British birds: A jay’s search for food

Though a shy bird by nature, the Eurasian Jay’s colouring is anything but. With a vivid blue patch on its wings, a body of dusky pink, pretty little black-and-white stripes atop its head and what looks remarkably like a black moustache, this bird is chic. No surprise then that ‘jay’ was once used, sneeringly, to describe a flashy dresser.

Like most members of the crow family, the jay (Garrulus glandarius) can be loud and noisy, and an excellent mimic. As well as copying other birds, they’ve been known to imitate the sounds of cats, dogs and even telephones. Some of their actions even mimic squirrels – they bury large quantities of acorns and show incredible skill at remembering where they’ve buried their hordes.

This afternoon I spent the most delightful 10 minutes watching this one particular jay search for food. Most thoroughly, it picked up leaves in its beak, then flung them to one side or the other out of the way. It then turned its head first to one side then the other to see if it had unearthed anything interesting. The bird was so engrossed in what it was doing that it hadn’t noticed me and my camera standing on the path directly in front of it and came walking directly towards me.

And, finally, success! I’m not sure what it found – it looked, perhaps, like some kind of seed – but the triumphant jay gulped it down whole and then looked directly at me with such a smug look on its face, before flying off, no doubt to repeat the same process all over again.

This is why I watch birds! 

British birds: A swan with two necks?

When I was a small child, many many moons ago, my brother and I would get up early on Sunday mornings, snuggle down under our eiderdowns in front of the big old valve radiogram (yes, I am that old!), and listen to Children’s Hour. One of my favourite stories was ‘The Ugly Duckling’ by that master storyteller, Hans Christian Andersen.

You know the one: a homely little duckling is called ugly and is persecuted by its siblings and other farmyard critters, spends a winter alone and lonely, only to be welcomed by a flock of swans that arrives in the springtime because, though he never realised it, he is actually one of them, an ugly duckling that has grown into a beautiful swan.

Maybe that’s why the swan has always been one of my favourite birds. Maybe I hoped I would grow into a beautiful swan – ha! Or maybe it’s all the other amazing things about them. For example, did you know?

• A swan will mate for life.
  
  
• A swan is one of the largest flying birds, with a wingspan of more than six feet.
  
  
• A swan can fly as fast as 60 miles per hour.
  
  
• A male swan is called a cob, a female a pen and that little ‘ugly duckling’ was really a cygnet.
  
  
• Some people are scared of swans and there are two names for that fear, cygnophobia and kiknophobia (though the Oxford Dictionary’s never heard of them!).
  
  
• There are many collective nouns used for swans, including a herd, a fleet, a gaggle, a bank, a bevy, a whiteness, an eyrar, a gargle and, for flying swans, a wedge.
  

Did you also know that here in the United Kingdom all swans are owned by Her Majesty the Queen? Well, strictly speaking, it’s only ‘unmarked mute swans in open water’ that the Crown owns, a claim that dates from the 1100s when swans were considered the pièce de résistance at the banquets of the gentry. 

Of course, nowadays H.M. doesn’t parade around going ‘That’s mine”, and “That’s mine”, and “I’ll have that one for dinner”. Swans are no longer eaten but, each year, the modern equivalent of the ancient practice of catching and marking them, on the upper bill, with a system of nicks and cuts to indicate ownership, is still practised on parts of the River Thames. It’s called swan-upping and, fortunately, these days the birds are rather more humanely banded instead by the Queen’s Swan Marker and the swan uppers of the descendants of two centuries-old medieval guilds, the Worshipful Company of Dyers and the Worshipful Company of Vintners.  

Originally, the members of these two medieval guilds made their own marks on the birds’ beaks: one nick for a dyers’ bird and two for a vintners’. And reminders of that practice can still be seen today in pub names, like the ‘Swan with Two Nicks', a centuries-old pub in Little Bollington near Altrincham in Cheshire.

And now you finally get to learn why I gave this blog post the title ‘A swan with two necks’. In early English, the word ‘nick’ also meant ‘neck’, so it is also common to find a lot of English pubs called ‘The Swan with Two Necks’, not because the birds were freaks of nature but as a reference to the nicks in their beaks. Of course, inn sign-makers were able to have a field day with a name like that, and the signs on the Manchester ‘Swan with Two Necks’, shown in the photos here, are a fine example of what a good imagination can produce.

Since humans first flexed their imaginations, the swan has inspired artists, novelists, choreographers and composers. It appears in Greek and Norse mythology, in Irish legends and in religious scriptures. It features in heraldry, in company logos, and is the name of a well-known Australian brewery.

So, next time you visit your local lake or wetland, take a second look at the wonderfully elegant swans as they glide by, and be amazed by the beauty they bring to our world.

The eagles have landed

In 1782 the American Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) became the official bird emblem of the United States because of its majestic beauty, great strength, long life, and because it's native to North America. It appears on the Great Seal of the United States, is stamped on the reverse of several American coins, and its image can be found in a multitude of locations, situations and media throughout the United States.

I’m a passionate birder so you can, no doubt, imagine my delight that I got to see Bald Eagles on my very first day in the USA. 

My friend Trudey had been following these eagles right from the time the three eaglets were born, about a week apart, back in March, and had shared some fantastic eaglet photos on Facebook so I was hoping I would be lucky enough to see them when I arrived. The birds had fledged, in stages, about two weeks prior to my arrival, so were no longer on the nest but were still spending most of their time in the immediate vicinity of the nest, in a park alongside the Fox River near Green Bay, Wisconsin.

We visited the park several times during the first few days of my visit so I was fortunate to get photographs of the three fledglings in various places and poses. I only saw one of the adult birds and that one only once, but I did get a closer look at two adult Bald Eagles being cared for at the Bay Beach Wildlife Sanctuary near Green Bay.

Bald Eagles are fascinating birds but rather than repeat all their cool facts and figures here, I’ll let you read them for yourself on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website.

I feel very privileged to have spent several hours watching these magnificent creatures and I hope you enjoy looking at these few of the hundreds of photographs I took of them.

Birds of New Zealand: part 4

I am not a twitcher – they have lists of birds and do anything, go anywhere at the drop of a hat to add to the ever-increasing list of birds they’ve spotted, to the point of being obsessive and often to the detriment of the birds they’re trying to see – but I am becoming much more serious about and dedicated to bird watching.

Naturally enough that also means my collection of bird photos continues to grow apace, which also means it’s about time I posted another blog about some of our wonderful New Zealand birds (my three previous blogs on the subject can be seen here and here and here).

This post covers a rather eclectic selection of birds, in this case based on the Western Springs location where I photographed them (though some photos were taken in other places on other days).

Tui (Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae)

Called the parson bird by the early European immigrants to New Zealand, presumably because of the resemblance of the white tufts of feathers at the front of its neck to a priest’s clerical collar, the tui is anything but pious. In fact, it has a habit of imbibing so much nectar from blossoming trees that it becomes quite intoxicated and sings uproariously. Its song is one of its most endearing qualities, highly variable, pleasingly melodic but also including a comprehensive vocabulary of clicks, creaks, cackles and groans.

Beautifully plumaged in shades ranging from iridescent greens and blues through dark browns to an inky black, the tui has quite a distinctive flight pattern, with louder flapping than most other birds due to its relatively short wide wings. Chances are, then, that you’ll hear the tui before you see it.

Left: tui. Right: New Zealand pigeon.

New Zealand pigeon (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae)

Our native pigeon, also known by its Maori name kererū, may be a plump critter but, in the breeding season, its aerial displays can be spectacular, flying high, swooping fearlessly earthwards, then stalling and pulling swiftly up before a potentially fatal impact with treetops or the ground. I presume female pigeons are suitably impressed!

With feathers of metallic green and a crisp clean white, with red eyes and red feet, New Zealand pigeons are essential to our forest environment. By feasting on the fruit of forest trees and shrubs, then flying around pooping a lot, they ensure the seeds of those trees and shrubs are widely dispersed. Sadly, though illegal, humans have been known to feast on the pigeon, meaning its numbers are not as high as they once were.

Male brown teal

Brown teal (Anas chlorotis)

The brown teal is listed ‘at risk’ so I consider myself very lucky to have seen this little beauty. Once widespread throughout New Zealand, the brown teal is now mostly confined to the northern parts of the North Island because of the predations of introduced species like rats and stoats and the loss of their habitat. You can read more about efforts to conserve these pretty little creatures on brownteal.com.  

When you get the opportunity, it’s an easy bird to identify – it’s slightly smaller than a mallard and predominantly dark brown. At breeding time, the male has a distinctive iridescent green sheen on the back of his head, as you can see in the photo at right.

Paradise shelduck (Tadorna variegata)

According to my bird guide, the paradise shelduck is ‘highly sexually dimorphic’ – for the uninitiated, that’s not some kind of kinky fetish; it just means the male and female look very different, as you can see from the photos below. It’s a large duck, somewhere between the size of a mallard and a goose.

The paradise shelduck’s Maori name, pūtangitangi, gives a clue to the sound of its distinctive and incessant calls: ‘pū’ means the ‘origin of’ and tangi is ‘to weep’ or ‘to utter a plaintive cry’. The chicks aren’t quite so maudlin though and cheep like any other duckling. And, as you can see from the photos here, they are extremely cute little bundles of fluff.

Paradise shelduck chick at various stages of development

Paradise shelduck: female at left and male at right

Black swan (Cygnus atratus)

Many people think of the black swan as an Australian bird – it is, after all, both are the state symbol and the state emblem of Western Australia. However, scientists have discovered that the black swan was present here in New Zealand at the time of first human settlement, but had been hunted to extinction by the time Europeans first arried. In the 1860s, they were deliberately reintroduced from Australia and, judging by how quickly the local population grew, they may, at the same time, also have re-colonised New Zealand naturally – flown or been blown across the ditch from Australia.

Appropriately enough, the black swan’s Latin name atratus means ‘to be clothed in black for mourning’. Perhaps that’s why some people believe it to be a harbinger of bad luck. Personally, I think the swan dressed all in black is a very stylish and elegant-looking bird.

Much of the information about these birds came from my much-thumbed copy of Paul Scofield and Brent Stephenson, Birds of New Zealand: A Photographic Guide, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 2013.

Black swan, adult at left, cygnets feeding at right

Birds of New Zealand: part 3

As my pleasure in bird watching has continued to grow over recent months so my library of photos has also increased, meaning it’s time to post another blog about some of our wonderful New Zealand birds (my two previous blogs on the subject are here and here). I say, ‘New Zealand’ birds but, in fact, a couple of those listed here are immigrants who have perhaps been blown to these shores on the winds of a particularly violent storm or hitched a ride on a ship and, finding the environment to their liking, decided to make New Zealand home … and who can blame them?

New Zealand scaup (Aythya novaeseelandiae)

The New Zealand scaup (aka Black teal) is a little cutie and quite the entertainer. When feeding for the little fishes, snails, mussels, insects and aquatic plants that make up its varied diet, it dives underwater, staying down for between 20 to 30 seconds and reaching depths of up to 3 metres.

Though its plumage isn’t striking, being mostly dark brown or black, its squat form and upward pointing tail give it a perky appearance. In the breeding season, the male likes to advertise his presence by changing his head plumage to iridescent green.

European settlement in New Zealand reduced the numbers of these natives for a while but they have recovered naturally in some areas and been reintroduced in others (North Auckland, Taranaki and the Wellington district). For Aucklanders, there are quite a number of scaup making their home at Western Springs. And a word to the untutored like me – I have just realised today that I have been pronouncing its name wrongly – apparently, it should sound like ‘scorp’ not ‘scowp’.

Spur-winged plover (Vanellus miles)

Here’s another bird whose name can confound the tongue as opinions differ on the pronunciation of plover. Some say plover as in ‘lover’, others says plover as in ‘over’. I’ll leave you to decide which you prefer!

The spur-winged plover is a self-introduced Aussie (in Australia, it’s known as the masked lapwing). It was first discovered at the bottom of the South Island in 1932 and is now widespread throughout the country. 

It’s a large stocky wading bird but can be found almost anywhere there is low vegetation. I’ve seen quite a few along parts of the Auckland coastline but I’ve also sighted several pairs on the grassy slopes of Auckland Domain.

Pied stilt 

(Himantopus himantopus leucocephalus)

This is another self-introduced Aussie which, since its arrival in the early 19th century, has interbred with our endemic black stilt to produce a bird distinct from its Australian cousins. I particularly like its elegant long pink legs – hence the ‘stilt’ name, and those legs are also the reason for its Maori name, poaka, from ‘po’ meaning small and ‘aka’ meaning long, thin roots. As those long legs suggest, this is a wading bird, most often found on wetlands and in coastal areas throughout New Zealand.

The pied stilt is a very social creature, so is almost always seen in large noisy flocks, often feeding near other wading birds like oystercatchers and godwits. As that beak indicates, they often probe for worms, aquatic insects and larvae but, when the light is good, they also catch their food by sight.

Sacred kingfisher (Todiramphus sanctus)

The aptly named ‘king of the fishers’ is another highly entertaining bird to watch, especially when fishing. It will sit patiently on a strategically placed branch, pole or railing overlooking a mudflat or estuary then, with a sudden flash of turquoise, it’ll be off to snatch, catch or grab whatever has caught its sharp eye.

With its loud ‘kek kek kek’ call, the kingfisher will be sure to announce its presence, especially if you stray within its territory during the mating season, when it will also dive-bomb other birds and even humans if it considers them a threat. Its burrows can often be seen up high in muddy cliffs and banks at the coast but it also nests in holes in trees. Luckily for us, the population is numerous and widespread so we can all enjoy its antics.

Caspian tern (Hydroprogne caspia)

I spotted the two birds in my photographs in Auckland’s Hobson Bay on 26 May – a very exciting first sighting for me – then didn’t see them again on further visits until 7 June. The Caspian tern is the largest tern found in New Zealand, about the size of the black-backed kelp gull but with quite different colouring. With an estimated 1300-1400 breeding pairs in New Zealand, sightings are relatively uncommon, hence my excitement.

I think these two are mother and fledgling, as the younger bird was continually begging for food, both through its supplicating posture and its constant begging calls. The very patient parent would tolerate this behaviour for about 5 minutes, then give up and fly off to fish for food, hovering over the shallow waters until she saw her target then diving rapidly down to swoop it up. They were an absolute delight to watch.

Eurasian (or Australian) coot 

(Fulica atra)

For me, the most fascinating thing about this Australian immigrant (first recorded breeding in New Zealand in 1958) is its bizarre lobed feet, a cross between the long toes of wading birds and the webbed feet of swimming birds like ducks. If you can’t see its feet, you will also be able to recognise it instantly by the white shield above its bill.

These coots have made themselves at home in those parts of New Zealand that have their preferred reed-edged freshwater lakes and ponds – the birds I’ve seen have been in Hamilton’s Lake Rotorua and at Auckland’s Western Springs, where they compete with ducks, swans, geese and gulls for the bread thrown by humans.

And that’s it for New Zealand birds: part 3 – there will undoubtedly be a part 4 in the future. I hope this post will encourage you to turn off your computer and head outside to check out your local birdlife. I guarantee you will be amused by their antics, delighted by their colours, and entertained by their merry tunes. Just remember the wise words of Robert Lynd, ‘In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.’

Much of the information about these birds came from my much-thumbed copy of Birds of New Zealand: A Photographic Guide, with a little additional help from co-author and master bird photographer Brent Stephenson.