West Midlands All Dayer May '23

We are very lucky here in Warwick, to bird as a community.  Each new sighting in the Warwick 100 area gets reported on our WhatsApp group, followed by a flurry of responses from other team members; celebrating both the individual finder and the team's success.  This is usually then followed by a barage of jokes and mild insults - all part of knowing each other pretty well by now!  When the opportunity arises to join the entire West Midlands area as a community for a day, we jump at the chance.  

The West Midlands All Dayer, run by West Midlands Bird Club, is a fantastic, twice-yearly event that started as a bit of fun between friends in the 1980s.  Now, a significant number of birding teams - from Shropshire to Warwickshire, Staffordshire to Herefordshire - race to find as many species of bird as possible in 24 hours.  With such a geographical range, there is a huge diversity of sites inlvolved - from megasites like Middleton Lakes, Ladywalk and Belvide to small 'unbirdy' patches like ours.  For us, it is not a 'race'...we know we can never compete with the wetlands, pools and migration paths of some of those birding hotspots.  For us, it's a chance to get involved and feel part of something bigger, along with making the excitement of a day list come to life.  When spotting a sparrow is a 'boom!' moment, it has to be a good day!

Our All Dayer started with my being woken at 4.20am by a blackbird.  Number one ticked!  I thought I might as well get out and about, so made my way on my bike to our local barn owl's haunt just before dawn.  No luck with Barny this time, but I managed to notch up several regulars and had a list of 30 by 6.30am.  A lesser whitethroat made me smile, as it was our 100th bird for the year (hitting our target one day earlier than last year).  While I was taking a sound recording, a cuckoo called in the distance - a great record for Warwick, for the day and the year!  Off to the golf course, adding a few more locals like great crested grebe and buzzard, then to the Saxon Mill fields to see if any migrants had dropped.  Nothing doing, but I did get to see a wonderful young stag by the river.

Stag at the Saxon Mill fields

At this point, the rest of the team started to stir, with Steve, David, Rick and Alec all contributing with bullfinch, goldcrest and sadly, a dead red kite reported (which we obviously didn't count). 

I had some chores to do and a lunch date with my Mum (watching Charlie get his new hat) as the team hit the 50 mark.  Top respect to a couple of the group, who braved the worst of the weather in the middle of the day, to pick up canada goose, treecreeper and raven.  

Treecreeper - Alec Cuthbert

Full of coronation chicken sandwiches, I went out again, choosing Hopyards and the sewage works.  A huge flock of hirundines, including sand martin, and reed warbler on a local pool made it worth the trip, while records of willow warbler, nuthatch and sparrow hawk came in from elsewhere.  Meeting up with Steve, we took a stroll around the racecourse to see if the ellusive whinchat was about.  There was no sign of anything out of the ordinary, although the skylarks were showing well.

hoards of hirundines

skylark at the racecourse

Even some of the ordinary everyday birds were notably absent today - grey wagtail, greylag goose, black-headed gull, kestrel or peregrine never made it to the list. 

Eventually we all decided to call it a day with a total of 64 bird species.   A brilliant result, with lots of conversation (including jokes and mild insults) on the WhatsApp, as well as keeping up with the #westmidsalldayer posts on Twitter.  A HUGE thanks to Phil Andrews for coordinating the event, we are already looking forward to the September one!

Lizzy

Here is the list...

blackbird
blackcap
blue tit
bullfinch SV
buzzard
Canada goose SV
carrion crow
chaffinch
chiffchaff
coal tit
collared dove SV
coot AC
cuckoo
dunnock
ferel pigeon
gadwall AC
goldcrest RT
goldfinch
great crested grebe
great spotted woodpecker SV
great tit
green woodpecker
greenfinch
grey heron
herring gull
house martin
house sparrow
jackdaw
jay
kingfisher
lesser black-backed gull
lesser whitethroat
linnet
little egret AC
little grebe AC
long-tailed tit SV
magpie
mallard
meadow pipit DM
mistle thrush SV
moorhen
mute swan
nuthatch DM
pheasant
pied wagtail
raven AC
Reed bunting
Reed warbler
robin
rook
sand martin
sedge warbler
skylark
song thrush
sparrowhawk SV
starling
stock dove
swallow
swift SV
treecreeper AC
whitethroat
willow warbler DM
wood pigeon
wren

Smelly birding

Countless, cloud-like swarms of martins and swallows swoop, turn and dive and over dark waters.  The local sparrow hawk glides silently overhead, checking out her chances amongst the dancing flock.  corvids squabble and scuffle over the best perches, while pied and grey wagtails march at ground level, in a seemingly never-ending hunt for insects.  What an idyllic spot for a spot of bird watching...

...at our local sewage works!

prime spot!

Here in Warwick, there are very few sites for quality birding and even fewer with contained, still water to attract wildlife.  So, the water treatment plant on the Stratford Road has become one of the team's regular locations to visit, to attempt to spot potential additions to our list.  It appears we are not the only ones to hold our noses in hope. 

Bird species seen across UK sewage works make for impressive reading over the years - dipper, glossy ibis, breeding green sandpipers and Siberian chiffchaff to name a few.  Beckton Sewage treatment works, East London, has clocked up 148 species including curlew, dunlin and Caspian gull, along with records of grass snakes and bank voles.  Northumbrian Water have planted reed beds at Birtley water treatment plant, attracting bittern, gadwall and jack snipe.  A 'Waste to Warblers' tour of the site was even offered back in 2016.  Swindon, Salford and Bicester have all also turned their sites into mini nature reserves to balance human need with protecting biodiversity.  Brilliant!

So, why do these manmade and rather smelly locations draw so many birds?  Well, the percolating filter beds in sewage treatment works have high macroinvertebrate densities, don't you know... (in other words, the water is full of oxygen and nutrients, so has lots of bugs in it that are big enough to see with the naked eye).  Fly larvae hatches, providing aerial food for birds (and bats, according to other studies) and providing plenty of opportunity for a healthy food chain.  As Tom Stephenson, US birder and author, puts it so concisely,  'Water, heat and fertilizer...what more could you ask for?'

Breakfast for hirundines...? 

So, we will continue to visit our little sewage treatment works; holding our noses, enjoying the regulars, hoping for rarities.  You never know what might turn up...

Lizzy

Ring Ouzel Fabulousness

Sometimes the stars just align...

I was in a coffee shop a few days ago, when I spotted a friend I hadn't seen for over a year.  Popping over to her table, we had a lovely natter.  Then she commented that it was very odd - she had only thought of me this morning when a strange bird had turned up in her garden.  I asked her about the bird...

"It was the size of a blackbird, just like a blackbird really, but had a big white patch on its chest.  I had a look in the bird books and I think it's a ringed ouzlett." She said.

Of course, up my heart-rate went, but I tried to keep calm and consider that it could just be one of our local leucistic blackbirds. "I have a dodgy picture that I can send to you, I took it on my phone."  She continued.  Heart rate a little higher.  The picture arrived an hour later.  Heart rate through the roof!

taken by my friend with her phone

She gave me her address and I hastily checked the boundary of the 100 area to see if it was tickable for the Warwick 100 list.  Ack!  about 100 yards outside.  Frustrating not to be able to get it on our list, but still a great record for Warwickshire (only the fifth ever winter rouzel, apparently).

I couldn't get away from work/life for a couple of days but, yesterday, I received a message to say he was in the garden again.  Having broken up from school for a mere ten minutes, I hotfooted it to the address and hid, shivering, in my kind friend's garden for an hour.   I'd only ever seen one ring ouzel before; on a birding trip to Dungeness some years ago, with Jack.  That one was flighty and a long distance away.  But here this one was, right above me in a rowan tree, an absolute beauty of a bird. He'd eat for a couple of minutes, fly off and return almost exactly eight minutes later.  

Hmmmm, I thought.  I wonder which direction he's flying in... 

A bit of following the flight path and peering down the road and my mood lifted even more - he was flying straight into the Warwick 100 area as part of his circuit!  Bird number 112 for the year and an amazing, if chilly hour spent.

Thanks so much to my non-birding friend for taking an interest and telling me about the 'strange' bird.  She doesn't want her address given out, so apologies to people who I know would want to have seen him.  But it just shows that some brilliant birds can turn up in the most unlikely of places!

  

taken by Lizzy

Birdsong in the Ballroom

One of our team members, Rick, has published a book all about urban birding; diarising a year of the birds and wildlife spotted in our local park.  It is a beautifully written book and well worth a read.

A couple of weeks ago, Rick was invited to speak at an event in Warwick town centre - he's quite the celeb!  Here is the local write-up on the event... 

The Regency ballroom in the Court House – Warwick's Town Hall – echoed to the sound of spring birdsong on April 13^th. The occasion was the monthly tea, talk and quiz staged by 'Unlocking Warwick', the Town Council's volunteer group.

Rick Thompson - a member of the Warwick100 Birding group and the Warwick Natural History Society, gave a fascinating talk about the surprising wildlife to be found in St. Nicholas Park, in the centre of town, as featured in his book 'Park Life – a year in the wildlife of an urban park'.

It was a full house in the ballroom as Rick showed pictures of some of the obvious and easily identified birds that are regulars in the park, such as the pair of mute swans, heron, the unpopular magpies and the noisy blue tits and great tits.   He described the excitement of springtime, when more than 20 million birds arrive in Britain, from more arid climes in Africa and southern Europe, to breed.

All birdwatchers know that identifying small birds is as much about bird-listening as bird-watching.  So, with the aid of the Collins Bird Guide App and a linked loudspeaker, the audience was able to hear some of the vocal residents such as the robin and wren, and also migrant warblers, arriving in the park in mid-April.

The ballroom rang with the sound of the easily identified chiffchaff, and the slightly more difficult songs of the blackcap, sedge warbler, whitethroat and Cetti's warbler - all to be heard now at Kingfisher Pools, near the footbridge in St. Nicholas Park.

Rick reflected on the importance of urban parks and contact with nature for physical and mental wellbeing. Scientists call this 'exposure to greenspace'.  The beneficial effects of regular contact with the natural world can be measured, and became invaluable to many during the pandemic restrictions.  Rick went on to say that observing wildlife closely and gaining some knowledge of the plants, insects and birds, makes his regular walks in the park much more rewarding - uplifting the spirits even in the darkest of times.

After the talk, Rick signed copies of his book ‘Park Life’, and the teatime quiz followed.  Devised by Helen Fellows, it contained 25 questions about British wildlife…do you know what a male and female badger are called? Or the name of an otter’s home?

We are very proud of our Rick and look forward to more books and talks from him in the future.

Park Life: A Year in the Wildlife of an Urban Park: Amazon.co.uk: Thompson, Rick: 9781839751738: Books

WNHS