24th May

My only bird record of note was my first Little Owl of the year, heard calling from the footpath which runs alongside the railway. They have become sadly difficult to find recently and I only recorded a single bird last year. I’m not clear what has driven this apparent decline but on Langlands, which held up to three pairs, John thinks the very heavy flooding of a few years ago is the cause because it killed all the earthworms. Certainly when I went down there after the floods the tracks were covered in a sludge of dead worms.   

On the insect front I saw my first Red Admiral and three Brimstone, a good count for this species in the village. I also saw my first damselflies with Azure damselfly in the Magic Garden and a Large Red Damselfly down Greenhills Lane…

The railway running through the parish acts as something of a wildlife corridor and I have seen birds orientating on and following the line (including once a flock of Common Terns). It used to hold Common Lizards, still the only reptile I have seen in the parish, and because it has often been less disturbed has held on to a different mix of plants than much of the rest of the parish.

Obviously you are not allowed on the railway but where the Morton-Thrintoft path crosses the line you can see many of the typical mix of plants with masses of Forget-me-Nots…

And mats of the low growing, yellow-flowered Black Medic. These are backed by White Dead-nettle, (or Adam and Eve in a Bower from the little figures, stamens, lying next to each other under the petal) and the pale green of Crosswort. Amongst this there are patches of Dove-foot Cranesbill,  Prickly Sow-thistle and Herb Robert …

As well as the attractive little Wood Avens…

And where an undisturbed slope remains they have retained  Cowslips and a few violets…

The railway also has Common Liverwort, fascinating plants that are also known as Umbrella Liverwort for obvious reasons…

These ‘umbrella’ ones are female with the male in the form of flattened leaf-like discs.

20th May

A very quiet week for birds, it feels as though migration is over before it has really got started and some species numbers, such as Swallows and both martins, still seem particularly low (although I did have a dozen House Martins feeding and gathering mud from the muck heap down School Lane). The only records of note were both Tracey and Chris having calling Cuckoos this week. Tracey heard hers in the bottom fields at Ainderby and Chris in Thrintoft. The latter bird was still calling today. This shouldn’t really be news but it is a very long time since we had them regularly in the parish.

As I don’t have a picture of these birds then Cuckoo Flower will have to substitute…

Incidentally this is the main food plant of the Orange Tip butterfly and if you look very closely on the flower stems you can sometimes find their tiny bright orange eggs.

My very slow progress on botany continues. As a whole the parish, with its intensive agriculture, has a really poor flora but even here you can find tiny pockets  so over the last few days I have added a handful of (common!) species to the parish list including:

Winter Bittercress…

Bird’s Foot Trefoil...

Common Fumitory…

And Dove’s Foot Cranesbill…

10th May

A much quieter week, migration seems to have slowed but numbers for some species such as Swallows still seem well down. I did see my first Swifts though with a single bird over the village green on the 5th and a dozen birds screaming over the house the next day...

I also finally ticked off my first House Martins with singles in Thrintoft and Morton. The only other birds of note this week were a Peregrine circling very high over the village on the 4^th and my second Sedge Warbler of the year singing vigorously away from thick vegetation in a field ditch on Langlands.

So photos will have to be restricted to common species like Yellowhammer…

And Reed Bunting

The other regular bunting, Corn, seems to be having a relatively good year with a total of 14 birds heard singing over the last couple of weeks. 

In contrast it seems to be a particularly poor year for Lapwings, I have only seen two displaying birds so far. I don’t know if this is a feature of the very dry weather, lack of food, different crop regimes or what but it’s worrying.

In lockdown garden birding what we have had are regular garden visits by corvids. It started with Jackdaws who have learned how to feed on the fat balls. Up to half a dozen have visited, one to hang on the feeder and break up the fat balls and the others picking the pieces up below. A couple of Magpies and the odd Carrion Crow have joined them and even small numbers of Rooks who are normally notoriously wary…

I have also been joining the many lockdown birders sitting in their gardens scanning the skies for birds of prey. Buzzards are regular and I have had Sparrowhawk and Kestrel over but no hoped for Osprey. Mind you cloud watching was quite enjoyable in itself…  

Night sky wasn’t too bad either…

Elsewhere this Shelduck was still zealously guarding his ‘pool’

Someone is going to have to tell him…

Hares again have been almost constant companions including this one doing a reasonable impression of a young Wallaby…

Other mammal watching this week has turned up three Roe Deer, a Stoat and a Fox which popped out of a hedge about three feet in front of me. I don’t know who was more surprised but instead of bolting away it loped along the path watching me over its shoulder as it went and then as soon as there was a slight bend in the path it shot off like a rocket. By the time I had switched my camera on this is all I managed...

I will finish with one word of warning. If you walk into a small piece of woodland following the sounds of what you think are deer just ensure it isn't actually a couple of people undertaking their lockdown exercise in a distinctly non socially-distancing form!

2nd May

I thought I had missed the chance of seeing Wheatear in the parish this year but I picked up a distant bird yesterday evening at the end of Greenhills Lane. However, Wheatears are like buses and down the river this morning…

It’s quite a well-coloured bird with peach underparts and some warm tones in its mantle so is likely to be a far north bird on its way through to Iceland or possibly Greenland. I have also found these northern birds, when spooked, always head higher and this one went straight to the roof of a field barn.

Last night’s Wheatear was joined by six Golden Plover, I think these are the latest records I have ever had in the village. In the gloom of yesterday evening my cheap camera struggled to photograph them but you can get a hint of what handsome birds they are…

Given the date and the very extensive black on its face this bird is likely to be of the northern subspecies ‘albifrons’ and again will be on its way north, probably to Iceland or the Faeroes.

On today’s walk I saw my first Garden Warbler of the year and the excellent spring for Lesser Whitethroats continues with another four singing birds today, almost outnumbering Common Whitethroats. Still no House Martins or Swifts though.

On the river itself it was very quiet other than four Oystercatcher, at least one pair of Yellow Wagtails and two Little Egrets…

I also had a fantastic total of 22 Hares today including ten in a single field, these were still boxing on occasions which I thought was unusual for this late. I photographed this one the other morning, the light wasn’t brilliant hence they aren’t really sharp but they make great shapes…

In recent months I’ve had a growing, but very basic, interest in botany. Unfortunately the parish, being intensively farmed, has a very poor flora. One plant I do see though is Lords and Ladies or the Cuckoo Pint (really pronounced pinnt rather than pynt)  and it seems to have been a really good year for them.

There is normally a single plant in this small spinney but I counted at least 20 this year, they have a vaguely unsettling air about them and it’s not hard to imagine them as fledgling triffids! Incidentally the roots of this plant are what were used to starch Elizabethan ruffs.

26th April

Bird of the week was undoubtedly the Hobby which I first saw as an interesting, but unidentified, blob in one of the huge arable fields down Greenhills Lane. It eventually took off and gave some good views although you would never guess from the single photo I managed!!

This is the earliest I have had in the parish. Other migration has been generally slow with the village swallows only really back in any numbers this week. An early Lesser Whitethroat was on Langlands on 19th and I had four birds singing down Greenhills Lane yesterday. My first Common Whitethroat was on 23rd but again they were widespread by my walk this morning…   

No Swifts yet although they have been seen over Scruton and I thought I had one over Morton this morning, in fact it was a distant Hobby, presumably the bird from yesterday.

Other things from my morning walk today…

A socially-isolating Grey Heron…

Two pairs of Buzzards which are common now but are still a thrill to see, particularly when they are performing their display flight.

And this smart little insect with, in flight, a brilliant yellow abdomen. I think it’s one of the nomad bees but it's hard to distinguish the species…

The only other birds added to my village year list this week have been a single Snipe and Red-legged Partridge (a species I didn't see at all last year)…

18th April

Despite the sunny weather the winds have been distinctly chilly and this probably accounts for the relatively low numbers of summer visitors so far. I have had half a dozen Swallows through the village but all have fed and departed and ‘our’ breeding birds haven’t arrived so far.

What was a nice find was a group of four Yellow Wagtails which dropped onto a remnant puddle of floodwater down Greenhills Lane…

They are one of my favourite summer visitors and I spotted other Yellows near Langlands and on the potato fields to the north of Ainderby.

These fields also attracted rarer visitors in the form of two White Wagtails. These are the continental form of our familiar Pied Wagtail and very smart birds with a pale grey back and clean white flanks and underparts. It’s likely these birds are en-route to Iceland.

These represented the first confirmed sightings for the village

This Skylark was also photographed there, not a rare bird but it’s unusual to get a good view of these birds on the ground…

I mentioned last week about the temporary local wader habitat. Unfortunately as predicted it looks as though  dehydration is going to outstrip migration but I did have one nice find, this Ringed Plover on the pool near Langlands. 

This bird dropped in on Tuesday evening for ten minutes before climbing high and away to the south and it was pure luck that we were in the right place at the right time. It does make you wonder how much must pass through unseen each week…

Other sightings over the last few days included two Wheatear in fields down Greenhills Lane and two Red Kite near Thrintoft both spotted by Jim and Sue. Hazel watched a Kestrel trying to rob a Barn Owl of its prey near Morton bridge and I had a flock of 120 Golden Plover in a field down Potter Lane.  Most were in their striking breeding plumage but unfortunately too distant to get anything other than a blurry record shot…

12th April

It has been ages since I posted anything (a combination of inertia, work but mainly lack of birds!) but in these strange times connection with nature seems more important than ever. A couple of regular readers have also prodded me into action so I will try and get back to a regular pattern again.

What has been noticeable is the number of people now walking around the village, for example I have quite literally seen more people on Langlands in the last three weeks than in the previous thirty years combined. Perhaps we might see more people taking an interest in the wildlife of the parish in the future?  

In terms of birds it has been pretty quiet but we have seen the first summer migrants over the last few days. The earliest was Chiffchaff with singing birds from 20th March. The first Sand Martins were on the river from 25^th March, a Blackcap was singing behind our house on 7^th April and I heard a Willow Warbler the following day. Jim and Sue had two Swallows over the Garth in Ainderby on 7^th and a bird was hawking over our garden on the 8th but I have not heard of any sightings since.

Migration generally has been poor with, despite sunny weather, the cold winds possibly being the cause. This is evidenced by regular sightings still of Meadow Pipits which are always an indicator of slowed migration. This included a tight little flock of 35+ in one of the meadows on Langlands…

Pick of the birds though was a cracking cock Redstart seen on the evening of the 10^th (a nice birthday present!). This was one of only a handful of sightings in the parish and only the second adult male. Unfortunately this terrible picture in the evening light does not do the bird justice!

My early morning walk yesterday was disappointing with around 30 Sand Martins, ten Chiffchaffs and three Willow Warblers the only summer migrants seen. What was positive though was to see a singing Corn Bunting on the edge of Ainderby itself, this is the first for four or five years. Altogether on my walk I had an encouraging nine singing males of this species which has seen such a dramatic decline in numbers.

Two of these were singing from oil seed rape and it will be interesting to see if they adapt to this crop as Reed Buntings seem to have done…

Last weekend there was an unusual movement of Jays over the parish. I picked up 10 going over Greenhills Lane and Chris Knight had another group of five over Thrintoft at the same time. So it’s interesting to speculate on the total numbers involved.

For once we have some interesting looking areas of wader habitat in the parish, remnants of the winter flooding...

but they are drying fast and it is going to be a tight race between wader migration getting in full swing and these sites retaining water. The pickings have been slim so far with a single Redshank on the Langlands pool…

And a Green Sandpiper on the pool between Ainderby and Thrintoft. This latter site also attracted thirty Teal, Shelduck, a pair of Goosander and (a real Ainderby rarity!) a pair of Coot.  

One of the pleasures of my daily lockdown stroll has been the regular sightings of Hares with up to fourteen seen on a single walk.

These have included one Rumble in the Jungle boxing match where they were really going at it,whilst this pair today were aggressively chasing off Carrion Crows (by charging at them with their ears bent forward) so I suspect they have some leverets secreted somewhere in the field…

19th January

My first walk of the year along the river. Despite the frost it was very quiet with no waders and only four Goosander, Grey Wagtail and a distant flying flock of 70 Golden Plover to add to the year list.

In the fields there have been good numbers of Fieldfares in recent days, they seem to move to ground feeding after Christmas even if there are good numbers of berries still in the hedgerows.

At Sedgefield the geese are still present in good numbers but the Barnacle was the only non-Greylag present but they were joined now by groups of Curlew. Eventually these all flew off and coalesced into a single group in the Bottom Fields, I tallied up a decent count of 106 birds…

12th January

I managed to get a couple of (poor) photos of the Bean Geese this week and can see they are actually Tundra Beans. They are the more likely in Yorkshire but really looked large and long-necked in the field. Still a great Ainderby find…

A large flock of Greylags was in the same field again today…

Searching through I didn’t see any Beans but did find a single Canada (must be a genuinely wild bird!) and only the second record of Barnacle goose for the parish…  

5th January

It’s been a shamefully long time since I last posted but it has been a reflection of an incredibly quiet winter so far. Hence only a feeble year total of 97 species for 2019, the lowest since I started keeping a record of the birds seen in the parish. Amongst the ‘lowlights’, no Red-legged Partridge, no Wheatear or Siskin, only a single Little Owl etc. etc. Here’s to a more productive 2020!

Today was the first chance to properly get out. The main target was a large flock of Greylags which have taken up temporary residence in the fields below Sedgefield House. They aren’t easy to view but I tallied up over 400 birds. As I scanned them I spotted a couple of different looking birds, Taiga Bean Geese! A new species for the parish. A brilliant start to the new year…

Elsewhere it was fairly quiet but I did see two Jays, around 50 Lapwing, a Great Black-backed Gull (a species I missed last year) and good numbers of Fieldfare….