Nightingales in November (69 page)

The type of invertebrates taken by overwintering Lapwings during the course of the seasons will of course be largely dictated by both the annual cycles of their prey organisms and the prevailing feeding conditions. The Lapwings' keen eyesight also means they need not just be restricted to feeding during daylight hours, as any nights brightened by moonlight will present excellent foraging opportunities, providing the ground isn't frozen of course. When not actively feeding or moving between sites, much of the rest of the time will be taken up by roosting. Preferring larger, more tightly packed flocks for roosting than when feeding, the sites Lapwings will pick for rest and recuperation tend to be primarily chosen with safety in mind. Roosting either during the day or night, many Lapwings will prefer either to use ploughed fields or tussocky grassland, which offer the dual benefits of shelter from the worst of the elements and concealment from predators. Overwintering flocks will also use flooded fields as roosts, which will be able to offer protection from any terrestrial predators not too keen on taking a dip, such as Foxes.

A recent phenomenon has seen Lapwings roosting – particularly during autumn and winter – on the roofs of industrial buildings in northern towns and cities. This was first noticed in Greater Manchester in 1984 and then subsequently recorded in and around Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Stockport and Wigan. In 1993 this behaviour also began to be reported from across the Pennines in cities such as Leeds and Bradford. Often comprising groups of up to 600 birds, most of these roosting flocks seem to gather on the roofs mostly after sunrise, presumably after a night's foraging, and then break up again just after sunset for feeding grounds
at least 4km away. Remarkably, the roosting birds are surprisingly tolerant of all the activity that comes from residing in such close proximity to humans. Presumably once the birds have become accustomed to all the noise, then these industrial locations are in a position to offer some surprising advantages. From their lofty position these urban-roosting Lapwings will not just be out of reach of ground predators, but will also be afforded a level of protection from inclement weather – with the sloping roofs offering a variety of aspects for shelter and additionally the bonus of some free warmth transmitted through the roof from the building below. So, disturbance-free roosting right in the middle of our industrial heartlands might not be as daft as it sounds!

As the food becomes stripped out of the Waxwings' ‘arrivals lounges' in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, which would have been thronging with Waxwings just a month ago, the distinct lack of berries by now will have initiated a mass desertion of birds. These flocks on the move will then effectively form a rolling wave trundling steadily in a south-westerly direction, so as the winter progresses, a Waxwing sighting will probably be more likely in Axminster than Aberdeen. However, with Rowan, Hawthorn, Pyracantha and Cotoneaster widespread either as native or cultivated plants right across urban, suburban and rural Britain, the only safe assumption when trying to catch up with a flock of Waxwings during an invasion year is that they could be found virtually anywhere.

Typically far more restricted to a number of long-established overwintering sites across the British Isles, a hardy bird like the Bewick's Swan will be positively revelling in the average
temperature of around 4°C that typifies the month of December across Britain. Research work on the swans at WWT Slimbridge, Gloucestershire has shown that many of them are very site-faithful, and being relatively long-lived birds, many individuals are recorded returning to the same location year after year. By identifying the individual Bewick's Swans from their unique bill markings the researchers at Slimbridge have been able to calculate that 87% of the adults survive from one winter to the next, and even for the younger, more inexperienced birds, the figure is around 66%. Of all the adults identified at the reserve each winter around two-thirds are paired, and with monogamy being the norm amongst these birds, the vast majority of pairings will only be broken by the death or disappearance of a partner. In fact ‘divorce' is so rare amongst Bewick's Swans that at Slimbridge mate-switching has only been recorded once while each partner was still alive. In this one exceptional case the birds ‘Piotr' and ‘Patch' were very much an item during the winters of 2001/02 and 2002/03, however in 2003/04 and 2004/05 ‘Patch' was suddenly found to have paired with ‘Peploe', leaving poor old ‘Piotr' to return alone. So deep-rooted is this monogamy that if one of the swans loses its mate, the researchers have calculated it could then take the surviving bird around five years to recover from becoming widowed, before breeding successfully with a new partner.

In stark contrast, the Cuckoo is highly polygynous on its breeding grounds, and so it is unlikely sexual congress will be at the forefront of their minds as they continue to see out the rest of the year in either the Congolese forests or northern Angola. In both December 2013 and December 2014, when Chris the Cuckoo headed to Angola, he initially arrived in the northern province of Uíge. This region was
historically covered with forest, wooded grassland and swamps, but has since largely been converted into a rich pastoral terrain reserved primarily for farming. After initially pitching down, on both occasions Chris then quickly moved further south, to near the coastal (and capital) city of Luanda. The coastal habitat surrounding Luanda is more arid than further inland, with large areas clothed in thick scrub. Quite why Chris and a select few of the other Cuckoos would leave the sanctuary of the Congo for the drier and more broken habitat of northern Angola is anyone's guess; however, in 2013 the rainfall in the Congo was considered higher than normal. This wetter than average winter in Africa's greatest forest may simply have made feeding conditions more unfavourable for the Cuckoos, which in turn forced a few adventurous individuals to seek better foraging opportunities further south.

It was not until the data from the geolocator attached to Nightingale OAD were analysed that researchers at the BTO finally had the first definitive evidence that British-breeding birds spent at least part of their winter in the coastal scrub of West Africa. Up to that point the only record of any British Nightingale recovered in Africa was that of a bird originally ringed near Shrewton in Wiltshire in June 1974, which was subsequently found freshly dead in Morocco in April of the following year. Since the pioneering work with OAD, two British-breeding birds have been netted by British ringer Jez Blackburn and his team at Kartong Bird Observatory in The Gambia in the middle of December in 2011 and 2012. Situated on the coast and just south of the capital Banjul, the ringing location is centred around the Kartong Wetlands, a diverse site which comprises reed and rush beds, sand dunes, mudflats, mangroves, rice fields, savanna scrub and a remnant of what would have
been the original forest cover. Both Nightingales were caught in exactly the same patch of dense thorny scrub, with the 2011 bird originally ringed as a juvenile near Ipswich, Suffolk in June of the same year, while the other Nightingale had previously been caught at Foulness, Essex in July 2011, only then to find itself being extracted from a second mist net, some 17 months later and 4,568km away. This remarkable connection between the counties of Suffolk and Essex, and a seemingly small and inconsequential site on the coast of west Africa, is all the more poignant given the fact that this apparently crucial scrub habitat continues to be cut down for firewood by the locals – one more reason why, with just 6,700 singing males recorded in the last survey, the Nightingale is continuing its alarming decline as a breeding bird in Britain.

Occupying around 760,000 breeding territories in Britain, the Swallow is still thankfully one of our commonest summer migrants. Those British Swallows which successfully negotiated the epic journey down to their South African wintering grounds should by now be finding the weather becoming ever more agreeable with each passing week. With conditions becoming steadily warmer and drier, resulting in an exponential increase of flying invertebrates, the Swallows will need to be wary to ensure they themselves don't also become targeted. The large winter roosts must be the equivalent of large honey pots to the likes of Eurasian Hobbies, Peregrines and Lanner Falcons as they attempt to snatch a meal during the brief time-slots when the Swallows are either descending to the roost at dusk or leaving at dawn. Having reached the sanctuary of the roost, the Swallows will still not be able to fully switch off, as Marsh Mongooses are capable of snaffling the occasional unwary Swallow. Generally though, these low levels of predation
should not even scratch the surface of the large populations safely managing to roost at many sites.