Birdwatch, February 2017

Steve Jones' bird sightings in February 2017. Happily, gaps are being filled!

Great Tit: more in evidence a year ago. Great Tit: more in evidence a year ago. Photo: Ian Kirk

I have been really pleased with my February sightings as birds I would have expected to see over the Winter have appeared, and I hadn’t seen them last year, the cold spell no doubt responsible. Admittedly I went out pretty much every day in February this year, whereas looking at my notes from last year it was seemingly every two to three days. The days have been a bit warmer and the birds were beginning to take on a bit more colour, with some starting to sing as the breeding season approached.

My garden Chaffinches which come to the feeder were quite active now, but apart from Blackbird, Dunnock, Robin, Blackcap and occasional Black Redstart there wasn’t much else. Last year I was seeing good numbers of Blue Tits and Great Tits. This year I have been hearing the Great Tit, but the Blue Tit and the Wren have been very scarce. The Blackbirds which were so prominent in January had largely moved on in the early part of February.

On February 1st a male Hen Harrier flew right in front of me whilst I was driving into Stari Grad. I saw it a few times in January, but only twice in February, the second time almost at the end of the month on February 27th.

Redwing with a Fieldfare, February 2017. Photo: Steve Jones

February 2nd brings another first – Redwing, not a very good picture but it shows the difference in size between the Fieldfare and the Redwing.

February 4th: feeding on the Vrbanj airfield there were in excess of 100 Fieldfares and Mistle Thrushes.

Then on February 7th I saw my first Pheasant, although I had been hearing them before this.

Cirl bunting, February 2017. Photo: Steve Jones

February 9th: I was out for just an hour in the morning, and concluded that the Fieldfares had moved on. It's interesting what a difference a couple of days can make. Blackcaps were very active. I tried to get a decent picture of them, but they were too flighty. I was hoping to show how the male and female have different coloured "caps", but alas that was not to be at the moment. I heard my first Cirl Bunting of the year singing (22nd in 2016), staking its territory. This bird is an all year round resident and very pretty as you can see from the picture.

There were also two very bedraggled looking Starlings. At first I thought I was mistaken, not having seen them here before, and to make matters worse the battery had run out on my camera. But once I got my binoculars on them it was clear as to what they were.

Starlings lined up. Photo: Steve Jones

On the evening of the 10th I heard my first Eagle Owl of the year, quite close to my house in Dol.

11th February brought me two new species for the year, the Rock Dove and, for the first time on the island, the Wigeon. Keeping an eye on bird movements in migration, I noted that some of the Cuckoos had started moving from their African wintering grounds. Hopefully heading our way! They should arrive in the United Kingdom by about the third week of April.

Wigeon, February 2017. Photo: Steve Jones

February 14th brings me another first for the island – Lapwing. Initially I saw 4 birds on the Vrbanj airfield,  but later in the month I saw them again: 2 on the 17th, 10 on the 20th and 1 on the 22nd.

Lapwing, February 2017. Photo: Steve Jones

February 22nd brings another two species to add to the year list. A solitary Raven which flew off in the Brač direction before I could get the camera out to photograph it. I didn’t see any last year, but heard one with a friend who also recognised it. Then there was a Pied Wagtail, rather late, as it was a bird I had been expecting to see in January.

Chaffinch visiting the Cafe Splendid in Jelsa. Photo: Vivian Grisogono

By far the most common bird on the island during February was the Chaffinch. Far too many for me to count but it seemed to me as the month was coming towards the end that several flocks had flown onwards to their breeding grounds. Many were feeding at my bird tables - I counted 14 at a time towards the end of the month, and they were starting to sing more noticeably. There were also large numbers of hooded crows. Buzzards were still in evidence, but not in such great numbers as in January and early February.

Almond blossom 'confetti', February 2017. Photo: Vivian Grisogono

Well, February left us with blossom beginning to show on trees, more Red Admirals and Brimstone butterflies on the wing. There were birds starting to sing as they set up their territories. While more birds will be leaving us in this early spring phase, we should start to see the arrival of the summer migrants in March.

Almond blossom with bee. Photo: Vivian Grisogono

SUMMARY OF BIRDS SEEN DURING FEBRUARY 2017

© Steve Jones 2017

Lead photo of Great Tit by Ian Kirk from Broadstone, Dorset, UK (Great Tit  Uploaded by tm) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

For more of Steve's beautiful nature pictures, see his personal pages: Bird Pictures on Hvar 2017, and Butterflies of Hvar

You are here: Home Nature Watch Birdwatch, February 2017

Eco Environment News feeds

  • Campaign network calls on government to prioritise smaller cars and introduce higher charges for SUV owners

    More than 1m cars too big to fit in parking spaces are being sold in the UK each year, and numbers are growing, research has found.

    A trend for cars bigger than the average urban parking space means new vehicles are outgrowing towns and cities.

    Continue reading...

  • Authorities race to complete clean-up operation after devastation from gales and heaviest rainfall in 20 years

    People on the Aegean islands, more used in April to the sight and scent of spring’s blossoms, have been left reeling from flash floods spurred by typhoon-strength gales, with authorities calling a state of emergency in some of Greece’s most popular destinations less than three weeks before Easter.

    “It’s a total catastrophe and it happened in just two hours,” said Costas Bizas, the mayor of Paros, the island worst hit by weather not seen in decades. “We need all the help we can get.”

    Continue reading...

  • Indore in Madhya Pradesh was once dotted with fetid waste dumps but after a huge campaign is now virtually spotless

    This is what happens usually in India: a politician wakes up and launches a cleanliness “drive” with fanfare. They ostentatiously start sweeping a street and speak solemnly about civic duty while the media take photos. The next day it’s over and things go back to how they were before.

    But not in Indore in Madhya Pradesh. From 2017, when it won the prize for being the cleanest city in the country, it kept winning for eight straight years, until last year.

    Continue reading...

  • Badenoch, Cairngorms: As we pause above the river, a sudden flash catches our eyes – a red squirrelis rippling along the branches below

    It’s early morning and the sky is a billowing parachute of blue, bursting its seams with sunshine and the fluffiest white clouds. A cool wind blows up Loch Insh, roughening the water and bearing the scent of spring. From the island, a song thrush pours out all the trills, beeps and chirps of its bravura performance, oystercatchers pipe and a woodpecker hammers, the sound echoing around the hills.

    In the forest, the birch trees carry no hint of leaves but are shaggy with moss and lichen, their twigs falling in soft fronds, wine-coloured and beaded. The trunks are irregular, pitched at wild angles, curving and bent, sometimes two or three growing from the same base. In contrast, the pale aspens grow up as straight as telephone poles, sharpening to a point at the top. All their branches rise in upturned spikes, bare but for the tiny ink strokes of twigs. At the centre of the woods is a stand of oaks, vast and spreading, last year’s dry leaves still spilling across the moss and the crushed bracken.

    Continue reading...

  • Application, submitted by Cranswick, would have created one of the largest industrial poultry and pig units in Europe

    A megafarm that would have reared almost 900,000 chickens and pigs at any one time has been blocked by councillors in Norfolk over climate change and environmental concerns.

    Councillors on King’s Lynn and West Norfolk borough council unanimously rejected an application to build what would have been one of the largest industrial poultry and pig units in Europe.

    Continue reading...

  • Sanger Institute’s Tree of Life team say genomes offer invaluable insight into how species will fare under climate crisis

    “We are following the ‘invertebrate of the year’ series with bated breath,” began the email that arrived in the Guardian’s inbox last week.

    Mark Blaxter leads the Sanger Institute’s Tree of Life programme, a project that sequences species’ DNA to understand the diversity and origins of life on Earth. But far more importantly, Blaxter and his team are superfans of our invertebrate of the year competition and have offered to map the genome sequence of whoever wins this year.

    Continue reading...

  • With air pollution causing a fifth of deaths in Nepal, growing EV use could add nearly three years to Kathmandu residents’ lives

    In a rundown hangar in the heart of Kathmandu, the remains of a dozen electric trolley buses stand abandoned and corroding. Caked in dust and bird-droppings and lined with rubbish, they are a reminder of a bold experiment, launched 50 years ago, to electrify the city’s public transport system. Down the side of one is written, “Keep me alive”.

    Today, that plea is being heard. More than 70% of four-wheeled passenger vehicles – largely cars and minibuses – imported into Nepal last year were electric, one of the highest rates in the world. The figure reflects a remarkable growth in the use of electric vehicles (EVs), which saw the country import more than 13,000 between July 2023 and 2024, up from about 250 in 2020-21.

    Continue reading...

  • Its lab buildings have a rusticated air while its sleek, paper-thin louvre windows are reminiscent of a luxury ocean-liner. More importantly, the people of Arklow in Ireland can finally go swimming without fear of floaters

    It is not often that the arts section of a newspaper finds itself concerned with the aesthetic merits of a sewage works. But then there are few facilities designed with the finesse of the new €139m (£117m) wastewater treatment plant in Arklow, which stands like a pair of minty green pagodas on the edge of the Irish Sea. Nor are there many architectural firms who have thought so deeply about the poetics of effluent as Clancy Moore.

    “There’s a wonderful passage in Ulysses,” says practice co-founder, Andrew Clancy, summoning James Joyce as we tiptoe along a metal gantry above a gigantic vat of bubbling brown sludge. “The narrator turns on the tap to fill a kettle, sparking a lengthy rumination on where the water comes from, how it flows from reservoirs, through aqueducts and pipes, describing each step in minute detail, from the volume of the tanks to the dimensions and cost of the plumbing.”

    Continue reading...

  • As LRIs put pressure on health services, a Spanish-led study examines what role exposure to air pollution may play

    The Covid crisis highlighted gaps in our understanding of the role that air pollution plays in infections.

    A flurry of studies carried out during and after the crisis allowed a UK government advisory group to conclude that long-term exposure to air pollution may contribute to worse coronavirus symptoms. The group offered examples that included a study of more than 3 million people in Denmark that showed air pollution added to the risk of death or hospital admission with severe Covid, especially in the least well off.

    Continue reading...

  • Species-rich plot can produce cooling effect 4C greater than single-species plot

    Woodland with lots of different kinds of trees can do a good job of buffering heatwaves and extreme cold. Now a new study demonstrates that increasing the mix of species can help to mitigate climate extremes.

    Florian Schnabel, from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research in Leipzig, and colleagues measured forest temperatures over a six-year period at the world’s largest tree diversity experiment in Xingangshan, in subtropical China. Their results, published in Ecology Letters, show that species-rich plots provided the greatest cooling effect during summer, with cooling more than 4C greater in an experimental plot with 24 species compared with a single-species plot. Diverse plots also maintained more warmth under the tree canopy on cold nights and during winter.

    Continue reading...

Eco Health News feeds

Eco Nature News feeds