Nature Diary 24th-30th Jan 2022

24th Jan  I spent an hour or so in the garden in the afternoon making a bird feeder out of some odds and ends I had lying around (a bit of old fence panel, a garden cane, some scrap plywood and some wire). While I was there a Grey Wagtail flew over several times, calling, although I didn't manage to see it. Also a Collared Dove came down to feed on the ground very close to me and a Blue Tit scolded me loudly from a nearby bush.

My new bird feeder (on the right)

26th Jan Walked around all of Middle Marsh Nature Reserve and then over to Middlesbrough Dock basin this afternoon. The most interesting thing at Middle Marsh was a Little Egret catching a fish in the beck near the Yellow Bridge. The bird-feeders were getting a bit low so I filled them up and put a new one up (a bought one this time) that I filled with black sunflower seeds.

In the dock were two Red-breasted Mergansers and 2 adult Mute Swans, which were joined by 5 more Mute Swans while I was there - a family party of 2 adults and 3 young (but full sized) ones, which swam in under the bridge from the outer section of the dock. The newcomers made straight for the 2 swans that were already there and the adults did a bit of posturing at each other - raising their wings and probably hissing as well (although I was too far away to hear the hissing).

28th Jan Another visit to Middle Marsh and the dock basin today, but in the morning. Sat in what is becoming my usual spot in the reeds for about half an hour but saw/heard nothing very unusual - just Robin, Bullfinch and the 3 common tit species. The feeding station is attracting quite a few birds, and a bit further on, underneath the Shepherdson Way flyover, there was a nice selection of birds in the bushes including eleven Goldfinches and 3 Goldcrests which were showing very nicely although I didn't manage to get a photo.

In the dock basin there were now 6 mergansers (2 male and 4 female) as well as the family party of Mute Swans (without the 2 extra adults this time). The 3 young ones were feeding on the green algae on the wall of the dock and were not keeping very close to their parents -  apparently starting to assert their independence a bit.

3 Mute Swan cygnets, Middlesbrough Dock, 28th Jan 2022

Six Red-breasted Mergansers, Middlesbrough Dock, 28th Jan 2022

A closer view of 3 of the Mergansers - 2 male (right) and 1 female (left) 

Bee Orchid leaf rosette, Middle Marsh 28th Jan 2022

On the way home I called back into Middle Marsh to get this photo of a Bee Orchid rosette (the basal leaves from which (hopefully) a flowering stem will grow later in the year), that I had spotted earlier.

Later in the day I made a quick visit to the lawn next to Holy Trinity Church in North Ormesby, which last year had a lovely display of Bee Orchids flowering (as well as other wildflowers), and was pleased to find 14 rosettes. Distressingly though, there was a lot of dog poo on the little strip of grass, which I will need to go back (with a spade) and remove.

29th Jan Today I had a little excursion in the car (as my bike is temporarily out of action) to a site I have not visited before. This was Mandale Meadow - a lovely bit of grassland and woods along Bluebell Beck, right on the western boundary of Middlesbrough, next to the very busy A19 road. I have heard lots about this site over the past few years as it is threatened by plans to build a road through part of it and also some new houses (I'm not sure exactly where the houses will be if they are built). There has been a big campaign to try and prevent the 'spine-road' as it is called, being built, with the council being very keen to do it and the local residents, mostly, strongly opposed to it. There is a lot of wildlife there, particularly a few scarce butterflies, although obviously they won't be around for a few months yet. I did see some interesting plants in the grassland though - mostly skeletal remains of last years plants. I also saw several very fresh-looking mole-hills, so at least one wild mammal is currently active there. I have heard that there are Water Voles on the beck, and deer and foxes in the woods, although I didn't see any signs of these on this visit. I am hoping to make a few more visits in the spring and summer to try and get a good list of all the plant species that occur there.

This sign in the car park at Mandale is part of the campaign to save the Meadows

A view across part of the meadows

Molehills at Mandale Meadow, 29th Jan 2022

Last year's flower/seed heads of an orchid (probably Northern Marsh
Orchid) at Mandal Meadow, 29th Jan 2022

A dead flower-spike of Self-heal - a pretty little purple-flowered
plant that you might have seen in your lawn.
This year's leaves are starting to show in some places

A display board about the wildlife of Bluebell Beck which was
put up several years ago

30th Jan Every year in January, people all over the country take part in the RSPB's annual Big Garden Birdwatch. Last year, apparently, over a million people did it - counting the birds in their garden (or in a local park) for one hour at some point during a particular weekend. I have been doing it in my garden for the past few years (and have written about it in this blog on at least one occasion). This year I actually thought I had missed it but yesterday I realised that it was this weekend and so I decided to do it in my garden in the morning and then go to the new bird-feeding station at Middle Marsh in the afternoon to do one there. The RSPB website says you can do more than one so long as they are in different places and that it is okay to do it in a park so I m hoping that Middle Marsh will count as a park.

The morning count was a bit disappointing, although not very surprising as bird numbers in my garden have been low now for at least the last year. I only saw six birds, of three different species, all in the pigeon/dove family - two each of Collared Dove, Woodpigeon and Feral Pigeon. There were a few gulls flying over and some Starlings on the roof of the house behind ours but I couldn't count them according to the rules.

The afternoon was much more thrilling. Over the course of an hour standing (getting increasingly chilly) behind the half-built screen  in front of the bird-feeders at Middle Marsh I saw 6 Blue Tits, at least 2 Great tits (you have to use the biggest number that you see together, to avoid double counting), 2 Bullfinches, at least 7 Long-tailed Tits, 3 Chaffinches, 1 Blackbird, 2 Robins and a Dunnock. I also counted a Goldfinch which was singing from the top of a tree next to where I was standing, for most of the hour, although I never actually set eyes on it (it still counts though as it was definitely there and was definitely a Goldfinch - the song is very distinctive once you know it).

A Great Tit tackling a black sunflower seed - Middle Marsh, 30th Jan 2022

Two Long-tailed Tits and a Blue Tit eating peanuts - Middle Marsh, 30th Jan 2022

This Robin was singing - but it could be male or female as both sexes
of this species sing, and they look identical - Middle Marsh, 30th Jan 2022

The Dunnock (known to my parents' generation as the Hedge Sparrow
(it's not a sparrow)), is common in gardens and parks but many people
might not know it as it is not very colourful and can be quite shy, feeding
in the leaf litter at the bottom of hedges and in woodland

Nature Diary 17th-23rd Jan 2022

17th Jan Walked down to Pallister Park with Sue just as it was getting light - Song Thrush singing vociferously from a tree just next to the main entrance. Sue has heard it there at about the same time several times over the past couple of weeks.

A bit later I was standing on the Yellow Bridge at Middle Marsh when a Kingfisher flew upstream towards me, perched briefly about 20 metres from me, flew back downstream a bit, perched again for a second before flying back and repeating the process, only this time when it flew back downstream a Sparrowhawk swooped down out of a tree, where it had been sitting unseen by me (and presumably the Kingfisher). The hawk missed the Kingfisher, which turned round again and came back up towards me and sat on the original perch, before relocating to a lower branch a few feet away, where it stayed until I walked on.

A lucky Kingfisher and her reflection
The orange on the bill shows that this is a female

A couple of hours later, after seeing a nice variety of birds in the rest of the area - including, some Goldcrests in the woods plus 3 Teal, a single vociferous Redshank and another Kingfisher on the beck further downstream. I came back the same way and the first Kingfisher was still there in the same place, along with a Little Egret fishing not far from it.

Britain's smallest bird - a Goldcrest (photo taken at Middle Marsh,
Jan 2022, by Ian Foster. Used with permission)

18th Jan After yesterday’s excitement I took my friends Jan and Keith on a walk around the reserve, hoping to get them good views of a Kingfisher. Sadly the only one I saw was a brief glimpse down by the tidal barrage and neither of my friends managed to get onto it. We did however see the Sparrowhawk sitting on a branch across the beck near the Yellow Bridge, just about where I had seen it the day before. Also interesting was a Redshank further upstream than I’ve seen them before.

19th Jan The new ponds at Middle Marsh are finished 😃😃😃. This week and last week we have had John and Dave the digger drivers excavating a series of ponds (8 small and 1 quite big) in the middle of the main reed-bed. Since I started visiting this site in 2016 I have dreamed of being able to get a pond dug, or maybe two but it is thanks to Ian and Annemarie of the Tees Valley Wildlife Trust (who planned the layout and supervised the work) and Simon and his colleagues at Middlesbrough Council (who funded it) that there are so many. The depths of the pools vary from 1m in the deepest parts of the biggest one to 30 cm in the shallowest sections. We are hoping that there will be a mixture of temporary and permanent standing water which should provide diverse habitat for a range of different species of plants, birds, insects and hopefully a few amphibians too. We have left a broad fringe of reeds around all of the ponds (except the two right at the northern end which are a bit separate from the others) and the hope is that this will prevent dogs from going in them. Aside from disturbing birds and other wildlife, dogs can be extremely harmful if they get into ponds, as the chemicals in commonly used tick and flea treatments can kill aquatic invertebrates, even when they are present in very low concentrations in the water.

One of the deep sections of the largest pond - 17th Jan 2022

One of the smaller ponds, already with some water, despite the
lack of rain recently. 19th Jan 2022

The approximate locations of the 9 ponds. Map by A. Mehl, Jan 2022

21st Jan This morning I was at Middle Marsh with one of my volunteers (from the ‘Green Shoots’ project that I work for) carrying on work on a screen which will allow people to watch birds at the feeders without disturbing them. We started during the Christmas holidays and have been doing a little bit each week since then. The design is a very old one - a line of vertical poles (2-3 inches in diameter) stuck in the ground, with thinner, more flexible branches and rods (mostly willow), going horizontally and woven in and out through the framework made by the verticals. We are going to leave slots at various heights so that people can look through.

I have put a couple of feeders there already and even while we have been working on the screen, Robins, Great Tits and several other species have been regular visitors, either to the feeders or to the leaf litter below them. A Redshank called from the beck while we were working - in almost the same spot as a few days before.

22nd Jan I spent an hour and a half today hidden in the middle of the reed-bed, sitting on a folding chair between two of the new ponds, listening to and watching the birds and reading a lovely collection of writings about nature (“Nature Tales - Encounters with Britain’s Wildlife”, compiled by Michael Allen and Sonya Patel Ellis, pub. Elliott & Thompson 2011).

Inspired by some of what I read and heard, here are some fragmentary notes that I took:

“-Jay flapping overhead as I walked in - Its outline is distinctive - reminds me of an over-sized Blackbird but with relatively broader wings. My first here for quite a while

- Constant background roar of the traffic makes it hard to hear any birds at first
- Robin tic-tic-ticking over to my right
- clear blue winter sky
- Sharp call of a Kingfisher from the beck
- Herring Gulls overhead - occasionally calling loudly - the typical ‘seagull call’ reminding me of childhood holidays to the seaside
- Angry Scolding of a Blackbird
- Bare trees skeletal against the sky - alders laden with cones making them recognisable even from a distance
- Goldfinch tinkling away as it flew over
- Feral Pigeon trying to fool me into thinking it was a Peregrine - again
- Now there’s a different constant low noise coming from the Chemoxy plant across the beck - but somehow I can still hear the wind moving the reeds
- At 11.45 two geese flew past some way away, surprisingly silent. Canada Geese I think judging by the apparently dark heads but it’s quite hard to tell”

Carrying on my walk I went over to the dock basin where two Shags were swimming around, diving frequently - these are the first I’ve seen in Middlesbrough. In the Sea-buckthorns on the rough ground beside the dock a mixed group of birds were feeding on the berries, or just sitting watching me - Blackbirds, Song Thrush, a grey-headed-black-tailed Fieldfare (which then flew away, chattering harshly), some Robins, a male Reed Bunting and several squeaky Meadow Pipits.

Crossing back into Middle Marsh via the level-crossing almost the first thing I saw was a Kestrel in a small tree. He flew away as I approached but I saw him again a couple more times. Four Teal flew off the Beck down by the barrage and a Great Spotted Woodpecker calling from the trees near the Navigation Inn was the first I have had in the nature reserve (my 69th species for the list).

On the way home I saw a Kingfisher again, flying downstream past the bird-feeders - as usual it was the sharp call that made me look up and see it

23rd Jan Back to my hiding place in the reeds this morning - earlier than yesterday. The first two birds of the day (and in my new notebook) were a graceful, all white Little Egret in the beck and a male Kestrel flying low from the meadow to the trees carrying a freshly caught mouse or vole - so freshly caught that it was still trailing a couple of pieces of long grass that it had caught along with its intended prey - I watched the grass fall to the ground as it adjusted its grip.

The road was much quieter this morning (8.45 on a Sunday morning) and I could hear at least two Robins and a Great Tit singing - quite early in the year but spring has already started for some creatures - among them a Magpie carrying nesting material (many people’s ‘love-to-hate bird’ but I think they are beautiful even if their call is raucous).

Moths of an Urban Garden #2 - Buff Ermine

The Buff Ermine moth (Spilosoma lutea) is a common and widespread moth in Britain and Ireland, although it is absent from large parts of eastern and central Scotland and smaller parts of northern England. Its global distribution covers a very broad band of territory in Europe and Asia, going as far east as Japan and including southern Siberia and northern Turkey. 

This pretty little moth is in a family of moths that includes some very colourful species (the Tiger Moths) as well as some fairly dull-looking ones, such as the Footmans (or should it be Footmen?). The adults are usually a nice creamy-yellow colour with some small black spots, mostly in a curvy line but with a few scattered around as well. It can be told from the buff forms of  White Ermine by the pattern and density of the black spots.

Buff Ermines fly at night but often come to light, and they are common in gardens so you may have seen one in your house. 

The caterpillars feed on a wide range of different plants, many of them extremely common, such as Stinging Nettles and docks and the older caterpillars, which are hairy and brown, are the most commonly encountered hairy caterpillar in most parts of the UK. When the caterpillars have finished growing, in late autumn,  they creep into dead plant material and form a pupa (what you might know as a chrysalis or coccoon) and spend the winter in this form before emerging as an adult moth from mid-May.

The name 'Ermine' comes from the resemblance of some species (notably White Ermine) to the ermine cloaks of medieval kings, which were made from the white winter coats of Stoats - the black spots on the cloaks coming from the  tips of the Stoats' tails which stay black all year.

An adult Buff Ermine moth, caught at my garden
moth trap in Middlesbrough, 25th June 2020

A Buff Ermine caterpillar which I found in Park End,
Middlesbrough, at the end of September 2021

Kingfisher and other things at Middle Marsh

In the last couple of weeks I have spent quite a bit of time at Middle Marsh Nature Reserve (the new Local Wildlife Site in North Ormesby, Middlesbrough).

With the help of volunteers from the project I work for, I have been extending the woodland path along the beck so that now it is possible to walk along it from the "Yellow Bridge", underneath the A66 flyover, to the Shepherdson Way Bridge (which goes towards Middlesbrough Dock and the football stadium).

Near the end of the path I have put some bird feeders and we are in the process of constructing a screen out of stems and branches of willow and other flexible woody plants, to allow people to watch the birds without disturbing them. Even while we have been doing this several Great, Blue and Long-tailed Tits have been coming down to the feeders, along with Robins, and at least one Coal Tit.

As well as this fairly small-scale work, which can be done manually by volunteers, this week we have had mechanical diggers in, in the wetland part of the site, to excavate a series of ponds in the reed bed. This work is being funded by Middlesbrough Council. Currently they are still working on the first, and largest of the ponds but we are hoping that this will be finished in the next week and two or three smaller ones also completed. The hope is that this will result in a mixture of permanent and temporary standing water, of different depths which will provide habitat for a diverse range of wetland plants,  insects (including dragonflies and water-beetles) and birds. I have written a bit more about this, and posted some photos, on the Middle Marsh Facebook page so instead of posting them here again I will post the link for the page and you can go and have a look if you would like to Middle Marsh Nature Reserve Facebook page

On Friday I was down at Middle Marsh supervising the diggers, along with Ian and Annemarie from the Tees Valley Wildlife Trust (who have been giving loads of time to this and without whom the pond project would be a lot less ambitious), and I took a short walk along the woodland path. Halfway along, I heard a series of loud, piercing, high-pitched calls and looked up in time to see a Kingfisher flying up the beck channel, just above the water.

This lovely little bird, bright blue above and orange below is an occasional visitor to Middle Marsh. The last one I saw was on New Year's Eve and it seems likely that this is the same one. Its presence is a good sign as it indicates that the water quality is at least good enough to allow small fish to survive. 

There are 114 species of kingfisher in the world, varying in size from the tiny African Dwarf Kingfisher (10cm long) to the crow-sized Laughing Kookaburra of Australia.

Our species is called the Common Kingfisher. It is one of the smaller species, measuring about 16cm from bill-tip to tail tip, and it occurs across a very wide area including most of Europe, parts of North Africa and large areas of central and southern Asia. They feed mostly on small fish (but will also eat insect larvae and other invertebrates) which they hunt from a perch 1-2 metres above the water. 

Common Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis), Ormesby Beck at Middle Marsh Nature
Reserve, Middlesbrough. 18th Nov 2020 (photo by Colin Conroy)

Moths of an Urban Garden #1 - The Brimstone Moth

Hi everyone. This is the first in a series of short blog posts that I'm planning to do, hopefully once a week, using photos of moths that I have taken in my garden, in urban Middlesbrough, and on nearby sites (such as Middle Marsh Nature Reserve).

For the first entry I've chosen the Brimstone Moth (Opisthograptis luteolata). Even though you quite likely have never seen, or even heard of this insect, it is very widespread and common in the British Isles being found everywhere except Shetland (in the very northern part of our archipelago).

Like many moths it mostly flies at night (unless disturbed accidentally during the daytime) but is found in hedgerows, gardens, parks and woodland where it lays its eggs on Blackthorn and Hawthorn and other shrubs, which the caterpillars will feed on after the eggs hatch.

The English name comes from an old name for the chemical element Sulphur, which is a pale yellow colour, like the moth. There is also a species of butterfly called the Brimstone, a much larger species which you may have seen flying along woodland rides in the early spring.

Although common, I have only caught Brimstone at my garden moth trap once (on the 1st of August 2021) since I started trapping there in 2018. As with all the moths I trap, this one was released unharmed when I let it go. After resting a while on my garden wall, it flew away into deeper cover where it was safe from predation by birds.

NMT 2021 - the last few weeks - and a few reflections on the year

For one reason and another I wasn't able to get out birding as much as I would have liked in most of December. When I did it felt like very hard work seeing any birds at all other than really common species, so I was pleased to add two more species to the list before Big Ben's bongs at midnight on the 31st.

A trip to Cowpen Bewley Woodland Park on the 19th yielded the first of these.  I spent quite a while sitting watching the feeders that have been set up there (now in a different place than they were earlier in the year) and was rewarded with a couple of brief views of a Marsh Tit (NMT #173) as well as good numbers of Great, Blue and Coal Tits, a few Chaffinches, a lovely male Bullfinch, several Robins and Blackbirds, a couple of Jays, a Great Spotted Woodpecker calling (but not showing itself) and a tiny little Goldcrest (Britain's smallest bird).

On the 27th, after a lazy Christmas Day and Boxing Day, I took advantage of the calm conditions and did my last bike ride of the year, to South Gare. I timed my arrival very well, as one of the regular South Gare birders just happened to be at the very spot where a Woodcock (a shy, mostly nocturnal species) was roosting under a bush near the road. I would never have found it without his help as they are amazingly well-camouflaged. It wasn't new for the year (I saw one on the 1st of January) but it was my best ever view of one and,  I think, the first time I've ever seen one on the ground in 40-odd years of birding. Thanks Bob.

Eurasian Woodcock  at South Gare, 27th Dec 2021

Woodcocks breed in woodland over much of Britain with their populations being boosted in the winter months by many birds coming in from northern Europe where, presumably, the forest soils are frozen solid or covered in snow at this time of year, preventing them from reaching their prey of earthworms and other burrowing invertebrates.

Most of the rest of my time at the Gare was spent watching a female Velvet Scoter, and several other commoner waterbirds, from various different viewing points and eventually getting some not totally awful pictures of the scoter (my 174th species for the list and the last new bird of the year). The whitish blotch on the cheeks of this dark sea-duck distinguish it from females of the more regular Common Scoter, as well as the white wing patch which is present in both male and female Velvets and absent in Common. Although the white in the wing is only just barely visible (with the eye of imagination) in the photos below, I did get a good view of it when the bird was disturbed by a man in a kayak and flew to a different location.

A female Velvet Scoter at South Gare, 27th December 2021

The calm conditions allowed me to get this nice shot of a pair of Red-breasted
Mergansers (male on the left, female on the right), which flew in and landed
quite close to me while I was watching the Velvet Scoter

On the last morning of the year I spent some time on my local patch, Middle Marsh Nature Reserve in Middlesbrough, and although I didn't get any new birds for the year, I did see a Kingfisher a couple of times - my first here since February. 

Doing the NMT list this year has meant that I've done both more birding and more cycling in the year than I've done for a long time (possibly ever). It has, however, involved quite a lot of 'twitching' (see here for a discussion of the proper meaning of this term - Twitching, bird-watching and birding), even within the local area, as my decisions about where to go were often influenced by what birds other people had been seeing at different sites, and I am coming to the conclusion that a commoner bird that you find for yourself is often more satisfying than a rare one which someone else has found. 

It has shown me how easy it is to get to some good birding sites by bike, particularly Hartlepool, which I had previously thought was just too far but is actually quite easy (so long as the wind is not too strong) because of the lack of hills. I will definitely be spending more time there in the future, as well as at my two most visited sites of the year, Saltholme and South Gare.

In 2022 I intend to carry on doing most of my birding by bike or on foot but I have decided to focus much more on my two local patches: the big one which includes Middlesbrough Dock and the south bank of the Tees going as far as Smith's Dock in Redcar & Cleveland Borough and the small one - Middle Marsh Nature Reserve on Ormesby Beck. 

I haven't talked very much about Middle Marsh in this blog up to now but I'm planning to correct that this year with, hopefully weekly, updates about the birds, plants, insects and small mammals of this little urban post-industrial site near the middle of Middlesbrough.