Peregrine and young                                                            – Dave Pearce

The Painswick Bird Club is one of the smaller wildlife groups in Gloucestershire. Possibly they are squeezed for membership by the Cheltenham Bird Club to their north and Dursley Birdwatching and Preservation Society not far to the south. They have some interesting talks, though, and guests are welcome there at the Painswick Town Hall.

Last night Steve Watson of the Gloucestershire Raptor Monitoring Group and South West Peregrine Group gave a lively and intriguing talk on Peregrines. Steve is a long-standing (obsessive?!) Peregrine watcher with a fascination for their physiology: just how does this bird manage its high-speed stoops and the huge G-forces when it manoeuvres? How does it focus on its prey, near or far? And what weaponry has it evolved?

Steve’s observations centre on the RSPB site at Symonds Yat. This is a sheer cliff face in the Forest of Dean where you can see great views of the birds in flight, and Steve showed some video clips of this. To complement this, he invited Dave Pearce to say a few words about the Christ Church Peregrines at Cheltenham. The footage Dave has is more restricted but more detailed, with egg-laying and nest behaviour more in evidence that flight.

(The title for this piece became obvious once Steve mentioned that aPeregrine had been seen near Painswick church tower, which is just across the road from the Falcon Inn and the bowling club of that name!)

Hen Harrier – Richard Tyler

Gloucestershire Raptor Monitoring Group is holding a Raptor Id Day on common British birds of prey on Sat 20th June.

It takes place at the International Centre for Birds of Prey, Newent and will include not just info but a chance to see various species flying and close up.

The day costs £15 and numbers are limited, although there are a few places left at time of writing. Booking is via the Glos Raptors online shop.

Wren                                                                      photo: Richard Tyler

There are several walks Dawn Chorus walks coming up around the Cotswolds soon.

On Sat 25th April, Arthur Ball leads a group round Batsford Arboretum (near Moreton-in-Marsh). It starts at 4a.m and finishes up in the cafe. Price £12, details here.

The next Saturday (2nd May) the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty have a more relaxed start time of 7a.m. Andy Lewis leads the ‘Birds and Breakfast’ walk from their offices at the Old Prison, Northleach, with a full English breakfast at their Cotswold Lion Cafe included in the £9.

The National Trust gardens at Hidcote Manor (near Chipping Campden) have a walk starting at 5am on Sun 3rd May led by Andy Warren, with breakfast afterwards for £10.

Also on Sun 3rd May the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust are running one starting at 4:30a.m at Whelford Pools in the Cotswold Water Park near Lechlade, price £5, and others at their headquarters at Robinswood Hill in Gloucester and their Lower Woods reserve in South Gloucestershire.

Set your alarm clocks!

The lay-by at Swillbrook Lakes this morning.

Well, maybe one comment:

I just don’t understand the mentality of some people

With the nights drawing in and if you are fed up with what’s on the telly and trying to find something to fill in the evening, why not try the tests on this Norwegian University site. The tests cover the Western palearctic – you can pick a country or the entire region and try pictures or sounds (or both).

Have fun

Snipe                                                                                    –  Richard Tyler

To Banbury (in driving rain) for a meeting with the neighbours – the Banbury Ornithological Society, on whose pattern NCOS was formed nearly 30 years ago.

The occasion was a talk by Charlotte Kinnear from the RSPB’s Otmoor reserve – great place for an office! – on ‘Upper Thames Waders’, part of their Futurescapes project. This project has been running for several years, and looks at the fortunes of four wader species in areas of wet meadows in central England. The area includes the Thames near Lechlade, parts of the Windrush, Evenlode, Glyme, Thame and Cherwell valleys, and Otmoor itself.

In the far west of the study area we have a couple of Society members contributing data from the water-meadows on the Sherborne National Trust estate, notably on Lapwing, which bred well there this year and contributed to a small rise in their overall numbers.

Snipe, it appears, are seen everywhere but are only found breeding at Otmoor. Curlew are drifting gently down in number, and Redshank had a good year after several undistinguished ones. Mostly the species under scrutiny had a lousy year in 2013 because of the wet spring.

Golden Plovers, October                                              Richard Tyler

This weekend (11-12 Oct) sees a census of Golden Plovers across Europe co-ordinated by the British Trust for Ornithology. It’s a repeat of surveys done in 2003 and 2008.

Although they breed much further north, Golden Plovers pass through and stay in the UK in large autumn and winter flocks, so this is an ideal time to count them.

Looking at The Birds of Gloucestershire’s winter distribution map, the birds can turn up in most places in this county – on the high wolds, down where the dipslope rivers broaden out, or in the Severn Vale itself.

Should you see any this weekend, the BTO asks that you record their number and location on BirdTrack. Otherwise, email NCOS and we’ll make sure your sightings get submitted.

One question posed about a year ago is where they all go at night. Wardens at the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust at Slimbridge report flocks feeding there in the Severn Vale, but moving off eastwards as dusk falls. So there may be hundred-strong flocks sleeping somewhere up in the Cotswolds in addition to the numbers we already see here during the day. Keep your eyes peeled this weekend.

Cheltenham Bird Club’s indoor meetings start again on October 6th. As ever, they have put together an interesting mixture of speakers for these Monday night events.

Three that particularly caught my eye were Graham Martin returning with more on bird sight, his speciality at Birmingham University; Mervyn Greening, a ringer from the Forest of Dean talking about nest-finding; and Tom Mabbett, a local boy now with Naturetrek.

Contact the Club here.

There’s an exhibition of landscape and wildlife photographs at Lodge Park, on the National Trust estate at Sherborne.

Sherborne (the Gloucestershire Sherborne, that is) is at the heart of the NCOS area; the Broad Water and the Water Meadows are both favourite birding sites.

The photographs are by Mike Robinson, the National Trust Ranger. Mike has worked on the land there for over 30 years, and knows the estate like no-one else. He’s also on site at times when few others are about, so look out for stunning dawn and dusk landscapes.

Lodge Park is open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays (and Bank Holiday Monday). The exhibition runs till the end of the August.

Marbled White, Chedworth

The Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey is the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme‘s large-scale nationwide study, similar to the BTO’s Breeding Bird Survey. So similar, in fact, that you can walk your own BBS 1-km square looking for butterflies and submit that.

There are a couple of differences between the survey methods – here you also record the percentage of sunshine per section and take an average temperature reading as well.

You will already have mapped the habitat for the BBS, and this plus the birds found in previous visits may throw up some interesting correlations for the scientists at the two organisations.  Each year’s findings get published in a Newsletter.