....And Memories Of '95.

A pair of Siskin visited our garden Wednesday this week, the male a brilliant individual, briefly on the feeders before flying off together. I was jumping for joy at the sight of these two birds and was tempted to call them rare for our garden, but looking through past records, I was surprised to discover 13 records here, the first being a pair on 2 March 2013 nearly 12 months after we moved in here, followed by 6 on 5 April 2013 which remains the best count in the garden to date....This means this weeks Siskins have been reduced from rare to scarce.

Thanks to Martin Jump for the excellent header image of a pair of Siskin at loggerheads.

Looking in on the Portland Bill Obs website for an update, showed a mainly negative feel on the sightings page in relation to spring migration, with 20 Wheatears being the first double figure arrival there to date this year. Comments went on to say, 'other passerines were few and far between'. Sea passage has yet to be anything meaningful, though a little taster for it on Wednesday turned out to be wide of the mark the following day, with 'no more than a dribble of routine early season offerings' on Thursday. A 'handful' of Sand Martins was as good as it got on 17 March, and just one Swallow was mentioned on Wednesday last.

.....................................................

Black Stork.

Twenty six years ago, was a memorable year for me in the early days of my birding whilst delivering car parts over a c.50 mile radius from Lancaster.

Black Stork. Bury Antoine.

On 24 April 1995, having looked in on Blea Tarn Reservoir during my lunch break between runs. I was driving along Littledale Road, when I saw a large heron sized bird flying quite low over the Quernmore Valley in the direction of the Lune Valley. The bird was initially in silhouette, but as I drew nearer its identity was revealed.

There was what was regarded as a secondhand rumour of this bird being seen on the floodplain in the Lune Valley later the same day, and one was also reported two days later in the area around Bolton Abbey, North Yorkshire.

Status: The Black Stork is regarded to be a vagrant which has turned up with surprising regularity in our recording area, this one was the 5th or 6th record.

Lesser Yellowlegs.

Lesser Yellowlegs. Martin Lofgren.

I had gone into the Eric Morecambe Hide at Leighton Moss on Wednesday 18 October 1995. Two birders already in the hide, asked me if I would join the attempt to ID a wader which was with 2 Greenshank and several Redshank, but noticeably smaller in size, and a more delicate build than the two other species.

The birds were all resting and required patience until they eventually became alert. The puzzling bird soon revealed long yellow legs, and a fine straight all dark bill. I took advantage of a fourth birder who arrived later to join us, he soon agreed that my suggestion was correct when I claimed the wader as a juvenile/1st winter Lesser Yellowlegs.

Status: A vagrant. This was the first record for our area, and the first of six for me seen over the years.

Thanks to Bury Antoine and Martin Lofgren for their contributions, with images of the Back Stork and Lesser Yellowlegs.

And Finally.

Some decent atmospherics made for good views of the Lakeland mountains over Morecambe Bay from Williamson Park recently. With some instability in the footage, short of a tripod on zoom. 

View Full Screen

The Stork & The Falcon.

The third April record I found in the archives, comes from the early days of my birding, and the very first of my scarce/rare finds. Come Friday, seen 25 years ago on 24 April 1995. With a bit of a story attached, this is the record of The Black Stork 

Especially in these dark days of Covid-19, I'm trying to keep B2B light, always my aim, and in the main about my passion for birds, but I failed this time.

Peregrine Falcon. Martin Jump.

Natural England have issued licenses for falconers to take Peregrine Falcon chicks in the wild from the nest, so people can gawp at falconry displays.

There's a lot to be said about this shameful act by Natural England, but no doubt you have heard about it already, if you haven't, you can find everything on the Natural England website, where you can read guff like....'The conservation status of the Peregrine Falcon is Green, which means they are widespread, and numbers are not under any threat'....and....'Falconry is an ancient tradition, practiced in England for centuries, and is recognised as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity'....Are this bunch at Natural England for real.

Meanwhile, I'd suggest for starters, Tony Juniper and the gong he got for his contribution to conservation, hands it back to the Queen.

A pristine male Orange Tip in our garden this morning contributed to making the lockdown and my self isolation, a pleasure. 

We're all in this together....Take Care, Stay Home, Switch Off, Relax and watch this....

View Full Screen

The Black Stork.

In 1992 when I applied for the job as a car parts delivery driver and was eventually successful in it, I had no idea I was about to become one of the luckiest birder in the UK. As you can imagine the job took me through prime birding country all points on the map, taking me through areas covering many miles, south to Preston, to Blackpool in the west, Hellifield in the east, and Kendal in the north. Quite periods over the years had me spending many hours birding and getting to know the birds on a daily basis and was the means whereby I first discovered the upturn in the status of the Stonechat in 1999 when I noticed them seen with more and more regularity on Newby Moor near Clapham, an area which was to become a stronghold for the species and where I found twelve birds on a cold winters day in November 2000....But the rest of this 'car parts delivery' story I'll leave for another time.

Black Stork. Copyright Bury Antoine.

My day at work on 24 April 1995 was going to be one to remember and I'll always recall being on a road I really shouldn't have been on to be honest, more to the point I was supposed to be back at base loading up for my next run.

But wait a minute....this large bird in the air flying parallel to the road I'm driving along and about to drop below electric cables suspended from pylons, is unmistakable as being a Black Stork (BS) which I saw precisely as the bird looks in the photograph above. The only disappointment now, is that I can't linger here very long at the peril of loosing my job, but I'm on the phone now to get the news out about this excellent find. 

It transpired that a farmer had seen this bird in one of his fields the day before my sighting and described it as....'looking like an Oystercatcher on steroids'....Well that might have seemed funny to him, but right now this was a serious and exciting business to me. The bird flew on and up the Quernmore Valley and a second hand rumour had it that it was seen on the Lune floodplain later that day. The following day 25 April, a BS was seen in Ennerdale in Cumbria and was thought to have been the same bird, another day later - April 26 - a BS was reported in the Bolton Abbey area and was presumed to be the same Quernmore/Ennerdale bird once again. 

Two months later there was another report of a BS flying east over the south of Lancaster on 30 June but no description or documentation was forthcoming on this one and so was lost to history.

The Spoonbill.

Its good to have a first record of Spoonbill on the Lune Estuary, moving around a little but spending a lot of its time at the mouth of the River Conder, the bird has been in the area for a 'few' weeks now.

Thorburns Birds.

An excellent example of the Spoonbill, Flamingo, Black Stork, and White Stork from the equally excellent book 'Thorburns Birds'.

The Spoonbill breeds at scattered sites in Europe, it bred in East Anglia, probably until the 17th century. But the Spoonbill was seemingly extinct as a breeding bird until the late 1990's.  Clifford Oakes mentions the first Lancashire record which is of a bird on the Ribble during 1840. More modern records show the first as being five birds at Ainsdale in 1958, with two birds in July 1963 at Leighton Moss RSPB Reserve where almost half the 'modern' records have been, and where the Spoonbill has been seen virtually annually since 1970.

By the late 1990's despite there being an increasing number of summering birds in the country there had never been any breeding Spoonbills suspected in the country, but a major surprise came in 1999 when a pair raised two young on the marshes of the south Ribble representing the first successful breeding in Britain since the 17th century....unfortunately they have not returned in subsequent years.

It is pleasing that I - like many other people - have seen the Spoonbill on recent visits to Glasson Dock where the bird can be viewed from the bowling green....an excellent record for the area. 

Waving goodbye....

Swallow Martin Jump

We've started to wave the Swallows goodbye for another year. I watched several individuals and groups fly past me going south last Friday with a mammoth task ahead of them. I reckon when we eventually see the records for 2012 we'll find the year has been at best a poor breeding season for the Swallows. One of the most amazing things about this species is that if the perch we see this individual on in this image is anywhere near its natal site, this bird could  again be found on this very post next year....mind blowing facts.

Thanks Martin, a brilliant image of the young Swallow with a lot of flying to do and an unforgiving desert to cross to reach its wintering grounds in Africa. 

  
Pink-footed Geese Brian Rafferty

And in a matter of a few weeks we'll be seeing the Pink-footed Geese dropping in in their thousands like these two to winter in areas like Pilling in the north Fylde.

And finally....

Peregrine Falcon Brian Rafferty

Yet another of those 'can't resist this one' images of an incredible Peregrine Falcon food pass with the adult above dropping prey to the juvenile below....Pretty impressive stuff Brian, thanks a lot for this and the PFG.

This is serious!

More to the point....very serious. I'm not going to 'get out' again today and staring at this monitor is definitely not good for the mind or soul but that's what I'm doing right now. So to help combat the ill effects all this is having on me I did the following research with my thanks to John Wilson who allowed me access to the LDBWS Annual Reports from the societies birth in 1959....

I did some 'digging' into the archives and as always came up with some interesting results from the 1990 LDBWS Annual Report. I also decided to give Lamberts (Lancaster) Ltd a plug with the front and back cover of the report from 20 years ago.

The year was noted in the report as an interesting one which included a Night Heron, Serin, and singing Marsh Warbler all at Heysham. Other notable records included a mass arrival of 95 Black Terns at Leighton Moss on 2 May which represented the largest number recorded in the area but which was a fraction of the in excess of 1,000 recorded in North-West England as a whole.

There was two attempts of breeding by the same pair of Mediterranean Gulls both of which ended in failure. Other negative news for 1990 was the no breeding success of 'terns' or Bowland raptors the latter which thankfully has now changed for the better  in 2010. Another record which had a particular interest for me was that of a Black Stork which many observers saw soaring over Leighton Moss. Five years later this is a species which I myself had the good fortune to find in flight over Little Fell Lane east of Lancaster on 24 April 1995. More interesting records appeared in this report with up to four Black Grouse recorded on Beatrix Fell, and two pairs near Hollins. This was the year my birding friend JB had the the good fortune of finding a White-winged Black Tern at Leighton Moss and then earned himself some honour in pursuing the bird to Dockacres, and then went on to Heysham to alert fellow birders who were there out of 'telephone' circulation which resulted in a large number of people having cause to be grateful to John for his efforts regarding this sighting and getting the news out. Of course I take particular note that no breeding records of Stonechat were discovered in 1990. It was noted in this report that a Subalpine Warbler found in Freeman's Wood in Lancaster in 1989 had been accepted by BBRC. 

To end, I note my name is absent from this report as of course it will be, a clear indication of my 'late' arrival on the birding scene....How I will always wish I'd have taken an interest in birds many years sooner than I did. 

I'D SOONER BE BIRDING!