JUST occasionally, a bird turns up in the garden that is unexpected.
It may be a bird that is rare in our garden or even, albeit rarely, a new species. The only new species this year was the drake Carolina duck, sometimes known as the wood duck, but that is another story.
Earlier this year there was one of the rare ones, only the second for our garden in the 24 years we have lived in this strath. It was a hawfinch which stayed about 10 minutes feeding on an apple and then was gone, not to be seen again, and I was just too slow in getting to the camera. The other rarity was a jay but that just spoiled me as it came for a few days and posed for the camera and some readers may recall seeing the photographic results on this page. I am sure that bird was nesting in the wood above the house but after its visits we saw no sign of it or any offspring it may have had.
Then another rare bird turned up last week and, as always, simply unexpected. I was in my study trying to write instead of watching wildlife out of the window when I glanced at the feeders only a few feet away. There were the usual siskins and chaffinches and then at the bottom of the mixed grain feeder there was a tree sparrow. I mentally logged the tree sparrow and then casually continued writing. Then it suddenly dawned on me that the bird was only the second tree sparrow we have ever seen in the garden.
The problem was, needless to say, that the camera was in the house. So I let the bird feed for a short while and then went in for the camera. Fortunately, the bird reappeared on the feeder and I was able to get the photograph that is not very good but passable as the weather was foul.
It stayed for about an hour and I have not seen it since.
It reminded me of many years ago when I was down south, I had a whole series of nestboxes, nearly 100, throughout two woods. The boxes were used by great tits, blue tits and occasionally redstarts. Then one year the tree sparrows moved in and within three years they had taken over every nestbox.
One of the reasons for the success of this bird is that they nest in loose colonies so the series of nestboxes were ideal for them. Even where the blue and great tits were on full clutches of eggs the tree sparrows would simply oust them. Then they built their own nests on top of the other birds eggs and nest. Some years each pair of tree sparrows brought off two broods.
In contrast in the Highlands the bird is described as a "locally common breeder in the Moray Firth; rare elsewhere".
Nationally, they are on the red data list which means they are among the most threatened birds in the UK. This is either because the numbers of birds are rapidly falling or their range is contracting. The only consolation is that nestbox schemes have undoubtedly helped in many areas, but obviously not in the Highlands.
It would at one time have been much more common, but the intensification of agriculture had a severe effect on this once farmland bird. The large number of stubble fields is virtually gone and the loss of insect-rich wetlands through drainage has also been harmful as with many other species.
Another problem is also the fact that the birds are very sedentary, which means if they die out in one area there is little chance of re-colonisation from elsewhere.
Stay away from stag danger zone
THE record of the week came about because I was watching Autumnwatch on BBC Television last week.
I also watched the follow-up that evening called Autumnwatch Unsprung which I enjoy because of the queries and photographs sent in by viewers. It also puts the three presenters on the spot over queries presumably they have not heard of until they are aired on the programme.
I have tried to mentally answer such queries myself and, I must admit, have not been very good. In that part of the programme there was a very bad mistake which I hope will be corrected next week as it is potentially dangerous.
The query came in about filming wildlife and a 15-year-old viewer asked Johnny Kingdom for advice on filming as to whether he would need an expensive camera to start off with.
The advice given was sound until it came to filming red deer stags or fallow deer bucks. The viewer was told that the thing to do was to use a hide, having obtained permission from the landowner, and then film from inside. This was fine until it came round to filming red deer stags. The viewer was told to obtain a tape recorder that was pre-recorded with the roaring of a stag.
The model shown looked, and sounded, very effective, but then the advice ran into problems. He was told that if you played the recorder then any stag would respond and the person in the hide could photograph it as it came closer. This is a very dangerous thing to do as a frustrated stag could charge the hide and wreck it and could harm the person filming.
Ironically, in the main part of the programme the problem of getting too close to stags had been aired.
