I was sat around the camp fire this morning at 06:30hrs
having a cup of Dandelion coffee, Merlin having eaten was settling down for the
day, when suddenly he was surrounded my around 30 song birds, consisting of
blue tits, great tits, long-tailed tits, chaffinch and sparrow.
I did not pick up on the initial alarm call; it may have
been very subtle and to be fair I was still prising the sleep from my eyes. As
I sat and watched how they responded to Merlin’s presence, it was clear that
some of the birds stayed well up in the canopy which was around 15-20 metres in
height. The closest one went to around 2-3 metres from Merlin and this was a
Blue Tit.
Merlin in the meantime was completely un-interested in them,
perhaps he thought they presented no threat to him, or maybe because he is
captive breed his responses may be somewhat different to that of a wild bird?
At one point Merlin ruffled his feathers, trapping air
between them and shaking of any loose feathers. This year Merlin has had the
biggest and longest moult I have ever experienced with him, I checked with some
friends and their birds were moulting heavily as well. We concluded it was due
the weather we are having, I decrease, immediately after Merlin ruffled his
feathers the parabolic flock of birds suddenly went wild. The warning calls
change to scalding headed up by the long-tailed tits mainly. In fact I had the
sense that the Long-tailed Tits were the main guys in the group, I will need to
check this out further to see if there is a lead role here for some birds.
Notably absent were the Blackbirds that said I had only
observed one or two Blackbirds in the area that I am working in. After my brew
I headed off to check on my client, and as I returned I became aware that two Magpies
had now moved in on Merlin, the song birds had settled down and started to move
away from Merlin as I left camp.
Again Merlin paid the Magpies no attention, and the Magpie’s
left as I entered the camp site. Having merlin presents me with a great opportunity
to observe how other birds respond to him and it allows me to pay close
attention to their calls and how they change given different situations.
No comments:
Post a Comment