Singing in the rain - 19 May

Recent Sightings Friday 19^th May   Singing in the rain - Thanks to volunteer Phil for his report and photos.

The dry spell through April and May is well and truly over.  An overcast morning gave way to heavy and sometimes torrential rain, hail and thunder in the early afternoon.  I became marooned in Nettley’s Hide eating lunch while watching the rain looking like stair rods.   This photo shows the ditch while the rain was just heavy

I had to feel sorry for one of our wardens who was visible out on the North Brooks mending fences in the worst of the weather.  Also for some our girls from the Visitor Centre who, having come out for a lunchtime leg stretch and fresh air to view the wildlife from the hide, then had to return to their afternoon work through the downpour.  I was able to wait until the rain eased off and reflect on the fact that it’s not such a hard life being a volunteer.

I had spent much of the dry morning in Fattengates courtyard hoping to see and hear a nightingale there and for most of the time was tantalised by some brief snatches of song.  Then my colleague Keith arrived and immediately found the bird on top of a pile of old wood, thereby making one our first-time visitors very happy. 

Everyone at Pulborough Brooks agrees that so far this has been a rather muted nightingale season and there has been much speculation about why this is.  The most favoured theory is that the persistent cool easterly and northerly winds experienced in April and May have kept some birds back on the continent, although to set against this there have been reports of several nightingales singing in nearby areas such as Waltham Brooks.  Another suggestion has been that too much scrubby understory that the birds like may have been lost to deer grazing in some of our key areas.  

From a visitor point of view this is disappointing as we like to feature nightingales as something for visitors to see and more especially hear, but the bottom line is that we can only encourage birds to come and breed here by managing the habitat as best we can, and can’t control the weather or exactly how our wildlife behaves.  And with nothing ever staying the same forever the habitat management is a constantly changing job to go with the risk of sometimes being soaked, so it’s not easy to be an RSPB warden.

However this proved to be a good nightingale day despite the weather.  With the rain having eased off in the afternoon I escaped from Nettley’s Hide and hurried around to Winpenny but was stopped in my tracks in Adder Alley by some splendid nightingale song – the best of the year so far.  I eventually located the bird not quite out in the open, perhaps sheltering from the now light rain.

This is not a classic nightingale photo but note the bulge in the birds throat as it is just about to start singing again.

Apparently on a rather wet guided walk the previous evening there had been some good song here too.  So all is by no means lost and anyone thinking of visiting to hear and see nightingales should definitely come.

As part of the breeding wader monitoring team I have been looking out for signs of lapwing nests and chicks.  Just before my recent holiday we had 10 chicks visible near West Mead and Winpenny Hides but on this day and on Monday’s WeBS Count none were to be seen. 

Its easy to be worried about losing these chicks to predation and its highly likely that has happened with some of them.  But I’m not convinced yet that we have lost them all.  It wouldn’t be difficult for the adult lapwings to conceal chicks in among some of the rushes and I did hear typical lapwing alarm calls to chicks while sitting in West Mead hide in the afternoon, as well as seeing crows being chased away.   In spring last year I recall there seemed to be a rather quiet period with nothing much to be seen, and then near the end of the season several nearly fledged birds appeared as if from nowhere.

There appear to be more redshank on the reserve this year.  

A pair was very visible at West Mead. Another pair could be seen straight out from Jupps View, and in recent weeks surveys have suggested there may be as many as 3 pairs on the South Brooks, sometimes visible with a scope from Winpenny or Hail’s View.  This year no chicks have been seen yet, but last year we had 3 pairs all successfully raising chicks.

While pinned down at Nettley’s Hide over lunch there were plenty of interesting things to see.   First a whitethroat kept moving between the brambles to the left of the hide and the bush to the right. 

There were several swallows and sand martins and at least one house martin out on the North Brooks, but the torrential rain seemed to be driving many of them to perch on one of the distant fences. 

A few of them stayed airborne but were doing so in a rather stuttering sort of way instead of the smooth swooping flight that is normally seen, almost as if they were trying to dodge the drops, an impossible feat as the rain was coming down so fast.  Perhaps it was something to do with flies being knocked down by the raindrops.  Once the rain eased off the fence was deserted and birds resumed their fast swooping and skimming flight.

As well as the ubiquitous mallards there were at least 5 gadwalls and 3 very colourful mandarin drakes to be seen rather distantly, this one consorting with some Canada Geese.  

The gull also in this photo tested the identification skills of the girls from the Visitor Centre and mine too.  None of us are expert in juvenile gulls but consulting a bird guide it was concluded that it was a herring gull between 1^st and 2^nd winter.

Having made my escape, I dropped briefly into Little Hanger and was surprised to see a coot sitting very prominently on a nest. 

These common birds usually generate little interest but I have always been intrigued by the fact that the reserve attracts several coots in the spring and summer.  As they are diving birds I should have thought that the shallow flood water wouldn’t suit them very well.   This was the first time I’d seen one on a nest here.

A similar moorhen, which stays all year, was outside Winpenny Hide apparently taking material to a nest site.

At West Mead a pair of very noisy black headed gulls appeared to show great interest in each other before one decided to play hard to get.

Safely ensconced with tea under cover outside the café with no rain immediately in sight I found the activity on the bird feeders and surrounding trees very entertaining.  First a nuthatch perched prominently showing its face mask in a front on pose.

Then a quiet chattering sound gave away the presence of a family party of great tits with some recently fledged birds.  The adults were taking seeds from the feeders and passing them to the youngsters half hidden in the foliage.  Here’s a view of one of them on which you can see that the usual black stripe down the breast is not fully developed.

Finally a squirrel joined the party, mopping up some of the debris near the feeders. 

Thus ended a very wet but varied and interesting day.