Puffins- the spell of the Northern Monks.

The little tourist boat out of Ulver Ferry on the Isle of Mull drew towards the towering cliffs of Lunga, largest and northernmost of the Trennish Isles, the chain of rocky little basalt islands in the Inner Hebrides, north of the famous Fingal’s Cave on the isle of Staffa, that great monument to undersea volcanism and geological forces. The water we crossed was crystal clear, and rich in life, fish weaving between fronds of waving kelp beneath the surface, moon jellies, and occasionally more unusual cnidaria, drifting everywhere. At one point even Common Dolphins were leaping beside us.  We docked at a rocky promontory on the island and made our way ashore on the columnar basalt, climbing a short cliff path. The skipper had warned us the birds would hypnotise us, that we’d risk falling into a trance on the cliff path, and would have to come back to the boat without seeing the spectacular heart of the seabird city which lines the steepest cliffs. His warning was spot on, but not heeded.

We sat up on the cliff top, among the wild flowers, the Bird’s foot trefoil and Burnett moths, on the rabbit-grazed, short grass, and watched the comings and goings of the Atlantic Puffins (Fratercula arctica) for hours. Birds flew in off the clear blue water, on wings beating rapidly, with thick, vivid coloured beaks full of silver sandeels.  Adults with food swiftly disappeared into their burrows, even Puffins are not averse to nicking their neighbours’ food, and to the gulls and skuas a Puffin with food on land is an obvious target.  So, they take their food underground hurridly, and unload it for the subterranean Puffling, the single, fluffy youngster waiting in the burrow.  Puffins without bills full of food seemed to enjoy a more leisurely lifestyle, taking some time to enjoy the sun and each other, pairs bill-rubbing and calling to each other, enjoying the bonds which hold them together, companionable, almost romantic. We were, naturally, enchanted by these entertaining little seabirds, and never made the journey across the little island to the spectacular Guillemots and Kittiwakes up on the towering sea stacks.

My paternal Grandma loved Puffins, and as such I must have drawn and painted hundreds of pictures of them, and bought puffin calendars and birthday cards for her every year. Images of them adorned her home.  They were here favourite bird, and as such have always held a special place in my heart. However I was in my mid-twenties by the time I saw one, on another chain of islands on the West coast, right down in the Scillies.  Puffins tend to live far from us, on rocky offshore islands, like the Scillies or the Trennish, or famously on Lundy, where the Bristol Channel meets the Atlantic.  They visit the coastline only briefly, setting up in April, and gone by the end of July. Their vanishing act is thorough and though wintering puffins were encountered at sea from time to time, it wasn’t fully understood until the advent of geotagging.  Once their Puffling has come waddling out under the sky for the first time, and taken to the sea, the parents remaining tie to land is severed. They shed the bright, temporary sheath which has grown around their bill, and darker feathers grow around the eye, masking the big, white face patches.  They loose the ability to fly during the Autumn moult, and spend the winter upon the ocean waves, living like the penguins of the Southern hemisphere, undertaking deep dives, wings adapted for ‘flying’ underwater. The black and white countershading Puffins, plus several related Auks share with Penguins are an example of convergent evolution, where similar evolutionary pressures lead to similar adaptations.  They retain the ability to fly only because of the need to avoid land predators, and only in the breeding season, to reach their cliff-top nesting sites, and they are at their most graceful underwater.  Then, come March or April, they return to their home island, and reunite with their lifelong partner, smartly attired once again. Some compare Puffins to clowns, given their colourful features and ‘eye makeup,’ and their scientific name compares them to monks, Fratercula arctica means ‘little Brother of the North.’ The name Puffin once applied to any burrow-nesting sea bird, hence the confusing scientific name of the Manx Shearwater, Puffinus puffinus.

Puffins are members of the Auk family, Alcidae, and are related to the Guillemot and Razorbill, as well as the extinct Great Auk. The family resemblance is apparent.  Unlike their relatives, puffins nest not on precarious ledges on the cliffs, but in burrows at the cliff-tops, usually taking advantage of those abandoned by rabbits, though they are capable of digging their own, and often do, take note of the sharp grey claws on their feet next time you are close to one.  A single egg is laid underground, in a chamber carved out for the purpose. The chick remains underground in relative safety, out of the reach of Herring Gulls and Raptors which occasionally prey on Guillemot and Razorbill chicks. Puffins also differ from their relatives in their winter habits. Razorbills and Guillemots can often be seen in winter, forming big rafts just offshore from their breeding colonies, remaining visible to birders onshore all year round, but Puffins are always absent from these agglomerations, preferring to spend the winter in the vast, open Atlantic, the Bay of Biscay and the North Sea, rich fishing grounds to which they have been tracked by modern telemetry techniques.

Puffins have a number of predators, with Gulls and Arctic Skuas all too keen to steal their hard won catch of Sandeels, which the young Puffling relies on almost exclusively, and Great Skuas, Great Black Back Gulls and birds of prey such as Peregrines, will occasionally prey on the adult Puffins. They are even, in some parts of their range, still hunted by man, though not in Britain.  Climate Change, and the loss of Sandeels as a result, and as a result of overfishing remain the biggest threats they face. They are confined to relatively few colonies around the North Atlantic, largely on islands off North America and North-Western Europe, and this reliance on a small number of sites led to the Atlantic Puffin’s listing as Vulnerable by the IUCN, and they are Red-Listed as Birds of Conservation Concern.

Yet at some of their colonies they are thriving, and one of those seems to be that of the Isle of Lunga. Rich, clear Atlantic seas offer them the food they need, and they are bothered little by the tourists who continue to visit their island breeding sites in considerable numbers. They are confiding and allow close approach, and photography. A few nest still at Bempton Cliffs in Yorkshire, alongside the Gannets and the occasional visiting Albatross, and though closed this year given the unfortunate impact of the ongoing HPAI epidemic, the Farne Islands still host a healthy population of these charming, entertaining little sea birds. Go and see them.

 

Lapwings

 A light spring mist lies across the lush green grazing marshes of Essex. The tiny herd of cattle stare me down with curiosity as I begin walking across the open field, the morning dew soaking off the grass onto my trousers. A cuckoo calls distantly, one of the closing headliners of the fading dawn chorus. I am looking for something else.  I am alerted to the presence of the bird I am looking for by its alarm call. It lifts into the air on broad, square wings, black and white, climbing quickly and turning sharply, and bears down on me, whistling its curious electronic whistle. The adult Lapwing makes several passes over me, close enough to let me know I am not wanted in its territory, but never close enough that I feel in danger of being pecked.  Its underside is bright white, its wingtips black, its eyes fixed on the potential danger, and its call almost otherworldly, to my mind recalling science fiction ray-guns, or Clangers, perhaps.  To others it may be the archetypal sound of the British countryside in May and early June. The reason for the adult Lapwing not wanting me there, and its reluctance to leave, is close by, at the muddy margin of a small pond, once a creek now cut off from the tidal river, pecking around in the mud. A tiny, awkward, fluffy chick, with a crown of mottled brown and a white collar, it’s one of the few chicks in whose downy plumage one can see the markings of the adult. A tiny, precarious little life, prodding around in one of the few remaining sections of its habitat in the county. The landowners here are rightly proud of their breeding Lapwings, and of the habitat they live in, and go to considerable lengths to protect these birds.

Lapwing, Speyside, Scotland, May 2023

Breeding Lapwings are not a typical part of the countryside in South East England. They have declined significantly since the 1950s, with the advent of intensive farming, and the loss of grazing marshes. They tend to do well on nature reserves managed for them, with water levels and grazing tightly controlled, and predators controlled or else excluded by metres and metres of electric fencing. Where I am now, a long way from Essex, North of the Border and then some, in the lush, green glens of Strathspey, Lapwings, and other farmland waders, are still a feature of the wider landscape, where lower intensity farming methods persist, though conservation organisations build links with farmers to promote their conservation. Elsewhere, small numbers of dedicated farmers and landowners are supporting the Lapwing’s return to the wider countryside, but they face an uphill struggle. They require very specific management, with grass short enough to allow a nesting adult a line of sight, for early identification of ground predators. They are highly vulnerable to predators, especially where shrinking colonies no longer allow a coordinated mobbing response.  They prefer shallow, standing fresh water in their nesting fields to persist into June and July to allow the chicks to feed, and cannot tolerate complete dessication of the soil, a challenge in times of changing climate.

Lapwing, Speyside, May 2023

To many birders Lapwings are very familiar, particularly from their wintering aggregations, their big flocks wheeling in the sky, turning from green-black to brilliant white as the birds bank and turn to evade a passing Peregrine or a Marsh Harrier. They are one of winter’s great spectacles. I recall immense flocks wheeling skyward against a backdrop of distant skyscrapers and wind turbines at Rainham Marshes on the edge of London many times.  One winter flock might comprise locally bred individuals, alongside birds from the near continent and beyond. A study from the Netherlands found that Dutch birds travelled to England, and to North Africa for the winter before returning to the same Dutch fields in Spring. They are individually faithful, as far as we can tell, to their wintering sites, but sometimes snowfall or other severe weather can displace them, and they need to undertake movements South and West to find food. They are largely short-range migrants.  Sometimes their flocks can be seen overflying even urban areas as they search desperately for a gap in the snow.

Lapwing, Lincolnshire, 2021

They are one of those birds which were they scarce or rare we would look at in absolute wonder. They’re a member of the Plover family, perhaps feral pigeon sized, topped with a smart black crest, over a friendly looking face in black and white, with big dark eyes and a short bill. Their undersides are white, and their back a palette of iridescence, mostly green but with notes of red and purple depending how they catch the light. Back in 2011 and somewhat blasé about Lapwings, given the large wintering numbers at some of my local patches, I was a volunteer at the Gialova Lagoon in Greece, where, one bright September day, in the heat, I encountered a Lapwing on the edge of some scrubland, and told my supervisor, she went running off after it, and came back cock a hoop to have found such a beautiful and unfamiliar bird.

Lapwings, RSPB Rainham Marshes, Greater London, 2011

But again, with such a decline in their breeding population, their wheeling summer displays and territory holding electronic sounding calls in an English, or even a Scottish summer, may become confined to specially managed reserves, or worse, a thing of the past. And, while managing for them is not easy, and can be costly, and thankless, it would be a great sadness not to see and hear that. And some people are investing the resources and energy required for Lapwings to return to the Essex countryside. And indeed, later in the season, when I returned to that site, the chicks had become two flighted juveniles, short crested, scaly backed versions of their parents, and it was great to see them making their way across the sea wall, to the Saltmarsh, to feed up on the wealth of shoreline invertebrates, before moving on, to wintering grounds near or far.

Emperors of the Moor.

 I love the big Saturniid moths. Ever since I was a kid and I got to watch an Indian Moon Moth emerge from its cocoon at home, a story of which my parents love to remind me, I have loved the big Saturniids, their big, ornamented, often bright green caterpillars, their silk-spinning and their cocoons, a palace for their pupae, and the big furry faces of the adult moths, with their dark compound eyes, their soft and luxuriant looking fur, and their surprisingly appealing faces.  Huge, patterned wings of eye spots, translucent windows and elegant pastel colours. The Saturniid moths are heavy duty night butterflies of immense beauty.   Although a group of them are called ‘Giant Silk Moths’ they are not closely related to Bombyx mori the domestic species so brutally harvested to make ties and party dresses. They are big, widely distributed, heavy moths, and the family includes the largest moth in the world, the Giant Atlas Moth (Attacus atlas).

Here in Europe, and Britain especially, we have something of a paucity of Saturniid moths. While the beautiful Spanish Moon Moth (Graellsia isabellae), a species I dream of seeing in the wild, lives in Mediterranean Europe, and the Tau Emperor (Aglia tau) sits just across the channel as close as Northern France and Germany, we only have one breeding Saturniid in these islands, and it is far from the biggest of them. However, the Emperor Moth, Saturnia pavonia, is a stunning beast, no less.  Males are finely patterened with rich grey forewings with eye spots, and purple fringing, and just a hint of a snakes’ head pattern on the wingtips, recalling some of its giant relatives. Their hindwings are orange, with dark veins like window lead, and another set of eye spots.  The females are grey, but no less spectacular, slightly larger, broad in the abdomen, and retaining the dark venation, with purple notes like the heather over which they fly. The eye spots are presumably aposematic colouring to threaten potential predators, and do look owl-like. The highly active males patrol the heather and grassland on sunny days in April and May. First impression is of an orange moth, the colour of its hindwings, often part concealed at rest. Having done all their eating as larvae, adult emperors do not feed, representing just a short-lived dispersal stage to mate and produce eggs.  Males spend their lives frantically looking for an opportunity to breed before their stored supply of energy runs out.  Their broad, feathered antennae serve to detect the chemical signals given off by females. Antennae provide a way of distinguishing the sex of Saturniids, under less pressure to detect chemical signals over long distances, the females have relatively thin antennae.  These moths can be attracted using a pheromone lure, designed to imitate the chemical signals of a female Emperor Moth. It works on similar principles to lures used to control pest species like Codling Moth or House Moths, but we were not using it to harm the moths, merely as an opportunity to observe and marvel.  When we, myself and a few colleagues from Butterfly Conservation, hung up the pheromone lure, from a fence in a little birch-and-heather patchwork not far from Aviemore in the Cairngorm Mountains, the male Emperors were with us in minutes.  Confused, they searched for the female, perching up on pines, posts and people, fluffy winged bundles of sexual frustration. The source of their confusion was soon taken away and repackaged, the moths’ energy reserves are valuable, and, the onlookers satisfied with excellent views, the moths melted out over the heather moorland once again.

Emperor Moth, Aviemore, May 2023

Females are relatively sedentary, seldom wandering far from their host plant, retaining their energy to distribute their eggs, and to escape from predators should the need arise.  They need to save their resources. As such, their lifespan tends to exceed that of the males, sometimes spending 10 days on the wing. A proximity to the host plant and a sedentary lifestyle saves them the active hunt for somewhere to lay that is a part of the lives of longer-lived lepidoptera, and like most Saturniidae, they don’t seem interested in finding the correct host plant. Fortunately, the larvae have fairly broad tastes, munching on heathers, birch, bramble and several other plant species, contributing to their surprisingly wide range in the UK, from the Highlands to open country in Essex and Kent, and down to Cornwall.

Upon hatching, the larvae are black and hairy at first, growing quickly, until by high summer the caterpillars are well grown and magnificent. A large Emperor Moth larva is bright green, studded with dayglow yellow, or sometimes other colours, points like gemstones, each surrounded by hairs, or perhaps bristles. It spends its summer eating, before spinning a cocoon, undergoing its final moult, and becoming a pupa. It overwinters in this state, as like all lepidoptera its body is essentially turned to soup and rebuilt into its final form. In Spring the moth emerges again, through a unique one-way valve in its cocoon, in contrast to other Saturniids, which instead produce chemicals to melt a hole through their silken palace. Then they face the world and fly, the cycle beginning anew.

Emperor Moth Larva on Orkney

Keep an eye out from April-early June for the Emperor Moth. They can be seen across the country, I have encountered it on the coastal marshes of Essex, the West Country heaths, up here in the Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland, and even, as a fat green, yellow-studded, heather munching larva, next to the Ring of Brodgar on the Isle of Mull.  Sometimes the larvae are easier to find than the moth, and tend to be active at the times of year we’re taking our summer holiday, so take a look for them too. In heather habitats their bright green colouration and markings make them surprisingly easy to spot.  And be impressed, by our only native Saturniid moth. A truly magnificent beast.

Snospurven! Snow Buntings, Plectrophenax nivialis, and all I know about them.

 At the lower station of the Cairn Gorm funicular railway, just above Loch Morlich, not far from Aviemore and part of Britain’s most noted Ski resort, there is a small, and usually astoundingly busy car park, surrounded by high end tat shops and various small, ski-related enterprises.  Emma and I visited the Cairngorms’ eponymous mountain in the hope of catching up with the confiding Ptarmigan for which the lower slopes are noted. The heavens had, the night before, dumped impressive volumes of snow on the towering landscape, and, though some paths up to the Slopes were already well trodden, the mountains, for miles, were coated in a thick, deep blanket of white, softening their ragged edges. Snow brings a curious sense of silence, and seemed to dampen the hubbub of excited skiers, and we looked down on a winter wonderland, snow hanging in the branches of the pine woods of Rothiemurchus, all the way down to the loch shore and beyond.

Snow Bunting, Cairn Gorm, March 2023

There were, despite this being apparently the only centre of human activity for miles here, special, and especially beautiful, birds here. A small band of Snow Buntings perched on the sloping roof of the ski centre. They fluttered down to pick about in the snow beside the green, angular, corrugated iron structure, flashing black and white wings. They allowed close approach, unafraid of the people around. Eventually a small crowd of photographers, armed with long lenses, gathered, and the Snow Buntings were keen and obliging models. Charming birds of high altitudes and the high arctic, last time I visited the flock, apparently a fairly regular fixture around the lower car park and the higher Ptarmigan restaurant during the winter months, had already melted away to their breeding sites high up in the crags. Flocking, and moving around these lower slopes, and being confiding, are winter behaviours. They nest high in the rocky landscapes, males singing atop deserted and windswept crags, where people very seldom tread. Arctic/alpine specialists, they breed right up into Arctic Norway, Arctic Russia, Iceland and Arctic Canada, places of icy extremes. When I visited Arctic Norway, in high summer, ‘Snospurven,’ a ‘common breeding bird,’ were nowhere to be seen.  Both sexes become whiter in summer, as they feed around the snow line, grabbing the insects which drift up on thermals, to find themselves dropped just above the snow line, an easy meal for the Snow Buntings to take back to their chicks.  During the last ice age they thrived across Europe. What impact climate change will have on such specialists as these remains to be seen.

Snow Buntings, Cairn Gorm, March 2023

Britain’s only breeding Snow Buntings are the few hundred pairs in the highlands, but in winter, more do appear in the country, and tend to choose a habitat which couldn’t be more different to the Cairngorms. They gather in small parties on stony ground, usually on shingle beaches, and are a regular fixture in some spots along the East coast. Here, their white-and-sandy winter plumage provides remarkable camouflage, blending readily with the Carstone and iron stained Hunstanton chalk pebbles of North Norfolk.  Here too they can be confiding, on a recent trip to Titchwell it was a joy to find these small and cheerful little birds scuttling around our feet. They can turn up as far South as Kent and Essex, but favour the North and East, making landfall at night as they cross the North Sea from Scandinavia and beyond, from places which make the North Norfolk winter seem mild.

Snow Bunting on the beach at Titchwell, Norfolk, December 2022

When we returned from our fruitless trudge through the snow on Cairngorm, without having seen a Ptarmigan, and a pair of noisy, cronking Raven the only new species on our day list of two species, we found 30 or so Snow Buntings now gathered, and a small crowd of photographers admired them, from just a couple of metres away.  What a privilege to encounter such charming and special birds, at such close quarters.

Cairn Gorm in the Snow. 

Snow Bunting.

Southend meets the Mediterranean.

 Southend Pier stretches over a mile out into the Thames Estuary, from the newly designated City of Southend, on Essex’ Estuary coast.  It was built in the 19^th Century to load and unload deep hulled sailing vessels, regardless of the state of the tide. Today it lives on, and is proudly proclaimed the longest pleasure pier in the world. For those from out of area, the River Thames here is several miles broad, the North coast of Kent sometimes lost in the haze on a misty day, the water is saline, the fish which swim beneath are marine, and the tidal range is substantial, leaving vast mudflats when the tide is low.  On a sunny day, it is a pleasant, if not a short stroll, out along the historic wooden boards, until you can really feel surrounded by water, a long way from the noise and bustle of Southend’s Sea Front, where dizzying theme parks and noisy arcades dominate. It is a place, in winter at least, of unexpected tranquility, and also, unexpected wildlife.

Mediterranean Gull, Southend Pier, January 2023

On the day of our visit frost, and caution had closed the historic boards when we arrived, so we embarked on the new, green, battery-powered train that has replaced the classic blue diesels, which are now reduced to waiting rooms and curiosities at the two pier stations.

Mediterranean Gull on Southend Pier. 

Upon exiting the pier train, we were met by one of our avian stars, an adult Mediterranean Gull (Ichthyaetus melanocephalus) which perched on one of the pastel painted beach huts, no doubt a coffee kiosk in high season. The Mediterranean Gull is uniquely beautiful among British gulls, and, always, in recent years, the most numerous Gull at the end of the Pier. As an adult, it creates the impression of a near all-white bird, its upper wings only lightly shaded in silver-grey.  In winter a black ‘smear’ creeps back from behind its eye, in contrast with the distinct dark ‘spot’ of winter plumage Black Headed Gulls (Chroicocephlus ridibundus), probably the nearest confusion species.  This commoner species was out here too, though in smaller numbers, a little smaller than the Med Gulls, with darker red to the legs and bill

Mediterranean Gull, Southend Pier.

As its name suggests the Mediterranean Gull is something of a newcomer to these shores, having  for most of its known history been confined to a few small colonies around the Eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea and Turkey. Here they bred in relatively small numbers under the baking summer sun.  The Med Gull was never the characteristic Gull of the Mediterranean region- that honour goes to the Yellow-Legged Gull, essentially, visually at least, a Herring Gull with yellow legs, or a Lesser Black Back with a paler back. Mediterranean Gulls are not your regular holiday seagull- though I did once see a pair drift over a Spanish beach.   Tied to the coast, in winter they seem to wander the Mediterranean outside of their breeding season.  In the latter decades of the 20^th Century, something changed for the Mediterranean Gull, and the species began to establish small colonies in the South of France and in Spain, and later on the coasts of Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, on the North Sea coast of Europe.  Now it breeds fairly abundantly in Southern England, along both the channel and the North Sea coasts, the odd pair pitching up at big Black Headed Gull Colonies such as at Two Tree Island, or forming colonies of their own on the shingle of Rye Harbour in Kent.  A spectacularly beautiful Gull in any season, in summer they become even more impressive, sporting jet black heads, with white eye rings, contrasting strongly with the brown hood of the Black Headed Gull, as reflected in its name in several European languages, for example, the Dutch Zwartkopmeeuw, causing consternation for international birders who neglect their scientific names.  Their white wings are all the more vivid in the summer sunshine.

Here on Southend Pier in the vague January haze, their wings still look bright, lacking black tips or contrasting leading edges that most common comparable species possess. But as someone passes, dropping a few chips, the angelic looking Med Gulls reveal themselves every bit as opportunistic and adaptive as their more familiar cousins, and they dive from their pastel beach-hut perches onto the dropped bounty, noisily squabbling among themselves for our wasted food.

Turnstone, Southend Pier

Another bird likes to hang out on the Pier’s end, another confiding opportunist, not afraid to pick up some of our scraps, and this one is adorable. Little bigger than a Starling, Turnstones, or Ruddy Turnstones (Arenaria interpes) as they are internationally known, are world-travellers, some of them crossing the Atlantic to reach our shores from Greenland and Northern Canada. There seems forever to be a population of these impossibly charismatic, charming little shorebirds on the move, and despite not occurring in the British Isles as a Breeding species, they seem to be here almost all year, absent only in May and June.  They can often be found on pebbly shores, turning stones, sometimes, in an unlikely display of strength, quite large stones, to hunt for the invertebrates underneath. They are unfussy about tucking into any sea-washed carcass that may turn up too. But on Southend Pier, running about among the feet of the visitors, and the colourful mini-golf course, they have learned to make a reasonable living from what we leave behind. Leftover fishing bait, chunks of Lugworm or Ragworm, probably extracted locally, seem to be a favourite, but a bit of sandwich won’t go amiss either. Hundreds of them roost on a small, wave-lapped slipway, and can reliably be seen there at high tide.  I suspect these smart little migrants tend to be unnoticed by most of the pier’s visitors,  but I find them extraordinarily photogenic. I have blogged about them before.  Have a browse. It’s there somewhere.

Turnstone, Southend Pier

Birds are not the only wildlife causing a stir at the end of the Pier. Mammals too, are in evidence. A pair of young Grey Seals raise their heads above the surface, and gaze up with appealing watery eyes. Recently afforded full legal protection, these popular piscivores are often encountered in estuaries, and despite the risk of ship collision, both our wild species of seal seem to be thriving, with Common Seals sometimes hauled out and sunning themselves on mudflats right in to Dartford and Rainham, the other side of London’s Dartford Crossing.  Grey Seals seem less abundant locally, but they are capable of travelling substantial distances.  These playful youngsters chased each other about, and eyed with curiosity the humans taking in the winter sun and sea air. I wondered if they occasionally take advantage of the growing popularity of catch-and-release among sea anglers, and how many small fish had been compassionately and carefully released into the green water, still bewildered and gasping, to immediately encounter the toothy and powerful maw of a Grey Seal.

Grey Seals, Southend Pier, January 2022. Photo by Emma Bickford. 

We walked back along the pier, toward the coast, and the noise, leaving these three wildlife stars behind us, as skeins of Brent Geese, another Essex icon, made their way across the cold blue sky.

Southend Pier

The Magic Of Starlings.

 I remember one winters evening when I was a child, walking through an underpass in Romford town centre. The kind of structure beloved of urban planners in the 50s and 60s, dishevelled by the 1980s and 90s of my childhood and youth. I recall reaching an open space at the bottom end of Romford Market, a sort of roundabout for pedestrians, open to the sky and fringed by small street trees. There was a cacophony in the skies, twittering, and the distinct whirring of hundreds of tiny wings. I was in the shadow of an urban murmuration, a big flock of starlings making their way to a communal roost somewhere else in town. I recall even at that young age, fascinated by anything small and flighted, being wonderstruck by this sensational display. Starlings are still common, but when I was a kid a flock of them could darken a grey Romford sky. Not so now. They have declined and become much scarcer since. While murmurations as big and bigger than that one I witnessed circa 1989 and still in single digits, still exist, they are few and far between, and invariably something of an avian tourist attraction, and very seldom in town centres. The Starling’s decline has been rapid, tragic and transformative.

Starlings in Cromer, spring 2022

Starlings are familiar, if not the most popular of garden visitors, I recall my aunt referring to the small bands of starlings which visited her bird table of a winters morning in the 1990s as a ‘raiding party,’ and even today they make short work of the fat balls and sunflower seeds we leave out for them. A pair attempted to nest in the apple tree in the back garden this summer, a glorious, noisy nest in a natural tree hole. They lack the tidy, hygienic practices of Blue Tits and other small passerines, which carefully move the fecal sacs away from the nest to avoid giving away its location. A static waterfall of white bird poo coated the bark beneath the hole. The adults were noisy too, attacking any magpie which landed in the adjacent trees. Sadly, I fear their efforts were not enough to protect their chicks from the big, mean corvids, as the nest fell silent one day, and no brown coated juveniles were seen on the lawn as I had hoped. I believe the garden nest of which I was most proud was not successful.

Starling in Maldon, Essex December 2022

The cause of Starlings’ decline is not known.   Agricultural intensification has led to shortages of food, especially the ‘leatherjacket’ cranefly larvae they particularly enjoy. They are badly affected by environmental pollutants, including medicines in wastewater, where exposed to them, but precise sources of exposure are unclear. Both the wintering, murmuration-forming populations and the resident population, which is highly mobile but not migratory, are in precipitous decline, with various sources pointing to declines of up to 70% since the 1960s, and 51% between 1995-20006.  They remain abundant in the United States, where they were irresponsibly released in the 19th Century, and have since become an invasive species. 

Starlings at a pre-roost gathering in the rigging of a Thames Barge.

But yet, on a winter’s evening on the Somerset Levels, or at Minsmere or Leighton Moss, murmurations in the tens of thousands are still recorded, big wheeling flocks throwing shapes against the cold sunset sky, descending noisily into the reeds, or onto artificial structures- Brighton Pier used to host a famous murmuration, before taking off again in an audible flurry of wings, until eventually, as darkness falls, they settle down, chattering gently to each other, before falling silent until morning, when they rise again in the dawn light, dispersing in small flocks- raiding parties, perhaps- to feed on whatever they can find, probing for invertebrates with the Lapwings in open fields, visiting and emptying your bird feeders, even raiding bins.  The crowd on the promenade sign pictured, from Cromer on the North Norfolk Coast, were eagerly descending on any dropped human food, and making a fuss around the dumpsters behind a chippy.  Individually starlings are beautiful, star spotted, iridescent, especially in the breeding season, when their bills turn from black to yellow and their plumage, with the protective breast feathers worn away over the hardships of winter, reveal a deep iridescence, of blues, greens and purples. Juveniles are solid brown, moulting into winter plumage in unusual patterns- a spangly starling with a brown head, often confusing inexperienced birders. But it is in numbers that they are most spectacular, and sought after, while barely anyone but little child-me looked up as they descended on Romford Market, the roost on the Somerset levels attracted hundreds of eager tourists, watching the Starlings of Bristol and Western Super Mare descend on the whispering reeds of the levels not far from Glastonbury Tour. Families had brought their kids to see them, and photographers brought an arsenal of lenses to capture the strange forms against the sunset. A group of students from Bristol Uni watched admiringly the psychedelic shapes in the sky, while an elderly gentleman with an elderly pair of swift binoculars watched from his mobility scooter. All left grinning along the banks or the muddy canal, to the car park in the dark.

The Otmoor Murmuration

I most recently watched a Murmuration when my partner, Emma and I headed up to Otmoor, the RSPB reserve near Oxford. Even on a grey Monday evening, the anticipation in the air was tangible as the sun briefly appeared through the clouds as it crossed the horizon, briefly flooding the countryside with orange glow before disappearing. We thought, standing in semi darkness, we might have missed the spectacle. However, we needn’t have worried, as the small, oval flocks began to converge in the sky, just above the treeline, merging into each other to form the big murmuration, which flowed in the air, creating strange forms there, ever growing as stragglers came to join it. After a couple of massed passes the starlings began to funnel down into the reeds, The sound, the whirr of wings, even at a distance, make the murmuration a sensory experience. I’ve never heard the sound of a murmuration accurately reproduced in Springwatch or any similar media documentaries, it seems a thing only to be experienced live. They funnelled into the reeds, the flock separating, as if the back end of it needs to wait in a holding pattern behind the disappearing lead birds, flowing back and forth like a liquid wave, until resuming the descent once the first wave had perched up.

The Otmoor Murmuration

Soon the birds had all disappeared into the reeds, though they kept twittering noisily, and one had to wonder what information was being shared down there. After about 20 minutes, something changed, and to our immense surprise, what seemed to be the entire flock took off, leaving the reedbed at speed for something low down on the other side of the path, leaving the reeds outside the hide once again silent.

And singly, they're pretty beautiful too. Starling in Cromer, Norfolk. 

The beauty of a murmuration is incredible. Inspiring. To all. You should probably go and see one. Before it is too late.

High Fashion and Green Metal in an Essex Summer: The Lestidae Damselflies

 As it is (ed: Not long past) Christmas, and I have already written of a decidedly Christmassy species, I thought, in the dark of St Stephen’s Night, to revisit the insects with which I spent a privileged summer, through the coastal marshes of Essex. The Lestidae damselflies, or Emerald Damselflies, come in a range of shades from key lime pie green, to metallic fir tree tinsel green, some bearing a dusty blue pruinescence. They are desperately fashionable too, subject of many treatises, management plans and UK Wildlife Podcasts, in part because of their undoubted beauty, more subtle than that of the splendid Calopteryx spp - perhaps more of them later- and less easily spotted than the big Aeshnids I wrote about before. Essex is their spiritual home- and arguably one of the epicentres of their remarkable colonisation of these islands. All four breeding species are found in the county, and I had the privilege of meeting them all over the summer of 2022.

Scarce Emerald Damselfly nomming a Blue Tailed Damselfly (Ishnura elegans)

Willow Emerald Damselfy, RSPB Bowers' Marsh, Essex. 

My first encounter with these splendid creatures was a couple of years ago at RSPB Rainham Marshes, where I met a gorgeous, deep bronze green insect hanging serenely on some wetland tree that may or may not have been the one from which it took its common name. This slim and delicate creature was a Willow Emerald (Chalcolestes viridis) a stunning creature which immediately caught my eye, especially as it was October, when all but the hardiest Common Darters and Migrant Hawkers had reached the end of their season. The Willow Emerald is unique among British odonata as it does not lay its eggs in water, but instead, in neat incisions made in woody vegetation overhanging water with a modified ovipositor. I have witnessed them laying eggs like this while still in tandem, the male gripping the female with his anal claspers, protecting, or jealously guarding her. From these eggs the tiny prolarvae emerge in spring, and drop into the water below to continue their life cycle, much more typically. Any which fail to find water do not make it, but conversely, being to an extent free of the need for water during late summer oviposition offers an advantage in a drying climate.  This species was first recorded breeding in the UK in something like 2009, in Suffolk. On a September walk by the Thames at Tilbury in 2022, with my good friend Chris, we found hundreds of these beautiful, bronze green insects, hanging out on Brambles tens of metres from fresh water. It is a species which has undergone a meteoric rise. Look for an all-green Damselfly, sometimes shimmering bronze in the sunshine as the light catches its iridescence, with clear wings (mind those flashy Calopteryx!) white pterostigmas (the dots in the ‘outboard’ corners of the wings), hanging out on marginal woody vegetation near still or slow-moving water.

Willow Emerald, Tilbury, September 2022

A few years later, while walking among the ditches at an EWT nature reserve way off the beaten track yet not too far from Basildon. Hanging on a branch, apparently relatively freshly emerged, was a beautiful male Scarce Emerald (Lestes dryas). Contrary to its English name, this species seemed very numerous on the sites where it lived. A hulking brute of a damselfly, size being a key if not universally reliable way of separating it from the smaller Emerald Damselfly (Lestes sponsa), and another species identified as having a distinct upward population trend, it likes Sea Clubrush choked ditches, sometimes to the consternation of site managers irked by its insistence on enjoying exactly the habitats wading birds do not, and often co-occurs on the coastal grazing marshes also favoured by Small-Red Eyed Damselflies and Ruddy Darter Damselflies. Like all Odonata it is an active predator, adult and nymph, largely taking small flies,  but not averse to dining on its distant relatives. At RSPB Old Hall, what I initially took to be a mating pair of Blue-Tailed Damselflies, turned out on closer inspection to be a Scarce Emerald feasting on the corpse of a Blue-Tailed Damselfly. In addition to an impressive display of predation, though I had no way of telling whether the Emerald had caught its prey on the wing or simply made a fortuitously (for the Emerald) timed landing, it represented a good chance to compare the blue bits of the two species. The steel blue pruinescence, a dusting of scales which fades with age, contrasted strongly with the almost luminescent looking blue tail-light of the commoner species.  Scan through the big crowds of Blue Tailed Damselflies for this big beast, and use your close-focus bins or a good photo to identify it by the pruinescence covering the whole of the first two segments of the abdomen, and the big, bent-paddle claspers at the back end to separate from male Lestes sponsa. A slightly different pattern of green and pale cream on the thorax separates the females of these species.  Look for them in June and July, I saw few of them after the big heatwave of 2022, for reasons unknown, perhaps it baked off the adults or desiccated any late developing nymphs.

Scarce Emerald (female) Essex 2022

Scarce Emerald (Male) Essex 2022

Historically, the commonest of the Lestidae in the British Isles, and still the one you’re most likely to encounter outside of South Eastern England, is Lestes sponsa, the Emerald Damselfly, you may hear it called the Common Emerald Damselfly.   This species has undergone something of a decline of late, like many of our odonata, as documented in the State of Britain’s Dragonflies report. It is hard to separate from L. dryas, I recommend a good book with the illustrations of Richard Lewington in it and a good pair of low-magnifying small binoculars for close focus, though any particularly small Lestes-with-blue-bits is likely to be one. Sadly I encountered just a few of this species during my summer transects.

Emerald Damselfly, Essex, 2022

The fourth species is the newest, and perhaps the slowest colonising, the beautiful and distinctive looking Southern Emerald Damselfly (Lestes barbarus). This is a gorgeous, key lime pie of an insect, with its dark green metallic upper surfaces contrasting with the pale, green-tinged yellow of its undersides, boasting a unique and instantly recognisable (yes, really) bicolour pterostigma, half milk white, half blackish brown. It has distinct ‘antehumeral stripes,’ look for markings like braces on its thorax. Its stronghold is on Canvey Island, of all places, I am advised a particular ditch is a good place to look, but I found it on the site near Basildon, where it was a new record. More delicate looking than the other three, it was first recorded in Britain in 2002, in Norfolk, and it’s been gradually colonising low-lying Essex since being discovered at Wat Tyler Country Park by Neil Phillips in July 2010, with other early records coming from Gunners Park, Shoeburyness in 2012. It is a more committed climate change rebel, and habitat specialist, than even the Willow Emerald, relying on ditches drying up in late summer for oviposition. I could scarce believe my eyes when I found one near Basildon on an EWT reserve. These species are moving so fast and unpredictably with their quiet invasion that they are one group in which the observations of keen eyed amateur naturalists and local surveyors can make real changes to known distribution maps.

Southern Emerald Damselfly, EWT site, Essex. 

So think of them on these winter days, and dream of them shimmering beneath a warm summer sky. Their season will roll around soon enough. Get yourself a good dragonfly book, a good pair of bins, and, come June, go to your favourite wetlands. You may just find yourself a new favourite insect there.

Southern Emerald Damselfly

*This blog has been edited since posting to correct the timeline of Southern Emerald colonisation and credit the finder.