Big and biggerer - birding back on track

The RSPB’s Big Birdwatch is undoubtedly A Good Thing. Not only has it been gathering important data on urban / suburban bird populations for 37 years, but with more than half a million people taking part it must also create more than its fair share of interest in birdwatching, and perhaps even sparked some scientific curiosity here and there.

It’s certainly a bit of an institution in the Hornet household. Come 10am Saturday morning we had our feeders full, our scopes and binoculars lined up at the French doors, and the RSPB's fancy new iPad app ready to go.

Goldcrest (credit: Cliff Watkinson)

Boy Hornet and myself were quick immersed in counting the fast-changing numbers of starling, robin, house sparrows, blue tits and more. During the allotted hour I think all our regulars made an appearance, plus a bonus goldcrest in the willow at the end of the garden.

Thirteen species in an hour with a goldcrest as the highlight bird is hardly the cutting edge of British birding, but I wouldn't want to spend that particular morning every year doing any but the Big Birdwatch. If you didn't this year, do make a date for next.

Sunday morning was a more traditional patch session, in fact my first proper one of the year. With only 90 minutes to spare I decided to work Napton Reservoir for the duration.

A quiet start left me with little more than 3 gadwall and a male pochard as standouts among the coots (c80), tufted ducks and mallards (c30 each). It was also good to see a pair of great crested grebe in a few moments of courtship dance.

But things really brightened up when I left the bankside and walked the nearby fields. Here I was able to answer the question: ‘where are all the redwings, fieldfare and finches?’

In fact the answer lay pretty much in one field, which held easily 100+ redwings, with 50+ startling and 20+ fieldfare dotted throughout, all feeding furiously on the recently unfrozen soil. A biggish goldfinch flock was the standout among the remaining mix of finches, sparrows, tits and other regulars. It was a vibrant and exciting place to stand for 20 minutes as birds moved hither and thither around me – the only disappointment being again my inability to turn any of the finches into a brambling (despite a bullfinch’s white rump, which did its normal trick of momentarily raising the heart rate while scanning a small chaffinch flock).

After weeks away from the patch, this was an engrossing interlude. Nothing stellar turned up, but a morning total of 35 species is far from shabby for a single site visit on my patch.

So, after last week’s slow-start moan, this week sees things a touch back on track – a total of 48 species hardly makes it a stellar January (let’s be honest, it doesn’t even make a stellar morning), but I’m back and at it and that’s what counts.

Bird of the weekend: Goldcrest (Regulus regulus), the UK’s smallest bird. A common enough species, but can be hard to track down, due to its tiny size and its fast-moving habits. A welcome bonus on a garden birdwatch.

All change - the new office patch

My office patch has long formed a small but important part of my birdwatching life, and for more than a decade that patch has been in and around the small market town of Henley-in-Arden.

With plenty of fields, some shrubby woods, a small stream and a canal all just a lunchtime stroll away, my Henley office patch has turned up plenty of memorable moments over the years - my best cuckoo encounter, mandarin duck and little egret, and - rarest of all - my only county wood warbler.

So it was with some trepidation that I joined my colleagues in an office relocation in 2013. The tiny hamlet of Langley is less than 10 miles from Henley, and undoubtedly the shiny new offices are good for business - but what would it do for my lunchtime birding?

Well the good news is that there is plenty of potential.

The office is surrounded on all sides by farmland, mainly for sheep and cattle so certainly no shortage of jackdaws. Half way along the track is a large, almost hidden lake, fed by a small stream and surrounded by trees. This of course brings an entirely new dimension to things. And high on the hills either side of the valley is mature woodland.

Today showed just what a rewarding mix that can all be.

At the lake I found 11 greylag, a little grebe, a moorhen, a grey heron and a calling kingfisher somewhere nearby. Six cormorants jostled for perch points on a single tree in the island, watched by just a single female mallard. She wasn't alone for long though, joined in short order by a total of 29 incomers.

As I moved into the main farmland, the most obvious feature was the number of pheasants on show. Clearly a local pen had been emptied in the last day or two - every field was literally lined with pheasants. Above and around them were the usual wood pigeons and jackdaws, with carrion crows and a few rooks among them.

A buzzard called loudly from nearby woods, a female kestrel gave great views while sitting on a wire, but it was the hedgerows that shone brightest: whether in ones or twos or in small flocks, I found just about everything I could have reasonably expected: blue tit, great tit, long-tailed tit, chaffinch, goldfinch and, slightly less common, coal tit, marsh tit, goldcrest and yellowhammer - the latter being the sight of two fantastic cock birds sitting high in a hedge and ignoring the increasingly wet and windy weather.

And when you add the other species picked up here and there along the way - the magpies, robins, wrens, blackbirds and pied wagtails to be precise - you have a very satisfying 30 species. Not at all bad for a 40 minute lunchtime stroll from the office.

Bird of the day: Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella): the stridently yellow male yellowhammer is as stunning a bird as you could wish to see, as the photo from www.andymorffew.com shows. A real farmland classic which is unfailingly generous to birdwatchers - as well as being almost luminous yellow it likes to sit high atop hedgerows, and it has one of the most distinctive and diagnostic calls you could wish for. Mind you, the females on the other hand...