Tweets

Greeted by green parakeets in the FT this morning, green parakeets which appear to be facilitating some illegal social mixing. A bird of which we see a good deal here in Epsom, but I have never noticed the yellow fan tail before, even though the fan tail is often conspicuous enough. Is it a trick of the light? Is heavy breeding in the Royal Parks bringing on mutations?

Apart from the FT, the picture is credited to Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images. For which see references 1 thru 4 below.

Nearer home, in the hawthorn tree outside our bedroom window - the tree which flowers spectacularly most years (reference 7) and which produced the haw jelly (reference 6) which BH is just now finishing - was a handsome great tit, puffing itself out and singing away. A two-tone cheep repeated four or five times, then a pause. Then start over. Simple enough, but presumably distinctive, as Wikipedia says that great tits start establishing their territories for the year at this time of year. Although how exactly that works, given the way that they cluster around our bird feeder, I have no idea.

PS: a bit later on, in the course of a Horton Lane/Longmead Road clockwise, it was the turn of the starlings, in twittering flocks. Perhaps a hundred or so rather than a thousand or so. Not in the tree by the Golf Course noticed at reference 9, rather in the tree in Ewell West noticed at reference 8 - a tree which has put on some growth in the seven years since then. Then some more in one of their favourite trees down Longmead Road.

Reference 5 suggests annual monogamy, plus a bit on the side, but does a pair of birds, once established, defend their joint territory, or is there a complicated system of overlapping male and female territories or what?

Reference 1: https://tolgaakmen.com/. A young and talented photographer. I was impressed by the quality of the gallery.

Reference 2: https://www.afp.com/fr. A French outfit, seemingly still operating in London.

Reference 3: https://making-of.afp.com/ces-collegues-caches-dans-les-bibliotheques. A tour through appearance of AFP people in fiction. Complete with illustrations which are not photographs. Very French.

Reference 4: https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/.

Reference 5: Breeding Area Fidelity of Great Tits (Parus major) - Paul H. Harvey, Paul J. Greenwood and Christopher M. Perrins - 1979. A paper which I find I could read for free at JSTOR, but $18 for download. Don't think my interest stretches that far - and it does not appear to have leaked out into the domain of freeview. A paper which appears to be based on the Wytham Wood which features in both Morse and Lewis. A wood of something over 200 hectares and which includes around 900 nesting boxes, apparently more than enough for the resident population of box nesters. So not very thick on the ground.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/haw-jelly.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/05/full-on.html.

Reference 8: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/12/a-tree-huggers-day-1.html.

Reference 9: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/12/a-tree-huggers-day-2.html.