Nightingales in November (65 page)

Having started their annual moult back in their taiga forest breeding grounds as long ago as early August, those adult Waxwings reaching Britain should also be looking bright and fresh as the last of their new set of feathers reaches full length. Despite undergoing a partial moult, those surviving youngsters from the summer's broods will not develop their full adult plumage until well into the next year. The retention of their original flight feathers for at least the next eight months will mean these first-year birds will not have been able to develop either the pronounced yellow on the outer webs of their primaries, or as many prominent red waxy tips on their secondaries. These waxy tips are not only the feature that gives Waxwings their name but are also the badge of status for any birds reaching adulthood. Despite the oldest known Waxwing having survived to the grand old age of 13, it is highly likely that the average bird's life expectancy will be distinctly less. With over 3,100 birds ringed across Britain, only seven Waxwings
have been recorded returning here in subsequent winters, and with mass invasions being irregular at best, this would suggest that most individuals may not reach Britain any more than just once in their lifetime. This will make their trip all the more remarkable as they take in a part of northern Europe that many of the flock will have never seen before.

Like the juvenile Waxwings, retention of the young Lapwings' flight feathers until after their first breeding season will mean that when observed in late autumn an experienced eye should still be able to pick out the immature birds among the mixed-aged flocks currently dotted around the British countryside. As Britain has been subjected to a recent run of comparatively mild winters, the Lapwing seem to have responded with a shift towards wintering in the traditionally colder, but possibly more productive feeding grounds in eastern England. Feeding on the rich arable fields, which form such a dominant part of the agricultural sector in this part of the world, the Lapwings' mobile nature should enable them to quickly respond if freezing temperatures suddenly make feeding conditions decidedly more difficult. Moving south and west, the Lapwing will then often target those habitats less prone to frosts, such as pasture and grazing marsh.

For young and inexperienced Blue Tits in particular, summer and autumn can be a period of peak mortality as they run the dual risk of predation or starvation. However, for those youngsters surviving this brutal examination, and along the way acquiring both a thorough knowledge of their home range and far better insulated body plumage, late autumn
should finally see their chances of reaching next spring begin to improve considerably.

Likewise for any juvenile Bewick's Swans which successfully fledged from their predator-riddled and climatically unpredictable breeding sites up on the Arctic tundra, the British wintering grounds will represent a place of comparative sanctuary. The young Bewick's Swans' survival prospects will also be enhanced considerably by the constant company of their supremely experienced parents, many of which will know the lie of the land at their winter quarters intimately.

Extensive research carried out at Slimbridge Wetland Centre in Gloucestershire has revealed that Bewick's Swans are surprisingly long-lived birds, which not only need a number of years to pair and breed, but also have a low reproductive output each year. Most of the swans only breed successfully for the first time when between four and six years of age, but this can often occur far later, such as the male swans ‘Victory' and ‘Money', which were not recorded with cygnets until ten and eleven years of age, respectively. The Bewick's Swan is of course strongly monogamous by nature, with experience often being the vital ingredient dictating reproductive success, but even amongst long-standing pairs, those seasons when young are produced can frequently be little more than erratic at the very best. Of 27 pairs followed at Slimbridge which were known to have been an item for at least ten consecutive years, only seven were found to have consistently and successfully bred, with young present, on average, at least one year in two. In fact, the best breeding rates were achieved by just two pairs – ‘Dougie' with ‘Estralita' and ‘France' with ‘Valois' – which both successfully managed to breed in nine out of 13 winters during the study period. Not only will breeding
success vary widely between pairs, but also of course between years, with poor breeding seasons seeing only around 4% of the flock represented by juveniles, as opposed to about 20% of the flock being cygnets when conditions up in the Arctic have been far more favourable and predators less effective.

By contrast to the sociable nature of Bewick's Swan families, any Robin holding a winter territory will have no sentimental thoughts whatsoever towards any of its other family members as it works hard to maintain an exclusive territory for one. Certainly in David Lack's pioneering study on Robins in Dartington, Devon, the majority of individuals which established winter territories in his survey area were male, with only a quarter of females reckoned to have stayed throughout the entire year. He believed the majority of his female Robins, along with a smaller proportion of first-year and older males, disappeared for a large part of the winter. They would then arrive back early the following year, to either pair up with a resident male or, in the case of the migratory males, to try and carve out a territory for themselves. Lack was subsequently proved correct in his assumption, as ringing has since revealed not only a substantial number of British-bred Robins opting to relocate elsewhere in Britain, but also a smaller figure preferring to spend their winter on the continent. The three countries accounting for most British-ringed Robins are France, Spain and the Netherlands, all countries influenced by the warming effects of the Gulf Stream along the Atlantic seaboard. Ringing in Spain has additionally shown that some Robins of unknown origin will return to the same Spanish territory in successive winters, raising the intriguing possibility that some Robins may spend their lives switching between a breeding
territory in Britain and a winter pied-à-terre on the continent.

Robins are not the only bird from our chosen twelve to sing for their supper during the winter months, as the British-breeding Nightingales, currently overwintering in west Africa, can also occasionally be heard uttering snatches of song from deep within the Senegambian scrub at this time of year. Unlike in England, where, upon arrival, they will be initially keen to sing both during the day and night, in Africa their performances are usually reserved for just the matinee slots, with the song also tending to be shorter, less complicated and more fragmented. Exactly why the males sing on their wintering grounds is not entirely clear, but there may be a territorial element, or it could just represent the perfect opportunity to practise their bewilderingly complicated song, in preparation for their return back to the breeding grounds. By contrast, all British Cuckoos, currently centred around the Congo River and the surrounding Congolian swamp forests, are thought to make little, if any, noise in their wintering quarters. Rarely even observed in this vast and largely undisturbed habitat, it would seem that quietly moulting and feeding out of sight of the innumerable Congolese predators may well be the best strategy for these highly secretive and mercurial birds.

Also keen on keeping a low profile, any adult Peregrines not actually out hunting at this time of year will be keen to spend as much time as possible conserving energy, which will simply be achieved by discreetly perching out in a sheltered spot. Providing they are able to find enough food to keep their internal furnace fuelled, their freshly moulted feathers
should at last be in a position to keep them sufficiently warm irrespective of what the British winter dishes out.