Wednesday 29 February 2012

Wagtail reflections

Under a leaden sky, a grey spring day, what better time to reflect on past adventures? I spent the summer of 2011 volunteering with the Hellenic Ornithological Society at Gialova. Happy memories of watching harriers from the roof of a long abandoned fish farm as the sun rose, of the first crowd of flamingos, landing on the lagoon the day after the first rains. Lying floating in the warm millpond-calm Mediterranean sea while Plain Tiger butterflies (Danaus chrysippus) flew over me, perhaps on some hazardous migration to North Africa, not dissimilar to their American cousings the Monarchs (Danaus plexippus.) Drinking in a bar with some of the gentlest people I have ever met, from every corner of Europe and beyond, united by a shared love of nature and nature conservation. One of my finest memories from this time, as summer turned to autumn and the hillsides turned from brown to green with the rains, was of the swallow roost. Hirundines, mostly barn swallows but with a few Sand Martin and Red-rumped swallows, would gather over the water, pursuing the mosquitoes over the surface, the winged cavalry as far as us much-bitten volunteers were concerned.  In their hundreds they wheeled and swooped below the sunset. They would gather in the vast phragmites swamp, chattering and squabbling for space, occasionally slipping awkwardly down the stems. Sometimes they would form a visible column, a dense stack of birds circling and descending, creating the impression of a column of smoke. Then, as if someone had turned out the lights, silence, as the birds settled down for the night. As the season progressed into October, and the chills of autumn truly began to set in, the numbers of these little birds began to drop off as they continued their journey, which, in the case of H. rustica, spans the breadth of two continents. But the reedbeds were not vacant, and the place of the swallows was taken by a different species, a wintering one, which arrived in small flocks, but nontheless gathered in density. These were the continental subspecies of a familiar bird, the White Wagtail, Motacilla alba alba, and it was with their gentle chirping that the reed beds now rang. Busy little birds, in the daytime they were rarely seen away from hard surfaces, the articficial paths across the lagoon, the small visitors' car park, with their curious running gait and low, fast flight. They too roosted among the phragmites, and by the end of october appeared to outnumber swallows.    
 
In winter, it is well known that the centre of Upminster is populated largely by their British conspecifics, pied wagtails, M. alba yarrelli. Yesterday I counted 30 gathered in numbers on the open greenery of Upminster Park. One wonders what such a species did before the built environment came and gave them a home.  They roost in numbers in one or two trees in the town centre, as they do in trees in urban heat islands across the country, little white powderpuffs clining to the branches as streams of commuters pass by. They remained still and silent when my partner and I looked up into the branches one cold evening a few weeks ago. No commuters stopped to see what had caught our attention, just a man and a small child who stopped, the father showing his daughter the tree full of little birds. There must have been fifty of them in the tree, and by day no-one would know they were there but for the white droppings on the ground beneath. Another tree across the road was similarly bedecked. As we watched the birds became restless, and we walked slowly away, knowing that wildlife spectacles first encountered on exotic shores can be experienced right here on the urban fringe. 

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