News From The Rock #18 - Fussy Chough

After the rain of Friday and Saturday it was a return to dry and sunny weather yesterday and again today with the now familiar easterly airflow dominating. While yesterday was warm, today saw the wind in the NE which had a distinct chill to it. We continued with our chough watches and now have 7 of the 10 nest sites confirmed as incubating. I wish I could show you photos of some of the spectacular caves the birds nest it but they are a 'Schedule 1' species and we need a special licence just to go near to the sites to monitor them, photographs of the sites are strictly prohibited.

If you remember from a previous blog I mentioned how each pair has their own little idiosyncrasies when it comes to their breeding regime. The typical routine when incubating is for the male to return, feed the female near the site, the pair maybe fly off for a quick feed together then she returns for another stint of an hour or so. One of the pairs I watched yesterday have slightly different preferences. She refuses to come off the nest for anything! So he returns, 'shouts' loudly at the nest entrance, gets no joy, goes in and feeds her on the nest. He then comes out and heads off. Except he doesn't go far at first, pottering around, digging out a few more juicy beetle larvae from the soil. A few minutes later he tries his luck again, once more calling away outside the nest. Its only been a few minutes since her last feed so she's not interested and lets him know with a raucous 'scolding' call from deep within the cave! With his tail firmly between his legs he heads off for another hour - and so this pattern goes on each time he comes back to feed her! 10/10 for effort on his part though and at least those eggs will be well incubated!

It takes a lot of effort to extract those juicy morsels!

Yesterday was a busy day migration wise with nearly 50 willow warblers and 40 blackcaps recorded plus over 100 swallows through the afternoon. Star bird of the day was a stunning male whinchat. My terrible attempt at a photograph below doesn't do it justice. Good numbers of Northern race Greenland wheatears dropped in for a pit stop on their way north too. Today saw another addition to the year list in the form of a female common redstart. Overall quieter for migrants today with the keen NE wind no doubt keeping numbers down.

One of the finest male whinchats we've ever seen on the island and I somehow manged to focus on everything but the bird!

Greenland race of northern wheatear (boldly marked head pattern and orange extending all the way underneath) feeding on what looks like a leatherjacket (crane fly larvae, incidentally one of the key components of the chough diet)