Tag Archives: Greenfinch

Natural History

A Five-Warbler Walk at Wraysbury Lakes

A heraldic pair of Greylag Geese

Well, I guess the point of a walk in nature in May is to see what is in flower, what birds are singing, and which insects have emerged (in other words, it’s all about sex). The first warbler to make itself heard was the Blackcap, with many singing males trying out different brief songs. They were mixed in with Garden Warblers, which have a distinctly longer and more even song. A Cetti’s Warbler or two sang their loud abrupt call chwitipitit, chwitipitit: once heard, never forgotten. I couldn’t find any Sedge or Reed Warblers by the river for some reason. In the thorny scrub, a couple of Chiffchaffs sang their names, and many Whitethroats rasped out their short scratchy song, flying up to the tops of Hawthorn bushes and hopping about for the optimal perch.

A Little Egret flapped slowly across the lake: it would once have been thought a wonderful sighting, but the species has happily spread northwards and is now quite common on British coasts and lakes.

I was however delighted to hear the wheezing spring call of a male Greenfinch. It was until recently a common bird around towns and villages, but the population was halved by the Trichomonas parasite in the 2000s. Here in London it almost completely disappeared, and it is only slowly recovering.

I glimpsed one damselfly, probably a Common Blue.

Chicken of the Woods fungus on a fallen Poplar. Some find it delicious, others terrifying!
A handsome parasitic wasp, on the hunt for caterpillars
Bugle in flower in the woods
A Whitethroat on his singing perch

Natural History

Winter Visitors to Otmoor … or is it Spring?

Here in town, the daffodils are in bloom, the bluebells are coming into fresh green leaf, and the temperature is 10 C, so it might almost be early spring. And this morning I heard the chi-chi-chi / zheeeee! of a singing male Greenfinch, getting into the spring courtship season. But some trees on the same common are full of twittering Redwings, winter visitors from the frozen North, a cheerful and bright winter sight.

Out in the countryside, it looks much more like Winter, the trees as bare as they ought to be in early February, the only flowers a few tufts of snowdrops near the pleasantly lichened reserve signboard at RSPB Otmoor. The reserve has grown steadily better from its early day, with more and more wet scrapes, pools, and reedbeds spanning something like a mile of Otmoor’s wide, flat expanse.

A Kestrel hovered overhead; Bramblings and Chaffinches lurked in the hedges; Redshank called in the distance. Red Kites drifted by over the trees.  Seven Snipe jumped up, screeching, from wet grass and zigzagged to a muddy island. A Cetti’s Warbler sang from almost under our feet, invisible.

The luxurious hide revealed numbers of Wigeon, Shoveler, and Teal, and a flock of Linnets with a few Goldfinches feeding on the grass in full view. Yellowhammers, Reed Buntings and more Linnets sat in the bushes. The trees were full of twittering: I soaked up the soundscape with hands cupped to my ears.

Thousands of Golden Plovers
Thousands of Golden Plovers (and some Lapwings below)

When a Buzzard came over, some 3,000 Lapwings and a similar number of Golden Plover got up, all glinting gold as they turned together in the sunshine.

Golden Reedbeds from a hide with no roof
Golden Reedbeds from a hide with no roof

Over to the north, a Marsh Harrier dropped into the reeds, got up again and scoured the reedbed for signs of prey, its broad brown wings slightly raised, its broad tail quiet unlike that of the Red Kite that wheeled past it.

Natural History

Making Wooden Pegs (whatever next) … and a Congregation of Newts

Making Pegs (with a billhook)
Making Pegs (with a billhook)

Well, I’d read John Stewart Collis’ marvellous The Worm Forgives the Plough, and his description of the bill-hook as a marvellous tool, but it’s one thing to read about something and quite another to do it with a purpose.

Today, we were tasked with making edges for a stretch of path in the reserve. You can see some lengths of birch trunk lying along the path edge below my left hand. These of course had to be pegged to keep them in place, and then wired and stapled to discourage casual vandalism. The only source of wooden pegs was … more sticks. I set to work with the bill-hook, and indeed the tool is finely adapted to its job. Well-balanced, just heavy enough, and sharp, it slices through wood with a satisfying soft chopping sound. Even so, care and skill are needed, and the job takes a bit of time.

Congregation of Newts
Congregation of Newts

When I had made all the pegs anyone needed, I went for a little nature walk. Down by the pond a now-scarce visitor was singing in the birch trees: a Greenfinch. In the pond, several smooth newts were flicking and darting about. The sun was glinting off the water, as you can see, but it seems two magnificently spotty males were courting a drabber female at the top.

Conservation, Natural History, Nature Reserves

Quick, Fix Those Nestboxes! The Natural History of Nestbox Damage

Fixing anti-squirrel plates to nestboxes
Fixing anti-squirrel plates to nestboxes

Quick! Spring is in the air, the Dunnocks are passionately singing their tuneless songs, the Great Tits are yelling Zi-Za-Zi-Za-Zi-Za endlessly, the Greenfinches are wheezing out their odd song (‘Zheee’), it’s time to fix those nestboxes. Most of those in the Gunnersbury Triangle had been “hammered” by Tits or Woodpeckers, or gnawed by squirrels. And a few had been rather roughly drilled by humans. So the warden decided that all of them should be given anti-squirrel plates; all, that is, except the Robin boxes, which have a wide rectangular opening in the front.

Nestbox hole gnawed by squirrel
Nestbox hole gnawed by squirrel

A few of the boxes seemed to have been attacked by squirrels. This one has what could be toothmarks and signs of extensive tearing of the wood outwards at a shallow angle, which looks like gnawing rather than hammering. It isn’t obvious why the basically herbivorous Grey Squirrel should do this.

Extensively hammered nextbox
Extensively hammered nextbox

This box, on the other hand, seems to have been hammered at a sharp angle to the surface, whether by the Tits themselves (they certainly do this sometimes) or by Greater Spotted Woodpeckers preying on nests – although they mainly eat insects and seeds, they do take eggs and chicks when the opportunity arrives.

Old nest with tit egg inside nestbox
Old nest with tit egg inside nestbox

At least 4 of the nestboxes had substantial and reasonably fresh remnants of nests inside; this older one contained two long-addled tit eggs (just one shown here; it was 16 mm long) with a mixture of moss and down as insulation.

Tegenaria, the Giant House Spider, at home in a very messy nestbox
Tegenaria, the Giant House Spider, at home in a very messy nestbox

Finally, one very old nestbox, carefully engineered with beading around the hinged lid complete with little brass hooks, contained a Giant House Spider, Tegenaria, a lot of beetle pupae, and what could be Gypsy Moth pupae as well. The box was a messy tangle of thick sticky cobweb, and the spider was distinctly reluctant to leave, seeming to want to stand and fight off any intruder.

All in all, what might have seemed a mundane bit of metalwork turned out to be a day full of interesting natural history. (But the metalwork was fun, too.)

A nestbox goes up on a willow tree
A nestbox goes up on a willow tree