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)