Garden bird-watching round-up, 2017

The Spring 2018 issue of Nature’s Home, the RSPB members’ magazine, arrived in the post a couple of days ago with the form for the RSBB Big Garden Birdwatch which takes place over the last weekend in January. I take part in this every year, although for the last two years I have had nothing to report as my front garden received a grand total of no avian visitors during the one hour I had designated for the survey (despite the various options that were available on the feeder), and back in 2015 two Ring-necked Parakeets who scared everyone else away. But one hour on a January weekend doesn’t tell the full story.

The bird-feeder in the front garden, situated so that it can be seen from the armchair in the corner of the lounge, actually gets a nice range of visitors. Over the past year, I have seen four kinds of tit (Blue, Coal, Great, Long-tailed) and two types of pigeon (Feral, Wood) on it, as well as Chaffinches, Robins, the odd Carrion Crow and the very occasional Greater-spotted Woodpecker. Ground-feeders have included Blackbirds and Dunnocks (and more pigeons), while I’ve seen Starlings and a Redwing perched in the tree.

Less welcome have been the squirrels, and I have tried various tricks to deter them. I thought that I had hit on a winning squirrel-deterring method by greasing the pole with some WD-40, and the resulting attempt by a squirrel to climb up the pole was admittedly hilarious. But then, of course, after several attempts enough of said lubricating oil had been wiped off to ensure a successful ascent, so an upturned plastic flower-pot with a hole in the bottom was deployed instead. I’m pleased to report that no squirrels have been seen on the feeder since.

Oh, and the parakeets visit too. Interesting birds, Ring-necked Parakeets. They’re not a native species to Britain, of course – but they have been a visible (and vocal) presence in the London area for a few decades now and are very well-established. Their exotic brightness has led to a couple of rather fanciful urban myths about how they got here; that the first pair in London were released at some point in the late Sixties by either Jimi Hendrix or Mick Jagger, or that the first ones escaped from Shepperton Studios during the filming of The African Queen back in 1951. There are a few question-marks over the extent to which they have affected native species (are they taking nest-sites from Lesser-spotted Woodpeckers, whose numbers are in decline?), although any queries about how a species from India manages to survive the winters here should be directed to the fact that their range includes the Himalayas; these birds may look tropical, but they can do cold. And, as they have shown, they are highly adaptable.

When gulls attack

They warn you about the seagulls in Falmouth.

If you’ve got food and are eating it at an exposed place like the quayside, there is every likelihood that the gulls will attack you and steal your food. I’ve heard talk of it in the pubs and the B&Bs, and I have seen it for myself – a young chap who’d got his dinner from the chippy (Harbour Lights, the best one in town) and was heading for a bench with a view out across the harbour when a gull swooped (swept?) down and hit him on the back of the head. He dropped his food, turned round to see who’d hit him, and when he turned back the main part of his dinner – a battered sausage so hot you could still see the steam coming off it – had gone, along with quite a few of the accompanying chips.

The good people of Falmouth – Britain’s most south-westerly port and a great place to visit – do not like the seagulls. They’d rather like there to be a cull, or some sort of means of keeping gull numbers under control, and earlier this year a West Country MP even managed to ask a question in the House of Commons about whether gulls could be culled. The answer was no, because internationally most species of gull are declining in numbers as there is less and less food for them at sea; perhaps that is why so many of them have started to look inland for something to eat. One species, the Herring Gull, has even made it onto the RSPB’s ‘Red List’ of threatened bird species, while the rest are on the ‘Amber List’ as their numbers have moderately declined over the last few years. Not that that’s any consolation to the lad who had his battered sausage nicked … by a Herring Gull.

There are four species of gulls that you will most likely encounter in this country. There’s the Herring Gull, which is easily recognisable with its light grey back and wings and the distinctive yellow beak with a red spot. It will go just about anywhere for food; my copy of the RSPB Handbook of British Birds (third edition, 2010) describes it as having a “wide range of food, from offal and carrion to seeds and fruits … eats the young and eggs of other birds, catches small mammals, scavenges on shorelines and rubbish tips”. Smaller is the Black-headed Gull, so-called for the chocolate-brown hood that it has during the summer (don’t ask). Although they’re gulls, they’ve been fairly common inland for as long as I’ve been birding. And then there are the two black-backed ones, the Lesser Black-backed Gull (which has a dark grey back and wings) and the Greater Black-backed Gull (this one, our biggest gull, does indeed have a black back and wings). The Greater Black-backed Gull can be really vicious – it “hunts in a variety of ways and takes a wide range of food. Kills and eats young seabirds … robs others of their food, will catch fish or feed on carrion, either in the water or washed up on the shore … has been observed scavenging road kills. It will kill and eat mammals, such as rabbits.”

Although I’ve been told that gull attacks have been on the rise, they’re not a new thing by any means. At least, not in Cornwall. Back in the early Fifties, Daphne du Maurier wrote a short story, ‘The Birds’, about what happens when the birds – not just the gulls, but the crows and all manner of little garden birds – somehow co-ordinate attacks on people; “birds that by nature’s law kept to their own flock and their own territory, and now, joining with one another in their urge for battle”. Seen from the point of view of a Cornish farm labourer who tries to defend his family against the attacks, it’s a tale of suspense in which no-one seems to realise that, somehow, evolution is turning against mankind: “As he jumped the stile he heard the whirr of wings. A black-backed gull dived down at him from the sky, missed, swerved in flight, and rose to dive again. In a moment it was joined by others, six, seven, a dozen, black-backed and herring mixed … Covering his head with his arms he ran towards the cottage. They kept coming at him from the air…”

Some say that Daphne du Maurier got the idea for this story after seeing someone attacked by a gull in St Ives, but the lady herself told the following story (in Daphne du Maurier’s Cornwall) of how ‘The Birds’ came to be: “Walking down from Menabilly to the farm one day, I caught sight of the farmer on his tractor ploughing the fields, a cloud of screaming gulls circling above his head, and thought, ‘Supposing the gulls attacked!’ That picture started the brewing process...”

Alfred Hitchcock later made it into a famous film, and although he set that film in California (he being based in Hollywood) the fact remains that the original story is set, and was inspired by something that Daphne du Maurier saw and subsequently thought, in Cornwall.

I am not quite sure where the story about Daphne du Maurier witnessing someone being attacked by a gull in St Ives comes from, but to many it does ring true, for the gulls who frequent St Ives are to this day regarded as the worst offenders in terms of attacking people for food. Woe betide anyone who tries to eat their pastie while walking alongside the harbour there! It has to be said, though, that their Falmouth equivalents are catching them up.

They warn you about the seagulls in Falmouth.

Peregrines in London

“All of us, regardless of age, can enjoy nature. You just need to do one simple thing: look up.”

David Lindo, The Urban Birder (2011)

David Lindo is, of course, right. Looking up is the easiest way to notice and appreciate birds, and that’s as true in the middle of a city as it is in rural areas. Who knows what you might see?

Well, the RSPB knows what you might see on Bankside and they’ve got some telescopes down there to make sure that everyone does. The telescopes are focussed on the tower of the Tate Modern (formerly Bankside Power Station), and they’re aimed at the preferred summer hunting spot of a pair of peregrines.

The largest species of falcon in Britain, the peregrine is the fastest bird in the world (during its characteristic stoop – a high-speed dive – it can reach 200 mph). They usually like open country, preferring to nest on cliffs. However, in recent years they’ve started to move into towns, where feral pigeons make for easy pickings.

Their use of the Tate Modern has been a thing for over a decade now, and this summer the RSPB is once again on hand to provide information about, and the chance to look up at, these magnificent birds.

The telescopes will be there until 5^th September.

Thoughts on the Big Garden Birdwatch

As a loyal RSPB member I took part in the Big Garden Birdwatch last weekend. As our flat does not come with a garden, I took myself down to the park (Cherry Tree Wood) for an hour’s birdwatching on a sunny but windy Sunday morning. As well as many pigeons and three black-headed gulls (thanks to the recent weather, the ground is sodden; last summer, ducks were sighted), I saw some redwings, tits of the great and blue varieties and even a goldfinch, which I didn’t recall having seen in Cherry Tree Wood before.

Being a committed birdwatcher (or should that be ‘birder’? I am currently reading Bill Oddie’s Little Black Bird Book and he thinks that the term ‘bird-watcher’ is old hat), I keep a record of the birds I see, and after writing up my sightings I was able to compare them with what I saw in Cherry Tree Wood the week before (when it was snowing) and what I saw in Cherry Tree Wood when I did the Big Garden Birdwatch last year. I was a little disappointed that the goldcrest, the long-tailed tits and the singing wren didn’t make an appearance this time around, but I can note with satisfaction that I saw the same number of species (eleven) as I did last year.

My records also show that I have seen a goldfinch in Cherry Tree Wood before – on 10^th January 2010 to be precise. How could I have forgotten? In my defence, it was one bird three years ago and to paraphrase from one of my all-time favourite movies, I wrote it down so I wouldn’t have to remember it.