light-hearted all taxa listing in great company

Going out with the Sussex Wildlife Trust today was a great deal of fun. As part of the Youth Council I get to do some pretty awesome stuff. Today was a 'Bioblitz' day in Stanmer Park, where we attempted to record as many species as possible in a little area members of the Youth Rangers (a different part of the wildlife trust altogether), manage for wildlife. It was a great day, and hopefully a predecessor to doing something like this on a larger scale for members of the public. Thanks to Renzo Spano, Dave Barker, Daniel Meads and everyone else for making it so enjoyable.

Our target, not knowing wuite what to expect, was 50 species, including all taxa. we surpassed that easily and we weren't even trying very hard! However, I learn a lot from the people there, and it was good fun being able to have a go at identifying some tricky species I wouldn't have attempted otherwise. I also probably showed off my smart-arse knowledge of birds a little bit too much!

Plant-wise, I managed to, after quite a lot of detective work, identify one of the plants as Cotton Thistle. Now I know what it is, I'm sure I'll be seeing it everywhere I go! We also saw about 20 other plant species overall, without too much effort on our behalf.

The pond was full of wonders, including Frog and Toad Tadpoles, the larvae of a Broad-bodied Chaser, Whirlygig Beetles, Smooth Newts, a Damselfly Nymph and perhaps, best of all, a Smooth Newt Tadpole. I was rather surprised as I have only ever seen Newtlets before, never a newt in this early stage of metamorphis. Though this is probably more through lack of looking than anything else!

Around the pond were a few Large Red Damselflies, and butterflies included Orange-tip, Small and Large Whites and Small Tortoiseshell. I saw Buff-tailed and Red-rumped Bumble-bees, and, after a great amount of effort, caught one of the smaller bees too. In the book this was shown as Andrena Haemorrhoa, it didn't give it's english name. I had to wait until I got home to find out it is also called the EARLY MINING BEE. I'm not sure why that is in capitals as they are pretty common, but it was the first time I have ever identified one of these smaller bees on my own and I'm rather proud! I also managed to photograph and identify a Common Carpet-moth.

Birdwise there wasn't too much to see. Willow warbler and Jay were the best birds, while Blackcap, Chiffchaff and Goldcrest were all heard, we saw the resident Sparrowhawk and Kestrel and had some nice views of Long-tailed Tit. But the birds weren't really that important. The best thing was learning a lot about other wildlife, from some very knowledgeable people, and having a great laught at the same time. Thanks again to Renzo for organizing this and to everyone who came along and made it such fun.

Large Red Damselfly

Common Carpet-moth



Early Mining-Bee



Smooth Newt tadpole. Told apart by the feathery gills (which you can just see)
and the rounded tail.

a warbler quartet, and corn buntings abounding

It was a dull, dreary and uninspiring day today, but with hard graft, a bit of luck and a willingness to exercise enough birds were seeen to make the four-mile round walk worthwhile...

I walked up through Seaford to Blatchington Golf Course. Almost the first bird I saw was a good one, a Peregrine that drifted over the house. We see them regularly but they are always a great sight to see from your own garden. Along Firle Road, a small amount more birdlife was noted, including singing Chiffchaff and Blackcap and a calling Goldcrest.

However, these Spanish Bluebells aren't such a welcome sight. They are distinguished from our own by their stalk, which is straight (English bluebells have a curved stalk which causes the flowers to droop). Due to Spanish bluebells having dominant genes over English ones, any cross-pollination effectively wipes out the genes of our own bluebells, meaning that, in areas where the two occur side-by-side, Spanish Bluebells are slowly but surely takin over.
Plenty of resident birds were singing in Seaford, along with the two migrant warblers. I heard all the ususal suspects, including quite a lot of Blackbirds and Robins. However, insects were very hard to come by with the cold temperatures and lack of sun. A few Buff-tailed Bumblebees were as good as it got, I didn't see a single Butterfly the entire walk!



Collared Dove and Robin. Unfortunately the light was pretty bad for
photography

 The first bird I saw on Blatchington Golf Course was a showy male Blackcap in the blackthorn clump by the entrance. Walking accross the rest of the Golf Course there were plenty more singing Blackcaps and Chiffchaffs. Exploring the golf course fairly thoroughly, I saw and heard 14 of the former and 13 of the latter. Among them where two Willow Warblers(identified by their wing-flicking habits), and I heard, just once, the scolding alarm call of a Whitethroat. A Jay was a good sighting for the time of year, and I heard two separate Green Woodpeckers. However, other wildlife of note was once again very restricted, to just a handful of Buff-tailed and Red-rumped Bumblebees respectively.



Chiffchaff, with a bit of digital retouching to disguise how awful the lighting was

From here, I had a look around Greenway Bottom. In total on the downs here, I saw 13 Chiffchaff, 8 Blackcap, 6 Whitethroat and 5 Willow Warbler. There was also a pair of Bullfinches and a Buzzard, and in the long grass all around I could hear the impossibly thin squeaks of small Voles, Shrews and the like going about their business...
However, the stars were undoubtedly the Corn Buntings. A declining downland bird, Greenway Bottom is now the only reliable area I know to see them breeding locally. There was just one singing male, but a flock of 20 individuals were present too, though difficult to pin down. I'm hoping some of these may also be tempted to stay put and breed.

To top it off, I saw another flock of 15 Corn Buntings in the stubble on Cradle Hill. At least one male also held territory around here last year, so I'm hopeful this might be another area they could breed in. That made 36 in total, a very good total for such a scarce bird, and definitely one of the strongest local populations. With sightings of this and Bullfinch, another scarce and declining farmland bird, plus my first returning Whitethroats of the year, this was a fairly good walk all in all.

In the end, I amassed totals of 27 Chiffchaff, 23 Blackcap and seven each of Whitethroat and Willow Warbler, along with 36 Corn Bunting, 2 Bullfinch and a Jay. 

record shot of a singing male Corn Bunting, this was also digitally enhanced when I got home



I'm an idiot, please don't laugh...

...You learn something new every day apparently. Well yesterday I learnt a bigun. I have been living a lie. I have been seeing something that doesn't even exist, through my own ingorance. I have spent the last few days looking at Cabbage Whites, not even realising a Cabbage White isn't even a Butterfly!

It all started yesterday, sunbathing in the garden. My dad was hanging up some clothes to dry at the same time, and I spotted an Orange-Tip. Only the second I had seen this year, and my dad's first. We then had a conversation about Butterflies, and he mentioned having seen his first Large White of the year...

being the inquisitive type, and thinking it'd be good to tell them apart so I could mention it on this blog, I asked my dad 'how do you tell the difference between a Large White and a Cabbage White?'. And that, dear readers, is when I discovered the shocking truth. THERE IS NO CABBAGE WHITE!

As my Dad explained, 'Cabbage White' is the generic name for the two white species of Butterfly, the Large White and the Small White. To tell them apart, size is the easiest method, but Large White also has considerably more extensive black on the wingtips. It is fine to label them both as Cabbage Whites, but not technically correct.

Armed with this knowledge, and having to walk a dog, I spent the time wandering Seaford, trying to find white Butterflies. and I did. I saw two, one of which i got a good enough view of to clearly establish it was a Small White. The other one I saw I suspect may have been a Large White but I didn't get a good enough view to confirm it, so that one still goes down as a Cabbage.

I also learnt, yesterday, that sometimes the calls of phylloscopus warblers can be very unreliable. Walking along the estate above Cradle Hill, Seaford, I heard a phyllosc in one of the gardens.

Normally, it would be most likely to be a Chiffchaff. So when i heard it making a Willow Warbler's characteristic two-tone call I was quite excited. A Willow Warbler is a fairly good bird for an urban area. I was sure it was one, based on it's call.

I didn't have binoculars, so the best I could do was to peer up into the canopy and hope to get a glimpse of it. I caught sight of it flying from one tree to another. Then when it landed it started doing the characteristic 'tail-dipping' of a Chiffchaff. CRAP!

OK, it wasn't that big a deal, but it did at least teach me you can't always trust this tricky pair when confronted with only their call. The song it very distinctive, and after that behaviour is the next-best clue I find (Chiffchaff, as already mentioned, tail-pumps a lot, but Willow Warbler flicks its wings). In a 'classic' individual, plumage also helps (Willow Warbler being generally brighter than Chiffchaff), but there are a lot of intermediates that can't be indentified on plumage alone.

and just to make it that little bit harder, sometimes a bird will sing a bit of both songs, see http://gwentbirding.blogspot.com/2011/04/theyre-everywhere.html for an example. Whether these are hybrids or confused individuals is often anybody's guess, but it seems that Willow Warbler may sing a 'mixed' song more often than Chiffchaff. I myself have a first-hand as a bird singing a hybrid song (it was a Willow Warbler on plumage/behaviour though) was seen at Pulborough Brooks RSPB for two springs running, and Dad and I managed to bump into it both years. It was a bit of a mind-fuck at first!

and if you want to check their calls and songs, there are links here (WilWa), and here (Chiffy).

But other than that, not a lot to report of late. However, Honey-bees appear to be out in force, and I have also seen a lot of Red-rumped Bumble-Bees in the last few days. Our pond is now crawling with little Toad Tadpoles, and there are up to four Slow Worms at any one time in the garden. We also have a few pairs of House Sparrow that regularly come into the garden getting food for their young, but asides from then and a few Blue Tits and Blackbirds, the garden has seemed very birdless recently. However, several Chiffchaffs have taken up residence around Seaford, and a migrant Buzzard, with the inevitable accompanying gulls (click here for my heartfelt tribute to the bastards), flew strongly north yesterday morning.

two of the Slow Worms in the garden

female House Sparrow, coming in to collect food for her brood

an 'arty' portrait of a Tulip. note I said 'arty', not arty.

I'm in the middle of a seabird colony...

...as are probably the large majority of people reading this blog. You might not have realised it yet though.

...Before saying anything on this matter, I'll just state the few little things I saw today. After singing Chiffchaffs on the 5th, I topped that with a Willow Warbler today. Otherwise very few birds are around at the moment. But I saw a few more Cabbage Whites today, along with my first Orange-tip of the year. On the night of the 5th, my first Pipistrelle Bats in Seaford being nice to see.

I'm talking, of course, about the breeding colonies of gulls that must now occur in almost every town in Britain. Certainly Herring Gulls breed in every coastal town in Sussex.

It is very easy to write these birds off as just being 'flying rats'. But, don't forget, they are still wild birds. In fact, along with crows, it's probably fair to say Herring Gulls (and other gulls in some areas) must be one of the most adaptable species in our country. To adapt to an environment in such a short period of time (in most cases less than 100 years) is a remarkable achievement.

There are a lot of people who say, they're only gulls, and barely worth a second glance. I used to be like this. The only time I would notice a gull was when it took a shit on me.

But take a look at them, and they are, in fact, a fully-functioning seabird colony. Of all the birds we see from day-to-day, I would argue urban gulls are one of the easiest to study the behaviour of. We can see the hierarchy in their ranks in winter, when they flock together in areas like school-playing fields (like mine). The adults tend to be dominant as you'd expect. The juveniles squabble over all the scraps of crap left outside, but all part if an adult swoops in.

Come spring, they are ubuquitous nesters. You can see pairs on roofs all over my hometown of Seaford. They often embark on fierce territorial battles (I have seen a bird drown another on a local pond once before!), and once they have young they will mob anything that gets too near. Even a human in a garden is seen as a threat to them. For some this is a nuisance, but I personally love seeing wild birds in their element like this. And if they crap on the guy next door who has probably given me lung cancer with all his filthy second-hand smoke, I won't complain...

In the evening, they all take to the air, calling and circling the houses below. If you stop imagining yourself in the middle of a town, close your eyes and picture youself on some far-flung clifftop, it's actually very atmospheric.

They are also an alarm system for birdwatchers. Me and Dad have seen HONEY BUZZARD, RED KITE and MARSH HARRIER flying over our garden in the past, thanks to the local gulls. I'm sure every birdwatcher has their own story to tell about how gulls helped them to see a raptor travelling over their garden.

Perhaps my favourite story involving the local gulls was actually an attempt to get rid of them, about this time last year. The school, fed up all the gulls, called in a falconer. They must have thought a Harris's Hawk would scare all them off. That was rather stupid. I'd have thought it doesn't take too much intellect to work out the result of pitching one domesticated hawk against the 50+ gulls that hang around our school. and several hundred others from the surrounding area. The hawk sat in a tree, feeling sorry for itself and trying to avoid several hundred dive-bombing gulls. The school scratched their heads and wondered what the fuck was going on...

so there you have it, gulls. They are a reminder of the rugged seaside their ancestors inhabited. They are a detection device for birds of prey. and they really piss off the governers of my school! Which is why I love them!