Nightingales in November (68 page)

Certainly for urban Peregrines, midwinter will also be a time for hunkering down in their respective territories as they go about the business of surviving winter. As the days continue to shorten, the birds will stay close to the core of their territory and even visit the nest site itself as they
familiarise themselves with any scrapes used in previous seasons. This subtle shift from neutral to first gear will be the very first move towards the breeding season as they prepare to reassert their territorial rights and strengthen the pair bonds with their partner early in the New Year. On a day-to-day basis, however, most of their time will be spent roosting to conserve energy in between bouts either raiding their caches or hunting anything from pigeons to Pied Wagtails and Woodcocks to Water Rails.

Mid-December

When compared to deciduous woodlands, which are positively dripping with caterpillars in spring, most gardens are generally considered far poorer quality habitat for Blue Tits during the breeding season. However, as food supplies in wooded areas undoubtedly dwindle with Christmas just around the corner, garden feeding stations will suddenly become a much more attractive proposition to the local bird population. Frequently seen in ones or twos, it's easy to underestimate the number of Blue Tits visiting a popular feeding station, both during the day and throughout the course of the winter. But just how many different Blue Tits may drop in during a single day was not fully appreciated until intense ringing efforts were carried out in a series of gardens. The sheer number of birds netted was able to show that well-visited gardens are capable of pulling in as many as 200 different Blue Tits in a single day, as a whole series of small flocks move through on a ‘regular beat'. In fact, garden birdwatching supremo Mike Toms from the BTO reckons that during the course of a winter, more than 1,000 different Blue Tits could visit a well-supplied bird table. This astonishing figure can easily be corroborated by BTO ringer Denise Wawman, who since 2008 has ringed 3,902 different
individual Blue Tits in her small Minehead garden, with presumably many more individuals having avoided her mist nets altogether! Denise believes that many of the Blue Tits visiting her garden in winter hatched in local woodlands, with ringing recoveries showing that only a tiny percentage come from further than 5km away.

Unlike the mobile Blue Tits, those Robins holding territory will be keener than ever to stay close to home as they continue to eke out a living in wintry Britain. Any Robin zealously attempting to protect a patch will still be unable to prevent other individuals from trespassing all of the time, particularly in those ‘hard to defend gardens' with plenty of food on tap. In fact, Denise Wawman has managed to ring a grand total of 362 Robins within the confines of her small, but well supplied Somerset garden since 2008. This fact alone suggests that the individual Robin that many people often mistakenly consider to be ‘their own personal bird' may instead be a whole series of imposters either residing locally or just passing through. In particularly harsh winters, when survival becomes the order of the day, territoriality may simply break down at popular feeding sites, as the incumbent Robin realises that chasing away all other intruding birds is a waste of energy and a pointless exercise. Without any nesting Robins from year to year, Denise thinks of her garden as a ‘neutral zone', where the Robins seeming to form a ‘queuing system' for the bird table in very cold weather. She says ‘they enter the garden from the north side, and fly across to the Lilac tree near the bird table, before moving through it towards the food. After briefly alighting on the bird table to grab a suet pellet, they then leave by flying around the house to the south. These departing Robins will then work their way back around the outside of the garden to rejoin the queue on the north side.'
Denise also adds that during the cold spells no fights were seen and there was only the occasional ruffling of feathers when a Robin went in the wrong direction or tried to queue jump!

Irrespective of the weather, those female Robins that moved elsewhere in Britain to maintain a different territory way back in the autumn, will from mid-December onwards be considering a move back to where they will intend to breed. Any females returning to a familiar area, upon choosing a mate will then quickly be pressed into service, as the pair work cooperatively to maintain a joint breeding territory right through to spring and beyond.

As the cold weather begins to bite, those territory-holding Peregrines which cached items earlier in the year when food was more abundant may well be forced into resorting to ‘something they prepared earlier' to supplement their diet during times of hardship. With temperatures falling, the Peregrines can be assured that any Woodcock, Water Rail, Moorhen or Teal harvested during the autumn migration will suddenly see the shelf-life of their carcasses extended as the caching spots become turned into outdoor refrigerators. Sometimes these caches can run into tens of prey items and need to be stored with a degree of care to prevent them being discovered by other predators. Additionally, any items that become dislodged by wind or rain will not be retrieved if they tumble down to the ground below.

Unable to create their own food store for the lean times, any Kingfisher opting to stay within its own territory for the duration of the winter will have little choice other than to find enough food or suffer the consequences. Faced with
freezing conditions, it's not unprecedented for Kingfishers to turn up at garden ponds hoping for an easy meal, and occasional observations have even recorded Kingfishers stealing food from Dippers and Water Shrews. In October 2007, one opportunistic or desperate Kingfisher in Essex was seen with a Pygmy Shrew in its bill, before the unfortunate mammal was presumably eaten. Such a highly unusual meal must be considered very much the exception to the rule for a bird that most consider to be almost entirely piscivorous, and usually when confronted with such untenable conditions on their own doorstep, many will simply move elsewhere.

After initially having turned up the volume in late October, presumably to prevent young Tawny Owls from attempting to settle within established territories, there will be a renewed urgency of calling by the adults as December proceeds. This ‘second wind' will often continue right the way though into January and beyond as they gear up for the breeding season early in the New Year. For those pairs holding a rural territory, Wood Mice and Bank Voles are believed to form the most important component of their diet during winter, with a study between 1949 and 1952 in Wytham Woods, Oxfordshire revealing that these two species alone accounted for over 60% of all items caught during November and December. However, amongst those owls holding an urban dominion, birds appear to be the predominant prey items of choice all year, with a study in Holland Park, London revealing that birds formed 93% of the total live weight of all food caught by the owls. The main targets for these urban Tawnies seem to be House Sparrows, Feral Pigeons, thrushes, Starlings and Greenfinches. Despite the proportion of birds to mammals caught staying pretty constant throughout the year, the same study revealed
that larger birds, such as Feral Pigeons and Jays, tended to be more commonly taken later in the year.