Bluetit factoid
Most birds can’t create pigments, other than melanin, on their own. This bluetit, high in the park’s canopy, can’t produce the pigment, carotene, that makes his tummy yellow; it comes from pigments in the green caterpillars he eats. The more caterpillars he eats and the brighter his tummy, the more likely he is to attract a mate.
Header picture by DKG; others CC0 from pixabay
Our willow warblers are among the park’s smallest birds; at 8.7 grams, they are only half the size of a robin. Their migration route, though, is the longest of any of the park’s birds: over 8,000km all the way to sub-Saharan Africa, an astonishing feat of endurance, and in April they will come all the way back to the park.
by keithwlarson (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Another migrator from the spring of 2018:
The Chiffchaffs are back
Back from our Christmas break with an interesting tidbit of scientific discovery from 2018.
Continue reading “Migration”
Many of our little songbirds abandon their territories in the winter and flock, sometimes in large numbers; but not the robin. Robins stick to and defend their territories right through the winter and their winter song is part of that defence.
Singing in winter is a high risk strategy. It uses a lot of energy when food resources are low but hanging on to a good territory right through the winter gives a robin an advantage in the spring when the breeding season begins. His winter song is shorter, quieter and altogther smaller than it will be come the spring.
Header photograph by Suzanne Humphries
Wood pigeons (Columba palumbus) are our largest and most common pigeon. Gregarious, very adaptable and given to flocking in enormous numbers at this time of year, they are an everyday sight in British towns and countryside.
In towns they seem unafraid but in the park they are shy and wary. Often the first indication that they are there at all is the loud clattering and clapping of their wings as they take off and fly away. Their call is the lovely, familiar background noise of spring and summer.
Collared doves (Streptopelia decaocto) bred in Britain for the first time in 1955, in Norfolk. Within 20 years they had colonised every county in the British Isles, and had even reached Shetland and the Outer Hebrides.
Continue reading “Eurasian collared dove”
Lisa Burge’s photograph of a jay in flight prompted some research; we wondered how many jays our park could support.
Simon Handley has reported a brown and white magpie in the park, at the top of the Arboretum; this is a rare genetic fault called leucism. Please don’t forget your camera next time you visit; we would love a photograph of it.
Kingfishers come to the park regularly. Many people associate them with rivers and are surprised to see them here, fishing in our little streams.
Read on:
A tree creeper (Certhia familiaris) photographed in the park on Friday by DKG. Read on:
There are several families of magpies in the park. This year’s crop are, as yet, short-tailed, loud- mouthed and clumsy, hanging out in gangs and still learning to fly properly. But, despite their dramatic black and white beauty, their reputation is poor.
We apologise for wrongly identifying this little bird. We thought it was a blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla) but our expert has identified it as a marsh tit (Poecile palustris). This is the first sighting of a marsh tit in the park: a new name for our species lists.
Like ragwort, creeping thistle (Cirsium arvense) is classed as an injurious weed by the Weed Act of 1959. Our hedges and edges are full of it: beautiful, pollen-rich, heavily scented flowers, buzzing with invertebrates, followed by seed heads elevated on stems sturdy enough to support seed-eating birds. Gorgeous.
Photographs by DKG
Words and pictures by DKG:
“A few photos of a Heron, Bullfinch and a Robin.”
This is now the longest continuous period of drought since 1976. The park’s paths are dusty, the grass is brown and crunchy underfoot, some of the trees are shedding leaves in an attempt to stop water-loss and the streams are shrinking.
This is the park’s buzzard. It has come to the park for some years and hunts regularly here and across Southwick Court’s old parkland. Buzzards breed when they are three years old but this bird is always seen alone.
The world is full of little brown birds. Small and brown seems to be some kind of default programme for birds and accurate identification can depend on an extra millimetre in a brown tail feather or the exact shade of a brown eye-stripe. Until they are otherwise identified, the RSPB calls them all LBJs: little brown jobs.
A few photos of an evening stroll in the park on Wednesday (23rd May).
For the last two years, a pair of blue tits has nested in a hole in an oak tree in one of the copses at the southern end of the park. There, they successfully raised broods of chicks under the watchful eye of DKG’s camera.
DKG heard this year’s first cuckoo in the park on Sunday morning.
Chiffchaffs migrate to the Mediterranean and West Africa for the winter, though an increasing number over-winter here. When they return, their song is one of the first signs of spring.
BY IAN B.
Pleasant saunter with Pat and all the hounds this morning round Southwick Country Park. The long tailed tit’s nest is now finished with a cladding of lichen.
Two reports: a little egret at the pond and a barn owl hunting on Lambrok Meadow but we didn’t see either. We looked for the daffs we planted last year and saw about fifty in flower and lots of blind bulbs all along the edge of Village Green from the decorated bridge around to the seat, and also down by the stream. Not a bad return considering they were supposed to be bedding in the first year.
The primroses are out all over the place and the first of the blackthorn and the pussy willow are beginning to show. Spring just round the corner. . . . .
Pictures: Ian B. and SMH
Good news: the pair of barn owls photographed by David on March 10th are still in the park. They appear to have chosen a nest site in a hollow oak tree. Both were seen early in the morning last week; the cock bird hunting, the hen near what we hope is the nest.
