LETTERS, NOTES AND QUERIES

Containing this month: 
Cheeky Blackbird: ..... Colin Hawes
Sadistic Robin: ..... Russell Edwards
So Near, So Far: ..... Adrian Knowles

Cheeky Blackbird

On June the 8th this year, Niall Benvie arrived at our house in Bentley to take photographs of stag beetles and their larvae. He had not seen stag beetles before and was somewhat surprised at their size.

Soon, our small back garden lawn was covered with the equipment that a professional photographer uses. Males, females and larval pabulum (a small tree stump, riddled with larval tunnels) were duly photographed. Then it was time for the larvae to play a star role. A small heap of woody compost containing two large larvae was carefully tipped on to the ground and one larva selected for its moment of fame. But immediately on turning my back to place the larva in a suitable position, a male blackbird that, unknown to us had hidden itself in an adjacent shrub, shot out, grabbed the remaining larva and promptly ate it. We stood there in amazement, but had to laugh at such audacious opportunism. To cap it all, the cheeky bird even had the nerve to come back and look for more.

Colin Hawes

(Niall Benvie is a professional natural history photographer based in Scotland. His work can be seen on the web at: http://niallbenvie.churchilljohnson.co.uk/blog/where his photos and technical advice are well worth a look.)

Sadistic Robin

Sunday morning the eleventh of October: the quiet tranquillity was abruptly terminated by two flying robins chasing one another across the lawn and then bang. The pursued robin had crashed into the window and dropped to the ground, head down and motionless. I thought for a moment it was only stunned and would recover and fly off but instead after a few minutes the pursuing robin returned and proceeded to attack the now dead robin. It was a vicious attack concentrating on its face and eyes, dragging the body around and turning it over. The robin would then fly into the hedge to rest for a few minutes before continuing its attack again. This continued on and off for the rest of the morning until I took the body away and disposed of it.

I can only presume that the dead robin died within the territory of the resident robin and the latter set out to remove the victim whether it was dead or alive. Today looking across the lawn I noted a pair of robins happily flitting amongst the undergrowth. It seems a bit early for pairing off but there they were.

Russell Edwards

So Near, So Far

On 10th September I was walking at Colton creek near Chelmondiston when I found the corpse of a recently deceased Redshank (although a Sexton Beetle had already found the body, even though it lay on intertidal saltmarsh).

The bird had a leg ring so I duly noted its number and sent the details off to the British Trust for Ornithology. I have just received back the bird’s details, which are quite fascinating. It was rung as a one year old by “Newton and Wright” on 11th September 1999, a day off 10 years before it died. I did not know that these birds could live so long. It was rung in Levington Lagoon barely 3 Km from its last resting place. Did this bird migrate thousands of miles every year, to return to the very same estuary every winter for all its 11 years? The ringing summary “Time since ringing: 3652 days Distance 3 Km” does not do justice to this amazing bird and the life it must have led.

This story shows the importance of looking for rings on dead birds and reporting the find. Yes, it is a bit macabre, but it is the reason why bands of dedicated ringers spend endless hours catching and tagging birds, with the vast majority of rings never being recovered.

Adrian Knowles
Jessups Cottage, London Road, Capel St Mary

P.S. The BTO reckons that four to five years is a typical life expectancy for Redshank, but the British record is 20 years.