Yes-pecks' in Wild-bird Seeds Mixes

 

Some years ago we helped a little with a project to measure the feeding success of an increasingly uncommon Australian Wader, the Little Curlew. A number of us watched a small flock of these birds feeding in different places in NW Western Australia. We recorded each time they probed the turf they were feeding on; each unsuccessful probe was noted as a ‘No Peck’ and a success when the bird was seen to swallow an item of food, was recorded as a ‘Yes Peck’.

Thus, ‘Yes Peck’ passed into our family collection of privately useful terms , and an interesting, successful or pleasing event became known as a ‘Yes Peck’.

This autumn, after a few unsuccessful visits to a couple of local fields where wild bird seed mixes comprising fodder radish, sorghum and linseed, and  which had in the past given us excellent views of big flocks of linnets and chaffinches, this year had only produced distant, very flighty birds in light too poor to identify anything.

So, recently, at last, a ‘Yes Peck’!

The sky was clear, the sun bright and we ignored the chill of a fresh NE breeze. The wind was blowing straight into the first field so we quickly crossed the road to the second, which at least in the corner, was sheltered by a few tall trees and a thick hedge.

Sheltered corner beside a crop of fodder radish.

A tangle of drying fodder radish plants with a big crop of puffy seed-pods, and dead thistles, was hosting a scatter of restless birds. They flew up from the field, into the hedge and tree-tops in a continuous cycle of movement.

Lane between crops of wild bird-seeds mix.

Glimpses of white wing-bars showed us the main birds were chaffinches, but when we turned the car so that we could see the birds in the tops of the trees down the lane alongside the seeds crop with the sun on them, we could see the colours and markings clearly. Indeed, most of them were hen chaffinches with a few males. Among them was one male greenfinch and a couple of streaky linnets with deeply-forked tails.

Cock Chaffinch

      Hen Linnet with deeply forked tail.

After deciding we weren’t likely to see anything else we moved on a couple of miles to another farm in the parish with another seeds mix. Yes! There was a lot of bird feeding going on here too and we again picked a spot where we could watch the birds as they flew up into the bare ash twigs of the hedgerow trees alongside the seeds field. There too, the most abundant birds were Chaffinches. Then, perching in the very top, the sun shining brightly on his yellow head, was a cock Yellowhammer,

Cock Yellowhammer, a bird we see much less of these days.

And then, enjoying the sun’s warmth, a couple of handsome cock Bramblings with bright chestnut shoulders and grey-streaked heads. We hear that huge flocks of Bramblings have been moving down the north-west coast of Scandinavia and N. Europe and some are now moving across the North Sea into Britain. This is a bird we can occasionally see here at home, but with gaps of several years between sightings.

                             Cock Brambling.

A good morning, with several pleasing 'Yes-pecks'.!

A good-sized crop of Fodder Radish

This crop was alive with Small Tortoiseshell and Small White butterflies when flowering in the summer. These wild bird seed mixtures in their different varieties are valuable for the invertebrate life they attract earlier in the season, such as Bumble Bees, grasshoppers, hoverflies, spiders. More big flocks of finches are feeding on the seeds now, almost invisible down in the tangled growth but flying up to perch in the nearby hedgerow trees when disturbed. The light was once more too poor to identify more than a few but they seemed mostly to be Chaffinches.

MANGROVES

 

There is a lot of talk of the value of trees, woodland, and forests because of the growing awareness of climate change, but very little attention is given, in our media at least, to ‘Mangrove Swamps.’ These coastal woodlands grow in saline conditions along sheltered coasts and inlets of a great many tropical and sub-tropical countries.

There are about eighty species of Mangrove shrubs and trees. They aren’t all related to one another. The term refers to their ability to thrive in salt water and to filter The salt out of their system. They grow in inter-tidal areas, subject to daily fluctuations in water level, from inundation as the tide rises, to drying out as it falls, conditions which would kill most species. They have various types of roots according to species, from short vertical aerial roots to a tangle of stilt roots as much as four feet high. These enable the roots to obtain oxygen while the tree grows in water-logged, oxygen-poor mud.

These Mangrove Swamps, Forests or Mangels, form a unique ecosystem. The tangle of roots slow down erosion, blanket the effects of storm surges and tsunamis, and trap silt washed from the interior countryside. The highly organic mud acts as a very important carbon sink, and the roots act as a nursery for great numbers of fish and other marine organisms.

Mangroves at high water showing the aerial stilt roots.

Blue carbon is the term for carbon captured by the world's ocean and coastal ecosystems. Sea grasses, mangroves, salt marshes, and other systems along our coast are very efficient in storing CO2. These areas also absorb and store carbon at a much faster rate than other areas, such as forests, and can continue to do so for millions of years. The carbon found in coastal soil is often thousands of years old. When these systems are damaged or disrupted by human activity, an enormous amount of carbon is emitted back into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change.

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We became familiar with various Mangrove swamps during our travels in Australia. We first came across them in the complicated system of creeks and inlets in Sydney. They become much more extensive on the Queensland coast, the North coast and down the west coast, becoming more sporadic and with fewer species, as the water cools further south, and are said to occur on one fifth of the Australian coast ( there are none in Tasmania) They are the third greatest area of mangrove forest in the world.

Peg Roots or pneumatophores are about 6 inches tall. We came across these in a mangrove swamp in a Sydney inlet a couple of days after we first arrived. We were still jet-lagged and the sight of parrots, common British plants like Sow 
Thistle growing as garden weeds, and walking through these aerial roots, growing in glutinous mud, all added to the profound culture shock.

Fascinating habitat though it is, I have a love/hate feeling towards mangroves, as not only is it home to a myriad of creatures from the canopy to within the mud under one’s feet, most intrusive being the voracious Salt -water Mosquito which attack within minutes of you entering the swamp, day or night. They bite ferociously and will penetrate at least one layer of shirt, seem undeterred by the most powerful repellent, and their itchy bites are fearsome and persistent. Prone as I am, to being bitten by just about every insect with mouthparts, these mozzies really had a field day with me.

All the senses are on the alert in this unique habitat, so strange to us, being used to the mixed deciduous woodlands native in temperate Britain and Europe. It’s unlike any other type of woodland, although the oval, evergreen leaves don’t seem unusual, it is the aerial roots of various kinds that arrest the attention.

Even the sense of taste is used if you try the white crystalline specks on the leaves of some mangrove species. They are salty and are a strategy for excreting the salt from the saline habitat the trees are growing in.

The fine glutinous mud which is always accumulating as the trees’ roots trap the sediments is unpleasant stuff to walk in. My mother’s term was ‘clarty’ meaning sticky and clinging….it could have been invented for mangrove mud rather than the word for sticky clay etc used by Nottinghamshire farming folk when she was a girl.

The most affected senses are those of hearing and sight – the incessant whining of the mozzies and other insects, the calls of elusive birds, the ‘snap, crackle and pop’ of holes opening up in the mud as the tide goes out and great tower shells begin to open up and move, mud crabs emerge from their holes and signal to each other with enlarged red or yellow claws; mud skippers come to life and run at each other across the mud, using their front fins as legs and signalling aggressively by raising and lowering their dorsal fins like luminous flags.

Red Mangrove Crab.

Yellow Signal Crabs wave their large claws at the first sign of movement.

Mud Skippers. One is displaying by erecting its dorsal fin. As the mud is exposed, they can walk on it by using their pectoral fins as front legs.

The tangle of roots make any sort of headway though these mangrove forests very difficult and further complicated by a network of creeks and gullies so the best means of access is using the boardwalks constructed in various reserves up and down the coast. Then you can stroll and pause to watch the birds and take in the surroundings. Bird-watching isn’t easy; either small and elusive honey-eaters, robins, flycatchers and Warblers tend to keep to the canopy, feeding on insects and pollen and nectar when the mangroves are flowering. The predatory birds like mangrove herons and kingfishers are well camouflaged and sit motionless and difficult to spot.

Impenetrable root tangle.

From our log, partway up the central Queensland coast:

“We made our way to the head of the bay and came to a small creek among the mangroves. We watched a host of little fish swimming into it as the tide came in and saw a sting-ray hiding under the mangrove roots. We started back to camp, but Kim called us back for a bird. It was a Bush Thick-knees, ad we stalked it through the mangroves and had a marvellous ten minutes or so, watching it. They are the birds which puzzled us in the night with their loud wild wailing cries.”

Beach Thick-knees. These birds are related to our Stone Curlews.

Young mangroves. Many species produce a prolific crop of seeds which will float in water but won't germinate until they wash up at the high water line.

These venerable mangrove trees were growing in fissures in a rocky reef partway up the Western Australian coast. They had huge stout and gnarled trunks bowing to the wind.

From log, again partway up the central Queensland coast:

“We were heading for the Edmund Kennedy National Park, a mangrove and swamp area south of Cairns. On the way we passed alongside Hinchinbrook Island. Between the shore and the island were extensive mangroves and a convoluted system of creeks.

Looking across to Hinchinbrook Island.

                    Cassowary

As we looked across the passage to Hinchinbrook, where our road passed through an area of vine-hung rainforest, what should stride out across the road right in front of us but a Cassowary! Good job we were going slowly. It had a great ‘helmet’ and a red ‘scarf’ of blue and red skinny wattles round its neck and a flouncing and quivering silken cape of black plumes. It immediately disappeared into the thick scrub at the side of the road.

We found our way along sand tracks to the camp-site in the Edmund Kennedy National Park. It’s obviously new (this was in 1989) with posh ablutions, no other visitors and an unused barbie.

Smoky fire at Edmund Kennedy to deter the mozzies. When I picked up a handful of dry gum leaves to make more smoke, a small black scorpion scuttled away.

A terrific dawn chorus after a restful night, but the mozzies are still about. After breakfast we walked through the wide belt of mangroves till we reached the coast. We hadn't reckoned with the distance, the heat, and the mozzies. The place was heaving with birds but as soon as we stopped we were attacked and eaten alive by the mozzies which bit us through our shirts. Quiet green-brown flooded creeks wound among the mangrove roots. Notices in the camp-site warned of Estuarine Crocodiles’(the notorious ‘salties’) but we were out of luck even though we were creeping round very quietly, hoping to see one. But all we saw were mud skippers, crabs and garfish.

Tony climbing among the stilt roots, to give an idea of their size.

These mangroves produce 'propagules' which when mature, with a small leafy sprout already growing, drop into the water or mud below like spears, and immediately send down roots and start to grow.

Mangrove Kingfishers hide in the foliage above the creeks.

 And very good views of a Mangrove heron before it flew into a mangrove near us and completely disappeared, so good was his camouflage.”

Showing the stilt roots.

From log, Aug.’93 (going north up the Western Australian coast)

"After the Eighty Mile beach, we re-joined the highway and crossed a vast flat sandplain with a sparse scatter of small trees, before turning down another dirt track heading west towards the coast. 23 kilometres down nasty corrugations, we came to Port Smith, our destination picked from the map as it looked an interesting night stop.

“ Pulled up in the shade of a big tree at the Campsite ($10 for the night ; ie about £4 sterling) and the very helpful lady suggested various walks to see plenty of birds.

The Land Rover belonging to this place was still in use, at least it was in 1993, so the manufacturers would be gratified. No MoT needed in the outback?

After pitching up, we went for a walk along a coralline rocky ridge behind the mangroves lining the creek. Lots of birds including a few new for the trip.

Port Smith

Next morning...up before 6 and walked down to the seaward side of the mangroves where we walked along over wet, very fine sand looking out over various creeky inlets in a wide cove with the sea visible a long way off. Lovely views of several Sacred Kingfishers and Mangrove crabs with brilliant red claws.”

Reef Heron feeding among young mangroves as the tide came in.

Sunbird in the mangroves. Beautiful iridescent plumage on its back.

From log, mid August’93. Now staying at the Broome Bird Observatory.

“After breakfast we drove down to One-Tree at the end of the track and walked up behind the mangroves to Crab Creek. We were amazed at the heavy crop of Mangrove beans on the trees. But we were especially looking for ‘little jobs’ in the trees. We had some success, seeing Broad-billed flycatcher, Dusky Warbler and M. had a quick glimpse of a Mangrove Golden Whistler. There were Stilts on the mud at the edge of the mangroves as the tide came in. It was 9am by now and getting hot. The threatening cloud and mist of earlier was clearing.

Mangrove Golden Whistler.

White-throated Whistler.

While staying at the Bird Observatory outside Broome, we enrolled in a Ringing Course and during sessions of mist-netting in the mangrove creeks, we saw several specialist birds of this habitat, including these two Whistlers.

Mangrove habitat is, like so many others, under threat from various human pressures: taking firewood, clearing for fish farming, and widespread destruction for resort development along tropical and sub-tropical coasts.

These unique ecosystems cannot be replaced.