counting coots

As most of you/us are aware, it’s been a bit breezy of late. Strange birds have been cropping up. Frigate birds, Petrels with funny names, Divers, perhaps even a Booby. One never knows when or where these things will turn up. I’ve kept this in mind when I have diligently been pounding around the patch every fecking day and yesterday I came up trumps!

Relatively new readers of this here blog will perhaps be thinking that a half decent bird has turned up on the patch. Regular readers will have a fairly good idea of what is coming...........


The Great Crested Grebe count has gone up to 4! Hurrah! The newcomers have been on the opposite side of the river to the regulars, and they are proper busy little birds. Mainly small flatfish was the prey and they were doing quite well. They were present again today.

So the patch is bringing not much of local or national significance to the ornithological world.

Or is it?

Yesterday morning I counted the Starlings coming out of the roost again, and this time the number has shot up. 4600 birds. Yep - four thousand and six hundred Starlings. That, dear reader, is a statistic. In a national context this doesn’t compare with some of the big roosts (Gretna, Brighton etc) I know, but I’m pretty sure that this is significant at county level, as 4600 birds of any species is not to be sniffed at.

The Frigatebird and the Petrel may be grabbing the headlines, but the fact is that these Starlings are more important to our Biodiversity than any number of wind tossed vagrants.

I’m more than happy with that.

That was the question.

In this instance dear reader, the convoluted answer is this.  If you know how to count lots of birds, you can skip this today and read something more interesting.  I have handily supplied some suggestions on the right hand side of the screen.  Isn't that nice of me?

Ok, counting them 'onetwothreefourfivesixseven' would be exhausting.  It's pretty easy to get a handle on what ten birds looks like so you extrapolate from there. Thankfully the Starlings trickle out in the morning rather than coming out en masse. Counting them in the evening is much more difficult and the quantity is internally referred to as ‘loads’.

If you look at the picture in yesterdays post, I use the tall building with the straight edge as the counting point. The birds generally move out (and in) to the roost under the bridge from the far side and the ones that I am counting are moving from left to right. As they pass the straight edge I count them in 10’s 20’s etc and write down the quantities at convenient breaks in the flow.   There is a fair chance that there are birds moving away from the bridge that I cannot see from my vantage point, but that dear reader, is another null hypothesis for another day.

And that's about it. 

Science. Done.  Again

Had half an hour to kill this morning so I took the opportunity to do some science.  My aim was to count the dispersal of Starlings from the roost again, to see if there was an increase (I had suspected thus - I think that this is my null hypothesis science fans).  Anyway, the Starlings were not that keen on rising from their slumber.  Crows, Cormorants, Ducks and Gulls are all up before the Starlings, which kind of makes the Starlings the equivalent of a bunch of stroppy avian teens. 

Interestingly there was a fair amount of Cormorant movement upriver, dribs and drabs, maximum flock size of 17 and the total that came through was 119.  My previous site high was a count of 92.  Ornithologically significant.  Top hole!

Eventually the Starlings did start to stream out from under the bridge, and in the little time that was left to me (no more than 15 minutes) I counted 2695 birds.  I would have expected them to keep coming out for at least another 20 minutes (but not so heavily) and would think that the total could be around about 3500+.

This is an increase from the previous total (which was on a longer time scale) thus proving my null hypothesis.  I'll put the 2695 count into Birdtrack I reckon, but keep 3500 as the current estimate for the site usage.

Oh yeah, there was an Egyptian Goose too.

Science - done.

The science continues dear reader.  Hardcore ornithological science.  I am in the frontline of the edge of the forefront of major scientific breakdown.

Normal modus operandi.  I eat apple.  I throw core onto foreshore to entice crow.  But you guessed that bit.

Tuesday.

Crow takes apple.  Pecks at it. 

Or as you will perhaps see dear reader, how not to produce scientific data.

A modus operandi of Ornithological failure perhaps...

Go to a different part of the river.
Throw apple core towards random Crow. 
Watch Crow peck at apple.
Get stale bread from pocket.
Throw crumbs towards gulls.
See gulls peck at crumbs.
See Crow abandon apple.
See Crow follow crumbs.
And the gulls with crumbs.
See Common Gull pick up apple core.
See Common Gull drop apple core in river.
Utter word 'bugger' under ones breath.
See Crow leave.
Have no apple left.
Utter word 'arse' under ones breath.
Continue to feed gulls.

I reckon I'll do it in a slightly more controlled way today.

Fancy title, exciting post - honest.

It’s been a while dear reader, so let’s have some more behavioural observations of Coots! These shots are taken from a local park, which is bisected by the elevated M4 and is also under the flight path to Heathrow, but it’s nice enough. It ticks the small local park boxes and is enjoyable. And it is popular with rats. Lots of them. Hopping about in the daylight without a care in the world, getting fat on the discarded bread that is left out for the ducks. And the pigeons. And the Geese. And the Coots!

A Coot doing standing.

The behavioural observation is thus. On the small body of water (a good size pond really) there are breeding Mallard, Canada Geese and Coots. There are also regular Tufties and Pochard with the occasional Mandarin and Moorhen. There are three pairs of Coots, all seem to be breeding ok and their broods are at totally different stages of development. One is still on the nest, one has well grown but not independent young and the third has some fresh hatchlings.

A coot being a fledgeling.

Now when the humans come along and feed the birds, there is a fair bit of competition and the pecking order is in place, getting quite forceful at times, with the Canada Geese at the top of the order pecking anything that comes close to them including ducklings which suffer the most. The goslings and ducklings are brought into this melee to almost fend for themselves.

Two Coots doing agression

The coots however are much more diligent. The three pairs have reasonably well defined territories, which the adults meet at the edges of and have a bloody good scrap from time to time (well, they are Coots) but the young stay in the respective territory, away from the big food fight and away from any mental rival Coots. Which could drown them. The parents join in the food fight, but only for long enough to grab some food and then swim back to the respective territory to dispense the food before returning to the aforementioned melee. Thus they swim out to the pond, feed young, swim back, get food, swim off, feed young, etc etc. Mrs Thing was particularly taken by this persistence, and not surprisingly either.

The Coots on the Wandle may have been labelled as retards, but this bunch are far from it.

A Coot doing floating.