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Posted by: Steve Halliwell
Below are aggregated posts from various wildlife blogs created by people within Lancashire (lancashirewildlife.org.uk accept no responsibility for any content not created directly by lancashirewildlife.org.uk).
Re: Wrong Doers in the Forest of Bowland Post Origin "Stephen Halliwell Blog" added here on January 29th, 2012
Please read the unbelievable garbage being uttered by the head of the Countryside Alliance regarding persecution. I don't know how she sleeps at night!
http://raptorpolitics.org.uk/2012/01/27/hen-harriers-the-rspb-and-persecution-according-to-the-countryside-alliance/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed
Posted by: Steve Halliwell
http://raptorpolitics.org.uk/2012/01/27/hen-harriers-the-rspb-and-persecution-according-to-the-countryside-alliance/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed
Posted by: Steve Halliwell
Variety of seabirds maintained in calm weather Post Origin "Pete Marsh Blog" added here on January 28th, 2012
Heysham Obs
Surprised that 4/4 of the windblown seabird species were still 'available' at high tide, especially Little Gull. It will be interesting to see what happens as the weather goes really pear-shaped in the next 2-3 weeks....assuming not snowbound at home
Inshore at high tide
Little Gull - 2CY stage 2 outfall
Guillemot - 3 SW corner harbour
Shag - 3 SW corner harbour, wooden jetty roost not checked
Twite - at least 16 but only seen in flight
Med Gull - two adults fisher's roof
Kittiwake - 28 SW corner harbour, two outfalls
Heysham NR office area
Green Woodpecker- almost but not quite added to the ringing list for here!
Greenfinch - 5 unringed trapped
Goldfinch - 3 unringed trapped
Blue Tit - amazingly, two unringed adults trapped
Far fewer birds than expected at the feeder, but everyones feeding them this weekend, aren't they!!
Surprised that 4/4 of the windblown seabird species were still 'available' at high tide, especially Little Gull. It will be interesting to see what happens as the weather goes really pear-shaped in the next 2-3 weeks....assuming not snowbound at home
Inshore at high tide
Little Gull - 2CY stage 2 outfall
Guillemot - 3 SW corner harbour
Shag - 3 SW corner harbour, wooden jetty roost not checked
Twite - at least 16 but only seen in flight
Med Gull - two adults fisher's roof
Kittiwake - 28 SW corner harbour, two outfalls
Heysham NR office area
Green Woodpecker- almost but not quite added to the ringing list for here!
Greenfinch - 5 unringed trapped
Goldfinch - 3 unringed trapped
Blue Tit - amazingly, two unringed adults trapped
Far fewer birds than expected at the feeder, but everyones feeding them this weekend, aren't they!!
Garden bird counting Post Origin "Lancashire and Lakeland Outback Adventure Wildlife Safaris Blog" added here on January 28th, 2012
The Safari didn't get in from the party until the wee small hours but Frank had us up not too long afterwards and then it was time to do our hour's count for the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch. Two Herring Gulls were very quick off the mark on the bread we threw on the garage roof and almost disappeared before the timer started.
The notebook filled slowly until an entry was written in in capitals - Coal Tit...year bird #99! Goldfinch and Magpie were near misses and a Sparrowhawk sat in the big tree at the top of the hill but didn't come anywhere near Base Camp today.
A quick breakfast was wolfed down and then it was off to the furthest reaches of the North Blackpool Pond Trail for more counting. A frosty start meant there was a thin crust of ice on the lake but the sun gave us some nice photo ops.The only Common Gull amongst the 30 or so Black Heads.
Great Crested Grebe, from this pic there are two on the lake as the one scoped and counted wasn't as far advanced in its moult as this one.
A couple of Primroses were found in flower and there will be an excellent show of wildflowers later in the year provided the path edges don't get mown at the wrong time.
Where to next? Might be back later, if not we have a safari planned for tomorrow to try to regain a decent lead over Monika.
In the meantime let us know what saved the day on your big outback count.
Overtaken! Post Origin "Lancashire and Lakeland Outback Adventure Wildlife Safaris Blog" added here on January 27th, 2012
The Safari has been overtaken by Monika in our, now annual, Year List Challenge ;-( We had a quick look through last weeks sightings in the local area and discovered there where 23 species we've not seen this year, plus a couple of others we know are in the area but haven't been seen/reported and then there's the Glaucous Gulls on the South-side we were so close to but so far away from last weekend....Maybe we should get out more!
52 Magpies in Magpie Wood was as good as it got today on Patch 1 and Patch 2 at high tide was an over the wall wash out.
Managed to get some pics of the underside of the little fungus growing out of the Gorse stem in between rain storms this morning - lo and behold it has a little stalk and isn't a bracket as we thought.
Current thinking from iSpot is either Velvet Shank or Plums and Custard. Don't think it's the latter but our knowledge of fungi is minimal to say the least.
Where to next? Big x0th birthday party for a mate of ours tonight so will we be compos mentis enough to do the Big Garden Bird Count at Base Camp in the morning. Even if we don't manage that we're booked to help out with the same at the North Blackpool Pond Trail later in the morning.
Grounded Post Origin "Pete Marsh Blog" added here on January 27th, 2012
Heysham Obs
Checking the tide and any other mini-excursions from the office just didnt happen!
Twite - c15 on the food mid-morning
Goldfinch - 3 on food
Mistle Thrush - 1 around the NHW.
Green Woodpecker - heard calling by the HNR office
Thanks to Tony for printing the first 40 copies of the 2011 Heysham Bird Observatory report - it should be on the shelves later this weekend- thanks to Alan for putting covers on and ring-binding- at Leighton Moss and available at Monday's LDBWS meeting as well as to anyone calling in HNR office
Postal copies: Please send cheque for £3-00 to Pete Marsh, Leck View Cottage, Ashley's Farm, High Tatham LA2 8PH. Make sure your address is included!
Checking the tide and any other mini-excursions from the office just didnt happen!
Twite - c15 on the food mid-morning
Goldfinch - 3 on food
Mistle Thrush - 1 around the NHW.
Green Woodpecker - heard calling by the HNR office
Thanks to Tony for printing the first 40 copies of the 2011 Heysham Bird Observatory report - it should be on the shelves later this weekend- thanks to Alan for putting covers on and ring-binding- at Leighton Moss and available at Monday's LDBWS meeting as well as to anyone calling in HNR office
Postal copies: Please send cheque for £3-00 to Pete Marsh, Leck View Cottage, Ashley's Farm, High Tatham LA2 8PH. Make sure your address is included!
Lifelisting Green Woodpecker Post Origin "Pete Marsh Blog" added here on January 26th, 2012
Heysham Obs
A recent strand on the LDBWS site concerned a wish to see a Green Woodpecker and advice was given on how to do so. Go back 30 years to the early days of the Obs and any suggestion that this would be a reliable site (also for Jay and Treecreeper) would be treated as not being serious. Today, the gentleman concerned achieved his ambition with good views of Green Woodpecker below the classroom along with 'one of' the wintering Treecreeper. This just shows how the habitat around Heysham Obs has subtely changed. This has not helped assessing the daily arrival of migrants, providing in those earlier years you did manage to get up at some ridiculous hour and monitor/intercept with mist nets the 'rush through the bush' as they headed inland for more food/shelter-friendly habitat, but it has certainly increased the number of off-passage birds and variety of breeding birds (e.g. no Blackcap and Chiffchaff nesting in the early days). Thanks to Nick for many of the sightings today:
Heysham NR/dog-walk
Green Woodpecker - one below classroom
Treecreeper - one Nature park
Outfalls
Little Gull - 2CY
Kittiwake - 4
Harbour and area
Med Gull - 2 adults
Twite - 22 at lunchtime, including 6 unringed and one bearing autumn 2011 Machrihanish SBO sequence
Goldfinch - 2 as above
Guillemot - 1+
Shag - 2+
Moths
2 Dotted Border
A recent strand on the LDBWS site concerned a wish to see a Green Woodpecker and advice was given on how to do so. Go back 30 years to the early days of the Obs and any suggestion that this would be a reliable site (also for Jay and Treecreeper) would be treated as not being serious. Today, the gentleman concerned achieved his ambition with good views of Green Woodpecker below the classroom along with 'one of' the wintering Treecreeper. This just shows how the habitat around Heysham Obs has subtely changed. This has not helped assessing the daily arrival of migrants, providing in those earlier years you did manage to get up at some ridiculous hour and monitor/intercept with mist nets the 'rush through the bush' as they headed inland for more food/shelter-friendly habitat, but it has certainly increased the number of off-passage birds and variety of breeding birds (e.g. no Blackcap and Chiffchaff nesting in the early days). Thanks to Nick for many of the sightings today:
Heysham NR/dog-walk
Green Woodpecker - one below classroom
Treecreeper - one Nature park
Outfalls
Little Gull - 2CY
Kittiwake - 4
Harbour and area
Med Gull - 2 adults
Twite - 22 at lunchtime, including 6 unringed and one bearing autumn 2011 Machrihanish SBO sequence
Goldfinch - 2 as above
Guillemot - 1+
Shag - 2+
Moths
2 Dotted Border
Wot a lot of knot we got Post Origin "Lancashire and Lakeland Outback Adventure Wildlife Safaris Blog" added here on January 26th, 2012
The Safari was reading Dean’s escapades last night whichincluded his first Frog of the year. He’s in the middle of the country and athigh altitude so his success prompted us to head out to the garden to see ifany were hopping around the edge of the pond – it was absolutely lashing itdown so we didn’t get past the threshold of the back door!
Our routine was back to normal this morning, even if ourcoat was still sopping wet from taking Frank out not long after the ill-fatedFrog hunt, and on leaving Base Camp in the cold (10C in the rain last night - 2C with frost settling on the grass at 06.00) pre-dawn we immediately heardthe Song Thrush’s song being carried from the Golden Triangle on the gentle butchilly morning breeze.
Round the corner one of the Peregrines was still pushing outthe zeds (zees for any American readers) on its ledge There were Robins aplentysinging from all points (must make a proper effort to count them soon) and acouple of Blackbirds were approaching full song.
Visibility on Patch 2 was excellent for a change. Out on thehorizon there was a beautiful rainbow and we wrangled the little camera from oursoggy pocket...it pulled a focussing hissy-fit so no pics for you to enjoy :-( not sure what went wrong but it didn’t seem towant to focus on ‘infinity’, or more likely didn’t ‘know’ what distance theobject we were pointing it at was. Beneath the rainbow we reckon there werebetween 1000 – 1250 Common Scoters and a single Red Throated Diver were seen.
The sea was still a bit too lumpy to be able to pick out anyHarbour Porpoises; we’d hoped to get one for the mammal year list before wecame across the much more numerous, and far easier to spot, Grey Squirrel butit wasn’t to be as we saw one of the latter in the big park on Monday.
On the beach we noted three Knot feeding with the Oystercatchersat the side of the outfall pipe. Something made us look over to the other sideof the pipe and we saw a fair few more. We started counting at the left-handend of the flock and got to the mid 80s when something spooked them and farmore than we were expecting got up and flew – at a guess over 500 alltogether...a good sized flock. A few Sanderlings were with them and as they allflew southwards past us the Sanderlings dropped on to the beach in front of usbut the Knot kept going well past our southern border.
A scan through the 100 or so gulls kicking about didn’t giveus anything out of the ordinary.
The wind had swung round and strengthened by lunchtime andnow was coming at us off the sea bringing heavy wintery squalls. There was aplethora of white horses and some big rollers out towards the horizon. Outthere too was a large swarm of diving gulls indicating a big bait ball but onceagain the sea conditions were such that we were never going to be able to seeany cetaceans that might have been in attendance.
Several Red Throated Divers were seen, the most for a while,one was pretty close in but prolonged observation was impossible as it spentmost of the time frustratingly hidden in the troughs.
Nothing of note was found with the vigorously bobbing CommonScoters and as a particularly large and dark squall sped towards us ominouslywhipping up the sea as it approached we turned and fled just reaching theoffice door before the heavens opened.
On the way home the light was phenomenal between the squalls with vibrant colours etched against the dark foreboding sky not seen it so crisp for a long time - shame we couldn't get any wildlifey shots.
Taken through the rain/hail splattered windscreen - not whilst driving, we'd pulled over!
Where to next? More of the chilly same with even more wind...for a change...NOT..we want calm; we want calm!!!
In the meantime let us know what's hopping out of hibernation in your outback.
Groggy Peacock hits the headlines Post Origin "Pete Marsh Blog" added here on January 25th, 2012
Heysham Obs
A Peacock butterfly was found by the NR car park by the visiting Arnside NHS group, but it was somewhat lethargic. Presumably the same was seen in flight during some late afternoon sun. Thanks to ANHS & Janet for bird records. All photos by Janet
Inshore sightings
Little Gull - 2CY appeared on the outfalls just after the group had left
Kittiwake - 20-25
Guillemot c6
Shag - c9
Twite - 14 at lunchtime, including 3 unringed birds
Goldfinch - 2 with above
Med Gull - adult north wall, 2 adults on the old Fisher's roof
Pink-footed Goose - 19 SE
Moth
Parsnip Moth in the trap
A Peacock butterfly was found by the NR car park by the visiting Arnside NHS group, but it was somewhat lethargic. Presumably the same was seen in flight during some late afternoon sun. Thanks to ANHS & Janet for bird records. All photos by Janet
Inshore sightings
Little Gull - 2CY appeared on the outfalls just after the group had left
Kittiwake - 20-25
Guillemot c6
Shag - c9
Twite - 14 at lunchtime, including 3 unringed birds
Goldfinch - 2 with above
Med Gull - adult north wall, 2 adults on the old Fisher's roof
Pink-footed Goose - 19 SE
Moth
Parsnip Moth in the trap
Better but not really any good Post Origin "Lancashire and Lakeland Outback Adventure Wildlife Safaris Blog" added here on January 25th, 2012
The Safari was excused a Patch 1 visit this morning as Wifeytook Frank out so no news from there other than we could hear the GoldenTriangle’s Song Thrush singing away while we were deciding whether to lie inbed for a few more minutes or get up n at em.
Visibility was a far better than yesterday at Patch 2, ormore specifically we could see further. In fact the visibility wasn’t that goodas there was a bit of a weird shimmery ‘heat’ haze in the distance which wasn’tgood for having a good check of the distant Common Scoters for anything out ofthe ordinary. Closer in there wasn’t anything to set the pulse racing with thefew Common Scoters sitting behind the surf.
On the beach the patch let us down a bit – there were a fewgulls and a couple of dozen Oystercatchers feeding in the runnels and along thewater’s edge as the tide rose. A Redshank and three Turnstones poked around inthe seaweed at the base of the wall and a handful of Sanderlings scurriedaround the edges of the incoming waves in their own inimical style. But it wasover our southern border and out of accurate counting distance where the bulkof the action was. Several hundred gulls included a few Great Black Backs, acouple of Lesser Black Backs – the start of the return passage? – and a ratherdarker than normal Common Gull – from somewhere to the east?.
Oystercatchers were scattered everywhere on the wide expanseof beach with many hundreds more in a long black line along the water’s edge,conservatively 2500 of them. Sanderlings too were numerous with 130 countedbefore they took flight and flocked up. A good number remained on the beach andwe’d guess at somewhere in the region of 200-250 altogether.
A trip along the corridor from the office to the brew-roomwas rewarded by not only a hot cuppa but through the windows a Magpie (P2 No 36) was seen flying over the garden which landed on a neighbouring roof joiningthree Black Headed Gulls, one of which was in just about full sum. plum.Magpies aren’t necessarily easy at Patch 2.
The lunchtime safari wasn’t up to much either. Theshimmering haze was worse and now started at the near-middle distance makinganything beyond that far out look as though it was related to Wobbly Bob from Wobblesville, Arizona.
Close in a similar number of Common Scoters bobbed about onthe swell, close enough to be able to tell there was nothing special with themother than a single Great Crested Grebe.
With nothing much happening we gave up after about tenminutes.
This shrub makes up half the front hedge at work, the other half being Tamarisk. No idea what it is other than it has little pinky-purple flowers that the Bumble Bees love...we do know it should be in bud yet!
Round the back is our Gorse hedge which gets excessively and badly pruned by people trying to get at the windows to clean them - pruned too hard for the local Linnets to nest safely in those spiny branches. A severed trunk has this unknown fungus growing out of it - dunno how long it's been there but not noticed it until this arvo...any suggestions...it's about an inch (25mm) side to side maybe a tad more.
Where to next? Gotta get better soon...hasn’t it?
In the meantime let us know what’s wobbling in your outback.
Solid wall of grey Post Origin "Lancashire and Lakeland Outback Adventure Wildlife Safaris Blog" added here on January 24th, 2012
The Safari heard two Song Thrushes on Patch 1 this morningalong with a Blackbird which was more tuning up than singing properly. 39Magpies were all that could be seem in the awful light although we had caused alittle disturbance as we walked passed beneath them so there could have easilybeen a few more. No sign of the Peregrines today – round the back?
Patch 2 was a dingy grey wash out with the last remnant ofbeach being covered as we got to the wall flushing numerous mixed gulls, 52Oystercatchers and a Knot. Visibility out to sea was reduced by the thick lowcloud to about 500 yards. Consequently only a few Common Scoters were seen andthose only in silhouetted shapes against the gentle swell – what might havebeen out there had we been able to see it???
By the time lunch came round and we were able to get outagain conditions were worse – the drizzle was heavier but still not quite rain.
Now even the scoters had abandoned us, in our extremelyrestricted viewing area there was absolutely nothing to be seen
We consoled our woe at not finding any wildlife to look atby taking some arty shots of the conditions and the MirrorBall...why?...Because it’s there! Blackpool’s answer tothe Statue of Liberty as SP put it recently.
Where to next? Better weather but a still calm seaplease...even calmer would do nicely if we could just have a bit of visibilityas well...no chance of seeing the Northern Lights tonight :-(
In the meantime let us know if your outback’s local landmarkhas got lost in the mist
