Flocking starlings

click photo to enlarge
Ever since, during childhood, I developed an interest in birds  I've enjoyed watching and learning from these fascinating creatures. Over the years, as my knowledge grew, I came to see certain species and their habits as markers of the changing seasons. The arrival of the wheatear and the call and tumbling flight of the lapwing were pleasurable and sure markers that spring had arrived. Similarly, the flickering wings and screech of the swift said "summer" just as surely as the warmth of the sun. The onset of autumn is always marked by the gathering of swallows on the wires and the distinctive calls from skeins of geese in lines and "Vs" overhead. And equally representative of that season is the evening flocking of starlings as they gather before going to roost in a favoured place.

When I lived in Lancashire I often saw starlings in clouds, thousands strong, so-called "murmurations", heading for the supporting metal-work under North Pier in Blackpool. This was a favoured site and an impressive sight. I often wondered what a night spent sleeping above a stormy sea was like for these birds. Since my move to Lincolnshire I haven't seen a gathering of starlings as big as the one in Lancashire. However, I do regularly see flocks of a couple of hundred assembling on wires or pylons before going to roost. I'm aware of a few small roosts in conifers and hawthorns, but I've yet to discover a large roost.

Today's photograph is part of a group we saw one evening, as the light was beginning to fail, on some wires on the nearby Fen. It was about fifty to a hundred strong. I took a photograph as they departed, reminded of a similar shot I took a few years ago of rooks.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 37.1mm (100mm - 35mm equiv.) cropped
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

I really don't photograph birds...

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...except when I do! Today's photograph refers back to a post I made in 2008 which itself referred to a couple of posts entitled "I don't photograph birds" and "I DO photograph birds"(my best bird photograph). The latter pair are on a short-lived blog, PhotoQuoto, that I published during a break from PhotoReflect.

The fact is I'm not a bird photographer even though I have an interest in birds. But, as I explain in the posts referred to above, if a bird presents itself to me, in a way I can't ignore, or in a manner I find interesting, then I'll photograph it. This happened on a walk near Sleaford a few days ago. The semi-albino blackbird has more albinism than I've ever personally seen in this species, and that made it sufficiently noteworthy for me to take the shot. The heron is probably the bird I've photographed more than any other. Its large size, I suppose, compensates for my lack of long lenses. It also has the happy knack of presenting itself in photographically appealing ways. Here the bird was on the opposite bank of the river in a patch of sunlight, looking like it was the star in the spotlight. They're not great photographs. In fact, every other photograph of a heron I've taken is better than this one. But, they are interesting to me, and are further evidence that my photographic ouvre extends to more than inanimate objects!

photographs and text © Tony Boughen



Photo 1
Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 140mm (210mm - 35mm equiv.) - cropped
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Private schools and song thrushes

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The other day I walked past the scene shown in this photograph and fell to thinking. My first thought centred on the song thrush that was singing its heart out from the top of a roadside tree even though it was ten minutes to eleven in the evening. Was this, I wondered, due to the fact that light remained in the sky or was it because of the street lights' illumination? Perhaps it was the combination of the two light sources that prompted its nocturnal canticle.

My second thought was one of despair. How long, I wondered, will our country have to suffer the dead weight of private education delivered by our so-called public schools? Is there no political party prepared to look at the clear evidence that private education not only impedes our country's economic progress through the values that it imparts, is one of the main causes of inequality that affects the rich every bit as much as the poor, and is a form of schooling that doesn't even deliver the educational goods that it professes to offer? One would imagine that a socialist party would give some thought to the issue, but no. You'd also think that parties of the right that espouse market values and a "survival of the fittest" culture would have no truck with a school system that produces students with inflated examination qualifications (see the link between average quality of university degree achieved by pupils of state and public schools with the same school examination grades), or that promotes advancement through socio-economic selection and networks rather than ability. But no, our private public schools continue to flog their wares to the well-heeled, the buyers and sellers profit, and the country continues to suffer from their self-interest.

The domed chapel shown in silhouette was completed in 1901. It serves Giggleswick School, "a co-educational boarding and day school", that charges fees to educate pupils. It is one of the many private educational establishments that I think our country would do well to dispense with for the better education and prosperity of all.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 37.1mm (100mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.9
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Doves, pigeons and breeding seasons

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One of the things I remember from my younger days, a time when I pursued bird-watching with a deeper interest than I do now, is the length of the breeding season of doves and pigeons. To my knowledge it exceeded that of any of the other species of British birds. The rock dove, woodpigeon and others of the Family Columbidae, often begin nesting in February and sometimes don't complete the process until November, having had several broods in the intervening months. That may, in part, account for the very large numbers of woodpigeon that the country now supports.

The collared dove is also a member of this family of birds. When I lived in the Yorkshire Dales I never saw a single example. However, my move to eastern England in 1971 immediately remedied that, and I soon became familiar with their insistent and monotonous call from March through to October. Given that this relative newcomer to our shores (it arrived in numbers only in the middle of the last century) has quickly achieved the status of one of the least liked birds, it cannot be good news for many that it is a prolific breeder.

I don't know a great deal about the habits of feral pigeons, but the fact that they are, in the main, descended from the wild rock dove, suggests that they too will have a long breeding season. Consequently, when I saw this white dove and a second parti-coloured bird in the porch at Sutterton church recently, I assumed that they were reconnoitring it for a nest site rather than seeking any kind of shelter. The bird in the photograph allowed us to get quite close, and never left its perch. Only when I came to process my photograph did it occur to me that it was trying to give some symmetry to the carvings on the column capital by reflecting the stone bird on the left!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 105mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/640 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -1.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Ring-necked parakeet invaders

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Walking along Rotherhithe Street in London the other day my ears and then my eyes were drawn to a ring-necked parakeet flying above me between the warehouse conversions and new flats that line the way. Its repeated raucous screech and its bright colours seemed out of place in that man-made canyon: a steamy jungle or baking sub-equatorial plain seemed more appropriate. And yet, a growing population of these birds can be found in London and in many other localities in western Europe.

The first recorded British breeding in the wild of this bird was in Norfolk in 1855, so escapees have long been known to survive in our colder climate. However, the next recorded occurence was not until 1969, in Kent. Thereafter colonies became established in south-east England, in the north-west (I saw them occasionally on the Fylde) and elsewhere. On the afternoon of the day I saw the Rotherhithe bird we went to Greenwich Park. Walking into the trees only a short way from the heavily peopled Royal Observatory and National Maritime Museum found us surrounded by ring-necked parakeets. In that location they were as common as the carrion crows and wood pigeons, and much noisier. The berry-laden trees were clearly the attraction, and I managed to photograph this bird in the act of eating. My shot is fairly heavily cropped - I don't possess a lens capable of close-ups of birds.

On my return home I did a bit of digging concerning the spread of this species in the UK. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) estimates a resident breeding population of c.5000 birds, mainly in Surrey, Kent and Sussex. Other authorities judge there to be double that number, and it has become one of the 20 most commonly seen birds in London. In 2009 Natural England relaxed the legislation on this species and monk parakeets allowing their control (i.e. killing) in some circumstances. Whether the ring-necked parakeet is allowed to spread and increase further in numbers will doubtless depend on the impact it has on indigenous species and fruit growing. Will it attain the status of the little owl and the pheasant, birds that we no longer think of as non-native species, or will it be subjected to the sort of culling that has reduced the number of ruddy ducks from around 5000 to about 120?

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 300mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 500
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Birds, man and the plough

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Today I was looking at the bird box in my willow tree. I placed it there two years ago in the hope that a blue tit (Parus caeruleus) would nest in it. Unfortunately it has been spurned each season; as was the other one I put in the cherry tree. So I've decided that I'll enlarge the hole to make it suitable for the slightly larger great tit (Parus major): I've had better luck with that species in the past.

Those thoughts prompted a short reflection on the way in which birds have adapted to man. Our obsessive tidiness has reduced the number of naturally occurring holes that the blue and great tits formerly used, and nest boxes now provide a significant number of the sites favoured by these species. House martins (Delichon urbica), as their name suggests, have also found man to be a useful provider of nesting places. They get their name from the habit of building their cup-shaped mud nests under the eaves of houses. Before man built houses with eaves these birds built their nests under overhangs on cliffs. I'm only aware of one location in England where that still happens - Malham Cove in Yorkshire; everywhere else man-made structures are preferred. So too with swallows (Hirundo rustica), a bird that I've never seen construct its nest anywhere other than in a building. In the UK one of the key bird habitats is the man-made suburban garden, those that naturally frequent woodland edges finding it particularly to their liking. The food that friendly households put out for them is also a big incentive to hang around dwellings, especially in the leaner winter months.

Of course birds aren't infinitely adaptable to the activities of man, and many species - particularly those of open farmland - are in steep decline. However, today I saw a scene that must have been replayed every year since a farmer first ploughed a field: black-headed gulls (Larus ridibundus) (and rooks) following the tractor, picking up the morsels revealed in the turned soil: a symbiotic relationship if ever I saw one. It being February a few birds were showing their breeding plumage of a full head cap of chocolate-brown feathers, though none would be ready for nest building for another three months. I took a couple of shots of the tractor and plough working the Fenland field, one as it headed towards me, and this one that shows the birds to better effect after it had turned away and started its next set of furrows.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Rooks

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I recall that on at least one occasion during my childhood the gun club in the market town where I lived took their weapons at the beginning of April and blasted the nests in a nearby rookery. Twigs, adults and young birds were destroyed by the co-ordinated fire of multiple shot guns. Quite what was achieved by this I don't know, but it seemed to satisfy the blood-lust of those involved.

Like most large, black birds the rook (Corvus frugilegus) has something of a bad name. Yes, it can eat newly planted seed, grazes on young plants, and sometimes joins the carrion crow (Corvus corone) in feeding on dead wild and farm animals. But, it also makes great inroads into invertebrates that are destructive to plant life, and deals very effectively with plagues of caterpillars. So it is by no means clear that it has an entirely negative effect on arable farms here in Lincolnshire or elsewhere. Nonetheless, the irregular persecution of rooks continues, sometimes by illegal means.

Perhaps if people knew more of the habits of the rook they might view it in a different light. The species is highly gregarious (just like people), and is thought to be mainly monogamous, often having the same mate for life (also like us!) In the UK it tends to be a home bird, rarely moving more than 60 miles or so from the place it was born, though rooks from Northern Europe do migrate south and west for the winter, swelling the populations of the countries where the weather is milder. It is a colonial breeder, favouring the very tops of tall trees that are located in clumps. My village, very typically for England, has a rookery in the tallest trees of the churchyard. People have long ascribed to the rook intelligence greater than that found in most birds, and have often described an apparently organised meeting of them on the ground as a "parliament." Recent research has proved that it's no bird-brain, showing that in some circumstances it is capable of finding and using tools to secure its food, something that is not observed in other species.

On a recent evening walk we came upon a couple of hundred rooks strung out along some wires. I took a photograph of the birds sitting there in serried ranks. However, as we rounded a line of trees they decided we were too close for comfort and in their fright took flight. The cropped image above shows a small group of the much larger total as they swirled and tumbled off the wires and caught the wind that carried them to a safe distance from us.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 110mm (220mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/2000 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Sculpture as perch

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Whenever I visit Whitby in North Yorkshire I trudge up the steps of West Cliff, to the statue of Captain Cook at the summit, and gaze across the harbour at St Mary's Church and the Abbey. Then I turn and look at the figure of Cook himself and remember that there has NEVER, EVER been an occasion that I done this without there being a herring gull sitting on his head undermining the dignity of his pose, his fine clothes and his serious countenance, making him look absolutely ridiculous, not to say risible!

On my forays into Boston, Lincolnshire, I frequently stop and look up from the Market Place at the tower of St Botolph's church. On these occasions my gaze passes the statue of Herbert Ingram, a Swineshead man, founder of the Illustrated London News and Member of Parliament for Boston. I invariably find that he too is topped by either a black-headed gull or a pigeon that is intent on turning his hair white. In the recent past I've photographed three sculptures with birds on them, two in Southport (the other here) and one in Rotherhithe, London. I used to fondly imagine that gulls perched on statues of people to get their own back for the hard time we give them. However, finding birds standing on bird statues rather scotches that theory.

Today's photograph shows both black-headed gulls and feral pigeons making use of the handy perches provided by the outstretched bodies of Stephen Broadbent's 2002 sculpture in Lincoln, entitled "Empowerment". Despite the fact that the two figures of the piece reach out to one another across the River Witham I'm guessing that neither the sculptor nor those who commissioned it thought too much about its usefulness to the local avian population. I think this sculpture is better than many, but it's not one that especially grabs me. I do, however, dislike its title: it sounds like its been dreamed up by a council committee that lives for the latest jargon. However, the birds of this part of Lincoln love the sculpture. On one occasion I counted almost thirty crammed onto its "perching points". I'm not particularly keen on the supports for the two figures in this sculpture, but I quite like the two almost touching figures, so I made them (along with their feathered friends) the subject of my photograph.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm (80mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The carrion crow

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"Carein Crowes...neuer medle with any quicke flesh."
The earliest known record of the name Carrion Crow in English, 1528

Standardized names for British Birds appeared much later than is generally realised. Not until A List of British Birds by a Committee of the British Ornithologists' Union in 1883 was a comprehensive list compiled that used only one vernacular name for each species. Yarrell, from 1843 onwards had attempted standardization, but used multiple names for some species. In 1768 Pennant's British Zoology (Birds) had adapted English names to match Linnaeus' scientific classification. In fact, not until the second half of the seventeenth century did bird books appear in English, though authors like Merrett (1667), Charleton (1668) and Ray (1678) translated or used Latin names or borrowings from continental authors.

Of course, the great majority of our bird names are folk names that arose anonymously. They often show regional variation (e.g. Lapwing, Green Plover, Peewit, Tewit), apply to the more common birds, and were sometimes shared between those that we now recognise as separate species (e.g. Marsh Tit, Willow Tit). In the distant past no distinction was made between the Carrion Crow and the Rook: they were both called simply "crows". However, with the rise of the study of natural history observers noted the rook's whitish beak, feathered legs, different call, more gregarious habits and greenish (as opposed to purplish) iridescence. And, later, the similarity of the carrion crow to another crow with patches of grey was realised, as was the interbreeding where their ranges overlapped. Consequently carrion crows became Corvus corone corone, and Royston crows, later called hooded crows, the sub-specific Corvus corone cornix.

However, none of this improved on the bad name that the carrion crow had with country people. Far from being seen as a useful scavenger that cleared the land of dead carcases, its habit of raiding poultry pens, game-bird hatcheries and the nests of songbirds, ensured that its name was as black as its feathers, and it remained the subject of persecution. In literature Shakespeare, Blake, Poe and others used the bird to represent the dead, or as an omen of impending doom. Which is a shame, because carrion crows are attractive birds that can be enjoyed in a wide variety of habitats from mountain-sides to the sea-shore. Today's image was taken on the slopes of the Pennines and shows a bird in a characteristic pose, searching for food from the vantage point of a dead tree. Unfortunately, the way I've taken the shot, in ominous-looking evening light and silhouette, reinforces the stereotype of the species as a lone, malevolent, brooding presence, ever on the look-out for its prey!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E500
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: N/A

Feather

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"Birdbrain n. colloq. a stupid or flighty person" (Concise Oxford Dictionary).

Anyone with a passing interest or proximity to birds can't help but notice the seeming dim-wittedness of our avian friends. I feed the birds each morning, putting some food on a bird table, and the remainder at various locations around my house. The bird table used to be the domain of a group of about 30 house sparrows that frequent a hedge near my kitchen window. However, for the past few weeks a particularly belligerent female blackbird has taken command of this feeding station, and spends her time hastily swallowing food between attempts to deny any to the sparrows. And she's successful. But, she must use as much or more energy in her displays of aggression as she gets from the food! Furthermore, 30 sparrows acting together should easily be able to dislodge a single blackbird. But they waste their time and energy taking turns to hover around the bird table, out of range of the blackbird's beak, in futile attempts to get the food. Birdbrained indeed.

However, in my experience few of our feathered friends can demonstrate feeble-mindedness as well as the guinea-fowl. A memory of my early teenage years is being sent into the woods by my uncle to find their nests. They were spread over a wide area, were never near their enclosure, with many simply abandoned, forgotten by their owners. My friends' guinea-fowl are equally imbecilic, and can spend literally hours walking back and forth alongside a fence searching for a way through, with no thought that they can simply flap their wings and fly over it.

Today's photograph is a feather from one of those guinea-fowl. What a beautiful object this small thing is, and how much more is revealed by the close inspection that a macro lens allows. I shot the feather (not the guinea-fowl!) in strong, natural side-light, on a dark background of textured plastic to restrict the colour range and accentuate the patterns. Birdbrained though they are, it is easy to forgive birds their mindlessness for the great beauty of their form and song, and for the pleasure that their company brings to our lives.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f18
Shutter Speed: 1/2
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7EV
Image Stabilisation: Off