.... more on the arrival of Winter.

...as promised more observations on the arrival of Winter.

Flocking tits...
flocking jays...
flocking pigeons...
flocking Goldfinches...
in fact,
flocking everything!

The birds are flocking, a winter trait among many species...
and we have large flocks of corvids... crows and jackdaws... 
milling around....
suddenly....
a tree will appear to loose all it's upper leaves...
and the 'leaves' leaving turn out to be a huge flock of Goldfinches that were blending in with the remaining foliage.

Simon of "Days on the Claise" observed last year a flock of corvids playing in the wind... and, despite the recent rain, our corvid flocks have been doing the same! Susan blogged about the same sort of  behaviour here in 2008.

The flocks of Lapwings are getting noticeably larger and the tit numbers are much larger than a week or two ago... and the warblers that were with them then seem to have moved on.

But perhaps, amongst all these flocking birds, the most spectacular have been....
the Wood Pigeons...
swirling flocks of a couple of hundred...
taking twenty or so minutes to pass the bedroom window...
when they are strung out as they move from one recently harvested maize field to another....

A very small part of a strung out movement of pigeons... open it in a separate window to view the numbers.
(I took three pictures to try and show the length... but they didn't stitch together.)

or in swirling clouds as they descend for a break in the poplars at the end of our meadow...
and then, without warning, exploding outward in all directions...
before assembling again, swirling around and settling...
a raptor had passed, probably, but I'd missed that.

Could have been the female Sparrowhawk...
or even one of...
or more probably, the local Goshawk.
We have had the occasional Peregrine...
all of which would love a tasty pigeon breast!
And it is the raptors that 'cause' the flocking...
it is a winter survival trait...
with the swirling mass it is difficult for the raptor to target an individual...
fish shoal for the same reason, but not seasonally.

Now we are watching out for the Cranes... they are on the move... a few flights have passed through Limousin... but they are massing at the Lac du Der to the north... 40,000+! So they are on their way south, too.

Hare today

The hare was moving right to left...

Either the cold weather is making the creatures more venturesome, or it's just the snow revealing where they have passed. This morning we awoke to find an unmistakeable set of Hare (Lepus europaeus) lièvre tracks passing our front door.

Coming towards the camera
If you look closely at the first set of prints,
you can see the rear right paw mark clearly at the bottom of the hole.

A hare, travelling at some speed, crossed the bridge from the meadow, and accelerated around the end of the barn to the proto-hedge where it could cross the road. Each set of pawprints is a single splodge in the snow, with the two front feet in line at the back. The huge back feet pass the front feet as the hare bounds along, landing splayed out to either side.

Here, the hare's front feet are at the back and the orangy splodges, just above the front elbows, are the hind feet overtaking!

Hares are hunted for the pot throughout France and elsewhere. In our community of communes the hunting fraternity is performing a comptages(census) of hares because of concerns about the population, believed to be declining rapidly (more by habitat loss than from predation). The season for hares was 25 September to 4 December last year, so our hares can bounce in peace for the time being.

Here is that paw print again.

Black hats in the cherry tree

On Monday night, the temperature in our verger fell below -20°C, according to our weather station. It has not risen above freezing since Sunday. In this severe weather, we have seen several species using our bird feeders for the first time, including cirl bunting, collared dove and great spotted woodpecker.

Picture of Weather Station readings showing the lowest temperature yesterday!! [And what it got up to by 6.30.]

A male Blackcap (Sylvia Atricapila) Fauvette à Tête Noire has started helping himself to a couple of apples that we hung in our cherry tree. This handsome fellow, with his dove-grey cloak and smart black cap, is a member of the warbler familiy and a familiar summer visitor, but is resident in this part of France and in parts of southern England. We've seen winter Blackcaps (browncaps, if female/juvenile), but he was a first on the feeders.

Even apples turning to cider-mash are needed by this male Blackcap

The other, slightly more unusual, species is the Reed Bunting (Emberiza Schoeniclus) Bruant des Roseaux. In summer, the male Reed Bunting has a black head and bib, separated by a splendid cream moustache. In winter he retains the moustache, but his head becomes striped in shades of grey and his bib becomes more or less speckled with grey. He mainly feeds on the ground under the cherry tree among the dunnocks, blackbirds, song thrushes and moorhens, under a light rain of seeds kicked out of the feeders by the goldfinches.

A chilly looking male Reed Bunting

We only get the occasional greenfinch or chaffinch at the cherry tree feeders - our best customers there by far are the great tits, blue tits, house sparrows and goldfinches. Here they have a choice of peanuts, wild bird mixture, fat balls and home-made fat blocks. A feeder full of black sunflower seeds hangs from a young willow in the meadow. There the finches are the main customers, both at the feeder and accompanying several young pheasants on the ground.

The Field Feeders
From left: Female Greenfinch, Goldfinch on feeder and Greater-Spotted Woodpecker on his way to the fat balls.
The fat ball feeder is a coiled tube of fencing wire... cost = zero!
It allows fat balls to be used without the netting - now considered to be dangerous to birds' safety.

Despite today's unscheduled snow, there are signs of spring in the meadow. The robins are chasing each other around the cherry tree with their usual aggression. A pair of hares started boxing before disappearing into the blackthorns on the riverbank. Two female blackbirds are disputing rights of possession under the cherry tree. The male finches are starting to look splendid in their summer costumes. By providing food for the small birds we are setting out a dining table for the sparrowhawks, a no win situation I'm afraid. At least we can protect the birds from the cats to some extent. We have set up a chickenwire screen around the foot of the cherry tree to stop the cats rushing the ground-feeders there. Before the snow, Jerry would sit inside it, being teased by the wrens who kept just out of pouncing distance, but it's too cold there for him now.

Greater-Spotted Woodpecker on his way...

Sad little bundle of feathers

Today we had a steady fall of fine snow which tailed off towards lunchtime, leaving the ground with a covering of about ten centimetres. Baron, our black tom cat, was beginning to get cabin fever and begged to be let out. Alas, he caught a Meadow Pipit (Anthus pratensis) Pipit Farlouse, which was foraging along the side of the hanger. Normally if you get to him quickly, he will release the bird unharmed and it will fly away, scolding. This time the little creature died in Tim's hand, although it had no sign of injury. On checking it over, there felt to be no flesh on its breast and it weighed only 15.1 grams.

Poor lttle scrap

According to Birds of the Western Palaearctic, the average weight for a healthy adult meadow pipit in autumn (and it has been autumnal up to very recently) is 18 grams.  Also listed are mortality weights of around 12 to15gms. The tip of the tail is quite worn, suggesting that this is an older bird. We think it was starving, exhausted and cold, and the shock of capture by a cat was the last straw. Until the cold spell started, there were plenty of insects around for it to eat. Its fate shows how quickly a small bird can run out of energy in cold weather.
Also worth noting is that this would have been [and technically still was] a new species for us here... we've seen them up on the 'tops' but never around here in the valley... so it had been driven to seek food in new areas.

The guilty party was sent to his basket, which is on the windowsill of our bedroom. Remarkably, he went!

Winter is here

The meteo has been predicting snow for some while, with an amber alert for today - so much so that Meteociel's server was struggling to cope with the load. At about 2pm today it started to snow - very fine, wet snow (snizzle?), just a few flakes at a time at first. Although the temperature was a degree or two above freezing, the snow quickly began to settle, and by 5:30pm there was a light covering.

Grandmont behind a curtain of falling snow

Now (9:30pm) we have about 2cm, although the weather station registers zero precipitation. Either we've had less than 0.3mm of liquid, or the snow is just too fine for the rain gauge to register.

We also have a red-legged partridge  (alectoris rufa) perdrix rouge sitting on the front doorstep. It didn't fly away when Tim opened the door to offer it a handful of bird food. It just ambled a couple of metres away from the door and returned to pick up the grain. This rather odd photo was taken with flash switched off, so as not to disturb the bird's digestion. The background is our crushed limestone path, with blobs of snow.

Can I come in for a warm?

A teaser for the Weekend

Early September was our last posting.... and much has happened.
We've been a bit too busy to put much up lately... despite being assured that Winter is here by the return of the Dabchick and the Robins... and getting in the harvest and processing tomatoes as fast as we can because of the frosts.... nursing colds.... watching a possible juvenile Goshawk  up on the ridge opposite [but it never getting close enough to make a positive identification]...so we thought we'd better keep our readers entertained.
So here is a picture quiz!
What are these four?

Wotisit1

Wotisit2

Wotisit3

Wotisit4

This is coming up with the irritating "lightbox" effect... but I will leave it like that as it works quite well in this instance.... just remember to click on the white X in the top right hand corner to get back to the blog entry.

We will give you the answers next week.

Hopefully, the internet cable will be installed through to the house from the office by then... and it will mean we will be more able to write on the fly and posts will become more frequent!!