The past week has thrown up a few interesting birdwatching surprises here in north Devon. Firstly I went out to Newbridge near Bishops Tawton on 18th Feb to check out the flocks of geese and swans frequenting the fields bordering the railway line and Taw. Consorting with the many Canadas was a black swan and I must say the creme de la creme of its kind.
On the opposite bank the small group of Mutes held a Whooper. In the same field common snipe by the score - perhaps as many as an hundred - were flushed.
On Saturday 21st February I went in search of the cattle egret recently seen in the Yelland area off the Tarka Trail. Although I didn't encounter the bird I was treated to a gathering of six spoonbills - three adults and three immatures - at the RSPB's Isley Marsh. Two of the spoonbills had been ringed which suggests they had flown in from Holland, or maybe Spain?
In times of harsh weather, such as we are experiencing in this young New Year, our feathered brethren are daily tested to the limit. Feeding methods, evolved over millennia, can now prove decisive to the survival of hundreds of their number. For obvious reasons predatory birds and waterfowl generally hold an advantage over insectivorous or ground-feeding species. (Have the goldcrests and chiffchaffs, espied along stretches of the Tarka Trail over Christmas, come through? Also the Dartford warblers seen on Saunton Down before the Arctic onslaught?)
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| • The handsome lapwing or peewit |
From the beginning of winter few of us locals can have failed to notice the ubiquitous presence of lapwings in fields bordering our roadways, or on marshland and estuary. Did these handsome green, black and white birds, with chestnut undertail and, in British birds, the unique permanently erect crest, presage the exceptional winter ahead and move downward and westward from mainland Europe in larger than normal numbers? And how right was that observer who described a lapwing flock looking 'like a flickering chequerboard'. As long as the ground remains yielding then the lapwing, widely known to countryman as the peewit ( in books often called the green plover, describing its upper colouring ) will be able to probe with its bill to find the invertebrates needed for nourishment. But should frost ironbound the soil it will have to look elsewhere. The mudflats and underbanks of the tidal rivers will suspend starvation.
Forty or fifty years ago the lapwing - or peewit as I called it in those days - was a regular nesting bird in north Devon but 'advances' in agricultural practices ie. land drainage and general intensification - have, lamentably, driven it from traditional breeding grounds. In my boyhood I fondly remember the springtime sight and sound of peewits over a particular rushy field near my home. Now I have to journey to the Exe estuary, where still they breed, to relive and refresh on that special joie de vivre.
In these present conditions however their plaintive cries arouse pity...
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| • Chestnut undertail feathers of lapwing |