A hint of spring sunshine and breeding behaviour begins. Great Tits are often first with their ringing song, Blue Tits too, but their song is often a coarse version of their call and they never sing for long. Great Tits keep going! Blackbirds are at it and Song Thrushes just revving up. Mistle Thrushes have been patiently singing since last November.

It happens every year – I hear a call, often associated with a tit flock, and ignore it until I remember what it is – of course it’s a Tree Creeper. I’m relieved that I can still hear it at my age. “Sibilant” is the word – it’s a word I have only read describing bird song but that’s what a Tree Creeper’s call and song sounds like: sibilant! One was singing in Logan’s Meadow in mid-January. Wrens are singing – they never seem to stop. They are our commonest bird with 11 million pairs out of the estimated 84 million breeding pairs of birds in the UK (British Birds, February 2020 Vol 113).

Four Great-spotted Woodpeckers were chasing each other through and around Logan’s Meadow. At least two were males with a red patch on the back of their heads. I like them. They are noisy, full of enthusiasm, careless and indiscreet in their nuptial display chases. Rhona Watson has photographed a female (without the red spot) in Jesus College grounds with a chafer grub. I think it was a gift and part of the rituals of a breeding pair bond.

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There were still plenty of Redwings and Fieldfares about in January. Fewer seem to have ventured into the City this winter which has been mild. I think there is still plenty of food to be found in the countryside and on farmland although Logan’s Meadow has a regular roost of Redwings. Eighty-Five Fieldfares were in a flock on farmland in the north of our project area in early January. The Newnham Nuthatch was a regular visitor to a garden feeder during the month.

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A female Goosander has been present on the Dickerson Pit at Milton Country Park during most of January. I have seen it in almost exactly the same place on several occasions – in the north end of Dickerson pit which is just outside our NatHistCam project area. The front cover of the latest Cambridgeshire Bird Club Annual Report (no 92, 2019) for observations logged in 2018 has an illustration of a female Goosander with chicks. Goosanders bred successfully for the first time in Cambridgeshire in 2018 at two sites; one site was on the River Cam at Little Shelford. Typically, it is a breeding bird of faster moving upland rivers and streams.

In 2014, I found a female Goosander with seven chicks in May on the River Great Ouse near Milton Keynes. They were amusing to watch. From a distance, they were like yobs on a day out diving, swimming and clambering over each other in the water until they saw me on the water’s edge when they lined up politely and immaculately behind their mother and swam past in a line. It’s a breeding bird we should now look for on lowland rivers.

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Peregrine(s) have been seen regularly on the united Reform Church in Trumpington Street. On a cold wet morning, I saw the female perched on the very top of the spire looking huddled and damp.

I had not been to Kingfishers Bridge Reserve near Wicken Fen for many years but in the last two weeks I have been there twice! It’s just off the road from Stretham to Wicken opposite the road to Upware. Its free to visit and well worth it. James Moss, the warden, and Stephen Tomkins gave excellent talks about the reserve to the Natural History Society on 30^th January. It has a visitors’ centre and encourages families and has hides, picnic tables and the “Bittern Hump” where you can sit and watch and wait for Marsh Harriers and Bitterns. There is a white-board where you can add your own sightings; someone had seen a” fezunt” which continues to amuse me!

In the month the regular pair of Stonechats, three Little Egrets and Kestrel were at Hobson’s Park and a Kestrel over the Market Square and Logan’s Meadow. The Kestrel is the common European lowland raptor and its range extends into North Africa and the middle-East.

Over the New Year I visited The Lebanon. The weather was terrible! Heavy rain every day often most of the day. I visited Mleeta in the south of Lebanon which can be described as the Hezbollah theme park! Hezbollah is considered a terrorist organisation but is an integral part of the sectarian peace and government in Lebanon. The park is on hills overlooking the lowlands of south Lebanon and was the resistance headquarters against the Israeli occupation in the 1990’s. It is a memorial to the deaths of the Hezbollah “martyrs” and shows captured Israeli munitions, a gift shop, lecture hall and a 200m tunnel through the hill to the Hezbollah observation post. The “sparrowhawk” is depicted as the bird of resistance because it “hovers, all seeing, over the valleys below and is bitter to the taste”. The Hezbollah guides were not impressed when I pointed out the bird described and in their propaganda film was a Kestrel.

Bob Jarman 31^st January 2020.

bobjarman99@btinternet.com