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THEY'RE ALL SINENSIS AREN'T THEY?

‘Continental’ Cormorant (juvenile, probably female) Ribchester August 2020 - the young birds always look a bit dopey to me

I’VE BEEN LOOKING AT CORMORANTS IN EAST LANCASHIRE since I got here in 2005, partly because there was little else to look at much of the time, and the overwhelming impression I get is that all the birds I see inland are of the sinensis subspecies, known as ‘Continental’ Cormorant. Many of them have obtuse gular patch angles and look distinctly shag-like. This angle needs to be more than 72 degrees to be clear of the most extreme nominate carbo birds and you can see the birds in these photos appear to be more like a 90 degrees right angle. This shouldn’t really be a big surprise as all the cormorants I see are miles inland and fishing in the River Ribble. They are also shot here from time to time as they obviously predate fish stocks so the youngsters are usually the most approachable for obvious reasons.

‘Continental’ Cormorant (immature), Ribchester August. 2020


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BACK ON THE RIVERBANK AGAIN

Spotted Flycatcher, Red Bank, Ribchester CLICK ON IMAGES FOR LIGHTBOX

MY DEFAULT BIRDING PLAN is to walk out of the back door, put my wellies on and head to the riverbank. Having done plenty of BTO BirdTrack walks this spring and finally passed the 100 species mark for Ribchester I’m building up some happy memories here. However, I hadn’t done any walks in the summer before so there must still be potential to find some surprises. The highlights of the last week or so along the riverbank between Ribchester village and Hothersall included a pair of Spotted Flycatchers feeding at least one newly fledged youngster at Red Bank. They were present each time I passed that way and were a real delight as they are so scarce locally these days. Another highlight was an apparent influx of Willow Warblers along the brook leading down to the Ribble from Lower Barn Farm. There were at least eight here at any one time, maybe more and were a mixture of adults and bright, yellow-bellied youngsters, flycatching in the lee of the hedgerow here. There was also a Chiffchaff and it was good to reaquaint myself with these two species in autumn, pretty easy really, especially the super bright juvenile Willow Warblers. They could easily just be local birds, although there has been a lot of immigration on the east coast in the last week so who knows?

Spotted Flycatcher habitat at Red Bank

Willow Warblers, near Lower Barn Farm, Ribchester

Today there was a Reed Warbler here as well. It popped up in a hawthorn and I was lucky to get a couple of images, which show the bluish grey legs, dark claws and prominent eye ring with very little supercilium, therefore ruling out the albeit much rarer other possibilities. There are only a couple of regular breeding sites for Reed Warbler in the ELOC area, although there are plenty just downstream at Brockholes. It was a surprising new patch bird nevertheless, I was expecting something like shelduck or Common Scoter instead.

European Reed Warbler, River Ribble near Lower Barn Farm, Ribchester - prominent eye-ring, very weak supercilium, blue grey legs and dark claws.

A Tree Pipit on Saturday flew up from a hawthorn by the riverbank, calling, also next to the cornfield, which is now very tall. I wonder if it has some pulling power for migrants? A Common Whitethroat was in the Himalayan Balsam at Lower Alston Farm, which is taking over the riverbank here like something out of the ‘Day of the Triffids’. The Little Egret tally hit five again this weekend, the same as Grey Heron, which are using the same newly sown field below Red Bank, the one from which the skylark was singing in the spring, that is also atrracting hundreds of Black-headed Gulls (up to 700) and just over 100 Lesser Black-backed Gulls. No Med Gulls, which is a pity as the location is ‘just below Flashers Wood’! I checked them several times but no luck yet. They are also feeding on the meadow on the Hothersall meander, which is being ploughed up at the moment, no doubt to make way for more ‘green concrete’.

A gorgeous Long-tailed Tit in the sallows below Lower Barn Farm, loosely associated with the Willow Warblers

Common Buzzard (a fairly typical adult, with a dark broad trailing edge to the wing and a bit ragged)

It has been striking how quiet things become in the afternoons along the riverbank at this time of year. Many resident birds are keeping out of sight, presumably moulting and remaining in the shadows. The number of species is way down on my springtime walks and it seems that a mere 40 is the new benchmark, despite a lot of effort. The following graphic of my patch Ribchester also shows I haven’t done any September or October walks yet either so there must be plenty of potential to add some new species, although I learned today there are another three that I am still missing that were seen so far this year - Little Owl, Common Cuckoo and… Common Scoter of course!

Blue represents 2020 sightings. I didn’t do much in June and July after lockdown eased and I’ve never done any complete lists in September or October.










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RUFF AT ALSTON

Juvenile female Ruff, Alston Reservoirs (Mike Watson) CLICK IMAGES FOR LIGHTBOX

AT LAST I FOUND SOMETHING INTERESTING AT ALSTON, it’s been a while. A lovely juvenile female Ruff was feeding on the wetland among lapwings yesterday evening. There was a dark and threatening mauve sky to the west, a wall of thunderstorms and maybe the Ruff pitched down at Alston rather than head into it? It was still there when I checked this morning, after the terrific lightning storm last night, but I was surprised to hear that it had moved to the No.#1 reservoir a couple of hours later and even better it was showing down to a few metres. Gavin Thomas commented that he was probably the first human it had seen? I reckon I must have been the second then, it even walked right up to me and checked out my lens hood. The closest I have ever been to a Ruff, a simply awesome experience in bright sunshine now. It was working the stone banks of the reservoir catching lots of tiny flies in the spindrift of the waves lapping the shore.

I was thinking about anniversaries today. Yesterday evening’s exquisite juvenile greenshank at Alston was 45 years after my first, at Leighton Moss in 1975 and the ruff is only a couple of weeks short of the 40th anniversary of my first Ruffs, at Voss in Norway in August 1980. They are scarce in East Lancs and this one is only my fourth in the ELOC recording area. The Covid-19 pandemic has certainly made me appreciate local rarities!


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REPROCESSED LAMMERGEIERS

Young Lammergeiers at the Buseu feeding station in Catalonia (Mike Watson) CLICK IMAGES FOR LIGHTBOX

THE PEAK DISTRICT LAMMERGEIER got me thinking about my previous encounters with this special bird. I had struggled to see one for years, having missed it in Turkey, Israel and even Nepal until I finally caught up with one on its nest on a remote cliff face in the mountains of Lesotho of all places! After that distant encounter the floodgates opened when I started guiding Wild Images tours to Catalonia and, later, Ladakh to the point where I have been lucky to have enjoyed almost 100 sightings in all sorts of situations. The most thrilling of these were without a doubt from photo hides in the Pre-Pyrenees of Catalonia, arranged via Steve West of Birding in Spain at Buseu and Serra de Boumort. I had been thinking of going back to see the Peak District Lammergeier in the hope of a better photo but instead I decided to take a look through my archives at photos of young birds from Catalonia and reprocessed a few of them.

Check out that crazy red eyeliner! (Mike Watson)

OK images taken with the 1DIV almost 10 years ago are way noisier than the 1DX but I found a couple I like that I had forgotten about. My good friend Keith Regan had said something very honest to me in 2013, that he thought my photos were far too warm, like Kodacolour Gold back in the 80s. So nowadays I always check the auto WB recommendation in Lightroom when processing images. You might ask why not just have the camera set to auto WB? Well, I don’t bother what setting the camera is set on as it doesn’t really matter when I am going to check it in processing later anyway. With green backgrounds a colder WB is invariably needed to subdue it, as in the case at Buseu, where the feeding area and surrounding pine forest is very green. It also makes the vultures look less orangey and more sinister and I like that.

A dozen enormous tail feathers, like a third wing, make Lammergeiers very agile for such a big bird (Mike Watson)

It was also great to remember some of these majestic birds with full tails, albeit a bit ragged by late April, it is a shame that the current Peak District bird is missing its third wing or it would be even more impressive. Let’s hope that it stays long enough for it to grow back. I’m hoping that someone will set up a feeding station for it. Lambs legs go down very well! Sometimes two per sitting in my experience! Many thanks to my friends in Catalonia who made these photos possible, Steve West, Jordi Bas and especially Jordi Canut at Buseu, where these images were taken. I hope to return one day to this wonderful corner of the Iberian Peninsula.


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