Contents

The story of our life in the Lincolnshire countryside, and its most significant wildlife episodes, has come to an end after thirteen years, following our re-location to North Yorkshire in March 2014. For that reason, I have re-arranged the posts into chronological order, with no new posts planned.

Contents

1.  Moving to the country - the deal clincher
2.  Lodgers
3.  A sad ending
4.  An unusual looking ferret
5.  Hopes for a better summer
6.  Kitchen sink drama
7.  An overseas visitor
8.  A wake-up call
9.  Humour
10.  At last!
11.  Brief encounters
12.  Red in tooth and claw
13.  Survival
14.  The eagle has landed
15.  Empty nest syndrome
16.  Expert fisherman
17.  Nesting
18.  Death
19.  High hopes
20.  Soap opera or Greek tragedy
21.  An interesting December
22.  Taking the Mick
23.  Spring - at last!
24.  A disabled shrew
25.  Winter 2014
26.  A final post

1. Moving to the country - the deal clincher

Who would have thought that the ‘deal clincher’ in our house purchase would be a bird? The decision to move into the country had been taken quite quickly once we realised that we were spending just about every weekend out of town. If I wasn’t engaged in solitary bird watching trips, we were both in the car exploring quiet country roads between the Lincolnshire Wolds and the coast, or parking the car and taking a walk.

We had set ourselves a budget and, several viewings later, fell in love with a Victorian farmhouse just 5 miles out of town that had been almost totally re-built 18 years earlier - and was roughly 50% over our budget. But on a cold and windy October morning, during endless surveys, searches and frustration, any doubts I may have had about the house were quickly dispelled.

I’d set off early on my bike to see if I could locate the osprey that had been reported in the general area of the house we were considering buying. Ospreys are not a common sight in Lincolnshire, although they may pass through on their spring and autumn migration, and I’d never been lucky enough to see one. I searched a couple of square miles without luck, but then suddenly, coming to the end of a short farm track, I caught sight of a large bird about half a mile away on top of an electricity pole. I raised my binoculars and confirmed that it was indeed the osprey, but my first ever sighting of this hugely impressive bird was nothing compared to the excitement I felt when I realised where it was perched – the pole was right outside the front of what was now most definitely ‘our’ house. We moved in eight weeks later, in December 2000.

The osprey stuck around for about two weeks, and for much of that time it was closely observed as it went about its daily routine, sometimes by as many as thirty birdwatchers armed with an impressive array of optical equipment. It obliged by repeatedly swooping on the river that ran alongside the road, and snatching fish from just beneath the surface. I saw it a couple of times more before it left to continue what was probably a 4000 mile flight to West Africa for the winter. I wondered if it would return next year when we’d settled in.

Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not obsessed with birds. I’m what Simon Barnes calls a ‘bad birdwatcher’, someone constantly observing the natural world, aware of what joy and excitement a chance observation can bring, but lacking the messianic zeal of a ‘twitcher.’ Although birds don’t dominate my life, I think I’d be lost without them. I’ve been fascinated by them virtually all of my life, learning to identify 50 of them using a set of Brooke Bond ‘Bird Portraits’ cards collected from packets of PG Tips tea in the 1950s.

I have never been on a bird watching holiday, I don’t belong to a club, and I don’t own a pager. If I see a large group of birdwatchers, armed with telescopes and telephoto lenses, my curiosity will be stirred, but I’ll often wander off in the opposite direction, preferring solitude, and an often fruitless search for something spectacular of my own, to the certainty of catching sight of a rarity.

I have seen some spectacular sights though, but not necessarily spectacular from a serious twitcher’s point of view, and I haven’t seen many rare visitors to the British Isles. There are still many resident British birds I have never seen either, but the act of looking for them has brought immense pleasure, and some thrilling experiences. Some of the most spectacular of these followed our move into the country, and for some of them I didn’t even have to leave the house!

2. Lodgers

It was the ‘other-worldly’ screeches that alerted me one April morning to the presence of something strange in the garage of our new home. An owl box had been fitted many years earlier, and barn owls were a regular sight, hunting along nearby ditches and verges, but so far all that had shown any interest in the nest box were a couple of amorous wood pigeons and a grey squirrel looking for somewhere to hide his hazel nuts.

From the entrance to the garage it was possible to see the opening on the inner end of the box, and I was sure that that was the source of the sounds. The box had another opening in the gable of the back wall of the garage but, as we eventually discovered, the openings were to two separate compartments, two sort of owl ‘semis’. I decided to investigate further after work that evening.

Once the pots were out of the way after our evening meal, I went into the garden and listened to the usual bird sounds. There were collared doves, a wood pigeon, and a robin, and then that screeching again, repeated every 15 seconds or so. It sound like some poor creature in agony. I approached the garage, not sure what I would find, and looked up into the darkness of the rafters. Something moved in the darkness.

I ran into the house to get a torch and my binoculars, and this time I approached the garage with the stealth of a hunter. I shone the torch up to the opening of the owl box, and there, staring down at me, were two faces. They were pale, heart-shaped faces with large, startled eyes, unmistakably young barn owls! They withdrew into the depths of the box, but over the next hour or so, curiosity, and probably hunger, got the better of them, and they appeared several times more. Sometimes they rocked from side to side, and sometimes just stared vacantly into my torch beam.

The next few weeks provided numerous opportunities for owl watching, with any visitors to the house tiptoeing to the garage to try to catch a glimpse of the comical faces peering out of the box. By far the most exciting views, at any time of the day, were of the parents searching the ditches and field margins for voles, the barn owls main food. A slow, almost languid flight, low over the rough grass, followed by the inevitable brief hover and drop, would signal the start of the dutiful parents’ return with another meal, both of them contributing equally to the task.

Sitting on a garden chair, trying not to be noticed, I would watch through my binoculars as one or other of them approached low over the ripening wheat, the prey now clearly visible in their talons. When they were so close I had no need of binoculars, I would watch as they flew past, just a few metres from my chair, following a regular flight path through a gap in the line of poplar trees and into the hole in the brickwork of the garage wall. From there, I learnt later, they would perch on one of the beams for a few seconds, before taking the offering into the box through the opening in which I had first observed the youngsters.

It was all over by the beginning of June, and working full time meant that I missed some of the most exciting episodes – the fledging, the practice flights, and the feeding of the young in the open. We were able to witness all of this the following summer though, but our owl neighbours were not done with 2001. The screeching started again in July, despite the atrocious weather, but this time there was to be no happy ending.

3. A sad ending

An owl shouldn’t do that – not a wild barn owl! It was a sunny afternoon in mid-September, and the fully fledged youngster landed just 2 metres away from me as I was tidying up the river bank in front of the house, a tricky job at the best of times. I guessed it was one of the second brood that had been raised in our owl box, against all the odds given the poor summer we’d had.

I’d taken a keen interest in the development of this young family, and they’d provided considerable entertainment at a barbecue in early August. Family and friends had taken turns to visit the shed to view their antics on a TV I’d connected to a nest box camera in the garage. It had not been good owl watching weather in the open though, and as I was now back at work I’d seen very little of them or their parents during recent weeks. I should have realised that poor owl watching weather was poor hunting weather too.

The owl on the river bank looked at me and blinked, and after about 20 or 30 seconds took off and flew weakly over the surface of the river, before settling clumsily on the far side, about 6 metres away, wings spread out, one on the bank and one on the surface of the water. What should I do?

Would it be able to climb up the bank? My indecision was short-lived. One of the local moorhens, currently tending at least its third brood of the summer, launched into a ferocious attack, legs extended in front of it. The hapless young owl drifted slowly away from the bank, supported as much by the thick covering of weed as the buoyancy of its own body. The plucky moorhen had made up my mind for me – I rushed over the bridge, scrambled through the nettles and down the bank, and lowered myself into 4 feet of weed, mud and water. As I scooped my hands under the young bird, and lifted it clear of the water, the cause of its problems was immediately obvious.

Beneath the beautiful plumage was little more than a skeleton – I could barely feel any flesh. Even on its chest its pectoral muscles, essential for flight, were wasted through lack of food. Maybe the parents had been unable to find sufficient food during a wet and cold late summer, or maybe the young owl itself had failed to provide for itself. Whatever the cause, it was clearly too weak to hunt, and after a couple of hours in a cardboard box on top of a hot water bottle, it died.

Lifting the cold, lifeless body out of the box, and wiping off some of the mud and weed, marked the lowest point of what had been a miserable summer. Maybe its siblings had had a more successful start to life, and perhaps next summer would be better for owl breeding. I could only hope.

4. An unusual looking ferret

‘Curtain twitching’ takes on a whole new meaning when you live in a house in the country with no neighbours within half a mile. It’s the early morning peep through the curtains before opening them fully, just in case there is some interesting wildlife scene unfolding outside the window. Disappointment usually follows, but as the house overlooks a river, or ‘drain’ as the Environment Agency rather unromantically calls it, I always lived in hope of seeing one of my favourite birds.

I knew there were kingfishers on this stretch of the river, and one of the first things I did after moving into the house was to provide a wooden post at the edge of the water from which they could fish. Not once in two years had this facility been used, although on one memorable occasion, as I peered through partly opened curtains, I was able to watch a kingfisher, not fishing, but bathing and preening on a paving stone alongside the perch. For several heart-stopping minutes, it repeatedly dropped into the water and returned to its position to groom its spectacular feathers.

Occasionally, a moment of quiet contemplation at the window has been rewarded with a fleeting glimpse of what looked like a turquoise Exocet missile, streaking along the river just a few inches above the water. How true that some of the best sights occur when you are not looking for them! Similarly, looking for a particular creature will often lead to something totally unexpected.

My first thought on this particular morning, as I peered through a gap in the curtains, was that someone had lost their ferret. I had seen ferrets before, and know they come in a huge variety of colours, but I had never seen one this colour before. How it took me so long to correctly identify it remains a mystery, and it was only when I was describing it to a work colleague that the penny finally dropped. ‘Dark brown, almost black, beautiful glossy fur’ - of course it wasn’t a ferret, it was a mink!

The American mink was first brought to Europe in the late 1920s, and they were bred for their coats in commercial mink farms all over Britain. Escapees, and possibly individuals released by animal rights activists, quickly established a wild breeding population, first reported in 1956, and they are now a well-established feature of Britain’s waterways.

I recall a family day out, at some time in the mid-1980s, walking part of the ‘Viking Way’ by the River Bain. We spotted a group of hunters in green jackets and long boots, with hounds of some sort, and we were curious to find out the nature of their quarry. My teenage niece, far more out-going than anyone else in our family, approached the group of hunters and asked them what they were hunting. “Mink and coypu” they replied. Both are invasive species from the Americas with similar histories, although the latter were finally eradicated in 1989.

Thrilling as it is to see wild animals in their natural environment, I admit to having mixed feelings about seeing a mink. They are fearsome hunters, with no natural predators, and are responsible for eating huge numbers of water vole and riverside birds. I am sure it is no coincidence that it was another anxious six months before I caught a glimpse of a water vole, one of our most treasured neighbours, swimming purposefully across the drain outside our house.

5.Hopes for a better summer

Hopes for a better summer in 2009, for us as well as our resident barn owls, prompted me to embark on some spring-cleaning. It wasn’t the house I had in mind; it was the owl box in the rafters of the garage. The previous summer had been very successful, and we had had some wonderful views, illuminated by the security lights, of two young owls being enticed out of the nest by their parents, and practising flying a few metres into the field and back several times during the night. Their proud parents looked on, occasionally disappearing to find food.
Aware of legal restrictions on tampering with owl nests, I contacted the Barn Owl Trust for advice. The nest box should be cleaned out every 2 or 3 years, they said, but should be done no later than February to avoid disturbing early broods. It should be done just before dusk on a mild, calm and dry day so that the owls are not flushed out into bright light or extreme weather.
It was dark by the time I had everything ready, and the February evening was crisp and clear. I expected the box to be empty, but I made quite a racket as I placed the ladder against a beam close to the entrance to the box, and half expected a sudden flight from the box. I waited a couple of minutes with the beam of my torch on the entrance, but nothing happened – they must be out hunting. I had on my dust mask and a pair of goggles (I remembered a man on Blue Peter describing how, as a teenager, he was blinded by an angry tawny owl when he approached its nest – I wasn’t taking any chances!).
I climbed slowly, brush, shovel, bag and torch stuffed in various parts of my clothing. I held my breath as my head reached the level of the entrance and I switched on the torch. It wasn’t just the depth of the mess in the bottom of the box that struck me – it was the sight of two adult barn owls, fast asleep with their backs to each other in opposite corners of the box! They reminded me of a couple sleeping after an unresolved argument.
Afraid I would wake them I rushed down the ladder. I could spring-clean later, but this was too good an opportunity to miss. I paid them another quick visit, this time with a camera. An hour or so later they had left and I was able to shovel out about 4 inches of the mess that several years of nesting had produced – including the skeleton of at least one baby owl.
Now the box was clean, and I was able to look forward to a spring and summer of successful owl watching, proud in the knowledge that I had helped the breeding success of this beautiful creature. It was not to be. Three days later, as I approached the house after cycling to the village store, I glimpsed a pale object in the long grass by the roadside. Surely it wasn’t what I thought! I cycled back to take a closer look, and yes, it was a barn owl, probably the victim of a collision with a car and almost certainly one of the pair that I had photographed earlier. There was to be no ‘barn owl summer’ this year.

6.Kitchen sink drama

There have been times when, as a scene unfolds in front of me, I find it difficult to believe that what I am watching is not being stage-managed. Yet these dramas are often played out in the most mundane of circumstances. I shall never forget one particular drama that was acted out as I was washing the dishes during the particularly cold winter of 2009-10 – a kitchen sink drama if ever there was one.
As is so often the case, it started with a glimpse of movement. This time it was directly beneath the window, and once again my first guess, that it was a bird ducking underneath the small gate, was wrong. I leant forward to see what had distracted me from my chores (it doesn’t take very much) and was quite surprised to see that it was a stoat, struggling to make its way out of the drive towards the bridge. The reason for its exertions was shockingly clear – visible to the right of its head, which it held impossibly high, were the wings of a small bird, probably a chaffinch, still flapping desperately.
The stoat struggled on past the brambles on the river bank, and then lifted its front legs and its struggling captive onto the low wall that runs alongside the bridge. I knew there was no time to reach for my camera, so I shifted my position to see more clearly. What happened next took my breath away. Without warning a bird of prey, obviously attracted by the flapping of wings, dropped from above and covered the stoat with its own outstretched wings. It was a female sparrow hawk, a regular visitor to the garden, but by the time I had recognised her she was taking off again. Her talons were empty and the wall was bare. The only winner in this cruel drama was the stoat – it had disappeared into the cover of the brambles. The hawk went hungry, but the fate of the finch was much worse.
The whole episode had lasted no more than ten seconds, but what an experience! How many hours, days or even years would I have to sit with a camera to capture such a sequence of events? The lesson, of course, is ‘be vigilant’. Anyone interested in wildlife can be a witness to such events, as long as their eyes are open and not glued to the washing-up bowl or the television.

7.An overseas visitor

Watching wildlife is not all joy and excitement. There are moments of shock and sadness, too, yet even these moments contribute to the fascination. The death of one of ‘our’ adult barn owls meant there was to be no repeat of the owl watching experiences of the previous two years, but the presence of the surviving partner throughout the summer and autumn gave me hope that things would soon return to normal. As an optimist I had clung to the words of Matthew Twigg of the ‘Barn Owl Trust’: “a site that is attractive to one (pair of) Barn Owl(s) is likely to be attractive to the species as a whole, and there is always the chance that a similarly unpaired individual may be looking for a mate”.
The New Year repaid my optimism, and by early January 2010 we saw two barn owls entering and leaving the garage. A new mate had been found!
There was to be another sad sight, though, before the winter was over. After a particularly cold spell, I was tidying the garden in mid-January and took a look inside the garage – or rather an open out-building in which we could park the car if we ever cleared out all the junk. On the floor in the corner was the body of a bird - but not just any bird. This was a bird of prey, with a large, hooked beak and huge talons at the end of its long yellow legs. Viewed at a distance (and I had seen one on only three previous occasions), identification can be difficult, but this close it took me only seconds – it was a Peregrine Falcon, the fastest animal on Earth.
Its eyes were sunken, and it seemed to have very little flesh under its feathers. Around its left leg was an alloy ring with clear lettering. It identified the ring as having originated at the Zoological department of the University of Helsinki, in Finland. I checked the website and learnt that they would like the ring returned, together with information on where, when and how it had died. I weighed and photographed the body in the hope that this would help to determine its cause of death. It weighed just 450g, only about three quarters the minimum weight for an adult male.
This pointed to starvation as the cause of death, despite my first guess that it had pursued a bird into the garage at high speed and been unable to avoid a collision with the wall. I had quickly dismissed this possibility, given the incredible flying skill of a bird accustomed to hunting at up to 100 mph around cliffs and crags.
I received a reply several weeks later, and it confirmed my suspicions. The bird had been ringed in its nest in Lapland at the age of 4 weeks, just six months earlier, in July 2009. It had flown to Lincolnshire in search of better weather and a reliable food supply, a distance of more than 2000 km, yet it died weighing just 450 g – at four weeks it had weighed 705 g.
Occasionally, the death of other, less spectacular, birds has had a profound effect on me. This may be surprising given the enormous death toll on our roads – it is not possible to drive a mile without passing a dead bird or mammal, from pheasant to badger. I once paused on a bike ride to pick up a wren. It appeared completely undamaged, probably killed by its proximity to half a ton of metal travelling at 88 feet per second rather than a collision. In its beak, as intact as the wren, was a mayfly – obviously being carried lovingly to its chicks, noisily demanding food in a nest somewhere nearby. Its surviving partner would now have a real struggle to feed a brood of 5 or 6 hungry chicks – assuming they were lucky enough to have had two parents around in the first place.

8.A wake-up call

The cat was moving the curtains with her paw, letting in some of the early morning July sunlight. Being woken at 5.30 a.m. on a Sunday, even on a warm summer morning, was very unwelcome. We had both had busy weeks at work, and had spent most of Saturday working, and the nature of our wake-up call was worrying too. The last time we had experienced a feline alarm clock had been when a burglar had entered our house several years earlier, before we had escaped to the country.
I leapt out of bed and pulled back the curtains. It took a few seconds to realise that this time it was burglars of a different kind. Moving slowly along the drive in front of the house and squeezing past the car was a herd of cattle. In seconds they would reach the garden or the garage, neither a suitable place for several tonnes of prime beef.
In boxer shorts and flip-flops it took me less than half a minute to make it to the garden – they weren’t there. Around the outbuildings in another few seconds and I was face to face with the invaders. Half a dozen were exploring the garage and the others were in the drive, apparently waiting their turn. I startled them, but they made no move. I raised my arms, conscious of the need to avoid panic – there was no stampede, but enough of a rush to rock the car and remove the wing mirror in their efforts to pass through the narrow gap.
A call to the local stockman resolved the escapee problem very quickly, but the excitement was not yet over, and our early rise proved to be a positive experience after all. There was no chance of a lie-in now, so we settled in the conservatory with a cup of tea. Within minutes we had another visitor. Around the corner, glancing furtively from side to side was a small chestnut brown creature with short legs and white under parts – unmistakably a weasel, lacking the longer black-tipped tail of a stoat. It explored briefly, sniffing the doorstep and the plant pots and standing on its hind legs to sniff the air. Within seconds it was gone, back the way it had come.
As if the voles in our garden didn’t have enough problems, with resident barn owls and a cat that spent most of its time waiting for a vole to appear. Here was one of the most efficient killers in the British countryside - but it wasn’t hunting today. It returned a few seconds later with a playmate and they proceeded to entertain us with one of the most spectacular acrobatic displays I have ever seen. They leapt in the air in unison, appeared to dance exotically together, and for a few seconds they resembled a furry brown ball rolling across the patio. We were mesmerised, but again they were gone almost before we could catch our breath.
Being deprived of a lie-in on a Sunday morning was not so bad after all.

9.Humour

Excitement, pathos and heartbreak are all features of nature watching, but there have been moments of unbelievable humour, too – often to do with my own ‘bad bird watching’ credentials rather than any humour inherent in the natural world.
I had at last bought myself a new camera and a telephoto lens, determined to move my owl watching on to a new level, and turn all those missed opportunities into prize-winning pictures. I had been watching our resident barn owls all summer, but all I had to show for it were a couple of distant shots, taken with an old digital camera, of one of the parents perched on the roof. Now I had the new equipment, all I had to do was get close enough and I would be a contender for ‘Wildlife Photographer of the Year’.
How could I get close enough, though? When we were in the garden the owls used the front of the garage to gain access to their nest. I had seen Simon King and his portable hides, and decided to use my granddad’s old army blanket for the purpose. I settled down on the grass in the owls’ flight path, half in and half out of a shrub, covered myself in the blanket and rested my elbows on my knees, the lens protruding unobtrusively from the blanket. It was going to be a long evening, but I had the patience – it would be worth it.
After what seemed an age I could not understand why there had been no sign of the owls – my camouflage couldn’t be that bad. I shifted slightly to relieve my numb buttocks, and glanced towards the house to see if a cup of tea was on its way. Then I saw the cause of my failure. Sitting alongside me, staring along the line of sight of my lens, was Holly, our longhaired black and white cat. The vet had once, rather tactfully, described Holly as ‘built for comfort, not speed' and there she was, making no attempt to camouflage her far from insubstantial presence! She was as interested in the owls as I was, but for a very different reason – and I’m sure the owls were well aware of it.
One of the things I love about cats is that they are always a great source of humour. Holly’s build means that she has never caught a bird, and her only hunting success has been in exploiting the habit of field voles to use the same ‘runs’ at all times. Once she has found one she just lies in wait and the voles come to her. Not that she kills many – unlike our previous cat, Sooty, she is easily distracted by the offer of food, and her prey is usually able to make its escape.
Sooty, on the other hand, was a fearsome predator, and efforts to persuade her to release her unfortunate prey could go on for some time. She was a rather fastidious eater too, and, occasionally, her refusal to eat anything below the waist resulted in the bottom half of a mouse being left at the door – rather like a pair of mouse trousers.
One mouse, though, was determined not to end its life in this way. As soon as I spotted that she had caught something I shouted. It distracted her momentarily, but when she turned her attention back to the mouse, its refusal to play the role of victim resulted in it rearing up on its hind legs and adopting the stance of a prizefighter, waving its tiny paws and baring its teeth. That was my opening, and I scooped up the startled cat and shut her in the house. I approached the quivering little rodent carefully and reached out to help it to reach cover, but it could not distinguish between attacker and saviour, and reared up once again, ready to take on all comers. I must say, its courage was impressive.

10.At last!

At last, after 10 years it has happened. Twice in less than a week there has been a kingfisher, not just perched on the paving stones by the edge of the water beneath our bedroom window but actually fishing from them. What it caught was not particularly spectacular, but I have never seen such aggression meted out to such tiny prey.
I was becoming increasingly worried that our stretch of the river had been abandoned by both kingfisher and water vole as, for the first time since we moved here, we had seen neither all summer. This week I have seen a kingfisher every day, and on several occasions it has landed within view. I even saw two flying side by side over the water on one morning, and on what must rate as the most hectic few minutes in my history of river watching I saw a kingfisher perched on the gate, followed immediately by a cormorant wrestling with a large, bloodied fish. I was then amazed to see a squirrel hopping up the river bank as though he had just arrived by boat.
Kingfishers really are special British birds, with vibrant colours and fascinating habits and, although most people would recognize one, I suspect that relatively few people have actually seen one. My nephew Paul is a civil servant working at the heart of government in London but as a child he would sometimes join us on country walks in Lincolnshire. One of our favourite walks was along a disused railway track and around some fishing ponds near Donington-on-Bain and there was something of a family ritual about the way we would react to the sight of a kingfisher. One of us would spot the flash of iridescent turquoise over the water’s surface and a loud whisper would announce the sighting – “kingfisher!” Our twin daughters would then run ahead, desperate to see it again, frequently calling out that they had indeed seen it again.
Paul and his sister would always join in with this ritual when they were with us and I was pleased that we were able to share such a thrilling experience – it would be something to hang on to later in life during those endless meetings discussing pensions with his colleagues. But Paul had a guilty secret. More than twenty five years later, at a family occasion and at the age of 33, Paul owned up. Yes, he had joined his cousins in the kingfisher routine on several occasions, and yes, it had been fun – but no, he had never actually seen a kingfisher. He had always been very short-sighted but none of us had realized just how much this had limited his wildlife watching ability. Paul was the first one to receive a copy of the photograph I took this week from the bedroom window.
An interesting post script to this story concerns the kingfisher’s toilet habits. Shortly before we had been privileged to witness one feeding from what we call our ‘jetty’ we had been intrigued by the mystery of the white ‘chalk’ lines on the paving stones. Who or what could be responsible for those? They were each about 15 to 20 cm long, starting about 10cm from the edge of the river and at right angles to its direction of flow. They were easily washed away by rain, but re-appeared in different pattern and numbers each day.
The mystery was soon solved and all it took was a glimpse of a tail briefly raised. My view was obscured and I missed the small quantity of excrement propelled at great speed from beneath it, but I have seen enough wildlife films to recall this behaviour. Once again I was left wondering why I had been so slow to pick up on such obvious visual clues.

11.Brief encounters

Kneeling in the sand dunes behind the old RAF base at North Cotes, I was scanning the tidal lagoon for unusual winter visitors. There were dunlin, redshank and numerous lapwings – nothing ‘special’. As I gave my eyes a brief rest from my binoculars I spotted something flying leisurely along the edge of the dunes towards me. This was very special! I turned with my binoculars to get a clearer view.
It was gliding between sporadic wing beats, following the contours of the dunes as it searched the rough vegetation for its next meal. Its white rump and its metre-long wing span gave away its identity – it was a female hen harrier, and it was getting closer by the second.
I held my breath and remained absolutely motionless as it approached to within what through my binoculars appeared to be a few feet. It was actually only a few metres and I was waiting for it to react to my presence in what was hardly an inconspicuous position. When it did react it was in spectacular fashion and not because it had caught sight of me.
Appearing over my left shoulder and almost flying head-on into the harrier was another large bird of prey, flying in the opposite direction but hunting in the same way, head down in deep concentration. I recognised it immediately as a short eared owl, probably the same one that I had watched hunting over the airfield earlier that morning. Both birds reacted in exactly the same way, like mirror images of each other, appearing to rear up and hang momentarily in mid-air, face to face with their wings outstretched. This stand-off lasted less than a second before they continued nonchalantly on their way, discretion definitely being the better part of valour for both of them.
Chance encounters like this can give wildlife watchers really magical moments. The previous month had been extremely cold and I had spent a frosty couple of hours on Sunday morning on the coastal nature reserve at Rimac. Not unusually for this time of the year I had seen next to nothing. This was particularly galling as I had my Christmas present with me – a brand new Kowa spotting ‘scope and tripod. I drove homewards but, even with feet numb from the cold, I was not going home without one last try.
I turned off the coast road, drove down a track with frozen puddles and parked on Howden’s Pullover, a rough car park on the edge of the salt marsh. I walked south along the sea bank towards an area of scrub, reeds and buckthorn. As I approached I spotted a barn owl hunting, so I ducked down on the landward side of the bank with the intention of getting as close as possible to the owl and trying out my ‘scope. After another 50 metres or so I chanced a peep over the bank. There it was, perched about 2 metres above the reeds on a branch of what appeared to be a small elder. Through my binoculars I could see it was agitated and taking a keen interest in the reeds directly beneath it. There was something there.
I quickly set up the ‘scope, located the owl and turned the focus wheel. What a thrill, one of Britain’s most beautiful birds magnified to appear just a few feet away. But its fidgeting was now more obvious than ever. I adjusted the tripod slightly so that I could see what had the owl’s attention, and there it was. Sitting in the reeds below, looking up at the owl and licking its lips – yes, I actually saw its tongue slide across its upper lip – was a fox.
There was frost on the reeds and the branches, the dark buckthorn in the background was out of focus, and the two subjects were framed perfectly and their colours exquisitely complementary. This would surely have been a winning picture in any wildlife photography competition. The only problem – I didn’t have a camera!

12.Red in tooth and claw

It is impossible to observe wildlife without constant reminders of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s description of Nature as ‘Red in tooth and claw’. It is sometimes easy to forget that some of the most thrilling encounters in the natural world will culminate in the death of one of the participants, the thrill being tempered with sadness and a little guilt – rather, I imagine, like the observers of the aerial battles during the Battle of Britain.
One of the most spectacular flying machines in the natural world is the dragonfly. It has the agility of a small helicopter but it wasn’t until I witnessed a kill that I realised what awesome predators they are. I was walking in the woods above Betws-y Coed in Snowdonia, marvelling at several dragonflies putting on an aerial display, when a large specimen suddenly swooped onto the bracken by the side of the footpath. I had no idea what it had seen, but, even though I was lucky enough to locate it almost immediately, by the time I had it had already eaten its way through the lower half of a wasp.
The master of aerial hunting is undoubtedly the peregrine falcon and, although one chose our garden in which to die last year, I have never been privileged to witness one stoop and take its prey. I have seen a peregrine in its typical rocky habitat in Cornwall and close to a recent choice of nest site high on one of the towers of Lincoln Cathedral, but my best views have been on the Lincolnshire coast, where they frequently spend several weeks during the winter.I even spotted one trying to take a lapwing as I watching great black backed gulls scavenge the after-births of newly-born grey seals at Donna Nook.

Although the peregrine is acknowledged as the supreme aerial hunter the sight of a sparrow hawk in relentless pursuit of anything from a wren to a pigeon is still something that is guaranteed to make the pulse race. The Sparrow hawk population crashed in the 1950s and 1960s because of the use of synthetic pesticides such as DDT. My first sighting of one was in the early eighties, soaring over Weelsby Woods in Grimsby, but their numbers have improved so dramatically that hardly a week passes when I fail to see a sparrow hawk, frequently a distraction whilst driving as prey is pursued across a road or roundabout. There can be few people who feed their garden birds who have not witnessed the gruesome sight of a sparrow hawk plucking its prey on the ground before tearing it to pieces.A visit to the sands and salt marshes of the east coast at low tide will explain the presence of birds of prey during the winter. There are often tens of thousands of small waders feeding in the invertebrate-rich mud and it was this scenario that provided me with a fascinating glimpse of the feeding habits of our smallest birds of prey. I had set off early to drive the tortuous route through Hull and East Yorkshire to Spurn Point, the only positive being a stunning view of the sun-rise from the Humber Bridge. I had just parked the car and was stretching my legs and scanning the waders feeding on the wet sand when I was suddenly aware of a rapid movement a few feet above their heads. A bird of prey without doubt, but I was unsure exactly what it was at first. Before the waders had chance to take flight the merlin, as I later identified it, seemed to reach down and grasp one of them before continuing its flight towards the beach. It was as if it were snatching an item of food from a supermarket shelf. As hundreds of waders rose into the air, accompanied by the belated alarm calls of numerous red shanks, the merlin settled on the dry sand and proceeded to pluck and devour what I could now see was a dunlin.
Another scene had unfolded, as exciting as any wildlife film, and I had the fortune to have witnessed it first hand. One of the great pleasures but also one of the great sadnesses of such encounters is that, unlike a scene from a film, I was the only person in the world to have seen it.

13.Survival

During December 2010 it was difficult to believe that any bird could survive such a prolonged spell of extremely cold weather. The temperature in our garden dropped to well below -10oC on several occasions and was consistently below freezing throughout the day and night for much of the month. The sight of a pair of wrens, one of our smallest birds, apparently looking for somewhere warm to roost one evening was quite moving. They flitted about under the garden furniture for several minutes but nowhere was suitable. I once read that 61 wrens had been counted coming out of the same nest box after a particularly cold night – it reminded me of the ‘how many people can you cram into a mini’ challenge. I wondered if they were coming out and going back in again through a rear entrance.
The smallest birds obviously face the biggest challenge but there are serious threats to birds of all sizes. I watched from the bedroom window as a heron fished very successfully at the edge of the river, amazed by the speed at which it turned and lunged when it had a fish in its sights. The movement of the water had prevented it freezing over and the heron seemed to have no difficulty in finding prey of a suitable size. I concluded, wrongly as it turned out, that the local heron population would see out the cold spell with little problem as long as the river didn’t freeze over.

The next day I observed from the bedroom window what I thought was a strange aspect of heron behaviour and searched the internet in vain for an explanation. One individual was standing in the water, patiently awaiting its next meal, whilst another was lying face down on the river bank a few metres away, its wings spread out on the snow-covered grass. I left for just a few seconds to tell my wife to come and see the dead heron and when I looked out of the window again the ‘dead’ bird had gone. I could find no description of herons playing dead but the odd behaviour remained a mystery for only a few more hours. The sight that met me as I crossed the bridge the following morning made it all too clear why the heron had been behaving in such a bizarre way. There it was, lying dead in the water with its neck twisted in a grotesque pose – it hadn’t been ‘playing dead’, it had been dying.

It was by no means the only casualty in and around our garden. A few days later, only a few metres from the last resting place of the heron, a dead mallard was seen floating on its back. This was the second mallard victim of the winter near the house. The first had been floating upright, the only indication that all was not well being the fact that its head was under the surface of the water.
Such was the severity and length of the cold weather that I was seriously concerned about the chances of survival of our resident barn owls. I read recently that barn owls originally evolved in a warmer and drier climate than we have in the UK and that mortality peaks from December to March. They have a higher metabolic rate than most other owls and their feathers do not have good insulating properties. During very extreme winters (such as 1946/7 and 1962/3) it is thought that more than half the population of Britain may be wiped out. Given all of this I thought the chances of survival were slim and I resorted to tossing the odd dead mouse, caught in traps in the workshop, into the roof space near the nest box.One of my Christmas presents had been a nest box camera with infra red illumination. I had decided to place it in the roof space pointing towards the owl box entrance rather than inside one of our many small nest boxes usually occupied by tits, robins and tree sparrows. This I did towards the end of February and for the next couple of weeks I had several glimpses on the old TV set in the stable of one of our owls. I knew for sure now that one of the pair had survived but I was becoming increasingly concerned that for the second time in two years we had lost the other one. Then, during one of my frequent visits to the stable, I witnessed something I had only ever read about. Not only had both owls survived but there they were, sitting on a roof beam in front of the camera, engaged in what the Barn Owl Trust describes as ‘mutual preening and cheek rubbing’. Spring had well and truly arrived.

14.The eagle has landed

As I have said before, I am not a twitcher and I am not a great keeper of lists. News of a rarity fills me with neither excitement nor the desire to travel to remote places to add a tick to my yet-to-be-compiled lifetime list. Sometimes, though, an opportunity is just too good to miss!
In late April I heard that a Tawny Pipit, enticingly described as ‘scarce’ on the ‘Birdguides’ website, was less than half a mile from our house. Breeding in much of continental Europe and wintering in the Middle East or sub-Saharan Africa, Tetney Lock is not exactly on its migration route, but this is just what gives keen birders their adrenaline fix and I am not completely immune.
It didn’t take long to pack up my equipment, including several layers of insulating clothing - the easterly wind that brings rarities to this part of Lincolnshire is also notorious for bringing hypothermia to visitors. Two hours later and the group of half a dozen or so birders I had teamed up with agreed that the pipit had probably moved on. Disappointing as it was it must have been much worse for the man who had travelled all the way from Bristol. It was also less of a disappointment than my belated attempt to see a Steppe Grey Shrike two years earlier.
So rare in the U.K. is this bird that ‘Birdguides’ gives it the magnificent rarity classification ‘Mega’ and one had been seen regularly over several days just five miles from my home. ‘Mega’ means ‘not yet occurred in the British Isles or exceedingly rare, or otherwise highly desirable’ Even with that recommendation it wasn’t until I saw a couple of photographs showing it perched on the hat of a birder and then on a telescope and tripod that I decided to face the inevitable large number of birders and attempt to see it for myself.
I had done this successfully a few years earlier with an American Robin, also a ‘Mega’ bird in the U.K., which had been spotted on an industrial estate in North East Lincolnshire. A colleague described where it was and I made the short trip from work in the lunch break. Within five minutes of parking the car and looking into a couple of shrubs by the gate to one of the units I saw it. It was a thrill to see a bird so rarely seen in the U.K. but it was a sad experience too. Like an exotic caged animal it was far away from home in bleak and unnatural surroundings and I wondered how long it could survive. It was killed the next day by a sparrowhawk.
I was denied even these mixed emotions with the shrike. Before I reached my destination I became aware of a small group of birders trudging wearily through the mud towards the road. It seemed the sparrowhawk had been one step ahead of me this time and all that remained were a few feathers.

The failed pipit trip was far from unproductive though. I managed some great views on the way home of a group, or ‘trip’, of seven Dotterel feeding in a field of newly-germinated peas and I was informed by one of the birders that the White-tailed Eagle was still around the ponds near Ruckland, less than twenty miles away. The Dotterel is a wader with beautifully subtle colours, with the male’s more muted plumage giving a clue to his role in caring for the eggs and chicks – a stay-at-home dad long before it became fashionable.My early morning trip to Ruckland rounded off an eventful April. Half an hour after arriving at what turned out to be one of the most picturesque areas of the Lincolnshire Wolds I witnessed a magnificent sight. A huge bird with a wingspan of between six and eight feet, the largest eagle in Europe, appeared over the horizon with an escort of common buzzards, clearly uneasy about its presence so close to their nests. I had always thought of buzzards as large birds in the Lincolnshire context but I had to revise my judgement – their wingspan was approximately half that of the eagle.
I watched in the company of four or five birders from various parts of the country for an hour or so before the eagle made its way effortlessly over the hill and out of sight. I set off for home still feeling the exhilaration of that first view. Spending time with fellow birders had not been too bad. Maybe I would give up solitary wildlife watching and become a proper birder – then again, maybe not.

15.Empty nest syndrome

I have now experienced ‘empty nest syndrome’ three times. The first time was a double helping when our 19 year-old twins left for university. I coped pretty well despite yet another milestone in the aging process and I was confident that we had given them ‘roots to grow and wings to fly’ – which brings me to my second dose.
Thanks to an inspired Christmas present, 2011 had been the best year so far for owl watching. By the time I got around to fitting my new nest box camera some of our nest boxes were already occupied so, rather than disturb any early home-makers, I decided to fit the camera in the roof space of the garage. There it could cover the hole in the wall, the entrance to the owl box and a number of the roof beams and would feed its signal to a redundant analogue television in the stable next to the garage. At this stage I didn’t know if our resident barn owls had even survived what had been one of the worst winters for decades.
That they had survived became clear during one of my frequent visits to the stable in early March when I witnessed something I had only ever read about. There they were, both adults sitting on a beam in front of the camera engaged in what the Barn Owl Trust describes as ‘mutual preening and cheek rubbing’ - classic barn owl courtship.
Throughout the warm, dry April there were no more sightings, but we kept our fingers crossed that they had mated successfully. By the end of April it was apparent that there were young owls in the box as both parents made frequent hunting trips into the surrounding fields. I even managed a superbly composed photograph of one of them flying over my head with a vole in its talons – superbly composed but hopelessly out of focus!
Unable to see what was going on inside the nest box I began to wish I had put the camera there. Young barn owls, unlike most other nestlings, run, jump, pounce and ‘play’ like kittens from about three weeks old and I was missing all of this, but it wasn’t long before I was rewarded with some fantastic TV footage of their next stage of development. Towards the end of June two heart shaped faces started to peer out of the box and on the 1st July one of them took a metaphorical first step. After nearly an hour of false starts, like a child on the high diving board, it hopped from the nest box entrance to the nearest beam, about two feet away. The second one was not so lucky. More hesitant even than the first and much more ungainly it capped its equally lengthy period of preparation by falling like a stone whilst attempting the same manoeuvre.
There followed an hour or so of worry as I tried to decide what I should do. I was aware that adults will not feed young owls if they fall from the nest so should I contact the barn owl trust or a local wildlife rescue centre, or should I climb up and try to return it to the nest box?. This would not be easy as it had not fallen not to the ground but to the layer of carpet underlay covering the beams at ceiling level across the whole of the garage. I was dreading trying to capture an active young owl hopping around a surface that would not hold my weight.
As the clumsy creature was now out of range of the camera I decided to find out exactly where it was before deciding what to do. I put the ladder through the opening, climbed up and looked all around. For the first time in years I was delighted not to see an owl. While I had been vacillating the subject of my concern must have somehow managed to find its way back to safety.
During some evenings the quality of the television pictures was so poor at low light levels that it was difficult to distinguish between the parents and the youngsters. The parents were in and out of the roof space and their offspring were in and out of the nest box, hopping from beam to beam and in and out of the view of the camera. Eventually, when we briefly saw five owls, we realised that there were three youngsters, not two.

They soon made their first foray into the outside world and throughout July we were privileged to be able to watch three owlets develop into fully fledged confident fliers. We watched their practice flights from tree to tree, from our granddaughter’s swing to the picnic bench and from the garage roof to the wall. As the light was fading one evening I was mesmerised as one of them pounced over and over again on something on the ground. I thought at first its leg was tangled in string and it couldn’t take off properly, but my worries were short-lived once my eyes became accustomed to the light. It was pouncing on a short poplar twig with a couple of leaves attached, using play as preparation for independence - it would soon have to hunt its own food.We returned from a week’s holiday in early August and the young owls had gone. We had no more views of them and their parents had returned to hunting in the dark, so we didn’t see them either. We were left with a feeling of emptiness, literally an ‘empty nest’ syndrome. And what about my third dose? That was when our granddaughter moved away, but that’s another story.

16.Expert fisherman

There is an angler who often sits for hours on the bank opposite our house. He is a friendly and knowledgeable chap and we often have long conversations about the wildlife in and around the river. We also talk about the bites he has had, the catches he has made and how different the fishing in the canal is compared with the river. I think he is a bit of an expert, but this morning his expertise was placed very firmly in the shade as I witnessed a real master at work.
Gazing out of the bedroom window in my usual way I caught sight of a cormorant coming in to make its customary clumsy landing on the water just upstream of the bridge to the left of the window. I waited a minute or so for it to be carried by the current under the bridge and into view. For the next 90 seconds I was mesmerized. It dived under the water, a manoeuvre I had witnessed many times before, and resurfaced less than 10 seconds later with a fish, about six inches long and probably a dace, held firmly at right angles to its bill. A quick adjustment and the fish was swallowed head first.
This successful dive was followed by no less than six more as it drifted out of sight behind the cover of a large hawthorn on the bank, each dive producing exactly the same result. A 100% success rate is something rare in the world of predators and can only mean that all the conditions had conspired to create the perfect hunt. It also goes a long way to explain why cormorants have been used for centuries by fishermen across the world, from Peru to Japan and from China to Macedonia. They are trained to dive for fish with a ligature tied around the base of their throat. This allows them to swallow small fish but those that are too large are brought back to the fisherman. It also explains why some anglers in the U.K. are keen to see a drastic cull. In a recent T.V. interview one likened a cormorant fishing to a tiger killing sheep in a barn.

Having one grandfather who skippered a North Sea trawler and one who hand made sea boots does not qualify me to pass judgement on the relative skills of different fish catchers, but I admit I felt a little uncomfortable when I described the cormorant’s exploits to my angler friend. He took it well though and even proceeded to describe similar success by local dabchicks. In my experience they don’t quite match up to the cormorant though. I watched a dabchick this morning and though it could catch fish very effectively it repeatedly struggled to master the coup de grâce. It frequently spent several minutes trying to subdue even the tiniest prey and on more than one occasion had to dive again having allowed it to escape.Despite my fishing heritage I have only twice sampled this most primitive of activities. The first time was when I was about seven and my granddad, the by then retired trawler skipper, agreed to take my brother Bob and me to a local pond. Bob had a small fishing rod but I don’t think I’m being disrespectful when I say we were both clueless. Much to my granddad’s chagrin the next few hours saw Bob and I land a succession of respectable sized roach, perch and fish I never did learn the names of, while he spectacularly failed to have any impact at all on the pond’s fish population. The final humiliation came when I accidentally kicked over his bait tin and all his maggots fell in the water. He was not impressed by my efforts to scoop them all back into the tin.
Needless to say we were never taken fishing again. I did try once more though, about 25 years later. This time I got a little closer to my heritage and cast my line off the sea wall but the experience of chasing an eel around the kitchen put me off for life – and my wife for even longer!

17.Nesting

The nesting season is well under way. A pair of kestrels has shown an interest in the second owl box and I’m looking forward to seeing how well they get on with their barn owl neighbours. There’s no evidence of any barn owl young yet, but we have our fingers crossed. This picture gives me optimism that owls and kestrels can get on well.
Tree sparrows are busy occupying as many of the nest boxes as they can and the great tits are showing their usual preference for gaps in the brickwork, despite the numerous nest boxes available – one pair has even pecked a hole in the expanded foam the builder used to stop the starlings getting under the porch tiles.

I commented just this morning what a great habitat our old sycamore tree was, with ivy covering it to almost two thirds of its height. I watched a wren, a green finch and a pair of wood pigeons carrying material in to different levels in just five minutes and I’m sure there is a goldfinch nest in there too. But I had forgotten the disadvantage of ivy. Great as it is for providing cover it also makes climbing very easy and several years ago we removed most of it from the house when we discovered how easy it was for rats to gain access to the loft. This morning, as I was obsessively pulling grass out of the gravel, I saw a weasel scurry across the drive, jump onto the wall and disappear up the tree – just like Jack up the beanstalk. It was about twenty minutes before it came down and though it was not carrying anything I swear it was licking its lips.Birds nesting in the garden can provide hours of enjoyment, but they also command great deal of respect. We could all learn a lot from the perseverance of a pair of collared doves who, like Sisyphus and his boulder, add twigs to a nest just about as quickly as they fall out of the bottom. Or the male wren who lovingly builds several beautiful nests and then allows his mate to make her choice leaving the others unused.
I learnt long ago not to interfere with this wonder of nature. Having fixed my first ever home-made nest box in our first ever garden I was impatient for it to have tenants. I decided to make my nest box particularly desirable by carefully lining it with dry moss and in less than an hour my glances out of the window were rewarded. A blue tit had landed close by the box and was calling to its mate. With growing excitement I squatted by the window to await developments. After briefly inspecting the inside of the dwelling both blue tits were soon flying in and out, clearly preparing a home. Or were they?
When I decided to take a closer look through my binoculars I received quite a surprise. It soon became clear that both birds were flying into the box with empty bills and flying out holding large clumps of dry moss! At least I had helped them to make their nest a little bit cosier – it was just a pity it wasn’t in my nest box.

18.Death

The ancient Egyptians are not alone in their fascination with death. I too have what could be seen as a morbid curiosity about dead animals, though I hasten to add that this is the curiosity of an observer and not a participant. Living in the country provides many opportunities to experience death, often as a result of the ever-present struggle between predators and prey, but just finding a dead animal can raise all kinds of questions. What is it? How did it die? How long has it been there? It brings out the Crime Scene Investigator in me every time
I recently found the body of an animal close to the River Bain in Lincolnshire. It was one that I had never seen before yet was able to identify almost immediately. On my twelfth birthday I was given a copy of the Observer’s Book of Wild Animals of the British Isles and I still had this animal’s picture imprinted on my memory. At about the same time I completed collecting a set of British Wild Life cards from packets of Brook Bond tea. This animal’s card described it as a “beautiful little animal, clad in black velvet with a white underneath, that lives at the waterside” – a perfect description of the water shrew. What neither source had communicated memorably enough though were the distinctive white ear tufts and these came as quite a pleasant revelation.

When a young adult badger was killed by a car just a few yards from our gate I knew I could not leave it there by the side of the road. I decided to treat it with some dignity after such an undignified death and dug a hole about half a metre deep between our fence and the wheat field behind our garden - not easy in heavy clay soil that had not seen rain for several weeks. I placed it in the hole, covered it with soil and forgot about it. It was a beautiful hot spell, rare near the east coast in August and about two weeks later I had an unpleasant reminder of my good deed.I was in the garden enjoying the warmth of the sun when I became all too aware of an extremely unpleasant smell. At first I thought it might be a stinkhorn fungus and started to rummage under the shrubs along the fence searching for the offending item. I was obviously getting warm, in more ways than one, because the smell near the fence was now stronger than ever. Maybe deep down I had some primitive recollection of the smell of death, or maybe the sound of hundreds of blowflies provided the clue, but a glance over the fence confirmed what I had now begun to suspect. It was the dead badger.
Instead of being buried beneath the long grass at the edge of the field it was now lying a few feet away amongst the ripening wheat and was hardly recognizable. It was covered in maggots, its fur was discoloured and the flies were still looking areas of spare flesh on which to lay more eggs. I didn’t examine it too closely but my guess was that I hadn’t buried it deep enough and a fox had disinterred it. I dug the hole a little deeper, put on my gardening gloves and, with my head turned away and trying not to breathe through my nose, I dragged the body to the hole and re-buried it. I then placed an old piece of steel plate over the grave and weighted it down with a couple of bricks. But I had failed to notice that something had been missing.

Several weeks later I made a bizarre discovery - lying in the drive at the side of the house was part of the leg of an animal. My C.S.I. training (‘A’ level biology) enabled me to identify it immediately as a foreleg, the radius and ulna clearly visible. The fact that all five claws faced forward, unlike dogs, cats and foxes which have four claws and a dew claw, told me that the leg belonged to a badger, probably a young one judging by the overall size. Was it from the badger I had buried? Had the fox ripped it off without me noticing a leg was missing? The only way to answer these questions would have been to exhume the creature for a second time, but my curiosity did not extend that far.

19.High hopes

I have had several reminders this week of the 1959 song ‘High hopes’, performed by Frank Sinatra in the film ‘A hole in the head’. Sammy Cahn’s lyrics tell the story of animals taking on unlikely challenges and they extol the virtues of perseverance and aspiration, but it wasn’t ants or rams that brought on this wave of nostalgia, it was a heron, a tree sparrow and a swallow.
As I drove over the bridge to the house late in the afternoon I made my customary pause to glance left and right along the river. The heron was about 20m away at the edge of the water, clearly about to strike. Within just a few seconds it launched itself forwards and down into the water, immersing not just its head but the whole of the upper half of its body, including both outspread wings. It must have already been aware of the car’s arrival but too committed to its attack to pull out, as it took off immediately afterwards and flew a further 20m along the bank, settling at the top by the edge of the field.
I have seen herons before with a variety of prey, including a dabchick and on one occasion a huge eel that took all of thirty minutes to swallow and continued to writhe energetically even after disappearing down the heron’s throat. But this catch was to present an altogether different challenge – it was a flat fish, probably a flounder, and it was anything but the right shape to make for easy swallowing. I had to imagine the struggle that ensued as it flew off after a few minutes to continue its battle in private, but the heron in the picture took 45 minutes to overcome its challenge.
Later the same day I noticed a worrying sign outside one of the nest boxes occupied by a pair of tree sparrows. There were several inches of what I thought was fishing line protruding from the entrance hole. Fearing this could harm the growing family I decided to remove the offending item, and after a minute or so it came free of the nest. I felt rather stupid when I discovered that far from being fishing line it was actually horse hair. There were two pieces, one black and just under a metre in length and one white and slightly shorter.
Since finding this I have seen many examples on the internet of birds’ nests incorporating horse hair, but I cannot get out of my head the image of a tree sparrow picking up a hair a metre long and flying for what must have been more than a quarter of a mile – and repeating the feat numerous times. High hopes indeed! On the subject of nests, another mystery has just been solved. More for the sake of cleanliness than security we have never left the doors to the out-buildings open for the birds to come in and nest, even though there is evidence that swallows had been allowed to build their mud structures in the stable before we arrived. The mystery we were faced with several weeks ago was why we kept finding swallows flying around inside the stable when we opened the door.
The door was never left open and, apart from a four centimeter gap at the top corner of the door, there were no more access points. Then I saw it. One of the spectacular and noisy aerial displays above the garden culminated with a swallow swooping down to the door and disappearing through what I had so far not even considered a possible way in. Admittedly it did not fly straight through the two inch gap, but it clung to the top of the door for less than a second before passing through. There are now tiny broken speckled egg shells on the floor and two adults passing through the gap dozens of times a day. I suppose we shouldn’t have been surprised – after all, swallows were nesting in caves long before people were building houses and access to a nest through a tiny crack would have provided a much higher chance of survival. What I do now is leave the door slightly ajar from time to time, an experiment to see how wide it needs to be before they will fly straight through without touching the sides. The record at the moment is just fifteen centimeters!

20.Soap opera or Greek tragedy

Soap opera or Greek tragedy, the barn owl story continued this summer.A lack of visible activity up to June led me to wonder if any eggs had been laid at all this year - last year by that time the chicks had been about 6 weeks old with both parents working tirelessly to keep them fed. A quick look in the nest box confirmed that there had indeed been no breeding success and the speculation about possible reasons began.
The disappointment soon faded once the frantic nesting activity of the swallows began. Within days of discovering they had found their way into the stable it was obvious there were young in the hurriedly constructed nest. Over the next couple of weeks the changes were rapid.

26th June

29th June

6th July - getting a little overcrowded

12th July - ready to go

The speed of development of the youngsters was impressive but not nearly as impressive as their flying ability. I have always marvelled at the aerobatic displays of adult swallows but standing in a stable no more than 4 metres square watching four or five of them circling me at breath-taking speed gave me a whole new level of appreciation. I only realised I had been holding my breath once the last of them had hurtled out of the door.

The parents returned shortly afterwards and raised a second brood, inexplicably in the 12 year old nest nearby rather than the new one. All swallows had gone by the middle of September but the month ended with a cruel twist.
I was resigned to a long slow descent into the short days of winter with only the occasional boost of a winter visitor or the sight of an owl hunting over frosty fields to raise my spirits. Thoughts of nesting birds had all but gone - until I wandered down to the garage.
It was the morning of the last Saturday of the month. On the ground, directly beneath the owl box, was a dead owl chick.It had most of its adult plumage but still carried a considerable amount of down and was clearly a good two weeks or more from being fully fledged. I put it to one side to show the family later and continued with my weekend jobs. Further evidence later that day confirmed that I had been mistaken to assume that an empty nest in June meant there would be no owl family this year. Hopping across the garden was another owlet, also out of the nest too early but very much alive. It wasn't difficult to corner and capture and once it was safely in the cat's carrying case I had to make a decision. Usually young barn owls should be returned to the nest as soon as possible but as this one was almost as thin and under-nourished as the dead one it seemed that the parents had abandoned them or were unable to feed them for some reason. The only solution would be to find someone who could hand rear it.

A rescue centre was located in Lincoln and my Saturday evening was taken up with driving a fragile animal nearly 40 miles expecting all the way that it would not survive the journey. It did but later that evening there was yet more drama. Another owlet was cowering in the corner of the garage when I arrived home and it too was placed in the cat box, though it looked more dead than alive. Just as I was deciding what to do with it my wife spotted yet another one up on the roof beams and suddenly one of the parents swooped in clutching a vole. If the parents were still bringing food then the best place for the youngsters was near the nest box so I carefully returned the one in the cat box to the garage roof and went to bed, wondering if I had made the correct decision to take one to the animal hospital. I had. The next morning there were two dead owlets on the ground under the owl box. So far three out of the unlikely brood of four had died.

The three dead owlets - note the different levels of development

A few days later yet another owlet was seen refining its flying skills alongside one of its parents and within a week these had disappeared - I will never know if this fifth one made it. A phone call from the animal hospital in Lincoln provided one crumb of comfort as the rescued owl was thriving and ready for a carefully managed release into the wild. Sadly, recent inspections of the owl box have led me to the conclusion that our owl box is no longer needed but, much as we will miss our neighbours, we should at least be spared another traumatic autumn.