Non-motorised Birding 17th-24th Jan 2021 (plus the 'Sweden Mystery')

It is not all that surprising that the rate at which I am adding birds to my NMT year-list is slowing down now that we are getting towards the end of January. I've seen most of the common birds that can be seen easily within a short cycle ride of my house, and, at least until the spring migrants start to arrive, most new species are going to take a bit more effort.

This week (well, 8 days actually) I have only added 4 new species to the list:

#63 - Eurasian Curlew

#64 - Goosander

#65 - Meadow Pipit

#66 - Great-spotted Woodpecker

The Curlew (as we tend to call it here in the UK, rather than using the full name) was one of very few birds that my wife and I saw at the Tees River Viewpoint last Sunday. This is a large wading bird with a long down-curved beak that it uses for finding worms and other prey in the soft mud of estuaries and marshland. The name comes from the plaintive call that is one of the characteristic sounds of the British seashore - if you've ever been to the seaside in the UK you have almost certainly heard it, even if you didn't realise it at the time.

On Tuesday I saw on the Teesmouth Bird Club's Twitter feed  that a couple of male Goosanders had been lingering for a few days on the park lake at Stewart Park, a couple of miles from my house. It was too late to go down there that day, so the next day, the 20th of January (which was also President Biden's inauguration day - sadly I wasn't invited) I cycled down there in the rain, locked my bike up and splashed across the flooded grass to the lake. There seemed to be almost as much water in the normally dry areas of the park as in the lake (I exaggerate somewhat, but not all that much), and large numbers of Canada Geese, domestic Greylag Geese and Mallards were sitting in the puddles and pools.

Once I got to the side of the pond one of the first birds I saw was a beautiful drake Goosander, followed by another close behind it. They were a bit shy but I was eventually able to get reasonably close to them and despite the rain I managed to get a few pictures of one of them. The Goosander is very closely related to the Red-breasted Merganser (see my blog from last week - Bike and Boots Birding Again) and in fact in north America it goes by the name of Common Merganser instead of Goosander. The name 'merganser' comes from Latin and means 'diving goose'. Although this is a duck, not a goose, the 'diving' bit is accurate as they frequently dive under the water for the fish which form the bulk of their diet. I actually saw one of them swallowing a fish it had just caught, although I wasn't quick enough to get a picture complete with fish. The male (aka the 'drake') has a glossy dark green head, similar in colour to that of a Shelduck or a male Mallard. Unlike those two species, however, it has a long narrow bill with a slight hook on the end and little tooth-like serrations which help it hold onto fish. The female looks very similar to the female Red-breasted Merganser that I saw last week, but a bit bigger and heavier looking.

A male Goosander (right) giving a nice comparison with a Mallard (left).
As with many diving ducks the back end of the Goosander slopes down to
the surface of the water, unlike the dabbling ducks (of which the Mallard
is one) which tend to have rather prominent rear-ends standing out of the water

Unfortunately, the bad light that I took this pic in means that you can't see the
bright red colour of the bill, and the glossy green head just looks black. 

Because of bad weather and other commitments I wasn't able to get out birding again until today (Sunday the 24th of Jan). I waited til late morning to let most of the ice melt from the roads and paths and headed east on the Trunk Road, towards Teesport. My first stop was the side of the road just before the entrance to the Port, where a small flock of Redwings was feeding in the bushes and even in the leaf-litter on the pavement next to the road. I then went along a little known public footpath in an area of waste ground next to the port and the BOC works (little known, at least partly, because of the big and misleading sign on the road just before it claiming that there is no public access in the whole area). This is the only place where I have seen Red-legged Partridge since I moved to Teesside, and is also where I saw the fox-cub I wrote about in August 2020 (see Species Spotlight - 20 - Red-legged Partridge  and  Species Spotlight - 18 - Red Fox). There were no Partridges or Foxes to be seen today so I headed back towards Middlesbrough along the Teesdale Way, seeing a few more Redwings as I went (but sadly no Fieldfares - another winter thrush which often hangs out with Redwings).

Coming off the Teesdale Way at South Bank Station I joined Dockside Road and found a nice little flock of Pied Wagtails on a stony field which had Lapwings nesting on it in the summer. In amongst the Wagtails were a few Meadow Pipits - this very common bird was probably the commonest bird that I hadn't seen yet this year, so it was good to get that 'list-blocker' out of the way. Meadow Pipit is a small, streaky, brown bird - the archetypal LBJ (Little Brown Job), which sounds a bit like a squeaky toy when it calls.

As with many of the places I passed through today, my next port of call, the Tees River Viewpoint, was surprisingly 'un-birdy', with only a few gulls, and corvids (members of the crow family - in this case Magpies and Carrion Crows) to be seen at first. Some high-pitched calls got me onto a couple more Redwings, along with some Blackbirds, Robins and a Great Tit. Just before I left a Curlew flew over and then my last new NMT-bird for the day called from the trees behind me - the loud 'CHEEK' call of a Great-spotted Woodpecker.

On the way home I stopped at the point where Normanby Beck goes under the road - someone has helpfully put up some bird feeders here and so the usual flock of finches, tits and other birds was hanging around, including 12 Blue Tits being uncharacteristically co-operative and letting me count them easily as they sat still in a couple of bushes for a few seconds. A Kingfisher flying out from the bridge under my feet was the first one I have seen on this beck, although they are fairly regular on Ormesby Beck (only about 150m away at this point).

This Goldfinch was one of the birds which were attracted by the feeders
at Normanby Beck. Other species there included Chaffinch,Greenfinch,
and Great, Blue and Coal Tits. Male and female Goldfinches look very similar
but can be told apart by the extent of the red on the face.
This is a female as the red doesn't go further back than the eye.

A group of Redshanks roosting on the rocks in the entrance of Middlesbrough Dock (very near the Riverside Stadium) were the last addition to the day-list. This is a regular spot for them, with my maximum count here being 91 (in November 2017), but today there were only 13. It's the first time I've seen them roosting here for a while though so I wasn't complaining. From the Dock it was only a short ride through the centre of North Ormesby to my house and a welcome cup of tea.

Before I go I want to mention a bit of a mystery which has been puzzling me for the last few days, in the hope that one of my readers may be able to tell me the answer. 

One of the features available to users of blogger.com is the ability to see what countries people have been viewing the blog from over different time periods going back from today - the last 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days and so on.  Until last Saturday, when I published my previous post, most people reading my blog had always been (somewhat predictably) in the UK, with the USA being in second place. I had only had 7 views from Sweden in the past year before that point, and only 84 since I started writing the blog in 2018. However, since that point my blog has apparently been getting a significant readership in Sweden, with between 20 and 25 views a day (177 now since I first noticed the increase). I can't see any reason for this as I didn't even mention the name of the country in my post last week, or anything that is particularly related to Sweden - Red-breasted Mergansers do breed there in large numbers but they do in several other countries in that region and I haven't had any views from them. I don't have many friends in Sweden (and non with whom I've been in touch recently) and I haven't had a large number of spammy messages in Swedish so I don't think it's because I've been discovered by a Swedish bot-farm, so it is still a mystery to me. If you are reading this in Sweden and have recently been telling all your friends about my wonderful blog, I'd love to hear from you. Oh, and thanks, I'm always glad to know that people are reading what I write.