Distant herons on a nest at Blenheim yesterday
Archives for February 2025
Nest building at Blenheim
Trying to learn about herons. Grey (the most common) herons are colonial breeders – they nest together like rooks in what are known as heronries. Very often these are on islands within lakes. In towns they can be in public parks. In the country it could be gravel pits or landscaped parkland belonging to big private landowners, historically aristocrats.
I delivered Eleanor to a residential course south of Oxford today, so stopped off at Blenheim Park on the way back. You don’t get more aristocratic than that. Luckily there’s free public access to the park – and a heronry. It’s well over a hundred yards off shore, but I watched for a whole afternoon.
Herons don’t do much for long periods, then do a lot quickly. The video shows one of a pair collecting a giant twig for nest building and delivering it to its other half, which is standing on the nest itself. Then it turns back into a statue.
Not sure which sex is which yet, but it was a good outing. Saw a lot of behaviour and learnt a lot. And I went to visit Winston’s grave at Bladen nearby, which mum would have loved.
I delivered Eleanor to a residential course south of Oxford today, so stopped off at Blenheim Park on the way back. You don’t get more aristocratic than that. Luckily there’s free public access to the park – and a heronry. It’s well over a hundred yards off shore, but I watched for a whole afternoon.
Herons don’t do much for long periods, then do a lot quickly. The video shows one of a pair collecting a giant twig for nest building and delivering it to its other half, which is standing on the nest itself. Then it turns back into a statue.
Not sure which sex is which yet, but it was a good outing. Saw a lot of behaviour and learnt a lot. And I went to visit Winston’s grave at Bladen nearby, which mum would have loved.
Trying to learn about herons. Grey (the most common) herons are colonial breeders – they nest together like rooks in what are known as heronries. Very often these are on islands within lakes. In towns they can be in public parks. In the country it could be gravel pits or landscaped parkland belonging to big private landowners, historically aristocrats.
I delivered Eleanor to a residential course south of Oxford today, so stopped off at Blenheim Park on the way back. You don’t get more aristocratic than that. Luckily there’s free public access to the park – and a heronry. It’s well over a hundred yards off shore, but I watched for a whole afternoon.
Herons don’t do much for long periods, then do a lot quickly. The video shows one of a pair collecting a giant twig for nest building and delivering it to its other half, which is standing on the nest itself. Then it turns back into a statue.
Not sure which sex is which yet, but it was a good outing. Saw a lot of behaviour and learnt a lot. And I went to visit Winston’s grave at Bladen nearby, which mum would have loved.
I delivered Eleanor to a residential course south of Oxford today, so stopped off at Blenheim Park on the way back. You don’t get more aristocratic than that. Luckily there’s free public access to the park – and a heronry. It’s well over a hundred yards off shore, but I watched for a whole afternoon.
Herons don’t do much for long periods, then do a lot quickly. The video shows one of a pair collecting a giant twig for nest building and delivering it to its other half, which is standing on the nest itself. Then it turns back into a statue.
Not sure which sex is which yet, but it was a good outing. Saw a lot of behaviour and learnt a lot. And I went to visit Winston’s grave at Bladen nearby, which mum would have loved.
Trying to learn about herons. Grey (the most common) herons are colonial breeders – they nest together like rooks in what are known as heronries. Very often these are on islands within lakes. In towns they can be in public parks. In the country it could be gravel pits or landscaped parkland belonging to big private landowners, historically aristocrats.
I delivered Eleanor to a residential course south of Oxford today, so stopped off at Blenheim Park on the way back. You don’t get more aristocratic than that. Luckily there’s free public access to the park – and a heronry. It’s well over a hundred yards off shore, but I watched for a whole afternoon.
Herons don’t do much for long periods, then do a lot quickly. The video shows one of a pair collecting a giant twig for nest building and delivering it to its other half, which is standing on the nest itself. Then it turns back into a statue.
Not sure which sex is which yet, but it was a good outing. Saw a lot of behaviour and learnt a lot. And I went to visit Winston’s grave at Bladen nearby, which mum would have loved.
Kingfisher
By the town boat club this morning. This male flew in with a fish and perched for about five minutes before flying off with it still in its beak. Normally the fish would be eaten straight away, but it’s being held in the correct position to be fed into the beak of a female kingfisher. Courtship is well under way!
Blackbird
Still light, properly light, at 5 pm. On the way back through town one blackbird sings after another. Warm, gentle, unfocused. Not yet loud enough to soar above the traffic, but a welcome hint of the glorious weeks and months to come.
In the back streets the twilight glows with the unfolding simplicity of their song.
Holme Fen
A couple of minutes of the Holme Fen soundscape at daybreak this morning. The bleats and grunts are from cormorants. They were already sitting on nests in the islands to the left and right of the picture.
The sounds of greylag geese pass over at one point, and after about a minute a kingfisher flies by with its characteristic high piping “Tzee”. You can hear softer calls between it and its mate for most of the rest of the clip.
Robins and great tits are singing in the background and there’s also a moorhen and some crows. Elsewhere I heard green woodpecker, mistle and song thrushes, and possibly a blackbird (though they don’t seem to have properly fired up so far this year).
Grey herons don’t appear to be nesting yet, but a roost of around a dozen little egrets was sitting in the branches of a tree at the westerly edge of the lake.
Lapwings at Titchmarsh NR
Non-swimming heron
At first sight this heron appears to be swimming, and although they don’t have webbed feet there are a few videos online of grey herons doing exactly that. But I watched this bird as it picked its delicate way down the bank and stepped into the water. Then it took a sedate walk along the shallows with long legs bent and feet firmly planted on the river bed.Proof that it still had contact with the bottom came when it suddenly lunged from the river and flew off. The first flap of those huge wings grabs a mighty scoop of air, but the leap from the water was so explosive that leg power must have been needed too.
Poise
Great tits
Great tits are prominent singers in the early months of the year. Their song is known as “belling”, and its two-note sawing sound seems perfectly designed to ring and echo through bare winter branches.
There are a lot of intriguing variations to that simple song, both between birds and from the same individual at different times. I’ve put together a half dozen clips to illustrate.
The species is one of the most studied in the world, thanks to decades of research by the Edward Grey Institute into the lives and habits of great tits in Witham Woods near Oxford. I think there’s a study somewhere about how they learn and build up their songs – must get my thinking cap on and delve into it…
Dawn at Kinewell
The sound of Kinewell heronry at 6.15 this morning. It was very cold but worth getting up for. All the calls until about 40 seconds into the video were made solely by grey herons – then some Canada geese joined in.
I’d only ever heard the “craak” alarm call before as a heron takes off across the meadows. In one of BB’s children’s books the sound is written phonetically as “frank”, which is also a dialect name for the bird itself.
These new sounds came from static positions in the trees where nests are being built. Communication appeared much more complex. The alarm call seems to belong to prehistoric times, and these braying, guttural squawks reinforce that.
I’m looking forward to the cries of the chicks in early spring. The Kinewell heronry only has a few nests – some can have a hundred. The sound must be awe-inspiring!
Kinewell Lake
A “seige of herons” at Kinewell Lake near Ringstead this morning. The collective noun is said to come from an old French word for seat, but I prefer to think it’s got something to do with endless waiting.
Anyway, this is the first heronry I’ve seen, and there were at least a dozen grey herons seated or flying around a small island at one end of the lake. A couple of egrets too. They may be pairing up already and should be nest building soon.
The island is within hearing and recording range of my parabolic mic, so I’m planning an early morning visit on Sunday to see what sounds they (and their cormorant confederates) are making.
Heron and egrets
Near the bridge across the river on the path to Ashton there’s a channel between the millpond and the main river itself. About three years ago there was a dramatic amount of clearing and felling there, which made me sad at the time. But after a couple of growing seasons it now looks much better.
It seems to have turned into a magnet for herons. As I drew level with the opening from the river yesterday there were both a great and a little egret glowing white and bright against the dull mud and winter branches towards the pond.
Both took off – the little egret weaving through the branches, and the great egret making a tight spiral upwards till it was met by another flying in from the meadows. There were some clacking sounds – rather like a glug-glug-glug a human might make at the back of the throat – and then the elegant pair winged off upriver.
While I was watching this I hadn’t noticed there was a grey heron there too, hiding in still plain sight. It took off with an exasperated Crrrraaak!
When I went back today there was just the little egret. But in the trees above were four ravens. Two flew off over Oundle, while the others took off towards Ashton. I could hear one calling from one of the tall pines as I walked back along the road.
The darkling thrush
Song thrush in a dusky blue-grey drizzle
The walk to Apethorpe
Last week I made four attempts to walk the 2 to 3 miles though the forest from Southwick to Apethorpe. Largely it was a story of mud and ravens…
The heavy clay footpath downhill from the old railway carriage was a rain-puddled morass more suited to bog snorkelling. One false move and you’d leave a welly behind. A crafty submerged bramble nearly tripped and did for me altogether.
Then just as I emerged from the bog a pair of ravens arrived and wheeled overhead. Strong necks thrust from welterweight shoulders, feathers splayed from the trailing edges of their wings, calls gruff and muscular as a rutting stag….
Nothing for it but to stand, gawp and listen as they whirled above the treetops. Rooted, ancient – the stuff of Beowulf or Middle Earth. Centuries fell away. Hours passed. Time to turn for home.
On the third day I got past the mud and ravens and took a path beyond the forest that I’d last walked decades before. But it had been rerouted round a celebrity’s property. Nothing looked the same. I got enjoyably lost, but managed to double back in the sure knowledge of how to get to Apethorpe next time.
On the fourth day I made it. Past the Elizabethan house that was once a borstal, now upgraded once again to a “palace”. Then into the village and back on the road alongside the lake. There’s been a heronry there in the past and I’d like to explore. But it’s invisible from the road. It might be reachable through contacts.
Then into Woodnewton, past Coco the Clown’s grave in the churchyard and back through the forest. During the slippery walk uphill a raven passed over with a hefty twig. It’ll be a long time before the path is dry, but the nest can’t be far away.
Grey wagtail at the weir
One of my favourite sights by the weir near Cotterstock lock this morning – a wagtail doing what wagtails do. A joy to watch!
I also heard my first chaffinch of the year by Cotterstock Hall.
Jays and ravens
Stirring sounds at sunset – jays, ravens and some “chikks” from a woodpecker. Jays and ravens are both corvids, but they sound very different.
When I hear jays screeching around dusk there’s often a tawny owl call too. I’ve seen them mobbing owls – they’re natural enemies. Ravens make wonderfully visceral sounds. I’ve only just realised that they have a loud swoosh to their wingbeats too, which carries more than a hundred yards in a quiet wood. No wonder they’re such a powerful presence in legend and ancient fiction.
Heron with a fish
Not the tidiest photo, but I seldom see a heron holding a fish