Birdwatching At Home in the Czech Republic

Our area of the Czech Republic is rightly famous as a destination for birdwatchers. There are several internationally recognised areas where ornithologists can see many unusual and common European birds. I am going to do a post or two about my birdwatching trips, but I actually don't need to go anywhere as the birds just come to me.

I am surrounded by birds and birdsong every time I work in the garden and orchard. The most common bird is the redstart (shown here in photo taken from Wikipedia) and it is as cheeky as any robin. In fact it is so friendly that the other day one arrived in my house, fluttering around the living room and bumping into the window. Then a few days later a swallow expertly flew through a crack at the top of my window, took a swing around the house, decided there was nothing worth investigation before equally expertly flying out again.

Other regular avian visitors to the garden are treecreepers who explore the rough granite stone walls of the barn for insects, woodpeckers (green, spotted and the non-British grey-headed), fieldfares, nuthatches, wagtails, tits, finches of various types,(including serins, siskins, and bramblings) and the ubiquitous magpies. A friend of mine has had the stunning scarlet rosefinch in her garden, but she lives closer to the forest edge.

Birds of prey are also to be seen from my garden. As I have said in a previous post we sometimes see black kites here and buzzards (common and rough-legged) are usually circling somewhere. The other day I saw three birds of prey being attacked by one brave magpie. The two larger birds (buzzards) ignored it, but the smaller of the three suddenly responded with a hurtling dive at the pesky magpie. You could almost hear the magpie cry, "Shit!!! It's a sparrowhawk." as it fled. 

Birdwatching

One of the advantages of the snow and the Czech winter is that you can actually see all those small birds you could only hear during the other seasons. Flocks of birds swoop into the bushes outside our house where they chatter and fight. The need to feed on whatever berries and seeds remain overrides any fear they have of humans. Instead of flying off as I draw near they ignore me. The other day I opened the bedroom window to watch as two blue tits raided the eaves for insects. They were so close I could have reached out and touched them.

The bare trees and hedges reveal their secrets such as this nest. Nests are so well hidden in the summer that you can pass within a few feet and not see them. But now the little hat of snow highlight their existence, so much so that it is now one of my pastimes on the train journey to Cesky Krumlov to count bird nests in the trees that line the track.

Themes Covered in This Blog - Theme 1 Czech Nature

As the blog gets larger I thought I might help readers interested in certain topics by creating some pages which list the blog's content by theme. I promise to update the pages as new posts are added.
The themes are: Czech Nature, Czech Customs & Culture, Places to visit in South Bohemia, Buying and Restoring a Czech House, Czech History and Politics, Day to Day Life in the Czech Republic. This post covers Czech Nature, click on the links above for the others.

Czech Nature

• Basket of Forestfruits
  
• Poppyseed
  
• Swimming with the Fishes
  
• Chicken of the Woods
  
• Moldavite
  
• Yummy Snails
  
• Cherries
  
• Czech Moles
  
• Spring
  
• Farming and the Landscape
  
• Birdwatching in Winter
  
• More on Frost and Snow
  
• Small Furry Housemate
  
• Snow at Both Ends
  
• An Enterprising Woodpecker
• God I Love This Country
• Ants in the Wood
• Fox
• Bark Beetles
• Dawn in the Woods
• The Early Bird Catches the Mushroom
• How Little Things Grow (Swallows)
• More Swallows
• Goodbyes (Fireflies and Martagon Lilies)
  
• Stork
• Devil's Wall Walk
  
• Woodland Flowers
• Wild Berries
• Miracle After the Storm
• An Encounter with White-tailed Eagles
• Spring Flowers 2009
• Arrival of Summer Birds
• Gold, the Colour of the Czech Landscape
• A Different Palette
• Tracks in the Snow
• Diamonds in the Snow
• Carp
• Strange Wading Birds (Egrets)
  
• More Czech Birds
• How to Hunt Mushrooms
• Czech Butterflies
• Meetings with Foxes
• Old Lady and the Caterpillar
• Sound of Evening (crickets)
• Yet More Czech Flowers
• Enforced Rest (Lizard)
• Czech Weather
• The Arrival of Summer
  
• Chanterelles
• Squirrels
• More May Flowers
• May Flowers
• Some Czech Wild Animals
• Mys
• Sun and Snow
• Czech Weather
• Czech Winter Sunshine
• Bears in the Moat
• Carping
• Encounter with a Wild Boar
• Remnants of Autumn
• The Walk from the Station
• Birds in the Czech Republic
• The Walk Home
• Spring

This post was brought uptodate on 5th August.

An Enterprising Woodpecker.

Please forgive the rather bad photo, it was taken through a misty window. I have been watching this chap for some weeks now. He or she comes regularly to investigate the cracks between the tiles on the barn next door and in the barn wall. Why peck at the frozen bark of the local trees, when you can have insects in ready-made cracks?

The barn is a real attraction for the local birds. I can stand at my window and watch nuthatches, redstarts, treecreepers, bluetits and more feasting on the insect buffet offered by the old barn. Allowing the bird life to come to me certainly beats wandering around in the cold weather clutching a pair of binoculars.

The Arrival of Summer Birds

The summer birds are now arriving. The most obvious are the swallows: this chap was preening himself on the electricity wire a yard or two from our lounge window. Yesterday I spent much of the evening watching their aerial acrobatics, as they swooped and soared over the village. They are much taken with our barn which with its open eaves offers good nesting sites.

The other day when I was scything the orchard (more of that anon) I saw a large bird of prey sweep across the neighbouring field. I could not see it perfectly and birds of prey are hard to identify in flight, but it too had an acrobatic flight style and I caught a short glimpse of a forked tail. This enabled me to identify it as a kite, not the red kite which one sees along the M40 motorway near Oxford but the black, a species that never makes it to the UK, is a summer visitor to this part of Europe. Of course the summer visitors we are all waiting for are the white storks, who build their nests on the tops of buildings and are supposed to bring good luck with them.

More Czech Birds

I love this time of year in the Czech Republic. It is the time before the Winter snows bring their own bright light to the land, when the land is full of contrasts – the silver ethereal shapes of the birches against the dark green of the forest firs, the crimson dogwood, and the light grey of the dead willow leaves. In the forest the ferns are a skeletal white against the moss and the huge red and white domes of fly agaric shine in the gloom. On these November days the sky sometimes has a deep blueness so vast that a whole navy could make their trousers from it and have cloth to spare.


One of the pleasures of this time of year is that all those birds, one has heard for months chattering and calling in the branches and never seen, are made visible – long-tailed tits, blue and coal tits, bramblings, treecreepers and nuthatches, hoards of chaffinches, jackdaws, and jays. The other day I walked down to the train station to such a commotion of birdsong, I just had to smile. A woodpecker was making light work of the bark on an ash tree, indeed so much so that I was hit by a piece of bark it had ripped from a branch. On the swimming pond a pair of mute swans had taken up their serene residence. From the train platform I looked up, above the wood on the hill opposite rooks were surfing the invisible breakers of the wind expertly riding the waves, then cutting back to ride the crest again with great shouts of enjoyment. The Czech birds have a long and hard winter to look forward to and they are enjoying the warmth and fecundity of this November weather while they may.

The Walk From The Station

I have already written about the walk up from the bus stop, so here I thought I might tell you about the walk from the small rail station that serves Horice Na Sumave. Again as with the walk from the bus stop the walk should be taken slowly and in a leisurely manner, to allow frequent stops to admire the views that unfold, the details of nature that reveal themselves, always the walk changes. I say this and all of it is true, but it is also true that the stop gives me time to catch my breath on the hill up to the village.

The road from the station goes along a level section at first - across a field of gunnera and thistles you can see a beautifully restored mill or farmhouse. At this time of year the the field is full of small birds, finches clearing the thistle heads of their downy seeds and as you pass they suddenly take flight to hide among the silver birch trees. The next major landmark is the town swimming pond. These wonderful creations are all over the Czech countryside - man-made ponds designed for swimming in in the summer and skating on in the winter. Ours is fed by the little river that starts in the hill above the house and is the home of ducks and frequented by housemartins skimming small insects off the surface. I remember as a teenager cycling to a similar swimming pond in a village near my Cotswold home. I remember too how wonderful the water was, unclourinated, warm with only the rays of the sun. Of course the health and safety bods have long since closed it down, but here in the Czech Republic the swimming ponds survive.

I then pass a small copse of elder and birch, where in the winter I was greeted by a huge chattering of hundreds of invisible birds. In the grass verge the other day I found two young snakes curled up and perfectly still. In the winter there was a dead deer in the snow. The road bends under a rail bridge and the walk up the hill starts. There are two groups of wayside trees - they are how I know where I am in the dark. The first at this time of year is host to mushrooms (though mostly inedible) and the second to a treecreeper, a little mouse-like bird that does indeed creep up the tree. In between I have wonderful views and of course the company of the ubiquitous cows.

At the top of the hill one arrives in the village. At the T-junction there is the village pond and the crucifix, with Christ's lolling head now blotted with bird droppings. There is a footpath sign - we are 700 metres above sea-level it tells us and so many miles from Horni Plana. Some time I will tell you about the walk to Horni Plana.