This week’s wild walk (Fri 25 July)

Some reliable garden favourites brave the change in weather.

First, thank you for joining Wild This Week in its new home as a section of Birdfolk! For any newcomers, this is an entirely free weekly tour of some seasonal wildlife here in the UK (not limited to birds). And to any of my original subscribers, it’s great to see you here! Enjoy!

After weeks of hot, dry weather – rain! But not the kind of rain that falls in drops. This is a fine mist that hangs in the air, sometimes carried this way or that by the breeze. It’s still a muggy kind of warm, but the sun is long gone.

There’s a Wildlife Trust reserve an hour and a bit away that I like to visit in these conditions. It’s one of the few reserves with bird feeders and a hide to watch them from. The shelter and proximity of the birds make it an easy choice. (I’m more of a birder than a photographer, but I needed some new fodder for Substack!)

So, off to Summer Leys, Northamptonshire.

I was hoping to see a Bullfinch, my favourite bird (alongside Short-Eared Owls). There’s no hanging on the edge of your seat here: I did not see one.

But plenty of garden favourites made an exhibition of themselves!

The gold standard

This gorgeous little bird is a Goldfinch. They’re absolute fiends for sunflower hearts and nyger seeds.

They have the most beautiful call: a tittering, lilting sound that resembles toddlers chatting away in a made-up language. You often hear them saying “chippy-chip, chippy-chip” from the trees before you see them appear in flocks of ten or more.

Some sources say you can tell the males and females apart by how far behind the eye the red patch extends, which would make this a female. Most sources say it’s not a reliable way to tell. The juveniles don’t get the red face until later in the year and can be a real pain for newbies to identify.

Slightly not-Great Tit

With 2.5 million territories in the UK, the next bird is one that most people with a bird feeder will recognise: the Great Tit.

This one looks like a juvenile, with scruffy feathers, a lot of yellow on its face, an ill-defined black streak down its front and no black collar. But it’s most likely a rather harried adult female who is undergoing a moult. She doesn’t have any sign of a yellow gape (like a youngster would have), and was very happy to attack any other birds that came near the food!

Most birds can raise a crest on top of their heads if the mood takes them, as shown above. In this case, she was about to chase off a male Great Tit. He has much more striking blue and green feathers on his back and wings, a solid black collar and his cheeks were white rather than yellow. You can see him in the bottom of the photo, though he’s out of focus.

Creeper in the woods

As this lot were posing, bickering and generally showing off, a small movement in the trees caught my eye. Something small and brown. But it wasn’t moving like the others – it was much more furtive. It was… scuttling!

Scuttle scuttle up the tree trunk – pause – mess around in a crevice – scuttle scuttle.

Then it fluttered over to the next tree and started again, sometimes scuttling downward, sometimes upward. It can only be a Treecreeper!

It paused to look for the source of the sound from my camera, then continued.

These adorable little birds are the only brown birds you’ll see running up and down the tree trunks, upside down when required. Thankfully, their population is stable at around 200,000 territories in the UK. They’re just really hard to spot!

It paused on this stump just before going out of sight around the side of the hide. This photo shows off its downward curved bill that it uses to pull insects and spiders out from little cracks in the bark. It also shows off the formidable-looking claws that make its arboreal adventures possible. And finally, you can see the white tummy that is usually hidden flat against a tree.

This one has a yellow gape at the side of its beak. It also has lighter and more speckled plumage than most adult birds and from those features and its slightly naive behaviour – perching in the open – it’s safe to say it’s a juvenile.

Not quite a Raven

As I was leaving Summer Leys, I thought I’d spotted something really special: a Raven, perched up close! That would be very unusual.

Alas, it’s just a well-fed Crow doing a fantastic impression. The thick throat and ‘trousers’ made it appear very Raveny, but a close look at the beak tells you it’s a Crow. I think the saying goes:

If it’s a big bird with a beak attached, it’s a Crow. If it’s a big beak with a bird attached, it’s a Raven.

Still, there are beautiful tones in its plumage – blues, browns, purples. A lovely way to end a damp and grey walk!

Let me know what you’ve seen this week, wherever you are in the world! I love reading about it.

The gubbins

Thanks for bearing with me as I moved from my previous Substack – I bought the domain (Birdfolk.uk) and figured it’d be nice to use it for all my work. Which means:

• Birdfolk, a reader-supported library of articles, each on a different bird in the UK. We’re starting with the most common ones, so that new birdwatchers can learn more about what they see without having to pore over bird guides and try to remember everything they read.

• Wild This Week (this post). Always free, and will be shared most weeks on a Friday. It covers some of the seasonal stuff you’re likely to see out and about in the UK.

• Tips & Tricks. This is also free (and coming soon). It’ll cover everything from how to support wildlife in your garden through to bird identification and sustainability. This will be very sporadic, as I have 12 articles outlined but none actually written!

I’ll stop banging on about all this from next week. Thanks for being here, I really appreciate it.