Here is another blog fix from our guest writer Jo Jones, who works with the RSPB Brecks Team as a stone-curlew field worker. Find out what June was like for her.....
5 June
Again, a tractor driver rings me. He is planning to cultivate a game strip tomorrow. I know the eggs are about to hatch and ask if he can bring forward the work to today. He readily agrees. I go to check the state of the nest. I find the adults both close by the nest and reluctant to leave the area -something is happening. I get closer and gasp. The egg tooth of each chick is showing through a tiny hole in each egg. The eggs are shaking with the tiny chicks’ efforts to get free into the world. The driver gets his work done, leaving a wide area uncultivated round the nest. These just hatching chicks are safe from the hoe at least.
Image of tractor work. Credit Jo Jones
Traditional sheep are grazing heathland. It is May but they have young lambs which are enjoying the warmth of the sun. Each lamb is given its own individuality by a mix of almost shiny black spots and sploshes on their white fleece. Their legs, like wobbly pipe cleaners buckle a little as they try to keep up with their mother, as if they are not strong enough to take the weight of their body. One lamb is underneath its mother, feeding, tail wagging – but then Mum decides to move on and all but walks over her lamb as she does so. These wobbly-legged new-born creatures are tougher than they look.
In my scope I have a magnified view of a sheep’s rear end, teats pink and swollen with milk. The stone-curlew - which I need to move to show me what it is up to – impassively stares into the distance, absolutely still. A young rabbit pokes its head up from a burrow, ears alert; a lapwing feeds, its rusty rear showing as it bobs forward after an insect. Still ‘my’ stone-curlew stares impassively, giving nothing away. This bird does not care that it is Friday, getting on in the evening and I would quite like to get home. Skylarks sing above me – the light is glowing. I am happy really to stay in this ‘other world’ for a bit.
10 June
I am setting out in one direction when Kevin rings. He is about to cultivate a strip of land ready for sowing with nectar-rich flowers’ seed. He knows chicks hatched nearby. Changing my plans, I go straight there and to my delight see adults and a chick feeding. (To my delight, as too often these birds don’t make it past the tiny chick stage.) Kevin waits while I dash, catch and hold the chick. Then he rattles down the strip with his tractor. I watch as his hoes slice the ground where I have just picked up the chick from. While he finishes cultivating, I ring the chick, now three weeks old, with a unique colour ring combination. Hopefully, we will spot this chick at an autumn roost, (where stone-curlews hang out together before migrating). Then we will know that we made possible this bird’s survival.
Image- Jo Jones ringing chick. Credit. David Mackey - Macks Photography
With delight I stop by at a farmhouse to let a farmer know I’ve seen ‘his’ chick. On my way out of the yard I can’t resist going into his barn, following chattering that sounds something like a primary school playground at home time. I see each apex of roof timbers has a mud nest, each holding swallow chicks calling to be fed. As I come out, their parents are soaring over my head, catching the next lot of insects to deliver to their insatiable young.
11 June
As I eat my lunch a visitor lands on my finger, this ant-like insect is shimmering turquoise, as if dressed in finest Thai silk. Even if going to a ball, I would be shy about dressing in such finery. Nature, I realise, has no such inhibitions. This is a creature out to impress.
12 June (with photos)
Mark rings from his tractor cab. He was about to cultivate a corner of field ready for drilling with nectar seed mix. “Jo, there’s a pair of stone-curlews here, do you want to come and check them out before I do the work? I don’t want to destroy anything.” When I arrive the birds run as soon as I stop my vehicle, a sure sign they have something going on. I wait and watch as the birds skulk back, stopping every few metres to check for danger. I am over 200 metres away and in my vehicle, yet I am still too close for them to be comfortable. Their behaviour suggests they have chicks. I carefully identify where they are – so often when I walk into a field, markers, which seemed obvious when looking through a scope, are lost as a whole new perspective opens up. I walk to the spot where I saw the adults, slowing right down when I get close to the target area. Eggs and chicks are easily not seen and trodden on. I catch my breath. Lying against the ground, between a scattering of barley stems is a tiny stone-curlew chick. I had scoured this farm looking for stone-curlew nests, but had missed this patch. But for Mark, this chick – or eggs if the cultivating had been done a few days earlier – would have been under the plough. I put the chick in a cloth bag to keep it calm while Mark rapidly cultivates the ground. Tom, another driver, comes to take a look as, work finished, I tuck the chick back in amongst barley stems to help it stay hidden until its parents return. Tom sees where I have put the chick but only when he is within a couple of metres is he able to pick the chick out against the ground. “Oh, wow, there it is. You would never see that from a tractor, would you?”
The adult parents fly round at a distance, calling mournfully, a sound we call ‘chick wailing’. Their calls tug at my heart. But I know that the instant we are out the way, they will come running back to their chick. We leave swiftly to let them do just that.
Image stone-curlew chick in vegetation
15 June
I see my first turtle dove of the season, feeding on the weedy edge of a field. This bird is distinguished – as a species and a beauty – by deep honey coloured mottling on its wings. The sweet scent of pineapple fills the air as my feet brush the feathery leaves of pineapple weed, which has sprung up along field edges.
16 June
I’m coming to the end of a hot weary day. I have walked miles with little success. I set out across yet another sugar beet field, where the plants still look small enough to make the area attractive to stone-curlews. The heat makes my eyes ache, the land is baked dry, the leaves of the crop are wilting. I stop and scan for any sign of my so-difficult-to-see birds. Nothing. I walk further. Scan again. Still nothing - except I am more hot and tired. I set off again. Suddenly, in the midst of this seemingly arid landscape, I am joined by a red admiral butterfly, fluttering between the small weeds that have sprung up between the beet. I marvel that something so small, so inconspicuous in the vast scheme of all that is going on in the world, should have lifted my spirits. Yet I feel like I have been blessed.
18 June
The blazing sun bleaches the sandy soil white. As I watch a stone-curlew on its nest through a scope, heat haze shimmers the bird’s edges until it and the sandy ground blend into one and the bird disappears. A cloud comes over. For a few seconds the bird re-emerges like a vision. The sun comes back out and the bird vanishes once more against the sand and flints. Nature’s magic.
As I ring two chicks, skylarks sing constantly overhead. Unimpressed, the chicks glower.
I walk across a plot, kept fallow for ground nesting birds. Three brown hares sit up tall, ears high, then bound off. A pair of lapwings protest at my presence with dipping dives and peewit calls.
Image brown hare by Chris Knights
My first chick of the summer fledges. I walked out onto the plot where this chick has been stuck on the ground for the last 10 weeks, either as an egg or chick; I caught sight of it running and then watched it take to the air. I feel like a proud parent watching their child walk off into school for the first time! Now this chick is flying, it is so much safer... The farmer has kept this plot, specially set aside for ground nesting birds, in great condition. As a result the adults may well go for having a second brood. Here’s hoping.
23 June
I find two eggs, this stone-curlew’s third attempt at breeding young. These birds are persistent. However, their re-lay attempts are only possible because of the provision by the farmer – and tax-payer – of fallow plots kept in a condition to mimic Brecks heath, with bare ground and minimal vegetation. The plot this pair have chosen for their territory has been kept immaculately: the result – two beautiful speckled eggs of one of the rarest species in the country.
22 June
I startle a stone-curlew so it flies from an uncultivated corner of field... still skylarks are singing high in the sky.
24 June
I am again at a fallow plot. At the plot’s far edge, two brown hares play-fight, bounding in circles, occasionally squaring up to each other, fists going. A lapwing gives a squeaky warning peewee call as she lands close. She – grey smudges on her white face tell me she is female - stands tall to see what is about. I catch sight of her young chick, still downy, searching through weeds for insects. No wonder she is taking care to see what is about. A yellowhammer sings for ‘a little bit of bread and no cheese’ from the hedge. Skylarks still sing from the sky...
Multiple, miniscule, yellow flowers of lady’s bedstraw are now flowering on their slim stems; setting off the bigger, thicker, purple-blue viper’s bugloss with which they share the heaths and verges. Even better, for me, nestled down in amongst this flora, is a stone-curlew incubating two creamy, brown squiggled eggs. Their parent’s yellow eye and beak, complete this fragile masterpiece, a masterpiece whose value is incalculable.