Tree Sparrows unmuted

Tree sparrows again. I love them – such a handsome bird. When I first met these guys about a year ago I believed they were mute because they weren’t particulary vocal at Rutland Water, and the sound of the chaffinches drowned them out.
However, they were chirping nearby, with the characteristic panache sparrows have. People say they chirp with a ‘country twang’ which you can sort of hear in this video.

Great Tit expelling Chaffinch from tree

8am battle of a great tit and a chaffinch trying to claim the same tree. Focus starts on chaffy then moved to the great tit.

RSPB North Warren, Telinga. Windy – it was hard to keep the great tit in the boresight of the dish even though it was only 5-8m up in the tree.

Blackbird goodnight

Some things are plain dumb. Along with building their nests too close to the ground, blackbirds making this sort of chipping sound just as they are retiring to roost is daft. It’s like saying
NEIGHBOURHOOD CATS!
I AM BLACKBIRD! COME AND GET ME
why do they do it?

Blackbird chipping goodnight mp3

Avocets feeding inelegantly ·

On the way back from Lincolnshire Titchwell called, even in the pouring rain. The lagoons were quite high, and the avocets had to adapt.
Gone was the dainty side-to-side swiping with the bill of the surface of the mud. This is what the avocet’s bill was designed for, with its delicacy and the signature upswept end.
In place of the elegance was this ungainly dive, kick legs madly for a while then rise and see what we’ve got.

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Sora visit

A Sora turned up in Lincolnshire. Worth a go this time – a much easier proposition than the one in Scilly islands. A lovely bird which this photo doesn’t do justice to, with a great combination of orangey-browns and earth tones to its plumage.
There wasn’t too much of a scrum at the Gibraltar point NNR at the frozen stream. The sora spent its time feeding on one bank, then charging across the ice to the other side of the bank at full speed.

Waxwings at B&Q Ipswich ·

Waxwings were reported at B&Q Ransomes Europark for the last couple of days, so it seemed worth a gander.
The flock uses a lovely trilling sound to keep itself together, it really is quite an enchanting sound. And there’s a lot of it too – they keep this up almost all the time. Not for nothing is Bombycilla garrulus so named!
Early-ish start rewarded – a whole treeful of them. Got some shots of them, and some video and sounds. The industrial estate isn’t the quietest location on earth so I had to hit this one hard with a 3.5kHz high pass filter to pick out the waxwings – fortunately their trilling is at quite a high pitch.

Tree Sparrows squabbling

You just have to love tree sparrows, with their chestnut heads and beady gaze. These guys are fun – arriving en masse and squabbling on the feeders at Rutland Water, at the aptly named Tree Sparrow Hide.

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Black Redstart

A first year male black redstart showed up at Minsmere, taking a fancy to the area behind the visitor centre. He was a real actor, twirling around showing delighted visitors with a view of his characteristinc reddish-orange tail. The bird showed a strong family resemblance to the robin, both in body shape and some of the mannerisms know from the familiar garden robin.
According to some reports he has been singing from the roof of the visitor centre. The nearest know of his kin are a couple of kilometres south at Sizewell.
Many people got to see him towards the end of March, and we hope this friendly bird will continue to deliver an easy twitch for April visitors to Minsmere.
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