A Memorable Fly-past and a Mass Stranding

Between Christmas and New Year’s Eve we managed to find a window of opportunity between snow showers to nip down from Durham to the Norfolk coast, for what turned out to be a truly memorable visit. On Monday evening we arrived at Snettisham just as the sun set and the mist descended over the fields, then watched thousands of pink-footed geese passing high overhead as they flew out over the Wash.

The flypast lasted for over half an hour – one of the great bird-watching experiences in England – with skeins of geese passing across the face of the moon on a bitterly cold but windless evening. No photographs, but if you want to see what these fly-pasts look like take a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt4XJIzmEsE&NR=1

On Tuesday we headed for RSPB Titchwell, where were saw ...

brent geese...

....pintails

.. and shoveller, seen below in more conventional views...

Then walked along Titchwell beach, crunching over tens of thousands of razor shells Ensis ensis, along with dead starfish, whelks, piddocks, gapers, sponges and assorted other shallow-water marine life that had been washed up on the beach. It’s not clear what had caused this mass die-off. There are reports of similar strandings of burrowing bivalve molluscs after storms that have shifted sand banks, but I wonder whether it was the result of a combination of a low tide and freezing temperatures that killed these intertidal animals. They certainly didn’t die of old age – there were young and old shells piled on top of one another.

Similar mass deaths of shallow-water marine life were reported during the famously hard winter of 1962-63, which makes me suspect that this might have been the cause on this occasion.

I Must Go Down to the Sea Again....

Christmas day's trip to the coast turned out to be so enjoyable that we decided to do it all over again on Boxing Day - but this time to Seaburn, just north of Sunderland. The rainbow turned out to be a good omen. At the north end of the beach we found this...

..bar-tailed godwit following the waves in and out with a flock of sanderling...

...probling the sand along the tideline before..

...flying off to ....

... perch on a rock for a preen..and then ....

... pause again for a moment's reflection. Smaller waders included...

...sanderling...

...dunlin...

...knot...and plenty of ....

... ringed plover, with those fake tan orange legs.

Christmas Dinner in a Bun

A combination of cabin fever, after too many days of snow, and a burning desire to break the mould of our typical Christmas led us to take our Christmas dinner in picnic form today, on the seafront at Tynemouth. And mighty fine it was too; glorious sunshine for a post-picnic walk along to North Shields fish quay and back. Two of the beneficiaries of our alfresco Christmas dinner were this black-headed gull............

...and this feral pigeon - both fine specimens of nature's waste disposal units.

The walk to North Shields yielded this handsome curlew...and......

... numerous oystercatchers whose beaks almost glowed in the low-angle winter sunshine and which....

....hopped with great aplomb from rock to rock, plus........

.... this crow that had found its own Christmas dinner that it had to defend against some pretty fierce-looking...

...great black-backed gulls..... while, also in black-and-white, up at the fish quay we came across this....

... grubby-looking pied wagtail, looking for scraps, and a...

... drake eider swimming .........

amongst the trawlers that were in harbour for Christmas. Then, on the way back we passed .....

... turnstones, that seemed to have added de-icing grit to their diet, and ....

... this very smartly turned-out redshank, complete with leg ring. But, best of all, there were scores of these wonderful...

... golden plovers, whose feather edges literally glowed golden in the afternoon sunlight. In about three and a half months I'll be listening to their plaintive calls as they begin to arrive back on their breeding grounds on Chapel Fell in Weardale.

A Christmas day to remember.

Merry Christmas to all........

It's an ill wind.....

This female great spotted woodpecker has been a frequent visitor to the garden bird feeders during the current cold snap

At the moment it's still very wary, but I'm attempting to coax it into closer camera range by drilling holes in an old piece of tree trunk and plugging them with sunflower hearts and other goodies....meanwhile, it spends most of its time on the peanuts and on the black sunflower seed feeder

Something I hadn't realised until I looked at these photos is that woodpeckers close their eyes when they're about to deliver a hammer-blow with that beak. Compare the photo above with the one below (double-click for a larger image), where you can see the bird's third eyelid (the nictitating membrane - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nictitating_membrane) shielding the eye just before it makes contact with the nuts. I guess this is to protect the eye against flying splinters, and apparently it prevents the bird's eyes from literally being shaken out of their sockets under the force of the impact. It must mean that once it begins to deliver the blow the woodpecker is - for a moment - blind...

Common Reed

This small patch of common reed Phragmites australis has colonised a small subsidence pond in Durham and has gradually developed into a fine habitat for reed buntings, which breed or feed there all year round. The plant doesn't flower until September, which means that it produces a heavy crop of seed throughout the early months of winter and this is one factor that makes it such as asset for small wetland birds in winter. Bearded reedlings' digestive system actually changes in autumn to accommodate a diet switch from insects to reed seeds. The seed heads look particularly attractive when they're back-lit by low-angle winter sun (see below)

Phragmites is a cosmoploitan plant and you can travel almost anywhere in the world, except for few tropical regions, and expect to find in in wetland habitats. These days reed beds are often used as natural sewage treatment systems, using the sewage-degrading bacteria that colonise the mud around the reeds' roots. There's a fine example at the RSPB's Saltholme Reserve on Teesside (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/tees/content/articles/2009/03/06/saltholme_official_opening_feature.shtml) and an explanation of how they work at  http://www.johnstonsmith.co.uk/fact17.html

For an example of another handsome but more exotic grass species, visit http://digitalbotanicgarden.blogspot.com/2009/12/pampas-grass-cortaderia-selloana.html

A Tree-Spotter's Guide to Buds: part 4

Aspen Populus tremula twigs are tipped with these sharply pointed buds that sometimes have a slight stickiness about their bud scales. This is quite common in poplar species and is most pronounced in balsam poplars, where the resin that's responsible has a wonderful fragrance. Poplars have a tendency to hybridise, sometimes making identification tricky, but aspen is easy to identify when it's in leaf because of a peculiarity of the leaf stalks; they're flattened from side to side, so the leaves tremble from side to side in the slightest breeze - hence the Latin epithet tremula. They also turn a wonderful shade of lemon yellow in autumn, and the sight of a whole tree of lemon yellow foliage trembling in the wind is something to behold.

Apple Malus domestica buds are blunt and downy, with few bud scales. The knobbly, scarred twigs have a character all of their own, especially........

...in old trees that have acquired their own epiphytic flora of lichens. Old orchards, now fast disappearing, are wonderful resources for people and wildlife and their cause has been vigorously championed by that admirable organisation Common Ground - see http://www.commonground.org.uk/

Most hedgerow apples are likely to be descendants of discarded cores of domesticated apples, rather than the native crab apple Malus sylvestris

The buds on the main twigs of wild cherry or gean Prunus avium are not particularly distinctive but a little way down the twig from these you'll find....

... the fruiting spurs that will carry those clusters of dazzling white flowers in spring - and in summer the cherries. Over the last couple of years I've tasted quite a lot of wild cherries and this particular tree bears unusually juicy and large deep red fruits, that make excellent cherry sauce for pouring over ice cream. Unfortunately, someone else has made the same discovery and this year raided all the low branches on the tree before I could get to it. All I can say is that I hope they suffered the same fate as the badger that had over-endulged in the fallen fruits: the ground nearby carried the purplish-red telltale signs of a badger with a severe stomach upset, along with a mass of cherry stones that had passed unharmed through its digestive system.

Sallow (aka pussy willow aka goat willow) Salix caprea carries green buds with no apparent bud scales, The single scale that sheaths the whole bud deepen in colour through the winter, taking on a brownnish hue, and when the leaf and flower tissue inside swells in spring the whole covering is shrugged off.

For part 3 see http://cabinetofcuriosities-greenfingers.blogspot.com/2009/12/tree-spotters-guide-to-buds-part-3.html

For more posts on tree ID click here

A Revelation on a Foggy Day

It’s extraordinary how a change in the weather can turn the mundane into something magical. Every day I’ve been walking past these hogweed umbels without noticing the spider gossamer draped over them, but a foggy day transformed them with thousands of microscopic water droplets. Amazing stuff, spider silk, famously strong and durable – see http://www.earthlife.net/chelicerata/silk.html#1

Check out this incredible textile, made from the golden silk of a million Madagascan golden orb spiders, at http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/spider-silk/ 

and at http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/spidersilk/

A Tree-spotter's guide to Buds: part 3

Still bearing the fruit of last spring's blossom, this blackthorn Prunus spinosa twig with its tight little clusters of buds will be clothed in a froth of white flowers in a little over three months from now. Blackthorn flower buds are carried on short woody spurs.

The attractive buds of bird cherry Prunus padus - glossy, purple-brown and pointed. A hedgerow tree that's commonest in the northern half of Britain.

Hawthorn Crataegus monogyna with short, pointed buds and twigs that often end in the thorns that make this such an effective, stock-proof hedge.

Small greenish buds of silver birch Betula pendula, on long, slender twigs that contribute to the tree's graceful silhouette in winter

Field maple Acer campestre. The short space between the bud scale scars that girdle this twig show that it made little growth over the last two years.

The twin buds at the end of this field maple Acer campestre twig show that last year it would have carried a single flower bud that developed into a bunch of winged seeds at the end of the twig, which have since been dispersed. A bud developed on each side the the bunch of seeds, so next year this twig will branch into two.

Winter buds of oak Quercus sp. , with their small, overlapping bud scales. The bottom right bud seems to have been galled by a gall wasp, which I think may be Cynips divisa - anyone know what it is for certain? I don't think it's easy to tell from buds alone whether the tree is common oak Q. pedunculatus or sessile oak Q. petraea but a search on the ground below will sort them out: if the acorn cups have long stalks, it's the former; if the acorn cups have little or no stalk, then it's the latter.

For more posts on tree ID click here