the main thing I discovered was that hauling an all-terrain baby buggy through 4 inches of powder snow really is as difficult as it sounds.

In the afternoon, despite all the warnings not to travel unless it was absolutely vital, I got in my car and went for a drive along the snow-covered, icy roads to the village of Woburn.  I was risking life and limb to witness a great wildlife spectacle: the Woburn waxwings.

Waxwing flock

A small part of the waxwing flock

Waxwings are birds, related (I think) to larks.  They are residents of Scandinavia but sometimes come to Britain in winter, to feed on berries.  These invasions – ‘waxwing winters’ have apparently been recorded since as long ago as 1679.

For a week or two now the birdwatching grapevine has been humming with reports of waxwings in the area.  The biggest flock is in Woburn, where 350 birds have been reliably counted.  This is a big number of waxwings.  Now, you must understand that I don’t class myself as a twitcher.  I’ve always made a point of sticking to the area around my house, looking for birds and animals but not travelling far from home just to tick off a species.  For me, understanding my local patch has always been the important thing.  At least, I did until we got a huge flock of unusual migrants a few miles away.  This was enough to get me skidding my way along the treacherous, icy roads.

The waxwings were easy to find.  A small gaggle of birdwatching paparazzi was gathered to watch and photograph them.  My RSPB Pocket Birds book says of that waxwings are “exotic looking and very tame”.   The book is very accurate on this.  Firstly, waxwings are very handsome birds.  Dark pink, with black and white bars on the wing tips and a charming crest.  They do look exotic.  To see a whole flock – hundreds together – was a fantastic sight.

Watching the waxwings in Woburn

Waxwing paparazzi - the birds are in the bush in the centre

Secondly, the main waxwing flock in Woburn was concentrated in a berry bush in the front garden of a house by the main road.  This was very convenient for birdwatchers as it meant we could get a real close view.  Every now and then the flock would scatter a little but they’d come back almost immediately.  They were not in least bothered by the passing cars, the photographers, or even people walking past on the pavement a few feet away.  It made for a great spectacle.  In addition to the hardcore birdwatchers, many people stopped walking or even stopped their cars to find out what everyone was looking at.

I’ve crossed a line today.  I’ve gone from a casual local-patch birdwatcher to a proper twitcher.  But for the experience of seeing a whole flock of such good looking birds I was quite happy to make the journey.  Besides, if the waxwings have come all the way from Scandinavia to visit our corner of Mid-Bedfordshire, it would be rude for me not to welcome them in person.

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Fieldnotes: 18th December 2010 – Let it snow…

Posted in Fieldnotes, Tracking, tagged , on December 18, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Snowy woodsI’ve mentioned this before, but the village I live in has a connection to some of the most courageous polar expeditions in history.  The frozen ends of the earth are a long way from our green fields and woods and hedgerows, but I like to think I’m keeping the polar tradition alive by going outside every time it snows.

It snowed a couple of weeks ago and I was looking forward to going out tracking, but unfortunately it all melted by the weekend and I didn’t get the chance.  Today, however, we’ve had another good fall of snow – four inches or so in the space of the afternoon.  The whole of the UK has once again ground to a halt (it took Mrs BWM three and half hours to drive home from London today, on what is normally a one hour journey) but I’m happy.  It’s snowed, it’s Saturday, it’s time to go out tracking.

It’s been a while since I’ve been outdoors, so it felt good to take out my camouflage jacket, put on my walking boots and pick up my tracking stick from its place behind the back door.  It sounds odd, but I always enjoy walking in winter.  There is a satisfaction in getting dressed up and going out into the cold, meeting the challenge of the conditions.  As luck would have it, I bought myself a new piece of kit on Thursday – a windproof fleece balaclava.  I suspect it makes me look even more scary than usual, but it really does keep my ears and neck warm.

The temperature tonight was minus 3 or so, which meant that the snow was still fresh and powdery, the snow-covered fields eerily bright in the moonlight, almost as clear as day. I  headed up to the pasture field in the hope of tracking the badgers there.  I’ve had some fascinating times following the badger trails here – following the tracks of badgers for hundreds of yards and seeing how the trails interact with each other.  The snow provides a wonderful record of badger behaviour that would normally be invisible.

BWM in heroic 'Polar Explorer' pose. Note the smart new balaclava.

BWM in heroic 'Polar Explorer' pose. Note the smart new balaclava.

Alas, tonight did not reveal anything about badger behaviour.  In fact, there were no badger tracks at all.

A few rabbit tracks, and the fresh trail of a fox trotting across the footpath, but no badgers.  I was out at 9.00 to 10.00pm, so perhaps the badgers had not come out yet.  It might be the case that they are staying underground at the moment – I know that badgers will venture out and forage in snow, but this snow comes after a few days of hard frost.  A hard frost makes it much harder for the badgers to dig for worms, so it may be that the frozen ground has had more of an effect on them than the snow.  I’ll go out again tomorrow and see if there have been any new tracks overnight.

Even without badger tracks it was still a fine night to be out.  Despite the chaos that it brings, I hope we get more snow.  If it carries on into next week I’d like to build an igloo in the garden and really make the most of it.

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