Nightingales in November (58 page)

Unlike the extensive work carried out to understand the moult of common garden birds like Blue Tits, far less is known about the moulting of species like Puffins, due to
their disappearance out to sea for the entire winter. As a result of knowledge gleaned mostly from birds either found dead or shot in winter, the Puffin's primary wing feathers are thought to moult in a synchronous fashion, a process which will render the birds flightless for at least four or five weeks. Flightless Puffins have actually been recorded in every month between October and April, with the examination of corpses recovered dead from beaches seemingly indicating a moulting peak in late winter. However, a wreck of 36 dead Puffins from around the Northern Isles after bad weather in October 2007 found 32 of the birds to have been actively in wing moult at the time of their death, suggesting that the majority of wing moults may in fact be more commonly taking place in the autumn. Of course, any Puffin unable to fly will not only be very susceptible to localised weather conditions, but will need to ensure that it has chosen a sea station able to provide sufficient food to keep it sustained during the period when its dispersal powers will have become extremely limited.

Mid-October is of course a peak time for migration in Britain, marking the period when the last of our summer migrants leave, and the first of our winter visitors begin to arrive. Currently close to completing their long, protracted annual moult and with surely tougher times ahead, the adult Peregrines will be keen to cash in on this annual flying food bonanza. In spring, urban Peregrines have been recorded taking summer visitors such as Wheatears, Turtle Doves and even Corncrakes, but in autumn a different suite of migratory birds has recently been revealed in their prey leftovers. As the temperature falls away, birds such as continental Woodcock and Water Rail are now being commonly recorded at a variety of urban Peregrine roosting sites. These normally secretive bird species tend to have
relatively short, rounded wings and tails, enabling them to fly quickly but providing poor manoeuvrability, resulting in them having to migrate at night to avoid detection by predators. Because of the immense amount of light pollution now obvious in most conurbations, Peregrine expert Ed Drewitt believes the pale underparts of these migrating birds, which would normally have remained hidden by the cloak of night, are now being lit up like light bulbs as they pass above our illuminated urban landscapes. Perching in the shadows below, many urban Peregrines have cottoned on to this ‘nocturnal buffet' and rather than adopting their more conventional ‘teardrop' stoop to strike down on their prey from above during the daytime, they have fashioned a novel technique of simply flying up a few tens of metres in the dead of night to snatch the unwary birds from below. During this time of plenty, with abundant and easy kills offered up virtually on a plate, the Peregrines may well now have begun to cache any surplus prey items in the full knowledge that the cooler temperatures should help preserve the food for longer. This natural outdoor refrigerator will then be able to offer up an easy ready meal when catching prey becomes more difficult in the depths of winter.

It will not just be adult Peregrines that are keen to maintain a presence on their breeding territory throughout the winter, as our resident Kingfishers will also be very reticent to budge from any watercourse offering both food and protection as they too prepare for their most challenging part of the year. In locations where most territories have already been earmarked by incumbent birds, the bottom of the Kingfisher pecking order will be those immature birds that fledged in the summer, whose inexperience means they will often be pushed into marginal habitats. Forced to eke out a living in areas away from the dominant adult birds,
many juveniles after the breeding season may have little option other than to head for the coast to try their luck. Even though fishing may be more difficult in turbid estuaries or saltwater creeks, the sheer amount of real estate available along Britain's convoluted coastline will often render holding a territory an unnecessary waste of energy. This will then have the upside of leaving the Kingfishers with one less thing to worry about as they concentrate on finding enough food to see each night through. In addition to familiarising themselves with a new habitat, these coastal birds will also have to get used to an entirely new diet as the regular food of Minnows, Sticklebacks and Bullheads become replaced by Gobies, Blennies and Sand Smelt.

As territorial boundaries become clearly delineated and disputes resolved, many Robins by the middle of October will have put their battles behind them and lowered their aggression levels to the less demanding job of territory maintenance rather than acquisition. With some juveniles holding territories alongside seasoned campaigners, there will be little to separate them in appearance, as each bird flaunts its familiar red breast to reiterate its intention to stay put right through to spring and beyond.

Like the Robins, holding a territory throughout the winter will also be vital for the survival of Tawny Owls, but due to the young owls' prolonged adolescence, it could be at least a couple of years before these inexperienced birds are given their first opportunity to get their talons on the first rung of the property ladder. Peaking in late October to early November, the frequency of calling by established pairs will only intensify as autumn gathers momentum, but
can vary from night to night depending on the weather. Often less vocal on cloudy and windy nights, the best times to hear the quintessential sound of autumn will be on those warm and still autumnal evenings when the moon is clearly visible.

Late October

Heavily moulting as they migrate, many Swallows will be looking pretty ragged as they stream across Namibia and Botswana's southern borders, en route to their final overwintering destination. With the earliest birds turning up in late August, and stragglers still appearing in December, the majority of Swallows should invariably sweep into their South African quarters towards the end of October. Having fed on the wing for almost the entire length of their journey, the Swallows will suddenly realise that they won't have a monopoly on the ‘aerial invertebrate buffet' but will instead have to share the available food with the local competition. Species such as the Greater Striped, White-throated and Pearl-breasted Swallows are intra-African migrants, which having wintered further north will now all be right in the middle of their own respective breeding seasons.

Ringing recoveries suggest that prior to the 1960s, British-breeding Swallows seemed to be overwintering in an area centred around the city of Pretoria, in Gauteng Province situated the northeast of the country, before then making a switch as they spread further southwest. Currently, most of the recent records come from the Western Cape, the fourth largest of South Africa's nine provinces in the southwestern part of the country. Roughly the size of England, the Western Cape is topographically exceptionally diverse and houses an incredibly rich vegetation with one the world's six floral
kingdoms almost entirely confined within the province's borders. The Cape Floral Kingdom is often called ‘fynbos', a term derived from the Afrikaans for ‘fine bush', and refers to the unique vegetation consisting of thousands of evergreen shrubs and flowering plants covering virtually treeless terrain. This incredible landscape is certainly an utterly different habitat to anything the Swallows will have experienced back in Britain, some 9,600km to the north.

Some six weeks after the Swallows departed our shores, and after an equally epic journey back from their own Arctic breeding grounds in the Russian Federation, the Bewick's Swans should also finally be touching back down in Britain towards the end of the month. As possibly two-thirds of all British Bewick's Swans tend to overwinter in either the Ouse or Nene Washes, it is perhaps no surprise that most will enter through East Anglia as they home in on tried and trusted fenland sites that have been used by generations of swans. While far fewer will travel further west, the small population of Bewick's Swans that overwinters each year in and around WWT Slimbridge in Gloucestershire is undoubtedly one of the most intensely studied groups of birds in the world.