Bird Taxonomy

There is true story that I was told years ago of a woman who after living all her life in London and only ever seeing pigeons, moved to a house with a garden and started noticing birds for the fist time. When her son visited he would reel off all these elaborate names for the birds, to the delight of his mother. She became so interested that she bought a field guide to birds. To her amusement she discovered that her son had just been making the names up and most of the birds she had seen were the common species found in the garden.

I know that story was true as it was the woman herself who told me. It however sparked a real interest in birds and wildlife.

I mention this as an American friend made a comment about my posting about the Great Tit; saying that it looked like a Black Capped Chickadee. I think that she is revealing something I have long suspected, that the pilgrim father's took over our British birds and just renamed them. I think that there are Americans, even as I speak, painting the wings of our native Blackbird and passing them off as Red Winged Blackbirds.

I bet that most of the exotic sounding species of birds over there are really ours, just renamed. Only kidding! But I do wonder if there are species in the Americas that are evolved from old world birds? While I know that many were named because they reminded the early colonists of European birds, but are unrelated, there will be some that share a common ancestor with old world species.

Anyway, I have had one bit of disappointing news today. The farmer on whose land sits one of the Badger setts that I watch has suspended permission for access. This is because over the Bank Holiday someone started a camp fire near the sett and cut down a couple of trees. Not only that the location was strewn with broken bottles and cans. While I helped with the clean up, he want to prevent anyone going there at all so that he can protect the Badgers and prevent any more damage occurring. I can understand him taking this action, and while it may seem unfair on me, he will stand a better chance of catching who is doing this if no one has any access. Once he can say “Get off my Land” to them, I should be able to gain access again, but I will miss the Badgers.

On a much more positive note though, something I saw on Springwatch last night solved a mystery for me. Back in the first winter in the village and exploring the woods, I had spotted an extraordinary looking mass on the trunk of a tree. I had been watching a tree creeper, but it disappeared from my view. As I scanned the trees for it I saw this strange looking mass on a tree trunk. I fought my way through the Brambles to try and get closer, and the sound of my approach disturbed the tree creeper and I saw a couple of them fly off. But I could not find the strange mass that I thought I had seen. Anyway, on TV they showed something that looked identical to this. Mystery solved, as the mass was a family of newly fledged tree creepers huddled together. This apparently they will do in winter too to keep warm. So what I probably saw was a huddle of adult Tree Creepers keeping warm. Well I learn something new each day!

The film is a clip of a Nuthatch feeding off a bird table.