Tag: pied

December 28th – I’ve heard of this before, but never seen it. In the Three Spires precinct in Lichfield, as dusk fell, a barely-noticed commotion of bird fuss broke the gentle susurration of continued consumerism below. One single tree out of several, decorated in Christmas lights in a fashion that must have taken someone bloody ages, what must have been a hundred or more pied wagtails.

I’d heard they flock. These nippy, twitchy little birds live off bugs generally, and are a common sight in car parks and factory yards and other areas of open hardstanding where they can hunt unhindered, but usually in ones and twos.

I don’t know if they came for the berries, or just a party. Certainly, nothing was bothering them. A remarkable sight I was lucky indeed to see.

September 14th – The boating lake at Chasewater has been drained for cleaning, and the old water spread on the west heath, by the railway. Odd to see this pool empty, but the feral white geese and opportunist wagtails didn’t seem to mind too much.

I noted they had warning signs out to avoid the area where the old water was spread, like it was suddenly a health hazard; whereas when it was in the pond, we were invited to sail toy boats and paddle canoes in it…

Let’s hope it’s kept a bit cleaner in future.

March 23rd – I went back to Chasewater to investigate the overflow situation, and because my conscience was burning me badly. I needed to feed those poor swans. The snow still fell, and the wind was evil. This was the worst snowfall I’d seen since the early 1980s, yet I was surprised at the diversity of the a avian population I encountered. Crows, waterfowl, gulls. Pied wagtails hunted what I presume were barely visible bugs over the overflow spillway. They mingled with a small, brown sparrow-like bird I didn’t recognise. Consulting with birders online later, these cute little brown jobs with comical flight and similar feeding behaviour to the wagtails turned out to be meadow pipits, probably brought down by the snow during migration. I was fascinated by the way they clung to the spillway walls.

I needn’t have fretted about the swans, as their mum was there. The Swan Lady and her husband are legendary at Chasewater, and they feed and tend the swans, taking note of absentees and arrivals. The incongruous and greedy flock gathered round their guardians with eager and expectant joy, and much honking. Bless.