Kind birds and unkind weather at Cranford Park

I had an unexpected day off work today so after firing off some e-mails and making some calls, I found myself at Cranford Park mid morning.

 

The weather was a little unpredictable to say the least. I just missed one rain shower, then it became very overcast and almost cold.

 

The Hobbys weren't as disappointing as the weather though, and I'm sorry if anyone is bored reading about them, but they are special birds and we are so lucky to have them breeding at Cranford Park.

The juvenile Hobbys were much more on the wing today, after the weekend where they spent most of their time sitting high in a tree calling for food. One juvenile landed just above my head where I was sitting at the log circle enjoying a coffee. I managed a few shots but have had to heavily lighten them.

 

 

 

I don't think the juveniles are catching food for themselves yet. Every time I saw an adult it was either doing a food pass with a juvenile or was feeding a juvenile on a branch. You can tell the adults are trying to encourage the youngsters to fly more. One would pass close to a juvenile calling, the juvenile would then be fast on the adults tail and calling back. After failing to get any food pass photos at the weekend due to the tree canopy, today I was lucky to witness and photograph several, BUT the weather really done me no favours. Every photo is in silhouette and no matter what exposure I used, I could not get a clear shot.

 

So let me talk you through what I did get.....

the adult is on the right....

 

 

 

 

You can just see the remains of the food pass in the talons of the juvenile on the left.

 

In another sequence, both of the juvenile were chasing an adult...

 

 

 

 

Below, one of the adults is bringing food to a juvenile sitting on a branch. Again, I could not get a clear shot on such an overcast day....

 

 

While the adult (on the left) feeds the juvenile (on the right), the other juvenile swoops down from above......

 

 

After watching our summer visitors for well over two hours I went for a wander and bumped into Sue and Jasper the bird-dog.

 

Last Sunday seemed to be a day for Hawkers (a variety of dragonfly), but today was the day of the Darters. Sue and I came across a large puddle where several Ruddy Darters were flying around and mating. Funnily enough when we went back to the puddle a couple of hours later, they had all dispersed.

 

 

We also saw another visitor to the park, and one that is becoming quite regular now, a Red Kite.

 

 

For a few hours the sun shone and the sky was almost blue. It was as if someone had turned the heating on !

 

We found a small Toad crossing one of the grassy paths.

 

 

And of course my favourite birds, the Kestrels, were hunting over the long grasses. We could only locate two today and at least one of them was one of this years youngsters.

 

 

Sue left before I did, and I had just got myself settled back at the log circle when the heavens opened and I had to run for cover. It certainly was not a predictable August day today.

 

But here is something very predictable, a photo of Jasper the bird-dog.

 

Hobby-fest at Cranford Park

Following on from yesterdays blog, we know the juvenile Hobbys at Cranford Park are roughly 8 weeks old, and they are flying though not hunting. The adult birds are bringing in their food, mainly dragonflies, and today a small crowd of us witnessed several food passes. It wont be long before the juveniles are hunting for their own food, and not long after that they, and their parents, will disperse and make the long journey to winter in Africa.

 

Therefore at the most, we will only be able to watch them at Cranford Park for another few weeks. As they are now fledgings rather than nestlings, I can reveal their favourite tree (but not the tree they nested in) is within Cranford Woods not far from the ha-ha wall boundary.

 

Hobbys are a Schedule 1 nesting bird, and therefore nesting sites are generally not made public knowledge until after the young have fledged. Next year, if I am lucky enough to find their nest, I will not be publishing it.

 

Hobbys arrive back in the UK from Africa in April-early May. They often pair up for life, and their territorial and courtship display usually occurs mid-late May. Like Kestrels, they do not make their own nests, but prefer old crows nests, or even old Buzzards and Red Kites nests. The female Hobby lays between 1 and 4 eggs, usually over 2-3 day intervals, during mid June. However, like Sparrowhawks, Hobbys can time the egg laying to coincide with food abundance. A bad spring can see the eggs being laid a few weeks later. Incubation is 28-34 days with the male bringing food to the female. The nestlings stay in the nest for between three and five weeks before fledging. For more fascinating facts, figures and more about surveying Hobbys please see this link

 

Today I spent a brief half an hour with Tony James before he had to leave. We had both of the juveniles out on the same branch in clear view.

 

 

Later on I was graced with the presence of the Mayor of Hounslow. Corinna Smart is also a fellow birder friend of mine, and thankfully for the birds sake, she turned up without her robes and official chains. It's ok, she knows me well and knew I'd be mentioning her in my blog :)

 

Sue, John, Phillip, Joe and Rick also joined us in the afternoon, and we all got to see both of the juveniles, both of the adults, some lovely acrobatic hunting swoops and as mentioned earlier, several food passes between the adults and juveniles. Sadly no photos of the food passes, too many over head tree branches, but I did manage some more poor shots of the juveniles on their apparent favourite branch.....

 

You can see from the photos below why I now have a sore neck. The birds are often perched very high up in their favoured tree....

 

 

 

We've only seen dragonflies being bought in by the parents to feed the juveniles, but Ralph Hancock who writes the Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park blog has confirmed his three juveniles Hobbys are also being fed on a diet of Ring Necked Parakeets. Please click here for the link to his blog. His report on the unusual food habit is on his blog post for Friday 22nd August.

 

I spent a little bit of time around the wood circle hoping for another sighting of the Brown Argus butterfly, but to no avail. It wasn't as warm and sunny today as yesterday, and there was a distinct lack of butterfly sightings in general. However I did find two of the Hobbys favoured prey. A Southern Hawker and a Migrant Hawker.....

 

 

Despite the cloudy weather it was a great day with like-minded friends. Thank you to everyone who made the trip to see our lovely Hobbys, and special thanks to John for bringing a large flask of coffee. I'm glad to see I've got you well trained my friend :)

Two confirmed patch ticks from Cranford Park

Following on from last Saturdays blog where Sue and I took a juvenile Hobby away from a naïve and un-informed young man who had found the bird on the woodland floor, and thought he was doing the right thing by keeping it captive in his bedroom, I was determined to get back to Cranford Park today to find more Hobbys.

Both Sue and Tony had been there during the week and seen Hobbys flying, and heard a lot of distinct calling.

 

It didn't take me long to find them this morning. Initially I could only see an adult flying around.

 

 

Not long after that I bumped into Tony and Audrey, and we split up to try and track down the location of the calling birds, which I hoped were more juveniles.

 

And they are. I found two juveniles in, ironically, our Kestrels old nest tree. They were incredibly vocal whenever one of the adults was near by, and after texting Tony and Audrey, we all managed to see both of the juveniles and saw adult birds coming in to feed them. Sadly pictures were hard to get as they were right at the top of the tree, but my two below are just to prove there are two juveniles.

 

 

Of course there really should be three juveniles. The one that we rescued last Saturday was taken to St Tiggywinkles in Buckinghamshire, to be assessed. I was hoping that although the bird had been in captivity and constant human contact for the previous 10-14 days, that there might be a chance it could eventually be re-released back in to the wild. Sadly it appears this may not happen. The bird is now in a large outdoor flying aviary with another rescued Hobby. The experts there guess-timate its age at  8 weeks.  Hopefully I will find out the final decision next week as to whether this beautiful little migrant can ever be released.

 

Back to its siblings though, after Tony and Audrey left I had a quick wander around the long grasses to see our Kestrel family. I could only find one adult and one juvenile today, so it does look like the other two juveniles have left the area. Wandering back to the Hobby tree, I spotted one out on a branch and very visible, so managed to fire off a couple of shots before it disappeared  from view again.

 

 

 

So it's confirmed. Hobbys have successfully nested at Cranford Park. I know that the last recorded time they nested there was five years ago, so it's really pleased me to see they are back. We have no idea what tree they chose to nest in, but hopefully the adults will return next early summer and I'll be able to monitor them more closely.

 

We also saw a Red Kite over today, and earlier this morning one was sat in a tree by the orchard. Two Sparrowhawks were also seen, one of the Kingfishers was whizzing about on the River Crane and I got two distant views of a weasel running across a path.

 

 

My other confirmed patch tick was this little butterfly.

I spotted it while I was waiting for a Hobby to show itself. Thinking it was a female Common Blue, I took a few snaps. When I got home and uploaded my photos, I immediately became suspicious. Something didn't look right. It looked more like a Brown Argus.

I had to get it identified to confirm my suspicions and the wonderful people on the Facebook page 'Butterflies UK' confirmed it. A female Brown Argus, Arica agestis.

 

 

 

To confirm this is a patch first for Cranford Park I need to email Alison Shipley who does the regular butterfly counts in the summer. But it is a first for me.

 

So all in all, a very successful and exiting day. Cranford Park never ceases to amaze me, considering where it is located. Heathrow airport one end, the M4 the other end, and the A312 all down one side. Yet the wildlife is incredible. We know now that Kestrels, Little Owls, Sparrowhawks and Hobbys breed on site. Buzzards and Red Kites are regular visitors. Both Pied and Spotted Flycatchers have been seen over the last two years as well. Yet it is such an under watched site.

A close encounter with a Hobby, and a stunning Spotted Flycatcher at Cranford Park today...

I very nearly didn't go out today, but I am now so glad that I did........

 

After a very busy hectic week at work, I really craved a visit  to Cranford Park. My first port of call there was my new favourite place, the stone bridge. As mentioned two weeks ago, I keep seeing the Kingfishers perched near here, and today I saw one of them again. Crap photos as the bird was still some distance away, but nice to see they are still active.

 

 

Also from the stone bridge I saw a pair of Black Caps and this ChiffChaff, which decided to have a  bath in the river by balancing on the green weeds just like the family of Blue Tits did on my last visit two weeks ago.

 

 

 

Sue and Jasper turned up not long after that and we were chatting by the bridge when we saw a bloke emerge from the copse with something perched on his hand. We stopped him, and discovered to our complete shock that he was carrying a juvenile Hobby.......

 

 

After questioning him in some detail, it emerged that he had found the young bird on the floor in the woods over ten days ago. But instead of seeking help or guidance, he simply picked the bird up and took it home. For the last ten days it's been living in his bedroom and been fed on bits of kidney and chicken. He claimed he thought it was a parrot when he found it and he fully intended to keep it as a pet.  

Well Sue and I soon put him straight. We told him he was breaking the law and I asked him to hand the bird over so we could take it to be assessed by experts. It took some convincing, and he was only really happy to hand it over after I said I would call the police if he didn't, and after I'd given him one of my blog cards with my email address on it. I told him to contact me later and I would let him know what had become of the bird. Even when I eventually had the Hobby safely in my hands, the bloke kept insisting he was an animal lover, yet when we asked him why he hadn't at least taken the bird to a Vet, he claimed he didn't know what a Vet was. He started to follow us as we made our way to Sues car then appeared to change his mind and walked away.

 

 

The young Hobby felt thin in my hands, and I could feel its breastbone. I could also feel nothing in its crop so I'm not sure when it last ate. It was also incredibly docile, and showed absolutely no fear. I didn't want to risk the poor bird attempting to fly off and hurt itself, so instead of letting it perch on my hand, as the bloke had, I gently cupped it.

 

Near to Cranford Park is a vets that has links to Heathrow Owls owned by Terry, so we took it there to be assessed. The whole time we were talking to the veterinary nurse, the bird just perched on the counter. It made no attempt to fly off or even walk around, but thankfully its eyesight and hearing appeared ok and it was looking around and was very interested in the noise I was making whilst  tapping out a message on my phone.

 

 

 

The helpful nurse contacted Terry who mentioned the words that I had feared were coming.......the bird is now too humanised to ever be released back into the wild. The bloke that found it may have kept it alive for the last ten days but by keeping it in his bedroom the poor bird has become imprinted.

Imprinting refers to a critical period of time early in an animal’s life when it forms attachments and develops a concept of its own identity. Birds and mammals are born with a pre-programmed drive to imprint onto their mother. Imprinting provides animals with information about who they are and determines who they will find attractive when they reach adulthood.

 

Terry will be picking up the Hobby from the vets tonight, and will then start the difficult process of finding a sanctuary that will care for it for the rest of its life. He has promised to keep me posted.

 

Before Sue and I left the vets, we really wanted to see it eat. It was far too thin for my liking. The nurse defrosted a couple of chicks, and we put the Hobby in to a holding cage with some water and the food. Within seconds the Hobby had walked across the cage and started feeding itself.

 

 

Strangely it had no problems at all in feeding itself, which makes me wonder if the bloke that found it was actually telling the truth. Because Sue and I were so concerned about the bird, I failed to get the blokes details. We just wanted to get the bird away from the bloke as soon as possible and get it looked at. It will be interesting to see if the bloke does contact me later tonight.......

 

Sue and I left the vets and drove back to the park in what I can only describe as a split mood. We were very happy that we had seen the bird eat, and  that it appeared healthy, but also a little sad that this gorgeous bird will never be free in the wild.

 

 We were also amazed that we now had proof that not only do Little Owls, Sparrowhawks and Kestrels breed at Cranford Park, but that Hobbys do too.

 

We decided to take a walk through the woods, just to see if we could locate a nest but to no avail. The bloke had been quite vague when describing where he had found the young Hobby, and with hindsight we maybe should have insisted he shown us, but as mentioned before, at that time after getting over the shock of seeing this man walking out of the copse with a juvenile Hobby on his hand, that Hobby was our main priority and we had to seek assistance for it.

 

There were plenty of butterflies and a nice Common Hawker to watch though.

 

 

We checked on our resident Kestrel family and could only find three of the five birds flying around the meadow grassland. They are no where near as showy as they have been in the previous weeks so it looks as if the juveniles are finally becoming wary of humans and have started to move on and find new territories of their own.

 This one was hiding in a tree....

 

 

Eventually we wandered back to the stone bridge to look for the Kingfishers. After a short while of hanging around, it wasn't a Kingfisher that caught our attention, it was a stunning solo Spotted Flycatcher. This is a first for both of us at Cranford Park, though I know Tony James has seen on here before and both Sue and I have seen them at nearby Lake Farm.

It may look like a boring little brown job, but these little birds don't live in the UK all year round. They actually spend their winter in Africa, and return to the UK in the spring, coincidentally just like the Hobby. You can only imagine how many miles these birds fly each year.

So here's a complete over load of Spotted Fly photos as there is no way of knowing when I will see one again.......

 

 

 

All in all, it was quite an incredible day. The close encounter with the Hobby was very much bitter sweet, and the sighting of the Spotted Flycatcher was a bonus.

 

So as always when Jasper the bird-dog has been out with us, my blog post finishes with a photo of him.