Some more "Non-motorised Birds" - Including "Super-Bird"

 A male Northern Wheatear aka "SUPER-BIRD"  at South Gare 
(read on to find out why they deserve this title)

Hi everybody. Sorry it's been a couple of weeks since I last blogged. I wanted to wait until I had a few more birds to talk about that were new for my NMT list. Since my last post on the 15th of March I have been to South Gare (twice), done an evening visit to Ormesby Hall to look for owls, and spent quite a bit of time around the 'becks' of East Middlesbrough. In that time I have added 8 new species to my non-motorised bird list for the year, bringing it up to 112, as of yesterday.

On the 17th of March I celebrated St. Patrick's day by going in search of a bird which doesn't actually exist in Ireland - the Tawny Owl (although as St Patrick is thought to have grown up in Britain he probably saw and heard it in his childhood). I braved the wind and went out, just as it was turning dark, for a bike ride to a few likely places. I started by heading down to Grove Hill and along part of Marton West Beck, crossed the beck at Devil's Bridge and down to the old Nature's World site, where I knew Tawny Owls had been calling recently. Maybe because I was too early in the evening, or perhaps for another reason, I didn't hear any owls - I could only get to the edge of the site as it was locked up for the night, but the hoots usually carry a long way so if they were in there calling I would have expected to hear them. From there I went along Ladgate Lane, through quite a bit of woodland (Tawny Owls' favourite habitat) but still no owls. A quick diversion into the north-west corner of the grounds of Ormesby Hall (a National Trust property) also drew a blank so I decided to go round to the other side of grounds - along Ladgate Lane and up Church Lane. This is a very quiet, badly lit road (it was pitch dark by now) which leads up into the back of Ormesby village. I hadn't gone very far before I was rewarded with the distant hoot of a Tawny Owl, and then another one a bit closer (or maybe the same one). Number 105.

A few days later, on the 20th March I made the trip to South Gare for the second time this year. Thankfully it was a lovely day with none of the ice that made the last trip a little 'interesting' (or foolhardy maybe). Before getting to the Gare I made a detour/ short-cut through the Tees Valley Wildlife Trust's Coatham Marsh Reserve. Although I didn't get any new birds for the list here, it was lovely to cycle past the lakes and waterways and I saw lots of waterbirds, including a few Pochard, a singing male Reed Bunting and a couple of Little Grebes (aka Dabchicks, which I also heard making their distinctive whinnying 'song'). 

Two Pochard - the male above and the female below. Photo
taken 6th of March 2021 at Greenabella Marsh

Once I got to the Gare I didn't have far to go before I saw a couple of birders standing looking at something behind the fence around the old blast-furnace. It was #106, a Little Ringed Plover. Before the 1930's this migratory wader (which was in Africa a few weeks ago having spent the winter there) was a rare vagrant to Britain. Around that time there was an increase in the number of old gravel pits and quarries that were being flooded to create small lakes. These, as well as other man-made reservoirs, had many gravelly shores and islands, which made excellent breeding habitat for the Little Ringed Plover. It quickly spread, after successfully nesting here for the first time in 1938. It now nests at many sites across England and Wales, with maybe as many as 1,300 pairs. Like the much commoner Common Ringed Plover it is a stocky little bird which is light brown above, and white below, with a black neck collar. Unlike its cousin though, the LRP (as birders call them) has dull pinkish (not orange) legs, no orange on the bill, and,  in breeding adults, a distinctive yellow ring around each eye.

Having had a good long look at the LRP I went on to the end of the Gare - stopping briefly to look at some Redshanks, Oystercatchers and Curlew on Bran Sands on the way. I later heard that I had just missed a couple of Avocets on the beach - they were flushed by a dog just before I got there. From the very tip of the Gare I managed to pick out a distant Guillemot (Common Murre to any readers in North America), still in its winter plumage. This was NMT bird number 107 and was closely followed by #108, a Rock Pipit (appropriately on the rocks) and #109, a Stonechat, in the bushes and long grass at the end of the road. While watching the Stonechat I could hear a Skylark singing his heart out above me and also managed to get this nice picture of a lovely male Common Eider just offshore.

From South Gare I went along the coast to Redcar Beach, where I was hoping to add Common Ringed Plover to the year list, but no luck, although I did count around 200 Sanderling, over 100 Turnstones and 4 Purple Sandpipers, among the hundreds of dog walkers and other people enjoying the nice weather

On the 24th of March, while actually at work (showing my colleague Caspar around the new Nature Reserve in North Ormesby), Caspar, pointed to something inside an abandoned shopping trolley that had been dumped in Ormesby Beck. It was a Water Rail (NMT #110), thankfully not trapped in the trolley. It scuttled away into the reeds, quickly followed by a second one which came from a different direction. These are the first that I've actually seen on my local patch, although another birder messaged me a week before this to say that he'd seen and heard one in the exact same spot.

The last two NMT 'ticks' (tick=a new bird for a list), were both seen yesterday. The first of these, Common Ringed Plover (at last), was represented by three birds apparently displaying to each other at a potential breeding site about a mile and a half from my house. Last year I saw one at the same site that seemed to be guarding a nest, although I never proved breeding success. I am planning several visits there later in the season to see if I they nest again (although it's rough ground, they are small brownish birds, and the closest possible viewpoint is 100 metres away, so it might still be hard to prove if they do). 

It was still early in the day when I'd finished looking at all the best birding spots within easy reach of my house, so I carried on along the Teesdale Way to Coatham Marsh and South Gare. I had a little walk around the 'slag plateaux' in the middle of the Gare, looking for Wheatears and other migrants but it was extremely windy by this time and I saw very few birds in this exposed area. Not wanting to lengthen the already long ride home against the wind, I decided to turn around at this point instead of going to the end of the Gare, but kept checking every bit of flat open ground as I went, as these are the places where Wheatears are often seen during the migration periods. 

This diligence paid off and I got lovely views of two male Northern Wheatears (known as just 'Wheatear' to British birders as it's the only one we get usually) and was even able to get some pictures of one of them -  number 112 for my NMT year-list. This small bird in the Chat Family (a bit bigger than a European Robin) is often one of the first migrant songbirds that birders see in the spring, after they (the birds, not the birders) have made the journey from their wintering grounds in sub-Saharan Africa. 

If this seems like a long way for a small bird to migrate, the British-breeding birds have got nothing on the two populations of the species that breed in North America. The ones that nest in eastern Canada fly, in autumn, through Greenland, Iceland and then across mainland Europe and the Sahara Desert, And back again in spring. However, the western population, which nests in Alaska and the Yukon Territory of Canada, is now thought to have the longest migration route of any passerine (songbird) species. 

Recent studies, using electronic tracking devices, showed that some of the Alaskan birds travelled around 15,000 km (over 9,000 miles) in spring and again in autumn. As some birds breed further east in the Yukon it seems likely that these ones have an even longer journey (although it is possible that they winter further north in Africa). 

The tracked birds travelled on average 290km per day. Long-distance cyclist Mark Beamont apparently averaged 390km a day during his amazing "Around the World in 80 Days" feat in 2017 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Beaumont_(cyclist) - he actually did it in under 79 days) , but he was a 6 foot 3 inch adult human, weighing about 90 kilos, and moreover, he had a support team following him with food, drinks and medical assistance. The Wheatear weighs about the same as 5 teaspoons of sugar (25 grams) and has to do it without any support team. In the case of young birds in the autumn they have to navigate completely by instinct, having never done the journey before, and if that isn't hard enough, (and in common with most passerine migrants) they do it mostly at night!!! Truly a SUPER-BIRD

Northern Wheatear (male) at South Gare. The name has nothing to do with
cereal crops and in fact comes from the Anglo-Saxon for "White-Arse"
referring to the big white patch on the rump and tail, which is often all
you see as the bird flies away.