Lockdown Birding

Hope your are all well and keeping safe and watching wildlife from close to home as Jackie and I are doing.  

The thing is what to do, well I think birders adapt well and Jackie is keeping a day garden lockdown list and I'm keeping a night time (or NocMig) list and we take our exercise walk around the local Lytchett patch. I've also been writing a daily species of the day on the Friends of Lytchett Bay Facebook page, though it's getting harder to find new species in the garden each day but just about managing it at present. 

The patch lockdown walk list stands at 45 species the Lockdown Garden List at 39 species and I've recorded 33 species between 21:00hrs and 05:00hrs overnight.  We have had some nice highlights and quality birds, Osprey, Red Kite for the garden and Arctic Tern for the Bay with Coot a patch rarity and Common Scoter as migrants over night on NocMig recordings.

Some of you may know that my trusty parabolic reflector microphone after many years of service stopped working last year and I've been undecided about what to replace it with.  Talking to Paul Morton of Birds of Poole Harbour and Sound Approach guys I made the decision to purchase a SM4 Song Meter from Wildlife Acoustics.  Though quite expensive it is waterproof and can be setup to record continually and saves to one or two SD cards.  I'm using 2 x 16Gb cards which has enough memory for four nights of recording.  So far it's proved to be very good and the recording quality is high, when you think that we're in a semi-urban area with a lot of town background noise to contend with.

Below is a couple of the better recordings, one of the three scoter flocks I've recorded over the last week and one of several coot passing overhead and the third is a migrating Moorhen and finishing with Redwing.

This is one of three recording of Common Scoter passing over Lytchett Bay in this past week.

This is one of five Coot that I've recorded over the last week a real rarity in Lytchett bay but I record them every year on NocMig. The thing is you only record the calling birds so you have no real idea of how many there are unless you get multiple calls all at once which sometimes you do.

Now you have heard Coot I thought I would add a migrating Moorhen for comparison. This is a nice recording though early in the night as there was quite a bit of background traffic interference but at around 19 seconds in you will also here one of the local female Water Rail calling from the reed bed opposite our bungalow, also a male at the end.

We also had a unprecedented Redwing passage on the night of the 1st/2nd April when I recorded 282 calling going over the majority being recorded between 03:00hrs and 04:30hrs in the morning.  This movement is possibly to do with the change from the cold northerlies which held the birds up and when the wind changed back to the south they moved and it appears this was a widespread movement across the south of England.  

Just to remind you of what they sound like I've included a recording below.

Our last Birding highlight was from this mornings walk along the east of the bay towards Turlin Moor where we were hoping to see a Swallow but ended up seeing an 'Arctic Swallow'.  

As when we reached the Lytchett View Point I spotted a tern species dipping in the bay as we watched it, both Jackie and I said "think that's an Arctic" I watched as it quartered the bay and Jackie called Shaun who unfortunately had gone to the other side of the bay for his morning exercise. It eventually came close enough so we were able to confirm it was an Arctic Tern.  This was a life species for our Lytchett Bay list and one we might not see until the autumn depending on how long this emergency restriction last.  Unfortunately I didn't manage a photograph so I've added one from a trip we had to the Farne Islands in 2017 coming on an attack.

Arctic Tern coming in to see me off the path - Inner Farne © Nick Hull