Tag Archives: Serin

Spring’s promise of new life fulfilled

Posted on 03/06/2011 | 2 comments

A small very dark coloured gecko can often be found on our black-painted front gates where he is much better camouflaged than he appears to be in the photograph. Waiting until the very last moment to move as you approach the gate it suddenly dashes off rapidly: it makes me jump every time, even though I half-expect it to be there.

27/5/11-Moorish Gecko keeping guard at the gate

28/5/11-A pristine Red-veined Darter- Sympestrum fonscolombei -posed beautifully on the car aerial

Despite their size and bulk Violet Carpenter Bees manage to land on the small flower heads of the cut-leaved lavender, the stem bending under its weight. Their attentions do not benefit the flower, they can take nectar without picking up any pollen.

A Violet Carpenter Bee taking nectar from a lavender flower

The last three wet winters we have had here have done wonders for increasing the variety of wildflower species that have colonised the ‘waste’, or vacant plots of land in our locality. At the moment they are at their best and attracting a fair amount of insects, which is good news for the birds still feeding unfledged or recently-fledged young and even better for the Spotted Flycatchers that are only just beginning their breeding cycle.

8/5/11 -Sotogrande, Wild Carrot flower

Wild carrot began flowering a while ago and although continuing to flower, earlier blooms have begun to go to seed now, I love the way it bunches its florets up into a tight, lacy goblet shape.

29/5/11-Sotogrande, Wild Carrot going to seed

Crown Daisies most frequently have golden yellow flowers, but there is a variety that produces white flowers with a yellow centre.

29/5/11-Sotogrande, Crown daisy - Crysanthemum coronarium var. discolor

One of the prettiest of the wildflowers growing locally is a mallow (malva). This is the plant that can often be seen in large patches along the roadsides.

Dwarf Mallow-Malva neglecta

There are quite a few malva, or mallow species found here, and they can be difficult to name, some also hybridise.

29/5/11-Sotogrande, a chafer (oxythyrea funesta) in the flower of Common mallow-Malva sylvestris

Two Clouded Yellow butterflies passed overhead, a blur of golden yellow engrossed in fierce aerial combat. Suddenly breaking apart they went their separate ways, one flew up and away while the other retreated to recover on a leaf amongst the long grass.

29/5/11-TGSOTOLCL-Clouded Yellow

A butterfly I was not quite so pleased to see was a tiny Geranium Bronze. A true native of South Africa, it’s thought their first introduction to Iberia was through Majorca,via imports of their LHPs, which as the name suggests is geraniums. They have spread quickly, colonising many parts of Southern Spain where the popularity of brightly coloured pelargoniums and suitable climate provides them with ample opportunity to thrive. This is the first individual of the species I have seen so far this year, so I’ll be guarding my geraniums now, they’ve been looking so good this year too.

29/5/11-Sotogrande - Geranium Bronze

I had set out on this little wildflower expedition to try to find a particular little butterfly and just as I had decided to turn round and head home I spotted it – just one Small Skipper on a scabious flower, a plant which is beloved by a good many species of butterfly and an important LHP to several species too.

29/5/11-Sotogrande, Small Skipper-Thymelicus sylvestris on scabious

Feeling very pleased with my sighting I was walking home and heard a very strange sound coming from low down in some shrubbery beneath a cork oak tree on the boundary of two vacant plots. I began to head for the boundary fence to have a look to see if I could see what was making the sound, a sort of loud warbling, piping sound with frog-like tones, then froze as a Nightingale flew onto the fence right in front of me. It turned and headed into the vegetation in the direction of the strange noises which stopped momentarily, so I assume they were the summoning calls of one of its young. I carried on walking a little way and the Nightingale flew in front

29/5/11-Sotogrande, a young Nightingale trying to land on a grass stem (photo taken through wire fence)

of me again, this time from the other side of the vegetation into the neighbouring empty plot, heading for the cork oaks next door to our house. Spotting movement low down on a branch where the bird had flown out from I looked to see that a young one had followed it and was wobbling trying to balance itself. It flew out, attempted to land on a grass stem, then flew back into cover, piping plaintively.

I carried on home and stayed there for a few minutes to let things settle down, then set off again hoping to get more views of the Nightingales. Waiting by the gate where I had the earlier sighting I was lucky enough to see an adult that flew from very close by across the road to a cork oak, then another bird came in to the tree in front of me. Not a Nightingale, but a perfect view of a Spotted Flycatcher.

29/5/11-Sotogrande, Spotted Flycatcher in cork oak

Back at home once more I could hear the almost constant and very loud piping of a young nightingale and had a couple of views of it as it perched briefly on top of the wall then perched in a small tree.

There were other recently fledged birds around too. Yesterday I heard young-bird- summoning calls emanating from the cork oaks and traced them to two Short-toed Treecreepers. It was late afternoon and too shady to try to photograph them, but hearing similar sounds this afternoon I went to investigate. I located the source of the sounds, quite high above me in a tree, but they were not those of Treecreepers, these were two lovely young Serins.

29/5/11-Sotogrande, Serins, both a very young male and a female

It is wonderful to be witness to the next generation of these beautiful young birds of very different species venturing out into the world, and I’m sure if I pay due attention the next few days will bring forth even more. One thing I have noticed they all have in common is the small size of their families. The Chaffinches that fledged a couple of weeks ago had just two chicks, the Nightingales may have two, but I suspect just the one this year,there were two young Short-toed Treecreepers and just the two Serins. I can only speculate that family sizes are tailored to the amount of locally- available food; it makes sense to be able to feed two offspring well than more insufficiently.

2 Comments

Posted in Birds of Southern Spain, Butterflies of Southern Spain, Dragonflies of Southern Spain, Migrant birds, Nature, Nature Photography, Wildflowers of Southern Spain, Wildlife of Cadíz

Tagged clouded yellow, common mallow, crown daisy, dwarf mallow, fledgling birds, geranium bronze, Moorish Gecko, Nightingale, Red-veined Darter, scabious, Serin, small skipper, spotted flycatcher, Violet Carpenter Bee, wild carrot

Spring catch-up

Posted on 28/03/2011 | 2 comments

17MAR11-A Serin singing

He turns his head to sing out in another direction

Birds are still singing, particularly noticeable at the moment are Serins and Greenfinches; as I walk around the roads of the locality there seem to be Serin’s trilling out from perches or performing their distinctive territorial flights every hundred metres or so.

23MAR11-Greenfinch singing

There are some very exotic-looking flowers opening up now; I've tried to find out what this tree is, but no luck so far

Blue Tits seem to be everywhere, I caught sight of one pecking around the orange tree blossom in the photograph, I wasn’t quite quick enough to get the bird in, so I’m afraid you will have to imagine how pretty it would have looked.

Another exotic flower spike noticed on my rounds

IN THE GARDEN

A pair of Blackbirds have been very busy for the past ten days or so; I’ve seen them both foraging in the garden so they clearly have a young family to feed. I have resisted clearing away the dry leaves and twiggy bits of tree debris from the edges of the paths so the birds can seek insects there; the Blackbirds characteristically add drama to their searching, showering the paths and themselves with discarded material. They make even more mess, but I love to watch them doing it.

18MARCH -Blackbird foraging, framed by a spiny Aloe plant

23MAR11-The female is more cautious than the male and sticks closer to cover

The weather has been changeable, but with enough sunshine to bring flowers into bloom and insects to pollinate them. I planted a few dark pink osteospermum plants about four years ago that have self-seeded and I now have a large patch of them in all shades of pink from very pale through to very dark. They look very pretty and have been buzzing with all sizes and variations of bees and hoverflies. I have no idea what species most of them belong to, but I photograph them anyway.

A bee I've not noticed before, having a gingery-brown coloured 'furry' appearance

A Large White butterfly on a blue periwinkle flower

There have been a good number of butterflies about, a lot of Large Whites, Red Admirals and one I’d not seen in the garden before – a Moroccan Orange Tip which didn’t find anything to tempt it to stay for long.

A large Egyptian Grasshopper on the trunk of the pomegranate tree. Sometimes mistaken for locusts, the grasshoppers can be identified by their beautiful striped eyes

The clattering sound of Egyptian Grasshoppers on the wing is a familiar sound in and around the garden at this time of year as the big bulky but handsome insects are stirred into action by the warmth. The one in my photograph was big, but only about two-thirds the size of a fully grown adult female, so maybe an adult male or a young female with a couple of morphs still to go through.

Another familiar insect has been on the prowl lately: this is a 'paper wasp' - Polistes gallicus. They resemble the common wasps but do not seek to share our food and will only sting if they are touched or stepped upon.

2 Comments

Posted in Birds of Southern Spain, INSECTS & SPIDERS, Insects of Southern Spain, Nature, Nature of Southern Spain, Nature Photography

Tagged Blackbird nesting, egyptian grasshopper, Greenfinch, Large White butterfly, polistes gallicus wasp, Serin, serinus serinus

Birds are singing, frogs are croaking

Posted on 28/02/2011 | Leave a comment

At the beginning of the week it seemed as though the total local Tree Frog population had converged upon our pool. Endearing as they are in the daytime when spotted out sunbathing, stuck to the sides of the pool like bath toys, as soon as the sun has set and they begin their croak-off contests, necessitating turning up the volume on your TV, you can go off them a bit. It wouldn’t be so bad if they got tired after an hour or two and quietened down, but the tiny creatures have enormous stamina and I’ve heard them still at it at 2am. The morning following a particularly noisy night session I discovered the reason for the increased volume; I counted no less than ten of them in a variety of sizes and shades of green in various spots around the pool.

Four of the ten tree frogs in the pool today. This image shows them at more or less their actual very tiny sizes. Males are smaller than females.

A grass-green individual

I probably would have put up with the din so I could indulge in a bit more frog-watching, but my long-suffering other half had reached his tolerance limit and decided at least some of them had to move on, or back to where they’d come from. So the pool was drained to leave about half a metre or so depth at the ‘deep end’. We found some interesting stuff in there, including tadpoles of various sizes and some large dragonfly larvae. I was worried then that the tadpoles would get eaten, so we put a bit more water in to give them more chance to escape. It’s a situation that reminded me of a quote I remember which simply says ‘Nature quietly finds her way back into places we think of as ours…’ which is sort of what has happened here, although in this case maybe not so quietly.

A Serin singing his heart out

My little dog is happy that the pleasanter weather has put more regular walks back on the agenda, although he gets a little bit frustrated with the frequent stops we make as I spot photo opportunities or something interesting to watch. This week there have been so many birds about that our normal 20 minutes ’round the block’ have been taking at least twice as long. I have seen more Robins than usual and think perhaps some are migrants; there are Blue Tits everywhere and Serins singing their tinkling songs from tree perches almost within sight of one another. They become more visible than usual at this time as they make display flights, shooting up from their perches then spreading their wings wide and fluttering and falling back down while still singing. Although seeming to be fully occupied by the effort they put into singing, they are still quite wary and easily disturbed, hence my best photo to date being a back view; it does show the yellow rump though. There are still nothing like the full number of House Martins and Barn Swallows back yet, but it’s been good to see a few in our patch of sky again. No sign of any Swifts yet.

A Collared Dove keeping a wary eye on me and the dog

There are dozens of Collared Doves around and I often come across single ones, or at the moment pairs, walking about on the roads. I know they’re common, but I like them, they look soft and gentle, which of course I know they’re not particularly.

: A large flock of Siskins pecking around on the road

One morning l spotted a little flock of twenty or so small birds pecking around on the road beneath a tree. The bright dappled sunlight made it difficult to see them well and I thought at first they may be Serins, but their reluctance to move until I was quite close brought to mind Siskins, which is what they turned out to be. They didn’t move far, the majority just going up into the tree above, but then a man got into the car that was parked just behind them and they all disappeared. I’ve looked for them several times since, but have only managed one or two; I would imagine they have moved on by now.

A Robin in a rubber tree- about to fly off

It still feels quite odd to see Robins here in Spain, especially this far south, and their strong association with our British Christmas traditions makes it even more odd to see them perched on ‘exotic’ plants such as cacti and as in this picture, a rubber tree. Their behaviour is quite different here too, they are much more wary of people and although they are present in our gardens, they are reserved and keep close to cover.

A White Wagtail strutted about on the road, oblivious to being watched with interest by a nearby cat

I’ve been trying to spot a Chaffinch singing with not much luck so far, but I got some lovely views of a beautiful male as he came down from his tree to feed on the nuts of a crushed pine cone on the road beneath.

Chaffinches are quick to take advantage of car-crushed cones and acorns etc

The male Chaffinch is a beautiful bird

He even looks handsome from the back

Birds spotted singing, displaying or otherwise expressing themselves this week:

Blue Tits and Great Tits, Blackbirds – I watched a female gathering leaves on Tuesday morning, Spotless Starlings, Chaffinches, Goldfinches and Greenfinches all singing, Serins singing and displaying, Wrens in several different locations, Robin, Blackcaps, House Sparrows, Collared Doves, Short-toed Treecreeper who doesn’t have much of a song but keeps up his soft whistle for longer lengths of time.

Balmy weather and bounty for birds

Posted on 05/02/2011 | Leave a comment

What a difference a week makes; following two weeks of rainy days and general wintry weather, this first week of February has been sunny and warm, with temperatures of 16ºC or more in sheltered spots, and there is a general sense that spring is on the way. The nights are still chilly, but the drier warmer mornings have coaxed the birds from their recent hiding places and they have been much more active and visible. Some have begun to sing regularly, in particular Wrens, Blue Tits and Serins. Thursday morning was quite magical, the first birds I heard were Jays squawking as they made their way through the cork oaks, and my first sighting was of 3 lovely Goldfinches feeding on weed seeds and Blue Tits, one exploring the nooks, crannies and plants on the terrace, all the while keeping up contact with another nearby. The regular Blackbirds were about on the grass and a Short-toed Treecreeper arrived to scrutinize the trunks of some of the palm trees.

Goldfinch feeding on the seeds of groundsel

A Blue Tit in a sunny spot in a Cork Oak tree

A Short-toed Treecreeper exploring a palm tree trunk

I could hear Spotless Starlings whistling and calling tunefully from high up in the palm trees at the back of the house and watched a Wren, first singing from various spots along the top of the garden wall, then poking about in the foliage growing against it. A very colourful Greenfinch appeared briefly on the fig tree; I haven’t seen one for ages.

Spotless Starling - (this is a young one)

A Wren singing from a shrub growing against the garden wall

Short-toed Treecreeper taking a drink or perhaps looking for insects

From the kitchen window I saw a pair of Blackcaps after the berries on the dama de noche shrub, two Chiffchaffs flitting about, and two female Chaffinches and half a dozen Housesparrows all pecking around on the ground. The Robin was out and about too, again I hadn’t seen one for a while another Treecreeper came in, landed on a yucca tree trunk, then flew across to the birdbath, something I’d not seen one do before. I think it was drinking, but it may have been looking for insects. (My picture was a bit rushed, but the bird was only there for a few seconds and it took me by surprise).

Cultivated garden plant: Night-scented Jessamine– Cestrum nocturnum Spanish: Dama de Noche (Lady of the night)

Berries of Dama de noche

A tropical and semi-tropical member of the Cestrum family, this Mediterranean classic is grown for the amazing night-time perfume that on a hot August night permeates the air (and our house) with its almost-overpowering scent. This is why it is grown, certainly not for its beauty; it is generally a leggy, untidy shrub and the flowers are small, lime green and held in clusters that during the day have no perfume. The small white berries appear in the late-autumn winter, which is why I don’t cut my plant back sooner – I wait until the Blackcaps have enjoyed them.