There is more good news this year regarding barn owls, as a pair has bred again for the third successive year near Redbournbury and it looks as if a second pair will breed late near Shafford. It will be interesting see which strategy pays off. You have to be licensed to even check a barn owl box so in early June I watched while our barn owl man, Peter Wilkinson, looked into all 6 of the boxes we now have along the Ver Valley. One box had one live youngster, just a few days old, a still warm dead one and an unhatched egg. Barn owls are very dependent on voles and mice which may be in short supply this year and of course the very wet May would have made it a difficult hunting time for the adults. Hopefully there will be two healthy young barn owls when we return to ring them in early July. In the other box two adults were roosting and as there is still time for them to produce a brood before the autumn we are hopeful. This pair had bred late in 2007 as there was one dead fledgling still in the box from last year’s brood. It is likely that two or three youngsters flew from this box in September or even October. Our barn owls are very elusive and to see them you need to be around at dusk as they seldom hunt in daylight. Two breeding pairs of barn owls in Redbourn must a first for decades.

I saw my first cuckoo this year on the very last day of May, having heard my first on 26 April. As with most years I found that the best local area for cuckoos are the water meadows just north of Shafford where a lot of reed warblers nest which are probably the hosts for our cuckoos. I heard cuckoos calling several times in early May, including the strange bubbling call of the female, but could never manage to get a sight of one until on this late May evening I saw the very distinctive profile of a cuckoo on the top of a fence post. Cuckoos have very long wings which when they are perched extend beyond the tail and it is this feature which I think makes them unmistakeable.

Buzzards and red kites are both now firmly established around Redbourn and although red kites live mainly on carrion I saw one take live prey while on an early morning walk through Gorhambury. Several pairs of lapwing are breeding this year along the Ver and it’s great to see the swooping flight and hear the plaintive calls of these wonderful birds. It was these calls which first drew my attention to a pair mobbing a red kite. This is normal behaviour especially when they have young to defend from predators but in this case the defence did not work as the kite dropped down to the ground and grabbed a lapwing chick and then was pursued into the distance by the furious lapwing pair. Hopefully they had another two or three chicks hidden in the grass which will survive. I am afraid this is nature at this time of the year when the success of one species depends on preying on others. Even your garden blue tits depend on caterpillars which are really just like the young lapwing.

Two really interesting birds seen around Redbourn, but sadly not by me yet, are a turtle dove which favours the Dunstable Road end of Blackhorse Lane and a spotted flycatcher which is nesting along Hogg End lane – that is maybe just outside Redbourn Parish but it probably flies over the border from time to time!

If you read this and have any interesting bird sightings in or around the Redbourn I would be more than pleased to hear from you on 01582 792843 or email john.fisher@btclick.com.

John Fisher

5 June 2008

BIRD NOTES

It is not often we get a rare bird in Redbourn so it was a real surprise when a ring ouzel turned up in the Redbournbury Water Meadow one Monday morning in late April 2007. Ring ouzels are the mountain version of the blackbird with a distinctive white collar and pale wing panels. They pass through the southern counties each spring on their way to their breeding areas in the uplands of Northern England and Scotland. Most springs I get to see them for a few days either at Stepps Hill near Ivinghoe Beacon or Blows Down in Dunstable. These are traditional stopping off points where they recharge before continuing their migration northwards.