Please show my best side!

A good while ago I had a rant about the rubbish left along Pond Lane. Mr Anonymous (which one I'm not allowed to know) admonished me for jumping to conclusions. He felt that they could accidentally have been dropped from a waste lorry.

So I suppose I'd better be careful about this piano, and alert everyone to the fact that they may have accidentally lost it off the back of their lorry.

I quite liked the fierce look the Rock Pipit had when I took the picture head on. It really showed how the character of the bird changes with the view you get. I think that the same is true with these two blackbirds.

He looks quite gentle when showing his profile.

This young female looks a fierce as it did when confronting the other Blackbird, shown above.

In fact it displaced the male that then went down to the large bath on the ground that is normally used by Wood Pigeons lounging about.

There was a sudden surge in the use of the feeders this afternoon, with a small group of Goldfinches brightening up the gloom.

Greenfinch and Chaffinch numbers were up a bit as well. I'll be needing to order more sunflower seeds next week.

A fishy Story

A recipe for attracting big, uncolourful, aggressive birds. Buy a nice large Halibut (first see bank manager for loan!). Do the necessary to get all the nice Halibut steaks out of it. Take the meat of the head etc for soup, and then put the bits out on the lawn and see what happens.

It won't be long before the local Carrion Crows realise that there is a free meal going. I don't know if it is by smell or sight that they pick up the information, but it doesn't take long.

Herring Gulls arrive quickly as well, but they are a bit cautious about landing at first. Because of this caution my pictures are through the glass, any attempt at opening the window left the garden birdless.

This Carrion Crow has an interesting pattern on the tips of its primaries. I have seen some with white wings, and as I showed, a completely white one in Lancashire. This ones is a bit more subtle in its aberration.

I often get two Crows down, but this was the first time that three came down to the feast. I wonder if one is a last seasons off-spring?

Last and I suppose least, the Magpies arrive to see if there are any pickings. They did make an attempt while the crows were there but go chased off.

Passing the radio pylons along Reach Road, I had a quick scan for anything sitting up there, and quite near the top noticed a Peregrine surveying the fields below.

Car Watch

I'm feeling sorry for myself at the moment. I did something I must have done about 100,000 times, got in my car, and somehow managed to tear my left calf muscle getting in. It's ridiculous, I can't tell why or how it happened, but I can't walk with out the aid a walking stick at the moment. So it's definitely p....ed of Friday today.

The car still makes a good hide and at high tide at this time of year there is ample opportunity to study British Rock Pipits at close quarters.

The good thing about Rock Pipits is they're normally not shy. In my limited experience, if you find a Water Pipit and it flushes it flies of and goes for miles in the air. It will often return not too far away, but it takes some following in the air because it stays up there for a long time. Rock Pipits generally fly short distances and then settle. Like all of these sort of subjective characters there will be exceptions but I think it is a clue if your not sure which you have. At this time of year both British and Scandinavian Rock Pipits are distinct from Water Pipits, but similar to each other. This changes after the new year and hopefully I'll get the opportunity to get some pictures of Water Pipit this year.

This is a pretty typical Rock Pipit, but a little brown job that I think is worth a second look.

"Who are you looking at then!"

There aren't many more common birds around here than Black Headed Gulls, but I still enjoy trying to get pictures of them "doing something".

This one is having a good scratch here.

And then having scratched used its beak to preen itself.

Although they seem to be always under pressure in the press, you know the lurid headlines in the daily rubbish, "Gulls terrify holiday makers by attacking them to steal their chips" etc, I still think that Herring Gulls are worth a look. They are an important starting point if you are going to sort out some of the less common gulls in this complex. We still haven't found a Caspian Gull at St Margaret's but there must surely be one in the near future. Meanwhile the fabulous pattern on this first winter Herring Gull is worth looking at.

I'm still waiting for the white head and honey iris, but today I had to be content with this bulk standard adult herring Gull.

The Autumn Leaves.........................

November Insects.

While I was in the garden, topping up the bird bath I noticed how man insects were around a flowering "Caster Oil" plant in the garden.

The Red Admiral, I suspect the same one as yesterday was perched on the plant but moved when my shadow spooked it, but not far.

There were quite a few of these flies, metallic and shining in the sun.

Wasps are still around, no longer able to make a nuisance of themselves in my moth traps, (I did run two last night but there were only four moths!) they are looking for other foods.

This Hoverfly is a Honey-bee mimic which I think is Eristalis interruptus. There were two or three around these flower heads.

The two Hoverflies, above and below look quite similar, but the eye shape and size are different. I think (Dean help!) that these are both in the genus Syrphus. The one above may be S. ribesii

This looks like S. Torvus, but there are others in this genus that are similar. (thanks to Dean for the ID),This is ribesii as well, but a female as the eyes don't meet.

On the arch above the flowers there were a couple of these bees, again I need help on the ID. Thanks Dean, again, a Common Carder Bee.

Other insects I saw today included a Common Darter (Dragonfly) and a Large White (butterfly)

Where are all the birds?

I did venture into the garden for a few minutes yesterday, mainly because I could see a butterfly flying around.

It was another late Red Admiral, that really should be getting down to hibernation soon, if it's going to make it through the winter.

Despite the amount of rain around and the dark skies in the evening the sky cleared and the full mood was like a light out in the garden. I didn't run my moth traps, partly because I was still feeling rough and didn't fancy getting up in cold to look inside them in the faint hope that there was an interesting moth and partly because the forecast looked as if it would be very wet around 3 or 4 a.m. These seems to have been pretty accurate and the weather was poor first thing but improved later.

The only birding I managed today was the garden. I got out for a few minutes to top up the feeders before coming in to wrap up warm and support the pharmaceutical industry. But where are all the birds? A few Blackbirds were around, but not as many as there often are at this time of year. This young bird spent long time have a good bath.

A Great-spotted Woodpecker did come and feed on the peanuts for a while. The black cap and red nape mean that this is a male. It was the only one I saw today.

Even the finches were in short supply, just a couple of Greenfinches and one Chaffinch came down to feed. I don't know if the awful weather has cleared a lot out, or whether there is still enough food in the fields and hedgerows, so that the number coming into gardens is limited. I don't think that this is the answer, because before we went up to Clitheroe there were loads of Goldfinches and Greenfinches coming in to feed. So far this year there haven't been any Siskins or Bramblings in the garden, but it not too late for them to come.

Before the garden safari I went round and straightened all the arches, they always suffer in the high winds. I added supports back and front to this one, but the last few days once again have taken their toll.

Ever wondered what it is?

Today wasn't nice. The wind got up to 50mph in gusts and the rain was nasty. To compound it, the cold that I was developing in Clitheroe came to it full blown maturity today and my ears, throat and all my joint ache. It's a good job that the medicine I take for colds is so palatable, hot Whisky, (or better still Whiskey if you got some Jameson's) honey, lemon and sugar. It probably doesn't work, but it is at least worth trying.

Looking at my study window there were a few drops of rain, had I been looking west instead of east there would have been many more.

When I was at the vets the other day, visiting a sick Bonxie, I finally got to see what this doorway was all about. I've passed it dozens of times but never stopped to look. It is the remains of St Jame's Church, and is almost nest to the swimming pool.

Originally a Saxon church it is assumed that St James's is one of the three, unnamed, Dover churches listed in the Domesday Book. The present structure dates from about the 12th century. As well as being a place of worship the church was also the meeting place of the official courts of the Barons of the Cinque Ports. Their last meeting was in 1851 and was presided over by the Duke of Wellington as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.

By the 19th century the old church was in need of enlargement and restoration. It was decided that it was not possible to build a sufficiently large church on the old site at the top of St James's Street, and a new site further north on Maison Dieu Road was selected.

The new church was built between 1860-2 and when it opened became the main parish church. The old church was used by a group of French protestants for a few years and was eventually restored in 1869.

This picture, copied from the information plaque, shows the original church.

The old St James's was severely damaged by enemy shell fire during World War 2. It was hit several times by shells, the tower eventually collapsing. In 1948 it was decided to leave it as a ruin to commemorate the people of Dover who, like the church, suffered much during the war.

The new St James's Church survived the war relatively unscathed but much of the parish it served lay in ruins and it was declared redundant and demolished.

Bobbing and Winking

Dippers have always held some sort of fascination for me. Partly, because living in the south-east there are few opportunities to watch them, but more because of their unique characters. Worldwide there are five species of dipper and they are all very similar in there life styles.

The Dipper we have in England is one of the twelve or so sub-species of the White-throated Dipper that that stretches from Britain to the Himalayas and China. They frequently bob up and down, and modern research indicates that this is a method of showing potential predators that they are fit and able to look after themselves.

They are not the only passerines (song-birds) that are found using streams and fast flowing rivers as their prime habitats, but they are the only ones that spend a considerable time under water hunting for their food. Their food is mostly aquatic insect larvae, although they do take fresh water shrimps and occasionally small fish such as Miller's Thumbs, or Bullheads.

Another signalling adaptation they have is the blinking of the upper white eye-lid. This can be seen from a surprising distance.

The Dipper, when actively feeding makes frequent sorties into the water and it has various adaptions to help it it cope with this exacting way of life. As soon as it enters the water the heart rate slows down and speeds up again when the bird leaves the water.

The blood has a higher concentration of haemoglobin so it can can carry more oxygen. The Dipper frequently dives in shallow water, normally less than 1 metre deep and can stay submerged for up to 20 seconds, though most dives are for 4 or 5 seconds.

A lot of debate about how Dippers stayed submerged in fast flowing torrents was settled by filming them in tanks. This showed they the used their strong wings to maintain their position in the water by rapid wing-beats, and this also allowed forward movement. The legs are also used in a running motion, to help propel the bird, or are used to cling to rocks on the bed.

I watched the two Dippers around the bridge at West Bradford (nowhere near and nothing like the Yorkshire Bradford). Once again one of them spend some time, near the bank, on a prominent rock singing. Mate fidelity between seasons is quite high in Dippers, although some males are bigamous or polygynous. The fact that this one was joined by the second bird, for a while, made me wonder it they were a pair, still maintaining a territory.

One of them flew up stream in a blur of wings and I caught up with it on a little weir a few hundred metres up stream. Unfortunately it was content with the opposite side and was it too far for more pictures. Dippers have linear territories, along the rivers, and they range from a few hundred metres to three Km in length, depending on the productivity of the river. When I left the bird, it was with a promise that this summer I would return and get some pictures of the family when they have one.