Woodcocks and Blackbirds

~ judyheiser

John the bird ringer sent me this photo of a woodcock that his son had found resting on the deck of his ship, not far off the Norwegian coast.

The bird could well have been heading to the UK to spend the winter, but it’s not a good sign that it needed to stop off on the ship because there is still a long way for it to go. John suggested to his son that he put some minced meat out for it but we haven’t yet heard how that went. A few years ago his son also had a snowy owl on his ship which must have been a pretty amazing sight

 Although the woodcock is very obvious on the red deck of the ship, it is normally exquisitely camouflaged, disappearing from view when roosting by day on a leaf-strewn woodland floor.

A trail camera photo of a woodcock in the wood this week

There is a small population of woodcock that breed in this country but their numbers are boosted a hundredfold in the autumn when birds from north-east Europe and Russia arrive here to enjoy our milder winters. Every year a fair number come to our wood and we enjoy night time trail camera photos of them throughout the winter until they leave again in the spring.

November 2023

Back in November 2018 Dave discovered that one of these lovely birds had flown in off the sea and unfortunately straight into his study window, breaking its neck. The fact that it had just arrived at its destination after a long and arduous journey across Europe and the North Sea made the whole thing even more sad.

Note the very tips of its tail feathers are grey when viewed from above like this. Photo from November 2018
But when turned over, you can see that the tips of these same tail feathers are startlingly white when viewed from the underside

The underside of a woodcocks tail feathers are very white indeed. In fact they are 30% brighter than the white on any other bird, since it uses them for courtship display at night. The grey upperside, however, ensures that its daytime camouflage is not compromised. Below you can see the grey upperside and the white underside of the tail feathers:

Although these overwintering birds won’t be displaying whilst in this country, I do have trail cameras footage of them flaring their tail up to reveal the white. Photos from February 2021 and March 2023:

Woodcock feed by probing their long beak into the soil and they would not survive if they stayed in colder climes where the ground will be frozen for most of the winter. This country, however, does have its own adverse weather from time to time and I love this photo from our wood in February 2021:

The snowy bill of the woodcock, which has been stuck into the ground to search for invertebrates

Blackbirds also arrive in the UK for the winter from the colder parts of Europe, boosting our resident population. There are five blackbirds in the photo below, taken this week in the wood, which is something that we would never see during the summer:

I don’t think that blackbirds get the appreciation they they deserve
November 2021. A continental blackbird being ringed in the meadows. It is slightly bigger and heavier than our resident blackbirds with a longer wing length and a blackish bill. Although not noticeable on this bird, some continental individuals also have breast and mantle feathers with grey edging giving a scalloped effect

There has been a lot of rain and dull, grey days recently and these conditions are not good for the trail cameras. However, I have got the following photos of the birdlife of the meadows at this time of year:

Starlings breed here in the spring but it is fairly unusual to see one at other times of year
The ringed female kestrel has been here hunting most days
And the tawny owls are around most nights
We have heard both a male and a female calling
Green woodpeckers primarily eat ants and their larvae, slurping them up with their long, sticky tongue. However, at this time of year, ants will be dormant and much more difficult to find. This bird has mud on his beak showing that he’s still probing the soil, but for now he will be taking other soil invertebrates as well as ants
Another wasp spider cocoon, full of overwintering baby spiderlings, has been discovered by a magpie
There are still plenty of hawthorn berries remaining on the hedgerows. Often they will be all gone by now

An area of our back lawn between a cherry and an apple tree looks like it has been keeping the badgers entertained:

Badgers are omnivores, eating a wide range of different foods, but they particularly like to dig in the soil for worms and other invertebrates such as leatherjackets and beetle grubs. The roots of the trees create a more complex soil structure and this area will no doubt be harbouring more insects and grubs than other parts of the lawn

We have a trail camera looking at a badger tunnel entrance on the steep cliff below the meadows. Recently there have been a lot of photos of badgers emerging from this hole and hardly any of them going in. I am taking this as evidence that this low tunnel is connected to the rest of the sett further up the slope:

At the bottom of the cliff is the beach and over the years we have lots of photos of foxes carrying fish. A fox this week has got itself a dogfish, which it has carried back up the cliff and is about to go under the fence and into the meadows with it:

We hypothesize that the foxes hang around night fishermen down on the beach, looking for an opportunity to steal their catch. The other possibility is that they find dead fish washed up on the shoreline

The candlesnuff fungus, Xylaria hypoxylon, that we have growing in the meadows this winter, is one of the very few British fungi to show bioluminescence, although it glows too weakly to be detected by the human eye:

Over in the wood there has been another sighting of an unknown mustelid:

I presume that this is the same animal that our woodland neighbours caught on their trail cameras last month:

It is probably a polecat/ferret hybrid because of the amount of white in its fur
Jays always look so comical when they bathe
A sparrowhawk bathing with the red stems of dogwood behind

I was in Maidenhead in Berkshire again recently and went on a birdwatching trip to the nearby Little Marlow gravel pit. It is always refreshing to see birds there that I wouldn’t normally see at home:

There are some mature limes near where we park the car in Little Marlow and we invariably see jackdaws here. But, for the first time, we noticed that they are using holes in the trunks of the trees created by fallen boughs
Ring-necked parakeets are common in the Maidenhead area but back in East Kent we haven’t ever seen one in the meadows or in the wood
Red kites are so common these days in Berkshire that I have almost stopped noticing them. One was consuming some carrion at Little Marlow gravel pit – presumably a dead gull. These birds are yet to reach us in East Kent
The highlight of the trip was a pair of whooper swans, with their yellow-and-black beaks. Although a very small number of these birds breed in Scotland, they mostly breed in Iceland and then come to the North of Britain and East Anglia to overwinter. We hadn’t seen whoopers at Little Marlow before and were very excited. This pair of birds stayed for a few days on the lake but have now moved on

I finish this week with the absolutely gorgeous Willesborough Windmill near Ashford. We recently accompanied our train-mad young grandson to an exhibition by the Ashford Model Railway Club which was being held in a barn alongside the mill. This windmill, which can still grind flour, is really close to the M20 motorway but we had never spotted it before or known that it existed:

The contented sound of the many starlings that seem to have made the windmill their home won out over the drone of the nearby motorway traffic

The mill is open to the public on summer weekends and we have put it onto our To Do list for 2026.

5 thoughts on “Woodcocks and Blackbirds”

    1. That windmill does look to be a particularly fine specimen and it’s fantastic that the sails still turn and it can still produce flour. On the downside it is now in the middle of some modern housing at the edge of a motorway but nonetheless will be very interesting to visit next year.

      Reply

Leave a Reply