Wildlife April 2011

[emma T]

heard my first cuckoo of the year today 

[mark smyth]

It's a few years since I heard a cuckoo

[mark smyth]

Italian bird hunters accidentally killed each other and passing walkers as they scoured the countryside for prey

This hunting season in Malta 6,000 hunters have been licensed to kill birds on the small island. Government quotas allow only 16,000 birds are allowed to be killed. How is the government planning to make sure each shooter kills only 2.66 birds 

Spring and autumn migration isnt a good time to go to Malta.

[RichardW]

I think you can sometimes hear Redwings singing in the UK as they depart for the breeding grounds. I regularly hear individuals singing while still in flocks here as they rest on their way north. Redwings also have very distinct dialects even varying over relatively short distances, birds from different dialect areas not mixing that much...

always hear them singing here for a few weeks before they depart, when there's a fairly big flock they make quite a noise!

heard the first Whitethroat singing today, pair of Red Kites still calling/displaying over the garden, watched a Blackbird escape the clutches of a Sparrowhawk.

[Anthony Darby]

Anthony, have you been out to Tiri yet?

Not yet Ashley. It's on my to do list but getting the children settled into school was the first priority. It's the nearest place to see wild takahe, which have fascinated me ever since I collected the Brooke Bond picture cards "Wildlife in Danger" illustrated by Peter Scott.

Italian bird hunters accidentally killed each other and passing walkers as they scoured the countryside for prey

This hunting season in Malta 6,000 hunters have been licensed to kill birds on the small island. Government quotas allow only 16,000 birds are allowed to be killed. How is the government planning to make sure each shooter kills only 2.66 birds 

Spring and autumn migration isnt a good time to go to Malta.

That's one of the reasons why I would never go to Malta on holiday. I have heard of morons in fast boats speeding between tourist boats shooting eagles as they go. Bird sanctuaries throughout the Mediterranean region seem to be littered with empty shotgun cartridges! Primitive peoples!  The worst way of catching small song birds I have come across in using limed twigs. I deliberately wrecked a man's day by spending an hour wandering back and forth looking for beasties (I think it was on Zakynthos?) scaring the birds away. He had one or two birds tethered and a whole load of sticky twigs. No doubt he would be back.

[Lesley Cox]

It's a few years since I heard a cuckoo

Here you are Mark. (in a creaky mezzo voice)

Cook
         oo.

[RichardW]

after seeing 4 under my feeders a few weeks ago heard a Brambling singing at work today & 2 Mandarin on the lake first thing.

no cuckoo here yet.

[mark smyth]

quick! someone drum on the tree with two stones!

[mark smyth]

We were brought to a secret location in Northern Ireland where there are two nest holes belonging to greater-spotted woodpeckers

[arisaema]

Are they rare in N I? It's the most common species locally, you always hear their pecking when walking in the woods in summer time.

Any sign of swallows or swifts yet?

[mark smyth]

They used to be as common as hen's teeth.

Ireland has never had woodpeckers due to the land bridge being submerged at the end of the last ice age. By the time the ice retreated far enough north it was too late.

There have been reports here and there for a few years and in 2009, I think, they bred in the north and south . Due to the expansion of the range of these birds they eventually  arrived here.

[Stephenb]

Great Spotted Woodpeckers have also spread their range westwards into my area over the last 20 years (Trondelag in mid-Norway). Black Woodpeckers used to be more common! Never saw GSW's in the breeding season 20 years ago. This year I've heard drumming birds in 4 places in my limited wanderings... I suspect that this is in part due to changes in forestry practice whereby old and dead trees are now left for the wildlife...  

Re- Black Woodpecker, I quite often find the oval shaped nest holes excavated by this species in dead trees when skiing in winter (seen in the picture in the link): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BlackWoods.jpg

[mark smyth]

oops I keep calling them greater when it's only great.

[mark smyth]

Something very exciting happened in N Ireland a few weeks ago. Tesco agreed to fund and erect a swift apartment block
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFkcStwutBE[/youtube]

[RichardW]

had a lovely morning yesterday watching Black necked Grebes, seen a few winter birds over the years but not in all their summer/breeding glory, beautiful!

House martins back in the nests next door.