At this time of year, the reserve’s blue tits are building nests in holes in our old trees. The ash tree at Fiveways harbours a nest every year and the fenced oak near the bottom of the Arboretum seems to have attracted more than one pair already.
Here is a video of a female blue tit building a nest while, outside, the male guards the site from marauders and thieves.
Video from The Nest Box
Header picture by Simon Knight
This week has see the return of our chiffchaffs!
Continue reading “Our chiffchaffs are back”
During the winter, in natural woodlands, blue tits spend most of their time in oaks, searching for insect food in the trees’ rich ecosystems. But at this time of year they turn their attention to the midges, mites and wasps that come to lay eggs in the new leaf buds.
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The Eurasian collared dove, Streptopelia decaocto, seems ubiquitous: one of the park’s noisiest and most common species. But it wasn’t always so.
How come?
Jay
Ian Bushell photographed this young jay in the reserve on Sunday morning. He said:
It is last year’s chick, a one year old bird that has raised its crest; adults have black and white bands on their heads. Its call, which was what attracted my attention, was more like the mew of a buzzard rather than the harsh call of the Jay.
…blue tits are surprisingly long lived. In Britain, the maximum recorded age of a blue tit is 10 years and 3 months but the world record is 11 years and 7 months.
Gallery images taken in the reserve by wildlife photographer Simon Knight
Blue tit colours
The blue tit (Parus caeruleus) has been classified as sexually monochromatic, which means that male and female are the same colour. This classification is based, though, on human colour perception, not on blue tit colour perception.
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Ian spotted a nuthatch at the weekend; the first he had seen in the reserve for about seven years. Let’s hope it’s one of a pair that are building their nest in a hole up in an old tree.
ONE: Though their typical nest site is a hole in a tree, blue tits have been recorded nesting in all sorts of places: letterboxes and street lamps, inside a crack in a wall or a drainpipe, under a cast iron drain cover and, of course, in garden nest boxes.
Continue reading “Five facts about blue tits”
Long tailed tits are early nesters.
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Robins, male and female, sing all year round but the male’s spring song is louder and more confident as he prepares to do battle for territory and a mate.
Header image by Simon Knight
Audio: European Robin from xeno-canto by david m.
Goldfinches eat seeds almost exclusively. Even this late in the winter, they come to the park to find seeds in the dried heads of composite flowers like teasel and burdock.
We discovered recently, to our delight, that the collective noun for goldfinches is a charm. How charming is that?
Continue reading “A charm of goldfinches”
Here is a post from April 2020 that might be of interest to our growing little egret fan club.
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Clive Knight has sent us pictures of the little egret (Egretta garzetta) that has been visiting the reserve for the past couple of weeks.
Our chiffchaffs will already have started the long journey back to their breeding sites in the reserve. They have overwintered in the warmth of southern Europe or northern Africa and are making their way home in a leisurely way with lots of stops for fuel. The males are the frontrunners and they need to arrive fit enough to find and fight for a territory.
They will begin arriving in March; their song (chiff-chaff, chiff-chaff) is one of the first signs of spring.
Pictures take in the reserve by DKG
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
We seem to be in for a cold snap. Time to winterproof your bird table with fatballs, high protein treats and a regular supply of ice-free water. Let’s look after our wildlife!
There are all sorts of things that shriek in our dark winter woods: the Eurasian Jay (Garrulus glandarius) is just one of them.
Jay (Garrulus glandarius) audio by Bodo Sonnenburg ( CC -BY-SA) xeno-canto.org
Have the blackbirds started singing yet?
Young males will begin to sing this early in order to establish and defend the territory they hope hold for the rest of their lives. Older and more experienced birds will wait until February or March.
Every year redwings are among the park’s winter visitors; we are their winter migration’s destination.
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The park’s twelve drummers drumming are great spotted woodpeckers. They begin drumming at the end of winter as part of a courtship ritual in which the male marks out his territory and advertises his presence. He drums his beak against hollow wood 10 to 20 times in just 2 seconds, and the females replies briefly as she enters his territory.
Here is a video:
Video recorded in March 2019 by George Ewart
On the seventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me seven swans a-swimming.
Mute swans (Cygnus olor) come to the park to graze, not to swim or raise chicks. They break their long journey to some faraway lake or river, to rest and eat in the park’s green fields. We are a swan service station.
…or not.
There are no geese anywhere on our species lists but we can offer you six species of corvid instead.
[1] Crow [2] Jay [3] Rook [4] Jackdaw [5] Magpie [6] Raven
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 