Weedon’s World
This month, Mike has been enjoying some scarce inland birds, more familiar in very different places from Peterborough
Share Mike’s delight in seeing a Kittiwake in an unusual location
Some birds have dual existences in the eyes of birders, fulfilling very different roles, depending on context. On the one hand, they are at their best in their element, their ‘rightful place’, in abundance, or in a swirling, breath-taking collective. Think murmurations, massive nesting colonies, or roosting, migrating or feeding manoeuvres. The individual is forgotten, lost, the whole becomes everything. On the other hand, the same bird which on its own is insignificant compared to the majesty of the flock, when found out of context, or out of place, becomes something exciting, desirable, treasured. What sort of bird am I talking about? Well, let’s start with the Knot. This dumpy, medium-sized grey wader comes into its own when it is just a tiny part of one of those incredible swirling, amoeboid flocks, raging over the mudflats of The Wash or Morecambe Bay. The individual becomes just a brain cell in the collective consciousness of the mass; trivial and meaningless unless part of the greater body. I found a Knot at the weekend, on one of the gravel pits I constantly check around Peterborough. It was on its own (apart from its smaller Dunlin companion), and just as grey and dumpy as those so easily ignored coastal Knots. Yet it was one of the most exciting birds I have found this year. Inland Knots are scarce and much appreciated for that very reason. For a second example, if I were to say Pink-footed Goose, what image does this conjure up? You may be imagining a single goose: blue grey wings, dark brown head and neck, pink-banded, short dark bill. But for me, it is those mighty yapping skeins across the reddening north Norfolk skies of sunset. Or the vast flocks feeding in fields there, or in Scotland or in Lancashire. This is when, where and how Pink-footed Geese are revered. Being really not that very far from Norfolk, in northern Cambridgeshire, we see skeins of Pink-footed Geese wandering off course in our skies from time to time. And, inevitably, one or two birds will linger in any given year, usually hanging out with the Greylag flocks. We have a couple of Pinkfeet lingering at the moment, including one at Ferry Meadows Country Park, which happens to be on my daily cycle route to and from the office. So, of course, every day, as I pass the Pinkfoot’s favourite field, I stop and scan, and bid a fond good day to the scarce little visitor among the feral brutes. And talking (once again) about Ferry Meadows CP, leads to my final example: Kittiwake. Perhaps surprisingly, the cute little Kittiwake is our most abundant breeding gull, with a breeding population
(380,000 pairs) equal to that of our Herring, Lesser Black-backed and Black-headed Gulls combined! It is also our most coastal gull, in fact, it really is a ‘sea gull’, that glorious term used by the lay community, much to the offence of many self-ordained birdwatchers. And, nesting on teeny little ledges on mighty, vertical cliffs, in huge seabird cities, calling its name, the single Kittiwake becomes just another dot, another lost cry among the overwhelming confusion of tens of thousands of auks, petrels, cormorants, Gannets and gulls, which make up the spectacle of the mixed colony. Stick one on a lake in Peterborough, though, and it becomes something altogether more special! No, the bread-throwing public don’t notice that that sea gull wheeling around their heads with all the others has wingtips dipped in black ink, two-tone grey wings, black legs and a smudgy grey nape. But we do. I do. Our local Kittiwake was found by daily Ferry Meadows explorer and bird-finder, Matt Webb, three days ago. It was calmly swimming around, picking newly emerged ‘gnats’ from the surface of the water like a slow-motion phalarope. And it has been doing the same thing ever since. I hope it can survive on this diet, before it heads back to the coast to eat good old, nutritious, sea fish. To put it in some kind of perspective, I have lived and birded around Peterborough for nearly 20 years. And, in that time, I have seen just five living (plus one dead) Kittiwakes, including this latest bird (my third at Ferry Meadows). Three have been adults, one a juvenile and the latest bird is a second-winter. This single, fly-catching Kittiwake in the ‘wrong place’ is scarce, special and lovely.
It was calmly swimming around... like a slow-motion phalarope