Serins at Landguard ..................................................................Nigel Odin

Serins at Landguard

There are 26 Serin records in the files at Landguard Bird Observatory. Autumn singles were noted on November 2, 1980, and August 24, 1987, but since then all records from 1992 to 2014 have been in spring with arrival dates from March 16 to July 7. All are records of singles on one day except for records from May 3 to 5, 2006, plus an intermittent long-stayer, presumed to be the same individual by its habits, noted on April 30, May 11 to June 4 and June 25 to July 11, 2012. Of all the records, 31% have been in the last five days of April and the first five days of May. Many birds do not stay on site for long or are easily lost for some time as they feed on the short turf areas of the nature reserve.

Records at Landguard account for about half of the Suffolk total and this is entirely down to the auditory skills of the finders, with the bulk of birds found by the same few observers. There is also a bias for records elsewhere in Suffolk found by a limited number of observers, so extra vigilance by other members of the Suffolk birding community may pay dividends. Singing birds are poorly represented in the Landguard records but Serin has a very diagnostic trilling flight call, which it issues almost continuously. Perched birds have also been heard making this diagnostic call whilst remaining hidden in the reserve’s Holm Oaks before they break cover. Listening to recordings might help observers “tune in” to the calls, but hours in the field is the best way to learn them. Unfortunately, some Landguard regulars cannot hear Serin calls even when they stand alongside others who can hear them clearly, so listening to recordings won’t necessarily help. Identification pitfalls for the unwary are escaped cage birds such as Canary, Serinus canaria, and Yellow-fronted Canary (Green Singing Finch) Serinus mozambicus, although both these species’ calls are different to Serin. The Serin is endemic to Europe and has long been predicted as a colonist of the UK following its welldocumented spread northwards from its core area across southern Europe and around the Mediterranean (Berthold 1993). The species has bred a handful of times in southern Britain since the first confirmed nesting attempt in the late 1960s but with just two breeding attempts this century (Holling et al 2009) colonisation of Suffolk no longer looks the certainty it once seemed, despite the warming climate.

Photo: Bill Baston

Refs:

Berthold, P. 1993. Bird Migration - A General Survey. Oxford University Press. p.6-7. Holling, M. & the Rare Breeding Birds Panel. 2009. Rare Breeding Birds in the United Kingdom 2006. British Birds 102 : p.197.