Richard K Broughton
@richardkbroughton
Research Ecologist working on birds, mammals, forests, farms, hedgerows, woodland natural colonisation. Marsh Tit & Wood Warbler studies. Editor-in-Chief of the journal Bird Study: Views are mine.
Sexual dimorphism becoming apparent now within broods of garden Mallards as they grow up. Look at the size difference in these two at the front: small female on left, huge goosey male on right, now bigger than his mother (3rd from left). These size differences are evident in other local Mallards.
Abbotsbury Swannery 139 years ago. From The Birds of Dorsetshire 1888.
Four weeks later and this garden brood of Mallards are nearing fledging. Just waiting for their wing feathers to grow fully. Sadly they lost one over the weekend, so close to safety. Only a fox or dog could worry them at this stage, often when owners take dogs to play in the stream, who chase them.
By rights, Carwash from Will O' The Wisp should be the 3rd leopard/lion.
New in #BirdStudy Lanners and Barn Owls use cliff caves in shifts to avoid each other. Temporal segregation and coexistence between the Lanner Falcon Falco biarmicus and the Western Barn Owl Tyto alba in a shared secondary cavity in a cliff www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... #ornithology
'Thames Valley'. Though apparently the fields of East Yorkshire also looks like Kazakhstan, so maybe the grass is just always greener in Northumbs.
Current state of the garden grass. Wondering how many tree-planting projects from the past few years are going to be wiped out this summer. Hundreds of thousands of trees? Millions? And all that time, money, plastic, water, carbon wasted. If this is the climate shift, tree planting needs rethinking.
If your garden Mallard situation has escalated, a Duckling Organiser is an essential item to keep your doorstep tidy.
Fantastic to hear this Buzzard fledgling behind the garden. I feared the nest had failed in the last heatwave. But now we're gonna be hearing this constant whining until September, when it wanders off...
31C and the North Wessex Downs are ablaze between Reading and Oxford.
Hummingbird Hawk-moths are always a thrill to see in the garden.
Update: the ducklings are now bloody enormous, but still controlling access through the Strait of Frontdoor.
And here come the contenders for the duckling freestyle diving championship, and the last one takes the 10 points for a flamboyant belly flop!
We are reaching duckling critical mass on the doorstep. This brood of ten have grown huge in the past 12 days, with no casualties. Trying not to think that it'll be another month of this before they're actually flying. And there's four more families around...
That was quick! Tophill's a sporadic breeding site ~48km from Spurn (2nd biggest dot on map below). Good example of Marsh Tits dispersing from isolated territories in fragmented habitat getting 'lost in the landscape', with no habitat or mates nearby. They keep looking until they run out of options☠️
Can't wait to hear origins of the ringed Marsh Tit at Spurn. In the book I included a section & figure on dispersing Marsh Tit juvs reaching Spurn in summer, how they must cross at least 40 km of hostile open farmland to get there. But sadly it's the end of the road for them. #ornithology #ukbirding
Heatwave effects can be indirect but no less devastating. This Moorhen family with flightless chicks have seen their wetland dry up, so are trying to reach a stream. But stream Moorhens won't let them. So they're stranded on a busy roadside verge, extremely vulnerable to traffic, cats and dogs.
Farewell, Margo. One of the all-time great sitcom creations.
Duckling situation latest: they're bigger, they're louder, it's still their doorstep whenever they want, and I'd just better remember that.
If people want to keep farming livestock in climate change England, they're going to need to factor in more trees, shrubs and wood pasture. It's amazing how many upland and lowland grazing pastures have virtually no shade at all.
Not far into East Anglia/Cambs, but Betony is fabulously abundant on one of the woodland natural colonisation plots at Monks Wood. It's a star display of the summer. Won't stay so common once the woodland matures, but for past ~15 years it's been loving the conditions (zero management).
The Met Office weather station on our Monks Wood site recorded 35.7C yesterday, 26 June. It was >30C by 10 am, and the grass temperature reached 45.2C. Imagine being a vole, hare, skylark chick, lizard or ground beetle in that heat. A foot deep, the soil was 22C.
New in #BirdStudy When ringing birds, measurement error is fairly common and is greater for larger species and when taking weights. Evidence for a relationship between bird body size and uncertainty in individual morphological measurements at ringing: doi.org/10.1080/0006... #ornithology
New #OpenAccess in #BirdStudy Artificial nests differ from natural nests in predation rates and predator identity: important to study natural nests if possible. Are artificial nests suitable to study wader nest predation? A case study on wet grasslands: doi.org/10.1080/0006... #ornithology #waders
New in #BirdStudy Edge of extinction: Ring Ouzels found in just 9 sites in all-Ireland survey, all in County Donegal. Decline to near extinction of a mountain passerine: the status of the Ring Ouzel Turdus torquatus in the Republic of Ireland in 2021 doi.org/10.1080/0006... #ornithology
I'd heard this new Poyser book was coming, but great to see it available for pre-order. The Bullfinch by Ian Newton. www.bloomsbury.com/uk/bullfinch... Well-known for raptors (classic Poyser 'The Sparrowhawk') and ornithology books, Ian actually began his career with finches. #ornithology #ukbirding