The shame of it: I fell off my two wheeler today. All that needless complexity turned round and bit me.:o
The bike is a single speed roadbike with smooth 700c x 23mm tyres and there was me going down this grassy floodbank about to get onto the official bike path, when the wheel got caught in the timber edging of the path and tracked with it, and suddenly I was flat on my side, my mobile phone (in my breast pocket) digging into my ribs, and my knee and hand both grazed. How I laughed.
But in an otherwise pleasant ride we saw:
A kingfisher - one of the real jewels of the British bird population, and unexpected in an urban setting: the canal that cuts through Nottingham. Kingfishers nest in burrows in sandy banks, and all around here is brick and concrete.
Then a rare sighting indeed: hiding among the mallards was a bird I cou;ld not recall seeing before. Duck like, but with a distinctively large head and a strangely-shaped orangey red bill. A bit of research when I got home revealed it to be a red-crested pochard. According to the RSPB handbook, there are only about 50 breeding pairs in the whole UK.
Apart from that, all the usual stuff, including a nice sighting of a cormorant.
The photos attached are from Google Images, just to illustrate. I didn’t have the chance to take photos.
Cool - my dad had one of those engines in his old three-rail OO set. Actually I think it was Sir Nigel Gresley rather than Mallard, but the same shape.
Hope the bike’s OK (that’s what I always think if I fall off anyway - grazes and bruises heal themselves, but expensive stove enamel and polished ally doesn’t!)
Oh, and I don’t believe Kingfishers really exist. There’s no way I could have lived this long (and spent a fair amount of time by rivers) and never noticed such a parrot-bright bird. Same goes for green woodpeckers - no such thing. You might as well say you’d seen a phoenix.
Rob - I was there and I saw the kingfisher too. I must have been lucky, I remember seeing one years ago as a kid. It certainly wasn’t as scenic as when I spotted that one in the wilds of Cornwall.
I’m sure had we gone out to spot rare birds we’d have seen none of them.
It wasn’t quite as surreal as my experience of a few years ago of spotting parakeets when youth hostelling at Kirkby Stephen. Especially as I’d had a couple of beers when I saw the first one…
Edit - forgot to mention I’ve seen a green woodpecker too. Last time on a roundabout in Reading!
People keep telling me they’re far more common than the boring black and white kind that we get loads of round here (lesser/greater spotted? not sure which - I’m not really a bird person [cue funny remarks…]) but I’m still not convinced.
My mum’s quite into birds [and again…] and she’s always remarking how all the normal ones we get in our garden would excite various birdy friends (nut hatches in our bird box, red starts in the wall, the afore-mentioned boring coloured woodpeckers, all apparently very interesting).
Have to admit that I wouldn’t have known what a green woodpecker looked like (yes - I’d have guessed it might be green!) if it wasn’t for Mike’s diverse educational skills. I get Muni coaching and twitching at the same time;)
The ones you get are probably greater spotted woodpeckers. They are about the size of a thrush or blackbird. They will often come to a garden bird feeder.
Lesser spotted woodpeckers are tiny: only the size of a sparrow.
Green woodpeckers are often seen feeding on the ground, often in clearings in the woods. A distinctive thing to look for is a yellowish bar across the back as they fly away from you.
A couple of years ago Ivan visited the UK and in amongst the cider drinking, giant dog watching, avoiding getting stabbed, pastie eating and unicycling (not in that order) he bought a book which he inadvertently left in my bag.
I think kingfishers are a lot more common than many people think, especially with the UK having had so few really cold winters lately. I do as much walking or sitting by rivers in the UK as I do unicycling, and there are few such days when I don’t see kingfishers, even here in the industrial Northwest. They travel quite considerable distances, so feeding and nesting areas can be well separated. But riding a unicycle or cycle is probably not the best way to find and see them. ( There is a pair at East Bridgeford Mike).
Sandmartins, like kingfishers, are also supposed to nest in holes that they dig into sandy banks. But in my town centre there are several pairs that nest yearly in pipes set into vertical riverside brick walls. Very lazy/enterprising of them! Kingfishers might do the same?
Saw some red crested pochards in St James’s Park, London, a couple of years ago, but there was quite an assortment of other exotics there, so they may well have been intentionally introduced to the lake.
