A surprise visitor (no, not Tim and Jane waving at a camera this time), and another bird heard on trail camera footage and not previously seen or heard on Liddells, prompted an idea for this and the next few blog posts. The trail camera clips often feature bird song. Below are two such clips. Your challenge is to identify the bird. Answers at the end of this post. As always, you will need to access the clips through the website. Go to www.liddells.co.uk and click on Blog to bring up the post.
3rd October
The Big Pond is a temporary resting place for all the Willow whips John pruned from a neighbour’s tree. Clare spotted a hoverfly nearby. She identified it as a Sun fly Helophilus pendulus; the scientific name means ‘dangling marsh lover’, while the ‘Sun’ is quite possibly from a misreading of '‘Helo-’ as ‘Helio-’. The insect’s stripy thorax has led to an alternative name ‘The Footballer’ although Clare has been unable to identify from which team; she thinks the black and yellow stripes look like a Regency waistcoat but then she is not a fan of football. (Stop Press: John says Borussia Dortmund play in black and yellow stripes.)
5th October
John mowed the paths for the final time this year.
6th October
John replaced the leaking roof sheet on the hide. He and Clare watched Long-tailed tits, Chiffchaff and Tree sparrows on or around the feeders and then saw Redwings and Fieldfares fly over the Wetland.
Clare wondered about beginning her annual attempt to learn more about fungi and was fairly confident she had found some Boletes near the Big Pond however, although believing she was correct in this instance, the following paragraph on wildfooduk.com has dampened her already moist enthusiasm. ‘A common and easy to identify family of mushrooms, the Boletus family is a large genus of mushrooms which until recently was split into a few smaller families, the main three being; Boletus, Leccinum, and Suillus. With the genome of mushrooms now being sequenced the family has been split much more with the scientific names changing regularly, this can lead to confusion with identification so for the purposes of foraging we consider any mushroom with a stem and pores instead of gills a Bolete.’
Fly agaric, however, are always attractive to look at although not to eat unless you are a roe deer. The trail camera on the Crag captured the doe and triplets having a Fly agaric picnic. (The sharp-eyed amongst you may query the date on the clip - the date needed altering after battery replacement.) There were several clips over a few days, of the deer returning as more of the fungi emerged.
Footage from the Scrub shows two of the kids, one couching while the other forages. While John and Clare often find places where the deer have obviously been couching, it is unusual to see them doing so. The posture and word ‘couching’ echoe the heraldic use of ‘couchant’ to describe an animal represented as lying on its stomach with its hind legs and forelegs pointed forward.
8th October
John has stitched together a delightful sequence of the doe with a singleton engaged in mutual grooming. It is tempting to attach interpretations to this behaviour: cleaning, building relationship, teaching, because it is pleasurable, etc.. The truth is we don’t know why the animals do it, however they do it quite frequently.
9th October
Farmer John negotiated with John to put 55 Suffolk cross lambs onto the Hayfield to graze it down. John H failed to find out what they are cross about.
The wall collapse last month proved a job too far for John and Clare, however Farmer John recommended his waller Gavin, who tackled the breach in the Liddells wall today and made a beautiful job of the repair.
No kye in the corn, however this is a bonny morning photograph. For readers left bewildered by this last sentence, click here.
Before.
After. We think you will agree that this is an excellent repair.
10th October
Clare decided to face the stickiness and process the honey from the frames. The first task is to slice off the cappings (the wax covers sealing the honey in the cells). At this point the honey begins to drip out, so positioning the frames in the spinner quickly is important. Clare’s spinner takes three frames at a time; the frames need reversing after the first bout of spinning so that the honey is released from each side of the frame. After all the spinning the tap on the spinner is opened, the honey drips through a double sieve and into a bucket.
11th October
A jay captured on camera in the Scrub provides a glorious flash of its blue feathers as it flies off. Clare has a fondness for Radio 4 quiz programmes and was delighted that the most recent episode of Brain of Britain, which she listened to before working on this blog post, included the information that the Jay’s scientific name, Garrulus glandarius, means ‘talkative acorn eater’.
12th October
Footage from the Scrub camera shows one of the two older bucks (neither John nor Clare can be sure whether this is the oldest buck or the recently arrived mature buck), engaged in territorial defence. You can see the damage that can be wrought on young trees by this activity. John is pleased to have the footage as this period in October can be referred to as the ‘false rut’, which is believed to be due to the presence of doe kids. Bucks will mark their territory by scraping and rubbing their antlers and front hooves on vegetation and the ground to spread their scent. Later the same day, the murder buck investigates the site.
A close-up of a hare on the Crag shows how well it is camouflaged against grasses in autumn.
13th October
Hares always seem to bring a smile so here are two; they seem to synchronise as they go through the Scrub.
John and Clare have an ongoing task choosing and preparing planting sites ready for the new trees when they are delivered later this autumn. After putting in posts for 10 Alders not far from the hide, they decided to have a break watching the birds. There was quite a lot of bird song so Clare used Merlin for help. The first bird Merlin identified was a Bullfinch, which was in sight however Clare knew there was another call not attributable to the Bullfinch. Merlin offered some more identifications of which the first three fitted with the birds in sight, and then ‘Yellow-browed warbler'. Just as Clare said ‘I don’t think so!” she saw it. There was indeed a Yellow-browed warbler in the hawthorns in front of the hide. Clare immediately sent messages to Ruth the ringer, who said she would come up next morning, and to Keith, who said that these birds mostly turned up on the east coast on their migration from the Siberia taiga forests to south-east Asia. This RSPB webpage suggests the same.
14th October
Against all expectations, Ruth netted and ringed the warbler! She had put a short net up by the feeders. She was busier than she had expected to be, catching the first Chaffinch she had had on Liddells, two new Tree creepers, a couple of Chiffchaffs, several Blackbirds and some titmice.
The Yellow-browed warbler in all its tiny glory. It is similar in size to a Goldcresr.
Clare saw the warbler again each of the next three days before there was no further sight or sound of it around.
Meanwhile on the Crag a mouse moves at astonishing speed, then a badger ambles slowly past, apparently sniffing where the mouse has been.
18th October
A Sparrowhawk flies up onto a perch in the Scrub.
19th - 21st October
Some autumnal delights: a 7-spot ladybird rests on a stile post, a Bullfinch pauses while eating Hawthorn berries, a Red Admiral basks in the sun, the glory of one of the beeches on the Crag, the seeds of a Yellow flag iris show their autumnal beauty, and lichen.
Clare and John visited the John More Museum in Tewkesbury recently. John Moore (1907-1967) was a British author and naturalist who wrote about the English countryside and campaigned for its preservation. In one of his books, The Seasons of the Year, he wrote that October is the ‘hangover season in the countryside: no new flowers, and old ones already drooping, the bents brown along the hedgerows and no birds singing’. John and Clare are pleased to have provided evidence that there is some bird song in October and that in spite of the absence of new flowers, there is still colour to be seen.
23rd October
Going through the camera discs Clare heard a bird that she hadn’t heard before or seen on Liddells. She called on Merlin and a couple of other human listeners for confirmation and all agreed it is a Reed Bunting. Clare recognises this bird by thinking of it as an old-fashioned bailiff with black bowler hat, white collar and tweed jacket. See what you think. Ruth said the species is one she was expecting might be around. It is present in the UK all year.
26th - 28th October
John prepared more sites for new trees. Farmer John moved the sheep onto the Wildflower Meadow. He reckoned they would only take five days to graze it.
More mouse activity on the Crag - mountaineering this time.
30th October
As the young buck kid turns sideways in the clip below, you can see the ‘buttons,’ which are the start of antlers growing.
The answers to the bird quiz: in the first clip you can hear a Goldfinch, in the second a Magpie is chattering before a Carrion Crow calls at the end of the clip.