Nightingales in November (4 page)

Any hungry Waxwings seen dropping into gardens in early January may well at some point be rubbing shoulders
with the local Robin holding its territory right through the darkest days of winter. The New Year finds the resident Robin in fine voice as it reminds any neighbouring red-breasts to keep away from his patch. Well aware that its survival depends on keeping this self-proclaimed territory to itself, for the males, the song in early January will also begin to serve the second purpose it was designed for – to attract females for the oncoming breeding season. With the female Robins also having held a winter territory, which they will have defended as if their life depended on it, by now many will have abandoned their winter residence in order to find a suitable breeding partner elsewhere.

The Robin's song has to surely be one of the most characteristic sounds of the British countryside. It should also be one of the first songs for the beginner to learn, primarily because it will be the only bird singing persistently at the turn of the year. It is also one of very few bird species where the female is equally capable of singing as the male. The song is a beautifully melodious warble, and it's hard not to agree with the author Nicholas Cox who wrote in the
Gentleman's Recreation
in 1674: ‘it is the opinion of some, that this little King of birds for sweetness of note comes not much short of the Nightingale'.

The turn of the year will also see the local Tawny Owls busily advertising possession of their territory to warn any rivals of thinking twice before trespassing. Unlike the Robin, which in most cases will mate with a different partner each breeding season, an established pair of Tawny Owls is thought to stay together ‘till death do them part'. With an intimate knowledge of their territory, on which they will rely entirely for food and accommodation throughout the
year, it is vital that any other intruding Tawny Owls are driven off with the breeding season just two months away. The hoot of the Tawny Owl is surely the most familiar call made by any British owl, and is always used, along with the Fox's bark, to signpost ‘winter at night' in any fictional drama on television. The male's call begins with the familiar drawn out ‘
hooo
', followed by a subdued ‘
hu
' and then a final ‘
huhuhuhooo
' in vibrato. The female also hoots, but it sounds squeakier and her ‘
kee-wick!
' contact call is far more characteristic. At this time of the year, the pair will effectively duet as they keep in contact through the hours of darkness, and when the male tags his territorial hoot on to the female's contact call, then the classic ‘
twit-twoo!
' can be heard.

Traditionally a woodland bird, the Tawny Owl is surprisingly adaptable and will often make a home in urban and suburban areas with mature trees, such as large gardens, parks and cemeteries. The Blue Tit is another one of our chosen twelve with historical woodland associations that has learnt to reap the dividends of living alongside us humans. Each year the RSPB carries out a Big Garden Birdwatch in January, in which the charity persuades over a half a million people to make both a note of the different birds and the abundance of each species coming into their gardens over the space of an hour. With the Blackbird usually topping the poll as the species most commonly recorded, it is little surprise that the Blue Tit is often vying with the Robin for runner-up spot. In 2015, for example, at least one Blue Tit, and probably many more, was recorded in 82% of the gardens surveyed, as the bird's natural acrobatic ability of foraging on the slenderest of twigs is effectively utilised to take advantage of the vast array of foodstuffs that many of us leave out. In addition to large numbers of Blue Tits supplementing their diet from feeders at this time, many of the local birds
will have been – since the previous autumn – active and paid-up members of a mixed flock, containing other species such as Great Tits, Goldcrests, Treecreepers and Wrens, amongst others. This gang's remit will be to roam locally for food in the surrounding town and country, secure in the knowledge that this ‘safety in numbers' strategy will hugely reduce the chances of each individual being picked off by a hungry Sparrowhawk.

For urban Peregrines, this time of the year should see any established pairs staying close to where they bred the previous summer. On occasion they will even visit the nest-site to check it out for later in the year, but they will also avail themselves of many other buildings during this time. Midwinter is a time when the Peregrines are far less obvious, as most of their time is taken up by roosting and hunting. The warmth of urban areas and an abundant supply of ‘flying food' in the form of pigeons may also persuade many rural Peregrines to try the ‘city slicker' lifestyle during the winter months too. At this time of year, obvious landmarks might see a number of Peregrines passing through, many of which will be either juveniles wandering well away from where they hatched, and non-breeding adults. These itinerant birds will take advantage of the lack of territoriality of any incumbent pair to undertake fact-finding missions for future breeding seasons, when they too might be in the market for a prime piece of Peregrine real estate.

Also keeping a low profile in early January will be our Kingfishers. Like Robins, the antisocial Kingfisher will only deign to share its territory with a mate during the breeding season, preferring instead a solitary lifestyle for the rest of
the year. For the male, his winter domain will commonly be the same patch as his summer breeding territory, with the female either moving away or holding an adjacent winter territory. In equitable circumstances, and with unnerving human parallels, the separated couple may arrange for their previous summer estate to be split down the middle, only to then rejoin forces and territories the following spring. But under the terms of their winter separation, there will invariably be a strongly delineated boundary, across which trespassers will most definitely not be welcome.

Apart from the odd territorial dispute, the only issues to preoccupy our Kingfishers as the New Year begins are if high winter rainfall causes flooding, or if a late freeze makes fishing difficult. Very cold winters can have a devastating impact on Kingfisher populations. If their feeding areas freeze over, hungry birds must move to avoid starvation or find different food. The winter of 1939/40, for example, was so severe that the River Thames completely iced over for a time, causing the Kingfisher population to plummet from around 120 birds along a 68-mile stretch, to just a couple of pairs once the river had finally thawed.

Another of our ‘twelve avian disciples' that fares poorly during cold snaps is the Lapwing. As an invertebrate specialist throughout the year, a covering of snow or hard frost means that the Lapwing will either be unable to uncover sufficient food or winkle it out from the frozen fields. Many Lapwings that breed in the UK will also winter here, forming large, mobile flocks that scour the countryside looking for feeding opportunities. Boosted by huge numbers of continental Lapwings, which have been pushed across the North Sea into Britain by ‘Baltic' conditions elsewhere, the Lapwing population may be as high as 620,000 individuals by the
height of winter. With a breeding population of around 130,000 pairs currently in Britain, this gives some idea of the huge continental influx of this fair-weather wader.

Plummeting temperatures are of course not an issue for the Nightingale, which will have passed through the Iberian Peninsula during August and September of the previous year, on the way to spending a winter in West Africa. A secretive bird at the best of times, where the British Nightingales spend their winter was unclear for a long time. According to the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) a paltry total of just two Nightingales originally ringed in Britain have subsequently been re-trapped south of the Sahara – hardly a sound dataset to give a clear picture of their movements. However, this is now all changing thanks to the use of tiny ‘geolocators', which have recently been attached to a number of Nightingales trapped in mist nets on their British breeding grounds.

No larger than a shirt button, and weighing just 1g, geolocators are revolutionising the way small birds can be followed on their migration. The devices have an inbuilt clock, calendar and a light sensor, and constantly monitor the daylight against the time and date. Attached to the lower back of the bird, and held in place by two loops running around the bird's legs, once the geolocator is recovered from a returning bird, the researchers should then be able to calculate where on the planet the geolocator, and of course the bird, was at any given time and date. In 2009 the BTO attached geolocators to male Nightingales on their breeding grounds. Nightingales show huge fidelity to their breeding sites, and so the following spring six of the geolocators were recovered from returning birds and analysed. Unfortunately five failed to produce any meaningful data, but the now famous Nightingale OAD (so named by the letters on his
device) was successfully tracked all the way to sub-Saharan Africa before failing.