Birdwatch, January 2017

Published in Nature Watch

Steve Jones has had a great start to the year!

Goldfinch Goldfinch Photo: Steve Jones

Steve's report for January 2017:

I was expecting to see quite a few species at the end of last year, especially brambling and fieldfare, but they didn't appear. Finally in mid-January I saw a Brambling! I don’t think I had been missing them up to then, I think they arrived recently, perhaps with the cold spell. January 2017 was much colder than the same time last year. I had thought I had seen a Brambling on 15th January, but was waiting to confirm. So I was delighted to confirm several Bramblings on 19th January, a couple pictured here among a host of Chaffinches. Also by chance there's a Serin (with yellow breast) in there too.

Brambling circled in blue, chaffinch in red. Photo: Steve Jones

I think it fair to say I have never seen so many Chaffinches as here, huge flocks everywhere, always feeding, Blackbirds are also feeding on berries in great numbers. Because of the way people tend their ground there are great plots of land left unattended throughout the winter and it is a great source of food for these birds. On the 10th January on the airport road to Stari Grad it was particularly cold, and all along the road there were birds - by far the majority Chaffinches and Blackbirds. I would think that there were several hundred in number. They were all descending on any indentations in the road where ice had formed, presumably to take in the liquid where possible. It was quite a sight. Often amongst the flocks one could spot the odd Goldfinch or Serin. In the photograph above you can make a comparison between the Chaffinch and the Brambling. During the month it was impossible to count the number of Chaffinches, but, by contrast, what has been interesting is that I have only seen the Brambling on two occasions.

Female blackbird. Photo: Steve Jones

13 1 2017: I was asked to do a survey of seabirds on the following day, although identifying seabirds isn't my greatest strength. Hopefully there would be nothing too complicated, and there might even be surprises. I had seen some Black Headed Gulls in Jelsa the previous week, which was unexpected.

Black-headed gull. Photo: Steve Jones
Black-headed gull. Photo: Steve Jones

On 14th January it was another particularly cold morning bordering on snow, in fact there was a white ground covering in Prapatna and a slight covering at Grebišće. So I did the “Seabird count” for another Croatian organisation as requested, but it didn’t provide me with much.

Yellow-legged gulls, Jelsa June 2012. Photo: Vivian Grisogono

There were the usual Yellow-Legged Gulls, Black-Headed Gulls and three Cormorants. Had the weather been what would be described as a normal winter's day, I don’t think it would have changed my count.

Cormorant. Photo: Steve Jones

22nd January brought a new sighting for me here down at the airfield. I was first attracted by the call. At last, a Fieldfare! This is another of the winter thrushes, about the size of a blackbird. Initially it was difficult to get a photograph, as they are off at the slightest movement. On the 22nd I counted in the region of 20 birds but over the rest of the month I saw them several times, An early trip to the airfield on January 23rd produced more sightings of Fieldfares, as well as my first Heron of the year. There were good numbers of Goldfinches, with about 60 - 70 in a single flock, and more Chaffinches. That brought my tally of sightings up to 23 species, slightly up on the numbers in January 2016.

Fieldfare. Photo: Steve Jones

On January 31st I saw between 50-60 Fieldfares on the airfield. There was also a new species for me on Hvar. I had caught fleeting glimpses of this bird while driving, but that's not good enough for certain identification. It was a bird of prey, about the same size as a buzzard. Buzzards circling above us are a fairly common sight on Hvar, but this one moved differently, gliding quite low over the fields. In birdwatching, the odds are that a few sightings will allow for clear identification sooner or later, and so it proved. The Hen Harrier was my highlight for January 2017.

Hen Harrier. Photo: Steve Jones

In total I saw 26 species during the month. Birdwatching on Hvar has brought out several differences in comparison to the UK. For instance, a friend in England keeps track of birds which touch down in his garden, and counted 25 species during January, whereas in my garden on Hvar the total would be about six..In my garden in Devon I would see about 12 species within an hour.

SUMMARY OF BIRD SIGHTINGS, JANUARY 2017

© Steve Jones 2017

Eco Hvar footnote.

At the end of January, the British Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) organized its Big Garden Birdwatch, an exercise in bird observation which has taken place every year since 1979. Due to the cold weather in northern countries, they were expecting an influx of waxwings, beautiful colourful birds which only visit the UK every few years. The annual Birdwatch scheme produces interesting details about bird numbers and movements. Numbers of house sparrows, for instance, have declined by about 58% since the annual count began. The aim of the scheme is to make people aware of the birds and wildlife around them, whether in cities or countries,  and to promote conservation. It has been extremely successful, with mass participation. Much work is being done in the field of nature studies and conservation in Croatia. A participation scheme involving the nation's schoolchildren would be of great benefit in helping future generations to understamnd and care for the world around them.

For more of Steve's beautiful nature pictures, see his personal pages: Bird Pictures on Hvar 2017, and Butterflies of Hvar

You are here: Home

Eco Environment News feeds

  • Experts say the hybrids risk ‘polluting’ the genetic stock, but scientists disagree on how to deal with them. In Piedmont, Italy, the sight of a blond wolfdog signals the risk of another new litter

    • Photographs by Alberto Olivero

    From the moment the rangers first saw him on their trail cameras, the problem was apparent. The wolf, spotted deep in the woods of Italy’s Gran Bosco di Salbertrand park, was not grey like his companion, but an unusual blond. His colouring indicated this was not a wolf at all, but a hybrid wolfdog – the first to be seen so far into Piedmont’s alpine region. And where one hybrid is found, more are sure to follow.

    “We thought he would go away,” says Elisa Ramassa, a park ranger in Gran Bosco who has tracked the local wolves for 25 years. “Unfortunately, he found a female who loves blonds.”

    Elisa Ramassa and fellow ranger Massimo Rosso search for wolf tracks in Gran Bosco di Salbertrand park

    Continue reading...

  • Subsidence linked to extraction of groundwater and natural gas, and weight of buildings pressing into soft ground

    A number of cities on the US east coast are sinking, increasing the risk of flooding from rising sea levels.

    Between 2007 and 2020 the ground under New York, Baltimore and Norfolk in Virginia sank between 1mm and 2mm a year, other places sank at double or triple that rate, and Charleston, South Carolina, sank fastest, at 4mm a year, in a city less than 3 metres above sea level.

    Continue reading...

  • World’s fossil-fuel producers on track to nearly quadruple output from newly approved projects by decade’s end, report finds

    The world’s fossil-fuel producers are on track to nearly quadruple the amount of extracted oil and gas from newly approved projects by the end of this decade, with the US leading the way in a surge of activity that threatens to blow apart agreed climate goals, a new report has found.

    There can be no new oil and gas infrastructure if the planet is to avoid careering past 1.5C (2.7F) of global heating, above pre-industrial times, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has previously stated. Breaching this warming threshold, agreed to by governments in the Paris climate agreement, will see ever worsening effects such as heatwaves, floods, drought and more, scientists have warned.

    Continue reading...

  • Decision raises concerns about financial future of UK’s biggest water company

    Investors at Thames Water have pulled the plug on £500m of emergency funding, raising concerns about the financial future of the country’s largest water company.

    The beleaguered utilities firm announced this morning that its shareholders had refused to provide the first tranche of £750m funding set to secure its short-term cashflow, after the company had failed to meet certain conditions.

    Continue reading...

  • Welsh Marches, Shropshire: After all the rain, cold winds and more rain, suddenly an explosion of flowers from this Mount Fuji cherry tree

    The way to the spring equinox was precarious. We began to wonder if spring would come and go, and it would still be winter. Daffodils looked pissed off. Bleachy damson and blackthorn blossom stained early. Rain, cold winds, rain, floods, more rain. Then suddenly this – boom – an explosion of flowers into a moment of balance.

    Emerging from the dark half, I thought it might be the Mount Fuji cherry, Prunus serrulata ‘Shirotae’. Battered by decades of standing outside a Shrewsbury nightclub, surrounded by walls and traffic in the corner of a shopping centre due to be demolished, and entangled with gossamer packaging material, this cherry had endured its suffering, and suddenly flowered like a Japanese painting. A Zen moment at the equinox.

    Continue reading...

  • Call for environmental emergency to be declared after data reveals 105% rise in raw sewage discharges over past 12 months

    Water companies in England have faced a barrage of criticism as data revealed raw sewage was discharged for more than 3.6m hours into rivers and seas last year in a 105% increase on the previous 12 months.

    The scale of the discharges of untreated waste made 2023 the worst year for storm water pollution. Early data seen by the Guardian put the scale of discharges at more than 4m hours, but officials said the figures were an early estimate.

    Continue reading...

  • Rivers in north of England among most polluted, shows new data. Search your postcode to see how sewage spills into your local river

    Rivers in the north of England are bearing the brunt of the sewage pollution crisis, analysis by the Guardian reveals, with the region’s waters experiencing the highest rates of waste discharge in the country.

    Storm overflows around the Irwell valley, where the rivers Croal and Irwell run through to Manchester, discharged raw sewage 12,000 times in 2023 — the highest rate of all English rivers when accounting for length, at 95 spills per mile.

    Continue reading...

  • A woman rushed a pompom to a wildlife hospital, thinking it was an injured baby hedgehog. These cases of mistaken identity happen more often than you might think …

    Name: Baby hedgehog.

    Age: Unknown.

    Continue reading...

  • Are growing rates of anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD, Alzheimer’s and motor neurone disease related to rising temperatures and other extreme environmental changes?

    In late October 2012, a category 3 hurricane howled into New York City with a force that would etch its name into the annals of history. Superstorm Sandy transformed the city, inflicting more than $60bn in damage, killing dozens, and forcing 6,500 patients to be evacuated from hospitals and nursing homes. Yet in the case of one cognitive neuroscientist, the storm presented, darkly, an opportunity.

    Yoko Nomura had found herself at the centre of a natural experiment. Prior to the hurricane’s unexpected visit, Nomura – who teaches in the psychology department at Queens College, CUNY, as well as in the psychiatry department of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai – had meticulously assembled a research cohort of hundreds of expectant New York mothers. Her investigation, the Stress in Pregnancy study, had aimed since 2009 to explore the potential imprint of prenatal stress on the unborn. Drawing on the evolving field of epigenetics, Nomura had sought to understand the ways in which environmental stressors could spur changes in gene expression, the likes of which were already known to influence the risk of specific childhood neurobehavioural outcomes such as autism, schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

    Continue reading...

  • IFRC and USAid staging conference to draw attention to risks and share best practice in disaster alerts and response

    Two of the world’s biggest aid agencies will host an inaugural global summit on extreme heat on Thursday as directors warn that the climate crisis is dramatically increasing the probability of a mass-fatality heat disaster.

    The conference will highlight some of the pioneering work being done, from tree-planting projects to the development of reflective roof coverings that reduce indoor temperatures.

    Continue reading...

Eco Health News feeds

Eco Nature News feeds