Nightingales in November (15 page)

Unfortunately there isn't the same level of detailed knowledge about the movement of Waxwings, but in a good Waxwing winter, both the number of birds and flocks will by now have begun to reduce as birds commence crossing back over the North Sea en route to their breeding grounds in northern Scandinavia and the Russian Federation. With spring arriving late in the boreal forests, it is reasonable to suggest that the Waxwings may well cover the 2,000km return journey at a leisurely pace, feeding along the way. Even in winters with relatively few Waxwings visiting Britain, it is still highly likely that early March will see a scattering of Waxwing records, principally along our eastern seaboard.

Of our four summer visitors, the species undoubtedly closest to its breeding grounds in early March will be the Puffin. Arrival dates tend to vary widely from year to year at the same breeding location and also between different colonies, but if each of the major British breeding sites is represented as the hub of a bicycle wheel, then the freshly-moulted adult Puffins will currently be arrowing in, like the wheel's
spokes, from all directions. It is highly likely that the Puffins will also be pausing for regular feeding bouts along the way, and having spent the winter probably feeding alone, will undoubtedly have begun to meet other Puffins returning to the same colony. These encounters out at sea after a long winter of solitude should to some extent prepare them for what will be a very intense social experience ahead.

The Nightingale has a shorter distance to cover between its wintering grounds and breeding site than either the Cuckoo or Swallow, so it's perhaps no surprise that they will be the last birds to leave their final wintering destination. So, come early March they will still not have embarked on the first leg of their 5,000km journey, which will ultimately see them arriving in south-east England in mid-April. Capable of covering a huge distance in their first long hop, British Nightingales will currently be busily laying down fat stores, only too aware that running out of reserves while circumventing the Sahara Desert could be a death sentence for a bird weighing little more than 20g.

Finally deciding that they can't delay any longer, early March will see our British-breeding Cuckoos at last leaving the Congo region. Data from the BTO's work tracking Cuckoos by satellite seems to indicate that come early March most tagged birds will start heading north. What factors make them suddenly up sticks and leave behind the sanctuary of their wintering quarters is anyone's guess, as day length and temperature don't vary much throughout the year close to the Equator. The cues, however, may include changes in rainfall patterns, which will have a knock-on effect on the prey they've been consuming. Leaving the massive Congo
forests behind, the general trend sees the Cuckoos pitching up in a wide belt of land consisting of mostly woodland savanna between the Central African Republic and Cameroon. After little more than a few days' rest, the majority of tagged Cuckoos will then quickly move west through Nigeria, Togo and Benin as they head towards Ghana.

In contrast to the Cuckoo's long hops with rests for feeding up in between, the Swallows will be continuing their migratory routine of travelling anywhere between 200 and 300km during daylight hours, before then finding a safe spot to roost each night. Working their way steadily north, early March may well see the Swallows approaching the Congo forests that the Cuckoos have only just left. It's thought that the Swallows may well take a more westerly route than where the Cuckoos overwintered, as continuous forest cover is probably a more difficult habitat for them to feed over than the lowland wetlands and farmland found closer to the coast. As mid-March arrives many British-bound Swallows will be steaming across the Equator and arriving in the unattractively nicknamed ‘armpit of Africa' as they cut the corner of the Gulf of Guinea into Cameroon and Nigeria.

One site where over a million Swallows bed down for the night on their journeys both north in the spring and south in the autumn is close to the village of Ebok-Boje, of the Cross River forest region in south-eastern Nigeria. Roosting on hill slopes covered in three-metre-high elephant grass, huge numbers descend at dusk, only to leave at sunrise the following morning. This roost was unknown to the outside world until 1987, and quickly made the headlines as local communities were thought to be regularly trapping and eating as many as 200,000 birds each year. Since this discovery, considerable work has been put in by conservation agencies keen to initially reduce and ultimately prevent the industrial slaughter
of the Swallows roosting here. Any Swallows escaping the liming sticks of Ebok-Boje will continue their journey north only too aware that an even bigger potential death trap, the Sahara Desert, will soon be looming very large on their horizon.

Mid-March

After spectacular aerial displays, a whole array of ritualised courtship and a fair amount of copulation, mid-March will see British Peregrines begin to start laying. The famous naturalist Derek Ratcliffe, in his peerless monograph
The Peregrine Falcon
in 1993, wrote that the earliest date he could find in the literature relating to when Peregrines laid their first egg was 23 March. However, the BTO has suggested that Peregrines are now laying on average nine days earlier than when Ratcliffe carried out his research. Ratcliffe also scarcely mentioned urban-nesting Peregrines in his book, as this is a phenomenon that has only been widely observed in Britain over the last 15 years. It now seems that the ‘heat island effect' commonly found in towns and cities is the main reason why populations of Peregrines in urban locations may well be breeding earlier than on the cold Cumbrian fells where Ratcliffe watched his falcons. Suffice to say, there will of course be variation between different pairs and different years, with the temperature in spring thought to be the key factor in dictating when Peregrines begin nesting.

In contrast to many birds, the Peregrine's nest is always a relatively simple affair, consisting of little more than a shallow depression with a few pellets and feathers drawn together. With the precise nesting location key to the success of the birds, ‘Peregrine boxes' on churches and other high buildings have proved spectacularly successful in cities such
as Bath, Norwich and Chichester. Here the box often consists of little more than an open-sided rectangle, with a roof to offer shelter from the worst of the rain and pea gravel as a substrate on which to nest, with clever placement ensuring that a sudden gust of wind won't blow the precious clutch either off a ledge or into a gutter.

The sign that a female may well be just about to begin laying will see her fairly restless early in the morning, prior to the egg being produced. This egg will represent the first in a final clutch of three or four, with as many as five reported by Peregrine ringer Ed Drewitt in Bristol's Avon Gorge in 2008, 2010 and 2011. The prevailing colour of the eggs is red-brown, with varying degrees of freckling, mottling and blotching, and an unashamedly biased Derek Ratcliffe called them ‘the most handsome laid by any species of bird'. The eggs do, however, develop a ‘shop-soiled' look during incubation as they become dirtier and splattered with droppings. A clutch of three or four may take a week for the female to lay, with incubation not thought to start until the final egg has been laid. Up to this moment, any development of the embryos inside the eggs will remain in a state of suspended animation until the warmth from the parents kick-starts the development process.