View From The Shed by Volunteer Shaun - THE NEXT GENERATION

THE NEXT GENERATION

 As we move towards the rear end of Summer a young bird’s fancy no longer turns to making baby birds. The eggs have already been made and laid. Hopefully they’ve hatched into baby birds and, with lots of parental help, should now be testing their wings in flight for the first time, either in preparation for an unimaginably long migration or to get ready for an increasingly mild Winter here in dear old Blighty.

Old Moor’s star species are no different from all the other birds that you see in your gardens, your parks or your nest boxes. They’ve been quietly busying themselves with the task of procreation and, for the most part, they’ve been rather good at it.

Visitors can hope to see our Marsh Harrier juveniles taking their daily lessons in harrying from their parents. There are at least five young from two nests. That’s potentially a lot of Marshas to be seen over the back end of our reserve. The smaller birds around our main mere are getting mighty miffed by the increased number of predators around.

Our Bitterns were definitely slow starters this year. We’ve waited and waited to see signs of chicks. And then we waited some more. It’s taken a long time and it’s much later in the season than is usual for our local birds but I can confirm that we have got some shiny new Bitternlings flying around our Dearne Valley. I suspect there may have been a failed nest or two and a second attempt but as long as there are more birds around at the end of breeding season than there were before, then it’s a major success. When I was a little boy, some fifty-odd years ago, the number of Bitterns that called the UK home had fallen into single figures. Now, thanks to conservation efforts to create specialised reed beds like those at RSPB’s Old Moor and St Aiden’s reserves, the current population is closer to a thousand birds. When rare bird numbers are as low as this, every chick is precious. That’s your hard-earned donations at work. Thank you.

We won’t know what’s happened with our third star birds until we reopen the Reedbed Path at the end of Summer but it’s a good bet that the Bearded Reedlings have been busy making eggs and subsequent chicks of their own. They’ve certainly been very active in the last few weeks with plenty of visitor sightings from the Bittern Hide and the Bus Stop sections of the reserve, so my guess is that they’ve been rushing around feeding chicks.

But the juveniles in the Valley don’t stop at our Big Three. At the end of last year we had a small flock of young Spoonbill take up residence on Old Moor’s mere. They were too young to breed but they were starting to go through the motions of ‘first dates’ - attempting to display to each other and even carrying sticks and twigs that, in later years, they would need to build nests.

It seems that those ‘later years’ may have already arrived, as a group of these large and curiously-faced birds have dropped in on us, complete with a few youngsters. They were old enough to have flown here on their own steam but still young enough to be begging for food from the parent birds.

And an even more unusual breeding species in our valley is the Spotted Flycatcher. We don’t see them very often here so to have a pair raise a brood to fledging - as has just happened - is a special delight.

The Blue Tits that had foolishly chosen to nest in our cigarette bin didn’t fare as well though. They brought their first brood of the season to fledging but their unorthodox nest box was then opened by some over-inquisitive children. No nest could survive that kind of invasion and the parents haven’t been seen since. May this be a lesson to us all; observe from a distance but never interfere.

And if you were wondering what has happened to our Robin pair, Black Eye and White Feather then I have a final update on their story. They managed to raise at least four chicks from their third brood to fledging and were seen happily and regularly feeding them beside our Welcome Shed. Of course, the fact that we leave plenty of seed and suet pellets for them has helped but it’s still been remarkable to see the amount of trust that even the smallest of these Robin chicks already places in us humans. We were even lucky enough to see the youngsters begin to pick at their own food when the parents deliberately began to leave longer and longer gaps between feeding flights. And then, one day, the chicks had dispersed. They were strong enough to look after themselves and had moved apart to find their own way in the world. Fly well, little birds.

Since then the parents have, as is the way of all Robins, become shadows of their former selves. We no longer see Black Eye at all. The gaps between her feeding flights became longer and longer and she had become noticeably worse for wear. She still hung around with food in her beak, presumably making sure that there were no hungry mouths yet to be fed, but in the end she just stopped coming. Her story has presumably ended, her energy completely spent.

White Feather is still hanging around but a more tatty and exhausted Robin you could not imagine. He’s lost almost all of his tail feathers and has a grey, blotchy appearance all over his body. He’s in a terrible state and his days are obviously numbered.

But well done you little orange birds. You did a magnificent job in raising your chicks but your work is done, you can rest easy now. It’s time for another generation to step forwards.

And the cycle continues.