Cormorant on the Kennet

On Friday afternoon I got my first reasonably close-up view of a cormorant.  I was hurrying along the towpath beside Reading prison (yes, I know its actually just a remand centre now) when a large black bird popped up from under the water only about 5 metres from me.  I stopped, leaned against the railings and  watched it while it dived and resurfaced several times, apparently without catching anything.  Then it flew off eastwards along the river. 

As it was rather small for a cormorant and had a tuft of feathers on the back of its head, it occurred to me that it might be a shag.  However, the latter tend not to come inland in the way that cormorants do and, also, their tufts are on the top of their heads, not at the back.

Red Kites near Pangbourne

This afternoon I travelled from Reading to Oxford on the train.  Just before we passed through Pangbourne I saw some largish birds soaring over the grassy hills to the north.  Though they were too far away to identify properly, they looked like red kites (Milvus milvus).

Red kites have been reintroduced into the Chiltern Hills and are apparently quite common in that area now.  Some good pictures of them can be found at Gerry Whitlow's web-site.

Early in 2004, Zoe and I were also on a train to Oxford when we saw three red kites quite close up.  They were flying together over a field beside the railway track and their characteristic forked tails were clearly visible to us.  One of them even made as if to attack one of the others by flying underneath it, turning upside-down with raised claws, and then dropping away at the last moment.

Treecreeper, Kingfisher, etc

This morning Zoe and I were up at the Reading University lakes at just after 8am.  There were quite a few other people about but they were mostly out jogging or dog-walking, or both.  While we were feeding the ducks and geese by the island on the big lake we caught sight of a kingfisher flying low to the island.  We didn't recognise it at first because it was silhouetted against a bright water surface but its irridescent blue colour became apparent when it flew in front of the shadow of the wooded island.

A few seconds later we saw a small bird that I recognised as a treecreeper (Certhia familiaris) running up the trunk of one of the trees on the island.  It was greyish-brown on top and lighter underneath.  As it was running up the trunk it moved around to the other side, away from us, rather like squirrels do.  Both Zoe and I have seen a treecreeper before. It must have been five years ago or so, because I remember Zoe being fairly small at the time.  I think I was doing the ironing or else putting away some clothes at the time and looked up to see the treecreeper on one of the chestnut trees just outside our bedroom window.  I called Zoe in from another room and she was just in time to see it.  Over the years, we have also seen a nuthatch and a greater spotted woodpecker through the same window.

Getting back to this morning, we also saw the usuals: Egyptian geese, the snow goose/muscovy duck, a cormorant, a heron, lots of mallards, mandarins and wood ducks, coots, moorhens, etc.  The shovellers were still there, mostly just sitting around resting under overhanging branches near the shore, though a few did go out into the middle of the lake and form a feeding whirlpool while we were there.

Pied Wagtails in the Dark

At 5pm this evening I was coming out of the side of Reading Station (the tradesman's entrance - I find it quicker than trying to fight my through the concourse to get to the main entrance).  It was already dark and, as I was about to cross the road, a flock of 30 - 40 small long-tailed birds flew up into the air and then alighted again on some bushes near the RailAir Bus terminal.  Their general behaviour reminded me of a flock of starlings but they were whitish against the black sky.  I went over to the bushes to get a closer look and saw that they were pied wagtails - a whole flock of them in Reading town centre at night!  I suppose that they were migrating south as a group in order to escape from the recent cold weather.

Update on Tue 2004-12-21 by Tristram Brelstaff

This morning at just before 7am I saw two pied wagtails on the same bush as the flock settled on yesterday evening.  The rest must have moved on during the night.

The 'Strange Duck' is a Snow Goose?

This afternoon I also got some photos of the 'strange duck' that Zoe and I first saw a couple of weeks ago.  I now reckon that this bird is a blue-phase snow goose [However, see update below].  The snow goose (Anser caerulescens) comes in two colour phases: the more common white phase which is mainly white but with black wing-tips, and the blue phase which is mainly black but with a white head.  The illustrations in BWP-CE and photos on the web do not give any indication of the beautiful scale-pattern in black and dark green that was visible on the back of our bird.  In some lights the dark green turned to a dark blue  (presumably this is where the term 'blue phase' comes from).  Here is one of the photos I took today:

Again, this bird was fairly persistent in begging for food: it got out of the water when Zoe rustled an empty carrier bag, which none of the other birds did, and I reckon Zoe could have had it eating out of her hand if only she had had some bread left.  This familiarity with human beings suggests an escaped captive bird rather than a vagrant that has wandered in from North America or Siberia.

Update on Thu 2005-01-13 by Tristram Brelstaff

Liz and Zoe report that someone they talked to today says this bird is actually a muscovy duck (Cairina moschata).  Muscovy ducks are natives of South and Central America but they have been domesticated and are now found all over the world.  Their plumage tends to be very variable.