by Jenny Seale | Nov 20, 2024 | Spotted
Spotted!
Wildlife in (and around) Hailsham
by Tim Fox
Bird song, abundant from Spring into early summer, has died down as it usually does at this time of year. With the exception of Robins, who continue singing to warn off other robins from poaching food on their patch, most other species have given up singing, save for the odd mild sunny winter’s day which tricks some birds into thinking Spring has arrived. Starlings, though, are another bird that bucks the trend for remaining silent in Winter: often on winter days, high places around town (including the tall trees in Station Road and around the pond, St Mary’s church tower, and the fire station training tower in Deer Paddock) host upward of twenty to several hundred of this oft-overlooked bird, many of those gathered merrily chattering a varied and whistling song.
Sturnus vulgaris (derived from Latin for common, not vulgar!) is slightly bigger than a cricket ball and many nest in the eaves and roofs of the older houses in my part of town, the adults foraging in local gardens first for nesting material (grass/leaves small twigs/ animal fur/litter) and then for food for the offspring (anything and everything from seeds to invertebrates). Adult plumage is dark, almost black, with white flacks during the breeding season and is iridescent i.e. it appears to change colour depending upon the angle from which you view it, with purple, green and brown featuring in the range of colours. Once breeding is finished, both brown-feathered juvenile and adult starlings form large congregations and can be seen, usually in many hundreds out on the Levels scouting around en-masse for the next meal. So many birds together in one place makes them a mobile larder for other bird species, including our local sparrowhawk and peregrine falcons. If you are lucky, and chance upon one of these raptors attempting to catch a starling for lunch, prepare to be mesmerised by the starling flock because, rather than flying to cover to escape from the predator, they stay together, and evade capture by swooping, diving and soaring as a flock. This synchronised mass movement (termed a murmuration) helps confuse the predator as it makes it much more difficult for a bird to be singled out (and then captured and devoured). Murmurations also occur late afternoon early evening in autumn and winter as the birds flock to their overnight roost sites and is something to watch out for if you are out and about on the Levels nearing sunset.
Tim can be found most Saturday mornings gracing the airwaves with Pat Bradley on 95.9 Hailsham FM, discussing local happenings between 8 and 10am.
by Jenny Seale | Nov 20, 2024 | Spotted
SPOTTED!
Wildlife in (and around) Hailsham
by Tim Fox
I’d not been on a wild goose chase before the first Saturday of 2021 but reports of White-fronted geese on nearby Pevensey Levels piqued my interest and so, with wellies attached, I set out alone for a “short”, Tier-4 permissible, recreational walk. Two miles and several hundred metres of muddy, motorbike churned-up, bridleway later, and the flock came into view. Watched by nearby Canada geese (dark brown body and black necks & heads), the similar sized but lighter coloured, White-fronted geese were walking slowly across a field, grazing the grass as they moved (geese do prefer eating grass to bread!). Their name suggests that they have a white front but this refers only to the small white patch on their forehead (borne out by their scientific name anser albifrons, with albi meaning white and frons meaning forehead. This white patch aside, they could quite easily be mistaken for another of our regular geese species, Greylag, which can sometimes be seen associating with the Canada geese around the Common Pond. What makes white-fronts a special species is that most years, only one or two arrive on the Levels, if any at all – this year there are a couple of hundred, with the flock I saw numbering about 130. They have flown quite a distance to get here having spent the summer breeding in the Arctic tundra in Russia and flying south normally to Belgium, Netherlands and Germany to escape the 24-hour night and freezing conditions. Usually, we only see such high numbers in Sussex when weather is bad on continental Europe but, at time of writing, both Europe and UK are relatively mild, so the reason for their presence in such high number remains a mystery. They do tend to travel around in a flock and so, if you are out-and-about in town and see a large V-shaped flock of cackling / honking birds overhead, they could very well be our rare visitors. Alas, they are quite timid and thus extremely unlikely to turn up on the Common Pond.
Tim can be found most Saturday mornings gracing the airwaves with Pat Bradley on 95.9 Hailsham FM, discussing local happenings between 8 and 10am.
Image: European White-fronted goose
by Jenny Seale | Nov 20, 2024 | Spotted
SPOTTED!
Wildlife in (and around) Hailsham
by Tim Fox
With rain forecast for the afternoon, a late morning ramble along the Cuckoo Trail was in order on a dull February day. My entrance via Freshfields Close was heralded by house sparrows, with blue tits next up as I continued walking. A repetitive mechanical tapping was in the distance, which I initially dismissed as machinery from the Station Road Industrial Estate but, as I got closer to the source and it became louder in relation to the songs of the sparrows, robins, tits, blackbirds, dunnock and goldcrest, I realised it was not man made, but of avian source: great spotted woodpecker (GSW – scientific name dendrocops major, derived from Greek words dendron – tree – and kopos – striking). With Spring just around the corner, the male of this pied black and white (with a red bum!) species (which can be distinguished from female by the presence of a red patch on the back of his skull) lays claim to his territory by selecting “sounding trees” – large tall trees that amplify the sound of his drumming – and making as much noise as possible to deter competitors from his patch. Sadly for me, there were no other drumming woodpeckers in earshot and with no drum-off, the drumming soon stopped. In my 20+ years of living in town, the closest a GSW has been to my garden (that I know of) was when one flew onto the Station Road lime trees (near to what is now a vets but some may remember as one of the Kerridges’ properties). He/she was too far away to spot my peanut feeder at my bird feeding station, but hopefully the one I saw on the Cuckoo Trail is rewarding anyone in the nearby houses who has bird food out with his presence.
GSM image source: http://peterbagnall-photography.co.uk/main/images/greater-spotted-woodpecker
Tim can be found most Saturday mornings gracing the airwaves with Pat Bradley on 95.9 Hailsham FM, discussing local happenings between 8 and 10am.
by Jenny Seale | Nov 20, 2024 | Spotted
SPOTTED!
Wildlife in (and around) Hailsham
by Tim Fox
March weather proved to be as unreliable as ever with sub-zero temperatures one week, followed by raging gales and scorching sunshine the next. When the latter occurred, it was time to get out and do some “pushbike birding”. This does not entail cycling single-handed whilst looking anywhere but where I am going through binoculars; rather it is cycling short distances, mostly at low speed, and stopping to have a scan around with binoculars and ears. Cuckoo Trail is good – of plenty of great habitat for birds to nest and forage for food but, if you are prepared for a short foray through country lanes, via Shepham Lane, Polegate, you end up back on the Pevensey Levels. Lapwing (peewits/plover) have been quite a draw recently, with large flocks several hundred strong frequenting the Levels and often spotted in strength on the field next to the Shepham wind turbines. Drawn to the mostly unfrozen area by recent freezing weather in the east of the country in February, they flock and graze together (there is safety in numbers) drawn to muddy fields and shore edges probing the soft surface for invertebrates.
Named as green plover or lapwing, derived from its flappy way of flying, a lot of people will know it better as peewit (after the sound of its call which means, like chiffchaff and hoopoe, it’s English name is onomatopoeic).
The scientific name for the species vanellus vanellus, is a tautonym (i.e. the same word repeated), with vanellus, as all you lovers of Latin language will remember, meaning little fan, a reference to the sound its wings make in-flight.
About the size of a pigeon (but with longer legs), its plumage seems to be a black and white with an upright tuft of hair at the back of its head, but closer viewer in the correct lights reveals that it is yet another bird with iridescent plumage, its back shimmering dark green or purple in the right light.
Until recently, I didn’t realise the rear underside of the bird was always orange-brown, and not the result of a morning after a dodgy meal!
This time of year, look out on the Levels for the tumbling display flights and calls or courtship and then, later in the year, look for the adults protecting their chicks by dive-bombing predators; there are plenty of beasts with claws or talons looking for a tasty lapwing chick snack.
Credit: Northern Lapwing by Wayne Davies – BirdGuides
Tim can be found most Saturday mornings gracing the airwaves with Pat Bradley on 95.9 Hailsham FM, discussing local happenings between 8 and 10am.
by Jenny Seale | Nov 20, 2024 | Spotted
SPOTTED!
Wildlife in (and around) Hailsham
by Tim Fox
At the end of April, nesting was well and truly underway. Five starling nests, with young begging for food from within, dot the buildings on my short walk into town from near Station Road. Hopefully, there’ll be just enough rain to keep the ground soft and insects buzzing (around well-watered plants) to enable parents to forage enough food for the chicks.
We have over the years put up nest boxes for house sparrow and swift, with sparrows readily accepting our hospitality and even taking over the swift box. Blue tits twice built a nest in one of the boxes, but never laid eggs. First time around nest desertion remains a mystery but, second time around, bumblebees took over the nest box early on, so the blue tits buzzed off.
Seemingly not deterred by bees in the neighbourhood, the blue tits (a small mainly yellow and blue bird species with white face a black “beard”) sought a home elsewhere and, despite the choice of several custom-made wooden boxes, they chose somewhere “illuminating”. I’ve often read of both great and blue tits nesting in places you wouldn’t want them – for example traffic bollards for great tits and ash trays for blue tits – but our locals, for at least the second year running, have chosen to nest five metres off the ground in a hole at the top of a lamppost on a public footpath. They have been spending a few days pulling moss out of the lawn, then hopping onto a nearby tree branch, before checking the coast is clear and flying up to disappear into the nest entrance to continue forming a small cup-shaped nest into which the hen will lay up to 10 eggs. In more rural areas, great spotted woodpeckers are known to drill new or enlarge existing holes into nest boxes and cavities in order to extract the eggs (or tasty chicks!) for their own and off-springs’ consumption; there is no way a woodpecker is drilling into the metal casing of the lamp, so top marks to the blue tits for choosing a safe location, and I’m looking forwards to successful chick-fledging sometime towards the end of May, beginning of June.
Photo credits: Tim Fox
Tim can be found most Saturday mornings gracing the airwaves with Pat Bradley on 95.9 Hailsham FM, discussing local happenings between 8 and 10am.
by Jenny Seale | Nov 20, 2024 | Spotted
SPOTTED!
Wildlife in (and around) Hailsham
by Tim Fox
I was astounded recently to be able to walk less than ten minutes from my town centre residence and hear a nightingale singing. The sun had just disappeared under the horizon as I approached, and many birds were taking part in the dusk chorus – the soundscape filled with song of blackbird, song thrush, robin, starling and even house sparrows, all of them saying (shouting!) goodnight to their neighbours. Every now and again though, the unmistakeable tune of the nightingale – an at-times fast-paced succession of high- and low-pitched notes – could be heard. As it got darker and the other birds quietened down, the melodious night-songster kept going, seemingly oblivious to the new housing estate that has only recently sprung up less than 100 metres away, and the revellers from a nearby party passing by his perch. A bird that many people would call a “little brown job”, nightingale (luscinia megarhynchos) is slightly larger than a house sparrow, and has a creamy/buff chest and underside, with brown/orange feathers and a red/brown rump tail. It is one of many birds that migrates to breed in northern Europe in our summer, then spending our winter in Africa. They arrive here mid to late April, with males singing to advertise their territory into late May. The UK breeding population has declined severely (91% decline from 1967 to 2007), with population explosion of deer (that like eating dense undergrowth, favoured by nesting nightingale) partly to blame. Some of the favoured nightingale sites also happen to be classified for planning as brownfield, which makes them prone to being lost to development. I treasure every time I hear a nightingale sing, because I don’t know how long it will be before they become extinct as a breeding bird in the UK.
Photo credit: Tim Fox
Tim can be found most Saturday mornings gracing the airwaves with Pat Bradley on 95.9 Hailsham FM, discussing local happenings between 8 and 10am.
