It’s been a fine autumn here on Hope Farm, with some excellent sunny early autumn days, crops have been harvested and next year's are sown and already growing. One of the great things in being associated with the farm is that we often have plenty of positive stories to report, and this blog post has not one but three such stories.
Readers of the blog will have heard the news that barn owls bred on the farm for only the second time in 11 years. I’m happy to report that five of the six nestlings successfully fledged, which is a remarkable feat for such a late nest. Here’s hoping that we have these birds back breeding again in 2012.
Twice a year we contribute data to the Partridge Count Scheme organised by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT); the surveys are conducted once in spring (which is used to calculate breeding abundance) and another is conducted in autumn to determine breeding success. The farm is one of over 700 that conduct their own surveys to find coveys of both grey and red-legged partridges, with count data reported to GWCT.
This autumn we found two coveys of grey partridges of 14 and 13 birds respectively and four coveys of red-legged containing a total of 40 birds. Grey partridges first held territory on the farm in 2004 and 2011 saw five territories on the farm. Indeed recently, we have heard that a covey of grey partridges actually managed to stop the traffic in the village... Definitely more than we could fit in one of our pear trees!
One exciting thing about autumn for many birders is that it affords the ability to see an array of rare migrants, primarily on the east coast at RSPB reserves such as Minsmere or Titchwell Marsh. Many eastern species overshoot mainland Europe and find themselves grounded in the UK at this time of year. Most of these vagrants are small warblers; similar in size to the well known chiffchaff and very few get further inland.
So imagine my surprise when taking my walking boots out of the boot of my car a few mornings back, when I heard an unfamiliar call that is best described as a cross between the contact calls of coal tit and pied wagtail from trees in the farm garden. I thought to myself that sounds like a yellow-browed warbler, nah I must be hearing things... then it called again. Swiftly I picked up my bins and headed to where the call was coming from and quickly found this tiny, strikingly marked warbler feeding high in an ash tree.
Three colleagues working here were frantically contacted and all four of us had excellent views of the bird that was hyperactively feeding on insects for about 30 minutes. Local birders were made aware of the find and details sent to the local bird club; alas the bird was not relocated after the initial 30 minutes (the photo below is not the farm bird, but shows how the bird differs from both chiffchaff and willow warbler).
Yellow-browed warblers breed in the far east in Siberian taiga forests (not to be confused with Siberian tiger!) and are meant to spend winter in China and Nepal. They're quoted as being the commonest small warblers wintering in Thailand and Hong Kong, so it's quite an unusual find in rural Cambridgeshire.
Winter counts of birds using the farm start shortly - any interesting findings will be posted on this blog.