Christine's walking & birds blog

I printed the photo out to count the birds and realised that, as usual, I'd underestimated.

The corner of the common was very busy. Pied wagtails, meadow pipits, starlings, one fieldfare, and one redwing were feeding in the grass; numerous reed buntings were again present, and a song thrush zipped by me and dived into the plantation. Several Cettis were heard along the river and a water rail called from the boardwalk.

Otherwise, our list boasted a singing siskin on top of the dead pine near the stream, a heard-only Dartie and large loose flocks of chacking fieldfare.

Greger wanted to cook a paella so we stopped at Maidenhead where Waitrose's car park was such a madhouse that I parked along the dead-end road while Greger went in to shop; and while I waited I saw ring-necked parakeets flying east; two flocks of about fifteen birds each. It was almost dusk by now and the birds flew fast and purposefully, parallel with the A4. I wonder if they use it to navigate?

Cetti's warblers were singing, water rails were gently squealing. A fine day to be out, watching birds and taking awful photos!

The flood held at least thirty-four wigeon, and four golden plover flew in from the west.

There is a posting on Herefordshire's go birding website of a blackbird singing this morning. It sang for about 5 minutes, which is similar to the one here this afternoon.

In my experience, blackbirds do occasionally sing in the autumn and winter, but generally they fall quiet at the end of the summer. What conditions today made two blackbirds, many miles apart, start to sing? Of course the same bird might have sung here yesterday while we were out, and presumably there were others today that sang unnoticed.

But there is often a sort of synchronisation in bird behaviour, whether it's an odd quirk of behaviour or seasonal change. It might be tawny owls in the autumn; one night I will start hearing them at home after their summer silence/absence, and then find that other observers have reported the same thing happening round their homes on the same night. Intriguing.

Back at home as we stood outside cleaning the mud off our boots, an unseen blackbird began to sing. Instead of the full rich outpouring of spring this was a slower, more muted song as though the bird itself had no real conviction in what it was doing. It sounded like the ghost of summer past.

There was nothing more in the birdy line until just before the car park at Bury Down. Looking back once more at the owls' scrub I got onto three birds flying quite fast across the Ridgeway. The birds were waders, smaller than golden plover, and were probably dunlin, although I couldn't swear to long enough bills. They were flying to the north-east which would put them on course for Dorchester or Otmoor.

Also on Plover Island were three brown streaky birds, adopting a hunched posture as they foraged in the vegetation. I had only my bins but I'm fairly sure they were skylarks.

The flood was still partly hidden by mist. A flock of grey geese, thirty strong, went over to the south-east and seemed to be going down beyond the common. Greylags probably, although in some bad pics I clicked off their heads looked dark. Checking later on the fields between Eton Wick and the River Thames, I could find only 50+ Egyptian geese.

My history of the Dorney floods

A damp miserable day inspired me to write a short account of the flood in the north-east corner of Dorney Common (DC), and the flood in the enclosed field behind Eton Wick (EW).

DC was the first of the floods to appear and although I can't say exactly when that was, it was first mentioned on this blog on June 25, 2012.  My first mention of EW (and a photo of the two floods) appears on July 16. I remember hoping that the floods would last into autumn 2012 for wader migration; in fact they've lasted for two autumns - in total, a year and four months.

DC has dried up at least twice, leaving that corner of the common in a bit of a mess. The grass doesn't seem to grow back very well and the area that was under water is covered mostly in thistles. EW has grown and shrunk with the weather but has never, so far, disappeared completely.

The floods have attracted a good selection of waders: redshank, snipe, little egret, common sandpiper, green sandpiper, dunlin, little stint, ringed plover, pectoral sandpiper, ruff, lapwing, golden plover and black-tailed godwit.

Maybe EW even became a breeding site. These redshanks were seen in June with a chick (possibly two). The parents were very wary; when I appeared, although distant, they began to alarm-call, and the chick ran from the water and hunkered down in the grass.

There were more bramblings in the Beeches, but I didn't go far. I'd forgotten that three o'clock in the afternoon at this time of year is already too late for the woods. It was growing dark and besides, too many leaves were still on the trees to hunt properly for lesser spotted woodpeckers.

Add to this the fact that it was extremely wet and muddy underfoot, and you have one dreary outing. Thank goodness for the lovely bramblings.  (I have to type the name of this species at least twice before it's accepted. They keep insisting I mean "ramblings". I know what I blooming well mean!)

Visible migration

I glanced out of the window just before seven o'clock this morning to see a large flock of wood pigeons flying south. I grabbed the bins and went outside, oblivious to the fact that I was still in my pyjamas.

In the next twenty minutes, wave upon wave of pigeons flew over high, heading south. Many dropped down onto tree-tops on the estate, although these were gone half an hour later.

I gave up trying to count in hundreds - in fact I gave up trying to count at all. But I'm confident that at least two thousand birds went over Taplow this morning.

I'm not a great fan of wood pigeons, but this was a real spectacle. Something about the sheer numbers of birds and their high, steady flight across the pinkening sky, made the whole experience as moving as it would have been had they been wild swans or geese.