Great Black-backed Gull, patrolling the River Ribble near Red Bank, Ribchester - look at the size of that bill!
THE BEASTS ARE BACK! Both days this weekend, in fact on all three of my BTO BirdTrack walks along the riverbank, featured a Great Black-backed Gull. I don’t see many of these brutes in Ribchester and they are special in that they are ‘natural feeders’, shunning the attraction of Whinney Hill tip at Accrington in favour of patrolling the river. I am guessing they are looking for dead salmon at this time of year or maybe anything that has been washed up on the riverbank following the high water on Thursday? With a 1.6m wingspan and weighing up to 2kg this is one of the biggest birds on the river and they always look massive as they cruise along, typically much lower over the river than the other large gulls. I don’t think I’ve been so excited about a GBbG since I saw one in Hungary around 20 years ago, where they are also quite rare. Two of the three were first calendar year birds and the other a second winter. I love the marbled effect of the intricately marked upperwing feathers! Another feature of my walks this weekend was the Little Egrets feeding in the shallows where flotsam had accumulated and I also noticed that the Black-headed Gulls and even magpies were also taking an interest in it.
Woodpigeons were still pouring south in small tight flocks on Saturday 31 October but they had more or less dried up by Sunday, albeit in awful weather. They do not seem to like to migrate into a headwind and rain! No surprise. Goldfinches peaked at more than 130 today, they are clearly on the move and also on the move, out of their pens, were pheasants, also in three figures today for the first time during my walks here. Let’s hope the shooters hurry up and shoot them! Rooks seem to be feeding more towards the village at the moment, they have stayed to the east/southeast of the village until the corn fields were cut and ploughed. There is still plenty of Kingfisher activity (along the river behind the allotments is a good place to watch from) and a flock of 27 Pinkfeet flew west for a change on Saturday! Gav Thomas also caught up with them as they passed over Redscar Wood downstream towards Alston.
Saturday marked the end of October, hitherto an unknown month for me but I finished on 70 species, which is a little more than I expected. In fact it seems that all months, except for the neglected June, July, November and December are around the 70 mark. Winter visitors making up for the missing summer visitors and vice versa. November got off to a fair start with 48 today.
Leaves are fast disappearing from the trees, with only oak still in more or less full leaf. Hawthorns have been bare for a few weeks and sycamores are now joining them. I saw numerous helicopter seeds spinning down to earth in the wind this weekend. The river was fairly low at just over 1m at Ribchester School by Saturday but it had peaked at 4m on Thursday night, owing to the heavy rain from yet another Atlantic depression and the fact that all our fields are waterlogged right now.
Goosander - there has only been one young bird hanging around near Ribchester recently
Goldcrest in an almost bare Hawthorn at Red Bank, Ribchester. They join tit flocks at this time of year.
Eurasian Sparrowhawk, male on the roof of a cow shed at Lower Alston Farm. There are lots of small birds here for it at the moment.
My Ribchester BTO BirdTrack patch - almost all my efforts go into the SW six km squares from the vilage westwards, by far the most productive area.
October ended on 70 species, only 3 behind the best month so far, September. I’m guessing that November will be on around 70 too by the end of the month.