Lancashire wildlife

I have just finished reading Winged Sentinels: Birds and Climate Change by Janice Wormworth and Cagan H Sekercioglu and it was a cracking read. If you are interested to learn about birds and climate change, and anyone interested in birds and conservation should be, and what effect climate change will have on bird populations then you will enjoy this book. It is a worrying read at times, but then the whole issue of climate change is worrying.


The blurb on the back of the book states "from ice-dependent penguins of Antarctica to songbirds that migrate across the Sahara, birds' responses provide early warning signs of the impact of climate change. Winged Sentinels: Birds and climate change uses colourful examples to show how particular groups of birds face heightened threats from climate change, and to explore how we can help birds adapt in a warming world. Generously illustrated with colour photographs, the book is a fascinating insight into what climate change means for birds, and the potential consequences of ignoring these warning signs". I couldn't have put it better myself!

Chapter headings are:

1. Phenology: seasonal timing and mismatch
2. Migratory birds face turbulence
3. Range shifts and reshuffled communities
4. Seabirds herald ocean changes
5. Climate change, abundance and extinction
6. Tropical warming and habitat islands
7. Shifting ground on conservation

I found the first chapter particularly interesting on seasonal timing and mismatch as this is something I am noting with my nest boxes and in fact I have touched upon this on my blog these past few posts. So go on, teat yourself, you won't be disappointed.

On Sunday Gail and I were once again on the nest box trail and our first port of call were our Tree Sparrow boxes on the moss. Due to weather restraints last weekend we hadn't managed to check them so this was the first visit and it had me scratching my head!

All fifteen boxes were occupied by Tree Sparrows but the puzzling aspect were the boxes with complete nests and no eggs or young and a couple of boxes with flattened nests as if the young had fledged! If this is the case then there is a huge amount of variability between boxes in terms of what stage of the breeding cycle they are at.

Seven boxes had young that were too small to ring and two boxes had full clutches of eggs being incubated. This means that next weekend there should be a few Tree Sparrow pulli to ring. The remaining six boxes were the puzzling ones, so it will be interesting to see what they're like next week.


After the Moss we headed off to Bowland to our boxes in the Hodder Valley. We checked all 39 boxes and 17 hadn't advanced at all from the previous week e.g. still empty or still a quarter nest etc, so these will be dropped off next weekend's round. We had eight pairs of Pied Flycatchers incubating full clutches and I managed to lift two females off the nest; both were controls so it will be interesting to see where they have come from. A further two boxes had complete Pied Flycatcher nests in them that were empty last week, so potentially we could have ten pairs this year which would be a record. This is probably as a result of under-occupation by Tits.


We had four boxes occupied by Great Tits, four by Blue Tits and a single box with six, too small to ring, Nuthatches in. So next weekend we will have the Nuthatches to ring and possibly up to eight female Pied Flycatchers to lift off the nest. Let's hope for some decent weather.

Today I had the pleasure of working on a farm that borders the River Wenning in the area of the beautiful Lune valley. The weather was perhaps what you would say a little mixed; sunshine and showers.

As I walked down towards the river I noticed a few Swifts feeding above the yard buildings and then when I got down to the river there was a good 20 hawking insects above the woodland. Presumably the damp low cloud conditions had brought some aerial insects down to low levels. Further downstream I had another eleven Swifts brinigng my total for the farm to 35.

The large barn in this particular yard is full of holes and crevices in the walls and under the eaves and consequently full of House Sparrows. I don't know how many pairs nest in this barn, but there is a fair few. Walking around the fields and heading towards the river I noticed at least three pairs of Lapwings and two pairs of Oystercatchers on territory, with the Lapwings favouring the bare re-seeded fields. However, when walking back across a field with good grass cover, longer than I expected a Lapwing would choose, I came across the nest with four eggs below. All were warm and obviously being successfully brooded by the female. When the pair of Lapwings selected this nest site the sward height would of course been a lot less.


Along the river were Sand Martins, Dippers and Reed Bunting. In a re-seeded field next to the river I noticed four small waders running around and displaying to one another next to a small flood. I lifted my bins and could see they were four Little Ringed Plovers. What took me by surpsise was the fact that they were in a re-seeded field, although it was fairly bare with just the first signs of grass growth. The water levels on the river were quite high and this may have pushed them off their more favoured shingle beds.

Heading back to the yard a flock of 18 Linnets lifted from the newly re-seeded field, presumably feeding on seeds that had yet to germinate. On my way back I called for a coffee in the cafe/post office at Dunsop Bridge (the exact geographic centre of Great Britain) and noticed at least 10-15 Swifts feeding above the buildings adjacent to the River Hodder.