Fat Paul Scholes

black and white

2012-01-29T20:24:00.001Z

I took some more substandard gull photos up at Peterhead today...but managed to jazz them up (or at least emphasise the cold, harsh environment they live in) by changing them to black and white.

White-wingers

2012-01-29T20:13:00.003Z

The highlight of two failed trips up north to look at the humpies over the weekend was definitely a last minute look at Peterhead harbour this afternoon. In an hour and a bit we saw....well, who knows how many iceland gulls we saw! The max count at any one point was of 8 iceland gulls, and with 2 glaucs thrown in for good measure. The majority of the Icers we saw were 2nd winter types, as has been the case everywhere else this winter.

Any other year I'd have been chuffed to bits with 10 white winged gulls in one day, but the following numbers put that into context a little. Chatting with Chris Gibbons this afternoon, who had been there since dawn (I think he scavenges on fish scraps as well...), it seems that there were 6 different glaucs, 19 different Icelands, and 4 different Kumleins. Which is an awful, awful lot.

And it's an awful lot of fun standing around in the harbour (if not a little cold as well) picking up white winger after white winger with the naked eye, as they mingle in around the blizzard of herrings, gbbgs, kitties and black headed gulls, while grey seals look up at you from the waters below. Certainly a lot more fun than standing around at Collieston seeing sod all.

And there was one more surprise white winger today, lingering with a mixed sparrow flock in the gardens of Collieston....

SEO and shag returns

2012-01-28T21:32:00.000Z

Short-eared owls are pretty much annual at the ness, in later autumn, but I've never known wintering birds. They've been around since early january, but it's taken me a while to catch up with them, partly due to humpbacks, partly due to Falkirk, and probably partly due to me forgetting to lift my chin up when I'm out and about.

I eventually caught up with one bird on Thursday when I took the long way round to a meeting at the JNCC office...a bird briefly seen quartering over the golf course. On friday the french one and I took the long way into town and had awesome views of one as it fluttered around the battery for five minutes, before getting shoo'd off by a crow. I hadn't realised how infrequently I see them until I consulted my new fancy multi-coloured spreadsheet of patch lists...since the beginning of 2008, if I remember correctly, I've only seen 4 shorties on patch. Thank god for multi-coloured spreadsheets, I hear you say.

And a bit of feedback on that darviced shag...it was ringed as a young' un on the Isle of May last year...and the herring gull was ringed here.

nothing to report

2012-01-22T17:10:00.000Z

A very quiet morning at the ness today, but larger numbers go gulls (an increase from, say, 30 to 300) was at least a little promising. It's about time we had another Icer in the harbour! I once heard someone say that in Aberdeenshire the gulls don't attend the tips on a sunday as there is no dumping of 'fresh' waste. I believed them, only just...but it would provide a handy explanation to the rather rapid increase in numbers.

I passed the time by looking for colour rings...finding a yellow ringed herring gull (T601) that had made a staggering journey of 4 or 5 hundred metres since December. I also had a blue ringed shag (TAI) that had come from a little further afield, so it'll be nice to see where that one originated.

humpback revisited...

2012-01-21T18:03:00.001Z

Took a wander up to Collieston today to have another look for the humpbacks that have been around. This time the french one was with me too, getting quite excited about the prospect of seeing her first whale.

I remember my first whale. It was a terribly seen, distant minke, so hopefully she appreciates how lucky she's been that her first whale was a Humpback down to 200 m offshore!

It was also reassuring to confirm my suspicions that there were two animals the other day, with clearly two different beasts on display this afternoon. One was a gert big gun, and the other was a little less big. I'm not sure if that means anything, but there has been speculation that the animals seen before christmas were a family group. Assuming that these two are the same as the pre-festivus ones.

Also kicking around off Collieston were both great and pomarine skuas. Has nobody told them its January? I've seen a few winter skuas before, obviously, but not three species in one year and not at the frequency that I'm seeing them at the moment. A male peregrine was also a pleasant distraction.

Fluke

2012-01-18T23:13:00.002Z

Today started with a bit of work. Not mundane officey type work, but marginally less mundane counting herring gulls type work. Although it wasn't just herring gulls today, as the monotony was broken down by such treats as crossbills, flyover geese, and best of all by a long shot, a female hen harrier that drifted over my head and barely flinched as it swept past me. Well worth sitting out in the cold for.

Today ended with a bit of twitching. Our field site needed two and a half days work so my chum and I decided that today, with humpback whales being seen off the coast, would be a good day to take a half day. We stopped briefly en route to scan through a big (5/6000) flock of pinkies which were decent enough to give up a barnacle and two euro whitefronts, and then high-tailed it to Collieston, just a few miles north of where the whale had been seen in the morning.

At first there was nothing. For a good half an hour we scanned the sea, picking up good numbers of red-throats but little else. And then wham...a series of tall and quite bushy blows (probably embushened by the wind), followed by glimpses of a massive animal under the water. At over 1500 metres out it was difficult to get any details but eventually we got decent views of the surfacing profile, showing off the knobbly dorsal fin very nicely. We stayed with this (although I think these might be more appropriate) amazing creature for about half an hour, being briefly distracted by two pom skuas heading south, but it wasn't until close to the very end that we saw the characteristic white-centered fluke of a diving whale. When you see these, you realise just how big the things are. When you see a whale at the surface you see very little of it at any one time...and I often think that it can be a little underwhelming. These flukes though, even at that sort of range, looked absolutely huge and for me were well worth waiting for. This was my third humpback sighting...but until now this iconic image had eluded me. Cetaceans will never replace birds for me...but crikey...when they're good, they're very, very good.

chuck and zeeep

2012-01-17T12:03:00.002Z

A very slow day on patch this morning, none of the hoped for iceland gulls, short eared owls or humpback whales. Instead, and ample compensation I think, here's some redwing noises, in sounds and pictures...

Redwing, chuck and zeep by fat paul Scholes

Buckie...and beyond

2012-01-17T08:04:00.002Z

Well, my employers were decent enough to let me go gadding about on a boat again, for what should have been 4 days, but ended up being 3 and a half due to half out team being struck down with savage seasickness. We were on the MV Sickmaker though so perhaps it was to be expected.

I guess the least surprising surprise is that we saw Iceland gulls. An immature offshore, a 2nd winter in Buckie harbour, an adult in Wick harbour (along with a probable distant glauc) and then a cracking adult offshore. I even managed decent photos of the Buckie bird, and might have got some nice ones of the Wick bird as well had it not been night time.

And an eider thrown in too for good measure....

Other 'goodies' included a few little auks here and there, and some good stuff for the site such as shag, pink-footed goose, and black-headed gull....my favourite however was a flyby black-throated diver, which is something I don't see as often as I'd like.

Deriving interest from the little details...

2012-01-09T13:36:00.001Z

Because sometimes that’s the only option!
Sunday was quiet on patch. A few long-tailed ducks and common scoters wung there way onto the patch yearlist, as did a grey wagtail, but on the surface, that was it. Time to dig a little deeper.
What’s this I see among the eider flock? Hmmm...a male with small sails. Probably best not to dwell on that for fear of alienating the remnants of any readership I ever had. Never mind, here’s a big brute of an argentatus herring gull. And whats this...a juvenile gannet! That is actually quite interesting. The vast majority of younger gannets would probably be a lot further south at the moment, somewhere like the Bay of Biscay, or of the coast of North West Africa. Certainly not in the North Sea. Wild speculation might predict that this was a Norwegian breeder (more likely to winter in the North Sea) or possibly even an Icelandic one (more likely to winter off western Britain....and possibly persuaded into the North Sea by all this weather we’ve been having).
And while I’m on gannets here’s an interesting thing. The winter range of UK breeding birds is believed to me on the march southward. With less bycatch disposed of in the North Sea, and lots more being discarded at new, large fisheries off northern and western Africa, it seems our gannets might be opting for the easy option. And why not? I know where I’d rather spend the winter.

2012 preview

2012-01-06T08:39:00.001Z

Instead of lookingback over what has been, over the last 12 months, as has become affy trendyamong the squillions of birding bloggers, I’m going to do something a littledifferent. I’m going to attempt to look forward. Not in a sort of I-predict-a-rarefestkind of way, but with a view to defining the up-coming year…what I’ll belooking for and when. All, of course, from a local patch perspective. Naturallyit will be dominated by thoughts of some of the more interesting stuff that Itry to keep my eyes and ears out for, but I’ve tried to mention some of theless glamorous stuff as well. As for the ‘big wish’ selection….I’ll bedelighted if just one of them happens. Ever. They are though, the sorts ofthings that get me out of the house and out into the field, so probably worth amention! Here goes…

January

The start of theyear will be taken up by clearing up on all the winter residents, all 20 or soof them, and checking out the bays and shorelines for any interesting waders orsea birds. ..grebes are rare on patch and January can be good for them. I’ll bechecking gull flocks for white wingers, eider flocks for kings, and loiteringaround the sewage works for roving flocks in the hope of a bullfinch,long-tailed tit, or like the other day, a coal tit. The main seawatching targetwould be little auk. January can get interesting after some severe weather,with big freezes pushing thrushes and other passerines towards the coast, andducks and other waterbirds towards the harbor or streams.

Big wish…Stellerseider in with the eider flock.

February

More of the same fromJanuary really, with probably better chances of a white winged gull. Probablylots of looking at eiders with sails!

Big wish…Ross’sgull in the harbor. And for March to hurry up.

March

This is whenthings start to get a little more interesting! Throughout March I’ll be lookingout for increasing numbers of seaduck, especially in Nigg Bay where long-tailedducks, red-breasted mergansers and occasionally goldeneye can be watcheddisplaying. Lesser black-backed gulls should be around, and of course the firstof the migrants should be in. By late March I’ll be hoping to have notched upchiff, sand martin, wheatear and Sandwich tern. Offshore, scoter and diversshould be beginning to move past. In the right conditions, bits of extraquality such as black redstart or white spotted bluethroat will be on theagenda, but I’ll probably have to satisfy myself by looking for white wagtailsand littoralis rock pipits.

Big wish…greatspotted cuckoo on the golf course.

April

April is anexcellent time to keep an eye out for wildfowl passage, especially freshwaterducks heading northward. The big prizes here would be shoveler, gadwall orpintail among others, and while looking offshore I’ll be keeping an eye out forlarge divers on the move. Naturally, my attention will turn to migrants aswell, with plenty of commoner species arriving and the opportunity to look outfor something a little less regular such as redstart or tree pipit. I’ll have aproper rare head on by this stage and will be keeping my fingers crossed for somethinglike a subalpine warbler or woodchat.

Big wish… somethingI’ve always fancied along the railway embankment, Iberian chiffchaff.

May

One of my favouritemonths. The volume of influx is probably less than in April but the chance ofsome quality is a little higher under the right conditions. Along with the lastof the common migs such as swifts and house martins, I’ll be looking out forlesser whitethroat and garden warbler, and of course, hoping for something alittle more special in the form of a bluethroat, red-backed shrike, marsh oricterine warbler. Offshore I’ll be looking out for Arctic tern and keeping myfingers crossed for a white billed diver or one of the rarer skuas as they headnorthward among the trickle of Arctics and bonxies that will be passing by now.Waders will be making their presence felt with whimbrels passing overhead andspecies such as dunlin and ringed plover passing through. For the first time inthe year I’ll really start to entertain thoughts of raptors, and will glanceskyward every now and again hoping for a honey buzzard or Montagu’s harrier. Ifthere’s any standing water in Nigg bay I’ll be checking it for wood sand andtemmincks stint, and hoping for one of the rarer yellow wagtails as well.

Big wish…malewhite-throated robin kicking around the battery….well, I did say BIG wish…!

June

For the firstchunk of June my mind will still firmly be on trying to find rare migrants. Bythe middle of the month though, when all that excitement is over, I shall mostprobably turn my attention to butterflies (although there’s no real variety)and wild flowers. Perhaps I should get a moth trap?

Big wish…lessergrey shrike.

July

Summersalternative to February, but marginally warmer. I’ll probably start thinkingabout what birds are breeding throughout the patch, and looking out forfledglings, and I’ll also keep an eye on the build up of the tern crèche inGreyhope Bay. Apart from that, this month, I will be mostly seawatching. Midsummer is a great time to sea cetaceans and with a bit of effort, minke andwhite beaked dolphin should be available.

Big wish…to findstonechat fledglings again.

August

This is thebeginning of the best part of the year. Autumn is well and truly upon us by August andgiven some decent weather I’ll be out and about hoping for greenish and barredwarblers, wryneck, red backed shrike, or citrine wagtail. If it doesn’t lookmigranty I’ll be giving the waders the once over, and I’ll probably spend afair bit of time seawatching, hoping for Balearic shearwater, petrels, andmaybe a Sabines gull. Black guillemot is a good chance during this month too. It’sa great time to be out and about by the end of the month, as there will be goodnumbers of alba wagtails and hirundines to sort through.

Big wish…A Sykeswarbler. And a good view of it…

September

The weatherforecast will really start to dominate my life this month! No prizes forguessing that September will be all about two things…migrants and seabirds.Earlier in the month I’ll be nose down for migrants similar to those suggestedfor August, but as the month progresses I’ll be starting to think about Blyth’sreeds and bluetails, and hoping to clear up on things such as yellow browedwarbler and commoner migrants while I search for the rares. Offshore, well,anything could happen. Large shearwaters will be high on the hitlist as wouldBalearics, Leach’s petrels, Sabs gulls…and one day, if I wish hard enough, aFea’s type petrel may slide by me. While all this is going on, the oddinteresting wader my grace my field of view, but if there is standing water inNigg Bay, the odd little stint or curlew sandpiper is not out of the question.Up above, pink-footed geese will be starting to stream over, and it’s not toolate for a raptor to soar southward.

Bigwish…considering how uber-rare they are these days, a yellow-breasted bunting.

October

The pinnacle. Myfavourite month of the year, and all too short. It’s a bit late for too manyseabirds so this month is just migs migs migs. And then some migs. While tryingto clear up on the commoner stuff, my mind will be firmly on olive backed andPechora pipits, any number of rare warblers, and some scarce buntings. As wepass through towards mid and late October, things focus a little more, towardsPallas’s, Radde’s and dusky warblers, Blyth’s pipits and pied wheatear.Offshore may still be productive and it can be a good month for Pomarine skua.Wader passage is largely over, but it’s worth kicking around for jack snipe andchecking the bays for difficult species such as grey plover.

Big wish…where doI start? A Siberian blue robin would get me very, very excited.

November

A month of twohalves. Early November there’s still the very real chance of picking up some ofthose late autumn specialities, with rare wheatears perhaps the best bet, andthe chance to mop up any of the common migrants that are not yet on the list…itcan be good for woodcock, black redstart, brambling, and the last of the asioowls. Seawatching can be very rewarding during this month. North westerly galesoften bring good numbers of little auks into the North Sea, and these may carrygoodies such as white billed diver, brunnichs guillemot, grey phalarope, orwhite winged gulls with them. Snow bunting are often around in November, andI’d be searching flocks of these, or finch flocks for laps, twite, and evenshore lark.

Big wish…lets gofor a first. Siberian accentor

December

Things wind downpretty quickly after mid November and it would probably take a hard spell tobring anything noteworthy to the patch. Add to that the short days, shoppingtrips and Christmas party hangovers, and you’ll see why I don’t get out toomuch in December…

Big wish…Ivorygull

A cracking pair of tits

2012-01-04T16:45:00.000Z

Oh the joys of working a local patch!

It was my first day back at work after the new year and needless to say it was getting me down a little. I decided a lunchtime walk down to Nigg Bay was in order to see if there was anything interesting in the bay or on the flashes. Both were dead, but I took the long route home around the sewage works (or the shit factory, as the missus likes to call it) and soon got onto a wave of passerines.

First up were a couple of goldcrest but then Bingo, one, and then two coal tits! I've only ever recorded coal tit on patch once before (in 2008 I believe) and even then thats a bit of a cheat as the birds themselves weren't actually on the patch. I was though, but only just....Unfortunately I had to leave the flock and get back to work so all of the treecreepers and humes warblers will have to wait until tomorrow.

Apologies about the title, but it might see the hit rate increase a little...

bad weather

2012-01-03T12:46:00.000Z

I knew it had been windy overnight but I had no idea how much rain had fallen!

You can always rely on a bit of bad weather to stir things up a little. The floods in Nigg bay were bare apart from a few surprised looking mallard that usually float around on the burn, but out to sea things were very different. There were now fulmars scudding southward and the odd gannet thrown in for good measure. A few red-throated divers went past but the big surprise of the day came in the form of a juv Arctic skua, which went south. Later in the year a single Arctic skua would hardly be at all noteworthy, but this is definitely the earliest one I've ever had. When I first got onto it I fully expected it to be a pom, by far the most likely mid winter skua in Aberdeen bay, but it was undeniably an Arctic skua, and all the more interesting for it.

A quick look at some NES bird reports show no reported January Arctic skuas between 2004 - 2008. In fact, April and May had the first records during these years.

But we shouldn't be too surprised by these things. My time in the wintery North Sea has shown me that species such as all three likely skuas, sooty shearwater and grey phalarope are all kicking in low densities at this time of year.

In which I rant about 'the process'

2012-01-02T15:56:00.000Z

Got out again this morning and added a very healthy sounding 13 species to the PYL (although I suppose it's only healthy sounding in relation to yesterdays rather anaemic sounding 28 species). Yet again there was nothing to really write home about, but buzzard, lapwing and goldcrest were all reasonably noteworthy.

Instead of birds, there seem to have been plenty of birders poaching my patch these last few days. A couple of them looked like those 'shoot-now-identify-later' type 'birders' that seem to be overrunning bird forum of late. It's safe to say that I have built up something of a snobbish disregard for these types. Far be it for me to tell anyone how to enjoy their hobby of course, but can we come up with a different name for them and what they do? To call them birders, or birdwatchers, is way off the mark. To call these folks birders very much cheapens what real birders do, in my opinion.

Howsabout we call them 'snaplisters' or something like that? It seems that all they are interested in is getting the shot and applying the correct label to it. This is fine, but when the process of applying the right label involves nothing more than asking a question on Bickerforum, you've got to ask yourself what the point is!

Take this example for instance. Even just the most cursory tips of the hat towards trying to identify this bird would have answered the posters question.

This winds me up a little and I'm not really sure why! Of course, I use a camera and have used it to help identify birds. I've also posted photos on the above forum and asked for advice, so I guess this is all rather hypocritical of me. Perhaps what it is, is that for me, it's all about the process. The learning, the researching, the fieldcraft, the feeling of development, and ultimately, that moment in the field when it all comes together. If I have to be told what something is, I get no other feeling than disappointment (apart I guess from a little kick up the arse to consolidate my knowledge in whatever area I've just ballsed up in) Luckily, that seldom happens these days, but, you guessed it, thats a result of putting in the hard work over nearly 30 years of birding.

As I said earlier its all about choice, and if thats what people want to do then they should go for it, regardless of what a grumpy ginger tosser like me thinks. Perhaps for some people, 'the process' is irrelevant, and it's all about the cataloguing of what they get, or the accumulation, rather like stamp collecting, or, dare I say it, twitching (I dared). Theres probably a bit of that in all of us...after all, just look at the first paragraph!

Its when the snaplisters make comments such as "oooh...I'll never get to grips with these willow warbler and chiffchaffs" that it brings it home to me. They're right. They won't, until they start to look, listen and learn.

All is quiet, on new years day.

2012-01-01T19:44:00.001Z

Not often I quote U2 on this blog, or anywhere else for that matter. Primarily because I don't know too many U2 lyrics, but also because Bono is a dick.

Dick or no dick, he was right about it being quiet on new years day. Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day though, eh. Girdle ness offered up 28 species this afternoon, a selection of such staggering mundanity that the highlight was 4 red-breasted mergansers. It was a classy clear winters day though, and the dolphins put on a nice display for a while. It would have also served handily to clear my head from the night before if I hadn't retired just after midnight with a dicky tummy.

So what will 2012 have in store for me then? Well, obviously I don't know, but I'd like to think that it'll be a little more productive than last year. Thinking back through my birding year, I remember highlights such as the Ouessant and Sanday trips, and several handfuls of white billed divers on the Dogger Bank. Overall though, the feeling last year leaves is one of disappointment. Probably a result of not many decent finds, which I fully intend to remedy this year. One thing I'm determined to do though is steer clear of a retrospective look at my birding year. Not that I don't like them, I just simply can't be arsed. I prefer to look forward, too.

28 species under the belt then, and 128.5 to go before I'm at 100%. See here for more of that patch listing malarky. I might even update my scores every now and again...

Anyway. Happy new year to one and all, and the very best birding luck for 2012. I really mean that.

some goodness at last

2011-12-19T20:13:00.001Z

I really am getting pretty terrible at keeping this blog up to date. However, I do have the excuse at least of having very little to write about. Since my last posting, I've had a flock of whooper swans past the ness, I've had a long walk in Glen tanar where I fell over at least once for every species of bird recorded (distant calling crossbills and a red kite on the way the highlights), and I've stood in a freezing field for a few days in the name of renewable energy (where I also had crossbills frequently, and a distant probable goshawk).

This weekend however, things took a very minor turn for the better with an Iceland gull off the foghorn it the ness. I think this is only my second record of this species here, glaucs being much commoner. I know that an Iceland gull really isn't anything to get my knickers in a twist about, but for me it really has been a slow year on the patch. My total of 121 spp is pretty close to average, but my finds this year have been pitiful!

The only challenges to the icer this year have been the bean and whitefront geese. Not a single decent passerine. Not a single decent seabird. Horrific!

Anyway, enough of the moaning. It was a very eventful few minutes in between snow showers while I seawatched from the foghorn. While I got a little over excited about the gull, a lone little auk flew over, a long-tailed duck and a common scoter mingled with the eider flock, and to cap it all off, a peregrine dashed over. Quite exciting really. Anyway, here's a few iceland gull pics that I took at peterhead a few years ago...apologies if they have appeared on this blog before. I really should get back to the heed cos as far as white-wingers go it can be like shooting fish....

a close look at goldcrest noises

2011-11-20T18:05:00.001Z

Already I'm fascinated by the detail I can see in sonograms of birds whose calls I'm very familiar. Here's some goldcrests I recorded this afternoon at cults reservoir, on a brief visit before the very serious deal of feeding the ducks along the river dee....

Nothing unusual there. Once you get past all the background noise the 'tsee tsee tsee' contact calls of the goldcrests are easy to pick out both in the recording and on the sonogram. Looking at them at the scale of the first sonogram there isn't a lot you can take from it really...a simple 3 note call at a round about 8 kHz.

Its only when you zoom in and look at each phrase at a fine scale that you begin to see the detail...some of which can be heard, and some of which can't (by me at least!). To my ears, each note is if a constant frequency, but the sonogram here shows that that is not the case, with each note starting around an average of 7.6 kHz and finishing at around 8.1 kHz. Something I do hear which is 'verified' by the sonogram is that the first note in the phrase is shorter than the second two, even if only marginally so.

What surprises me is how quickly it is over. Each phrase is well short of a second long with each note lasting less than two tenths of a second. It seems to take so much longer in the field! And why only three notes? In autumn birds, contact calls often seem to consist of 4 or 5 notes (which perhaps adds to my perception of the overall length of the phrase) but these ones pretty resolutely only called with three note phrases.

Bloody hell...as if this blog wasn't boring enough as it is!

Now I can do this!

2011-11-20T10:34:00.000Z

And I can add sonograms that look like this!

This is a recording of a robin that then gets drowned out by herring gull noise....made on my new remembird. I think you can expect a wee bit more of this sort of thing in the future...

It was actually quite a productive wander around the ness this morning...about 25 long-tailed tits were in Nigg bay, along with a couple of woodcock and a male blackcap. A great crested grebe in Nigg bay was a bit of a surprise but apparently it has been around since friday at least. An awkward bird at the ness, but one that seems to be getting a little more regular (just like long-tailed tit actually....which is pretty much regular in winter these days).

Also pretty awkward here is grey plover...so it was affy nice to have one calling and flying around grey hope bay. Here's a little recording of it's sad, sad voice....

20111120 greyplover by fat paul Scholes

And a little look at what its sad, sad voice looks like....the two squiggles at around 1.5 seconds and 3 seconds!

If you play the recording you'll hear that the remembered doesn't cope with wind and background noise particularly well...which might be helped by adding some sort of shotgun mic. Nevertheless, although this doesn't look or sound particularly clear, it's worth bearing in mind that it was windy, there is plenty of white noise from the sea in the background, and the bird was well over 50 metres away from me when it called. The result may not sound brilliant but its a useable record of what is clearly a grey plover...the sort of thing that would come in handy with a rarer record or more difficult bird to ID.

Aveiro

2011-11-18T16:13:00.001Z

I've been lucky enough to have a few days in Portugal this week, at a cracking place called Aveiro. I was there to make a presentation which I managed to not mangle completely, and on the morning of the conference I had a wander around the massive lagoon on the western outskirts of the town.

The place looks brilliant....a huge series of lagoons, salt marsh, reed bed etc that I'm pretty sure would reward some proper exploration. I cannot even begin to imagine what it's like when wader passage is in full swing. Anyone wanting to find their own yanks could do a whole lot worse than here in september!

My list of species was tame, but then I did only manage about 20 mins of daylight before I had to get to the conference. The highlights were greater flamingo, spotless starling and black winged stilt, along with black redstart, little egret, shoveler, gadwall, golden plover, blackwit, greenshank, dunlin, and common sandpiper. Not a bad little collection for a journey to work! If I ever get a chance to go back i'm definitely taking a scope and a wee bit more time....

there are no original 'bean' related puns left...

2011-11-18T16:01:00.001Z

So I'll just leave the title at that. Stepping out into the mizzle and fog on the 13th I had no idea what to expect really, but I must admit that after the day before I had geese on my mind. After a brown looking chiff in the garden though I was on the lookout for passerines really...

That was soon all put to bed by a flock of 22 geese that came south over the allotments. They made a pretty close and low pass and it was clear that most of them were euro whitefront....19 of them in fact, with three glorious bean geese thrown in for good measure. Not my first bean geese at the ness (that was a flyby last year, during a similar but much smaller scale invasion) but certainly my best views. To me they looked large (appreciably larger than the whitefronts), long necked, and had long bills with a pretty substantial amount of orange on them. My first impression was that they were taiga beans, but in an influx made up almost exclusively of tundras, and the fact that my views were not brilliant for subspecific ID, I'd be happy to be dead wrong on that. One thing is for sure, there is a lot of variation among beanies of both subspecies and some birds are not clear cut at all.

The flock landed on the golf course for about 10 seconds and then got up and went north again having been spooked by a golfer.

After that, it was all a bit tame...with a very late wheatear and a woodcock at the battery.

184

2011-11-12T20:25:00.001Z

Patch bird 184 appeared today (courtesy of a tip off from Dr W) in the fine form of a Euro-whitefront.

Unfortunately there was not a lot else to add...with the late autumn surge seemingly depositing rare phylloscs in lots of other places that aren't girdleness. There was definitely some movement going on though, with several lapwings heading south and a few curlews doing likewise.

Nigg bay was quiet but the silence was broken by a calling great spotted woodpecker...well it called one, anyway. Unfortunately, although turning to FC and declaring it to be a greaterpecker, I then decided it must have been my imagination and wrote it off. It's a pretty rare bird here after all, but a chat with Andrew confirmed the a GSW had been around, and that I wasn't going mental.

The only other stuff of interest was a blackcap in Abbey gardens, and 2 short-eared owls. One flushed off the grassy bank in greyhope bay, and the other lazily slapping southward over Victoria road. I promise I did not run down the street and up the steps so I could get it on my house list.

purple pics

2011-11-12T16:04:00.001Z

I think its fair to say that I'm awfully fond of purple sandpipers...

On a boat

2011-11-08T19:17:00.002Z

I've finally been allowed out on a boat by my employers! Exciting! Its been a while so I thought I might be a little rusty but it seems its just like riding a bike. But with a little more water involved I guess. I shouldn't really say where I was but suffice to say, it was not a million miles from here...

So, what did I see. Well, the absolutely undoubted highlight was a Sperm whale....which was not expected in the least, but there have been a few sightings recently including the rather well watched one in Kirkwall harbour. It was so unexpected it had our MMO going for a wee while, but when we pieced together the evidence (such as pale greyish brown body, no dorsal fin to speak of, large size, steep forehead (which I didn't see) and, the real clincher, low bushy blow, always to the left...even against the wind) there was nothing else it could have been. My first sperm whale in britain and to be honest, the first I've ever had acceptable views of. It's been a pretty remarkable year fro cetaceans for me now, with this and 2 humpbacks!

Birdwise there was plenty of interest too. One of the first birds we saw was a long-eared owl....nothing staggering about this of course, but I would expect an owl at sea to be heading rapidly towards the coast....not so with this fella, as he circled among the gulls for several minutes and was observed hovering 3 or 4 times. No idea what it was doing, but it wasn't being mobbed by the gulls or making any effort to avoid them. My theory is that it was hunting migrating passerines, and the gulls it was with were doing the same (I've seen large gulls drive a migrant robin into the sea and tear it apart before...dramatic stuff (but not so enjoyable for the robin).

Also recorded were a single snow bunting, a few greylag geese, long tailed ducks, a pom skua and over the course of the three days, about 40 little auks. I've put some photos in(as you probably noticed). Not that they were taken on this last job or anything, just that this blog seems to have been rather lacking photo wise recently....

Quite a few of these....

Plenty of these.....

Good numbers of these....which are quite uncommon on the site apparently

And some of these, including a distinctly scan do looking bird....

how to not find (or see) a desert wheatear

2011-11-08T18:55:00.001Z

1. Go to girdle ness
2. Look at a woodcock and a peregrine, among other things.
3. Under no circumstances look at a desert wheatear.
4. Specifically look at Greyhope bay for a desert wheatear as it looks feet tasty for one.
5. Do not see a desert wheatear
6.Go home, and a few hours later get a text about a desert wheatear in Greyhope bay.
7. Swear

Remnants of the fall....

2011-10-29T18:39:00.000+01:00

Was there a film called that?

Was it about semi large numbers of blackbirds hanging around at Girdleness a few days after their arrival. Along with some song thrushes and redwings? My kind of movie.

To be fair there was much more than just a few thrushes around today. A blackcap was still at the north bank and a chiffchaff that looked pretty un-collybitta was in the battery willows. Not a tristris but somewhere in between...which probably makes it an abietinus then.

4 snow bunting were feeding with starlings in the walled garden and were probably new in...no-one else has mentioned them from the last few days.

What was not new in was a redpoll that I had flying around at the sewage works. I encounter redpoll more and more frequently at the ness these days but always as flyovers. I've never actually had decent views of one perched at the ness...until today. After the big arrival of continental/scando stuff from midweek I was half expecting this bird to be a mealy poll, but it sat out in the open for a few seconds allowing me to grill it, and identifying itself as a very very lesser redpoll. Assume nothing, eh?

Last, but definitely not least, a very big surprise. Not a rare bird at all, in fact, a bird that until recently bred on the ness, with up to 4 pairs in some years. The last few harsh winters made it very difficult for our local stonechats though, and as far as I know, there has only been one record over the last 2 or 3 years. It was therefore a great pleasure to encounter one in the scrub near the sewage works. It would have been a greater pleasure had it been a siberian stonechat but I gave it a good going over and it was totally normal. Still....lets hope it sticks around and finds a friend.

Migrants are still lingering in good numbers just inland from the ness in Torry. A mistle thrush was a local goody and from the window I had all the thrushes, goldcrest, and 4 blackcaps together. I'll be keeping an eye on the garden for any other loitering migs....common redstart or reed warbler would look very nice on the old window list!

the big day

2011-10-29T18:19:00.000+01:00

Wednesday was always going to be the big day as far as arrivals and finding goodies goes. As soon as I was out of the house at dawn, it was clear that there were large numbers of thrushes coming in with redwings especially zeeping overhead and a brambling over Abbey road.

On the ness it was all about the thrushes as well. There were just hundreds of blackbirds everywhere and redwings were coming in off constantly. In about the thrushes there were smaller numbers of other common migrants such as blackcaps, goldcrests and chaffinches, with plenty of skylarks going over and at least 4 woodcock.

Of course, there were no biggies but a few pleasant surprises. 2 pale bellied brent geese looped around over the allotments looking thoroughly disappointed with where they'ed ended up. At the battery, the female type black redstart was still kicking around (to be joined by another later in the day), and from the south bank a short-eared owl lazily flapped towards town largely ignoring the attention it was getting from the gulls.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was the first winter male common redstart that was flycatching around the mound on Baxter street. I can't verify this but I reckon it must be the latest one I've ever seen in this country. It looked pretty good too.

more thrushes. again.

2011-10-25T21:01:00.000+01:00

Yet again there were gazillions of thrushes around this morning. Redwings and blackbirds mainly with fewer fieldfares and the odd song thrush. I know this cos I could here them. I couldn't see them cos today it never really got light, what with the thick cloud and heavy rain, and the perpetual cyclone of leaves and carrier bags that seemed to follow me wherever I went.

The conditions made it really difficult to see, or hear anything else, so the sum total for my morning jaunt, in addition to the above, was; Snipe, woodcock, redpoll spp, lapwing and black redstart.

The black redstart was at the battery, trying desperately to cling onto the walls of the more sheltered areas while I was trying desperately to keep my nockies still and dry. There must be other stuff out there, but in the wind and rain it's bloody difficult to pick stuff up. Being dark doesn't help either.

Conditions tonight look pretty good....it's been blowing a hoolie out of the east all day, and tonight its misty and lashing it down with rain. I just hope they've eased by tomorrow morning....

incoming....

2011-10-24T21:11:00.001+01:00

I had high hopes today (and still do for the next few days) as we have some fairly hefty south easterly winds, backing right across the North Sea, along with some nice bits of high pressure in all the right places. To be honest, tomorrow and wednesday look best, but I wouldn't have been able to concentrate on my work if I hadn't gone out and had a look today!

Well I only had an hour or so, but it was clear that thrushes were streaming in, with redwings and fieldfares pretty much constantly overhead. In fact they still are overhead...I can still hear redwings going over now. Over the racket of the X factor unfortunately. There wasn't a lot of other stuff (but that might have had something to do with the wind and the dark) but in my little jaunt round the allotments I also picked up woodcock, brambling and a lapwing.

Luckily I've got a little longer over the next few days.

life support

2011-10-24T20:28:00.002+01:00

It seems like this blog is on life support. It lies dormant for long periods, and then I send a pulse of life through it every now and again, and it clings on to life.

Which is a little strange as I've really been enjoying my birding of late, without seeing anything earth shattering of course. You'd have heard about it if I'd seen something earth shattering. I've not been having quite as nice a time as I had on Ouessant, but there's been plenty of good patch fayre.

The 15th of October was particularly enjoyable as Claire got rather enthusiastic about pointing stuff out for me after I went a little spastic over the shelduck she found for me. That was her only contribution, but there was also Pom skua, long-tailed duck and velvet scoter on offer, and, perhaps most surprisingly, a flock of 15 or so tree sparrows over the sewage works. There was also a lone house martin lingering around over Torry which stayed until the 17th at least.

On the 16th I got another Pom and also several long tailed tits and goldcrests at the sewage works, and Saturday, a decent seawatch turned up good numbers of skuas, as well as manx and sooty shearwater, a red-throated diver and an ad w little gull.

Finally, on Sunday I had a stomp around and scored a bit of patch gold...a great spotted woodpecker at the sewage works...only my third record (but my second this year). Also in the vicinity were a couple of blackcaps and goldcrests, up to 20 long tailed tits, and a jack snipe at the battery that I almost trod on.

So hopefully this latest injection, along with a little cosmetic surgery, might give this blog a new lease of life!

Ouessant photos...

2011-10-09T13:51:00.004+01:00

Ouessant 2011

2011-10-09T13:10:00.001+01:00

Oct 2^nd,

The day starts with the ferry crossing just after first light and soon kicks into gear with an ad w little gull and a great northern diver from the boat…there were a couple of things I didn’t see though. For the first time on one of these crossings, I saw no Balearic (or any other, for that matter) shearwaters, and I also saw no birders on the boat. In fact, I birded all afternoon on the island and only bumped into a bin toting birder (in fact, the guy who I enjoyed the grey-cheeked thrush with all those years ago) in the evening as we went for dinner. Insane. It’s the first week of October, the birds must be on their way judging by the amount of stuff that’s turned up in Britain over the weekend, and there is only a skeleton crew working one of Europe’s premiere rarity spots….

After getting to the house, and having the obligatory few cidres avec mon lunch, I set off to bird a few of the better spots in the west of the island. It soon became apparent that there were migrants everywhere. The bushes were rammed with chiffchaffs and the open areas had plenty of wheatears. Around the few spots I checked I had 4+ redstart and pied flycatcher, at least 3 whinchat, 2 reed warblers and a willow warbler, and of course this was all set to a background of choughs and constantly passing mepits.

Remembering that I had to be sociable I returned to the house to do some sunbathing (viz-migging). By the late afternoon not much was moving but twenty odd med gulls were putting on a decent display hawking for insects around the house. While watching these I picked up a small passing flock of starlings…..and bingo, a juv Rosy starling! What a fitting end to a very enjoyable day, I thought. Until on setting off for dinner when a ringtail harrier drifted past in the dusk….I got nothing on it but it did look quite small….

Oct 3^rd,

The day starts in frustrating fashion with some high level dithering and really, really thick fog. Birding in the cover was out, it was just too dark, but there was still plenty about, with good numbers of pied fly and redstart, along with singles of spotted flycatcher and reed warbler on my morning walk around the house. After breakfast we drank cidre and did some food shopping for what seemed like an eternity, and just when I was beginning to get a wee bitty miffed, a Richards pipit schreeeped overhead. Well that cheered me up no end!

After lunch I headed out west. Things were a little more active in the warmth of the afternoon, with whinchats and pied flys especially apparent. I got the fright of my life as I almost cycled over a wryneck at Cost ar Ruen, and spent a good 15 minutes waiting for this Ouessant tick to emerge from the cover. I needn’t have bothered as just round the corner there were 3 more, rather shamelessly sunning themselves in the open. It’s an affy long time since I saw 3 wrynecks together…what brilliant birds.

Well, I was quite happy with things as they were, but early in the evening I received a text from the friendly Belgian regarding a little bunting he had found, rather kindly, just 5 minutes from the house by bike. I turned up to find 13 birders wading through a field, and a small bunting flying around…eventually I got better views of it perched briefly in the crop…. two little buntings in two weeks. Not bad considering it took me 34 years to see my first!

Oct 4^th,

Up with the lark this morning and round to my old stomping ground in the far south west of the island. Here, there is a little bay with pile upon pile of stinky seaweed, which attracts loads of feeding passerines. There was nothing out of the ordinary today but at least three yellow wagtails provided some entertainment among the wheatears, white wags and pipits. In the fields and gardens there were good numbers of common migs and I also got prolonged close up views of a couple of Dartford warblers.

Back home through the drizzle, and over our usual very late breakfast, a wryneck feeding at point blank range through the kitchen window warms things up a little.

At this point I start to feel a little unwell…I’ll spare you the details but suffice to say I couldn’t venture too far from the house! I managed a wee wander round mid afternoon and notched up a nice selection of common migrants, including a few more yellow wagtails passing over. Thing are obviously still on the move, which is encouraging for the rest of the week…

Oct 5^th,

I set off on foot this morning, which was a relief as far as the old ballbag was concerned. I was headed toward a small bay that I’d been told was good for waders and had hosted an American golden plover for a few days before I arrived. I took the long way round, enjoying a couple of reed warblers in the cover and two very flighty Lapland buntings on my way.

It didn’t take me long to get to the spot, and there no more than twenty yards away from me stood a corking American golden plover, almost oblivious to my presence, feeding away surrounded by meadow pipits and white wagtails. I sat down to have a good long look at it in what was pretty extreme close up….I probably wont get many opportunities to see one of these as well as this again! While enjoying the plover it suddenly dawned on me that there was something other than the aforementioned passerines feeding alongside it. Out from behind a lump of seaweed hopped an Ortolan bunting…which I think is pretty regular but also reasonably uncommon here. Its certainly the first I’ve had here in 5 years. All in all a very enjoyable morning

Apres midi was spent doing family type things, including snoozing, and having a few short walks looking for birds. There was nothing of any consequence to report other than twice, a ringtail harrier gave me very bad views. It was probably just a hen harrier but I’d like to have a proper look….

Oct 6^th,

A much quieter day for migrants, probably because of the 50km winds keeping everything down. There do seem to be a few noticeable differences from the beginning of the week though…chaffinch, yellow wagtail, song thrush and woodpigeon are all more numerous now, and chiffchaff numbers seem to have halved at least. I also haven’t seen a single common redstart for a few days now, having seen 4 or 5 each of the first few days.

The strong winds have brought some seabirds inshore. This morning I tried some bins only seawatching (while lying down on a rock…not my best idea). There were literally thousands of gannets passing close in, and among them I managed to pick out a few bonxies and sooty shears. The French chaps managed a great shear today as well, so there is obviously stuff out there worth looking for. If these winds keep up till Saturday it might make for an interesting crossing. In more ways than one.

Despite things being difficult to see in the conditions I did notch up a few more interesting migs…a snow bunting at Arlann and a black redstart in Lampaul.

Oct 7^th,

Another very quiet day with things again difficult due to the high winds. A total clearout of migrants might also have been making things feel slow…even the chiffchaffs seem to have buggered off now. The American golden plover remained at plage de yusin, but in the midst of an apparently migrant free day, a calling yellow browed warbler at Poul Feaz was a very pleasant surprise…apparently there have only been 3 or 4 on the island this year so far.

Oct 8^th,

The only morning I didn’t head out birding and I really wish I had! For two reasons…firstly, I wouldn’t have had to endure the rugby in a room full of French fans, and secondly, and much more importantly, because cold weather on the continent had caused an arrival of birds. When I eventually got out after the inevitable 3 course lunch there were birds everywhere. All of a sudden there were goldcrests everywhere, with increased numbers of firecrests, and chaffinches in the gardens. If I’d had a little longer I reckon I might have done even better than the juv common rosefinch I had feeding in the garden next door….not that I’m complaining about that at all!

So, all that remained of the holiday come 5 pm was the crossing back to Brest. I finally got a Balearic shearwater, along with 5 sooties, but best of all was a flurry of activity around Ile de Molene that included great, arctic and pom skua.

For the fifth time, it was difficult to leave Ouessant, but perhaps this time more than ever…which is why we’re planning to do two weeks next year. I’m looking forward to it already.

Sanday, 18th to 23rd September 2011

2011-09-26T16:44:00.003+01:00

Back to my old tricks last week, going on an autumn birding trip with the old crew. As usual, we wanted to try somewhere a little 'different' but with potential, and Sanday fitted the bill perfectly. Only 4 kms from North Ronaldsay, so bound to get the rares, yet terribly, terribly under watched. In fact, it fut the bill so perfectly that we may well go back there next year. Here's why...

16th Sept,

Today was spent travelling north, birding at various spots on the way up to Gills bay for the ferry late in the evening. We didn't come across anything special, but enjoyed greenshanks at loch fleet, and sooty shearwaters at Noss Head (which looks uber rare, by the way but). The best of the days birding was reserved for the crossing, before it got too dark to see anything...we got 4 stormies, a few manx and sooties, and of course the odd bonxies and tysties.

17th Sept,

In between waking up with a hangover and doing a biiigggg shop for the week in Tescos (other supermarkets are available...but not in Kirkwall. Unless you count Lidl. Which you shouldn't) we managed to squeeze in a few hours birding. Somewhere along the line we bumped into Eric 'the legend' Meek, who showed us round some of the better migrant spots on South Ron. There were obviously birds arriving with decent numbers of blackcap at most spots. Heart stopping moment of the day came at honeysgeo when a single, incredibly greenish warbler like note came out of the bushes. Despite our best efforts though we couldn't even see a bird let alone string a common phyllosc into a rare one....Which is a shame cos I'd like to promote the name honeysgeo as much as possible.

After an uneventful crossing to Sanday we got our first taste of birding on the island at the bushes at Stove. In the dark and in the wind. Needless to say we didn't see much!

18th Sept,

With the wind in the south east and drizzle on our faces we had high hopes for today. Birding around the gardens in Lady village (the lady gardens! Ha!) gave us a taste of things to come with both spotted and pied flycatchers, a garden warbler and multiple willows, chiffs and blackcaps.

We decided to head out to the east end of the island, and before we even got there, Ian (who was on fire all week) managed to pick up a juv red-backed shrike from a bush as the car zoomed by. This put a wee bit of a spring in our step which was maintained at our first stop. The garden around Salties had redstart, lesser whitethroat, and a wryneck. And so it continued all day, with common migrants at each stop, with the odd bit of scarce thrown in willy nilly, with a Lapland bunting over north loch, and a yellow browed warbler in gardens in the middle of the island. We finished off the day back at the east end of the island, where Dave bagged a little bunting. After giving us the run around for a wee bit, and giving flight views and calls, it eventually rested up on a wall allowing us all to enjoy the bird properly. A really great start to the holiday!

19th Sept

A little quieter today in terms of the scarce birds, but the majority of the common migrants seemed to stay around, which was a bit of a feature of the week. The yellow browed from yesterday was still around, and a new bird was at the Stove bushes in the far south of the island...which was a brilliant little site that held 6 species of warbler and 4 whinchat that day. Among the warblers was the only whitethroat of the trip. Among other stuff seen at various locations on the 19th were barnacle goose, merlin, SEO, the briefest of glimpses of a water rail (and a dead one, the victim of a cat, in the north), plenty of twite, hen harriers and peregrines. There is always plenty to look at on Sanday...

20th Sept

I decided to turn my attention to the waders today, with the large tidal expanse of the Cata sand being my focus. I had a look in the morning when the tide was dropping, and realised that if I could get myself into position for a rising tide I'd get some cracking views of the waders. My morning walk took me along the edge of the Cata sand, and the highlight was a gang of 5 lapland bunts that put on a cracking display among a flock of twite...There are certain birds that I considered rare back in my childhood...things like YBWand sooty shearwater for example, that I can still recall the thrill of seeing for the first time. Lapland bunting comes into this category. My first was a cracking breeding plumage male somewhere in Cleveland way back when, and although I've never seen another one quite like that one, it always sends my mind back to that spot when I hear one tickytick as it goes over.

Anyway, also that morning, among the thousands of waders on Cata sand were a curlew sandpiper and a couple of ruff, and a merlin menacingly perching on the salt marsh.

My afternoon visit to the high tide roost was slightly less enjoyable, perhaps due to the incessant heavy rain. I say incessant, but that is perhaps slightly misleading as there were times when it was hailing heavily and not raining. I got soaked to the skin and affy cold, but it was worth it for the good views of the large numbers of waders....900 bar wits and 1000 golden plover, among other things, with peregrines and short eared owls keeping me entertained as well. The whole island looks amazing for waders....I'm quite surprised we didn't get a yank somethingorother.

Some of the others had a barred warbler this afternoon.

21st Sept

My notebook seems a little sparsely populated for today, so obviously not an awful lot going on...but still plenty to keep you going. North loch had a scaup, hundreds of wigeon and a max count of 68 pintail, there were plenty of waders on the peedie sea, as well as a greenshank in roadside pools on the way there. Stove had a new spotted flycatcher as well as a few other lingering migs, and there was obviously some new stuff coming in as a YBW put in an appearance in one of the Sanday rangers mist nets in Lady. Rod (the sanday ranger) has a mist net permanently on the go in his garden and his, and the other gardens in Lady were getting some good coverage from us so this bird was probably new in or at leasing roaming over the island. See photos in the post below.

22nd Sept

Another quiet day migrant wise, with the best bird of the morning being the YBW in the same garden as it had been all week. I headed out to bird around the spit towards Start point in the afternoon, which was also quiet but looked brilliant....the sort of place you'd want to be in a fall, before the birds moved inland and found themselves some decent cover. In the afternoon, some of the others had a common rosefinch briefly, in the east of the island.

23rd Sept

The last day, which ended well for one of the group who turned up a Richards pipit at tofts ness, in the far north east of the island. We went and had a bit of a stomp around looking for it but to no avail...there were plenty of lap bunts in the area though, and the whole spot looked brilliant for rare larks, pipits, wagtails, and perhaps the odd great snipe or two....

So, on the whole, a great holiday! Birding by day, with always plenty to look at and the opportunity to find your own good birds, and of course, the obligatory drinking of whisky and various orkney ales in the evening, along with some great company. What more could you ask for...apart from the odd BB rare I suppose. Next time.....

some Sanday Pics...

2011-09-26T16:23:00.005+01:00

The brown dot on the wall is a little bunting....I assure you, really, it is.....

Dipping a sabs

2011-09-12T21:26:00.001+01:00

After a fortnight of mucking around in the name of work, and then an absolutely monster night out on Friday night to commemorate the moving on of a certain cap'n haddock, it wasn't until sunday that I managed to get out to the ness. I was rabid with enthusiasm but unfortunately, these days, I'm of an age where hangovers last more than one day so my concentration was leaving a little to be wanted...

There was sod all around, so I was reasonably surprised to bag a genuine migrant in the shape of a juv whinchat. That was it though so I swiftly retreated to continue being soft as shite somewhere much less windy.

Until about half five that is, when a text came through with news of a Sabs gull heading south close inland at Donmouth. One hastily bartered lift later and I was joining dr Whitehouse at the lighthouse. Kittiwakes galore were pouring into the harbour so we gave it twenty minutes or so and decided that sifting through the kitties was our best bet.

Well, we didnt see it, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't there...there were zillions of Kittis roosting on the far side of the north breakwater that were completely out of view to us. The massive influx into the harbour attracted both adult and juv little gulls, of which the adult had been seen the day before, so possibly a lingering bird. I wouldn't be surprised if the Sabs was doing the same sort of thing. One for Andrews window list I think....

Skinflats and kinniel

2011-09-12T19:46:00.001+01:00

It's not often I get to see waders. Not decent ones anyway, although I suppose some folk further south might rate the odd purple sandpiper a lot higher than any of the species I saw the other day at skinflats and kinniel. With this in mind I jumped at the chance to go and check out these two jewels in the upper forth recording area last on Wednesday. It was well worth getting my work shoes muddy for....

Not that we saw anything groundbreaking. Skinflats first lagoon hosted a few ruff and a blackwit, and the second lagoon hosted very little indeed, but looked majorly rare! What I would give to have this little muddy corner on my local patch. The best of it were a green sandpiper flushed from one of many muddy puddles, and a bit of a surprise on the form of a spotted flycatcher.

On to the stunning vistas of the forth at Grangemouth after all that excitement. By god it's bleak there, but the birds love it...oodles of black tailed godwits on the mud, with a lone ruff, and a couple of greenshank on the lagoons with three golden plover. Unfortunately, the reported ring billed gull was not on show. Hopefully this won't be the last time I get to check these two sites out cos they look like they've got an awful lot of potential.

Pendeen, 5th september

2011-09-06T20:05:00.000+01:00

It can be a frustrating old game this birding…

I have just spent a great weekend at the seabird group conference in Plymouth, and before I go on I’d like to comment on the main thrust of the conference, which was basically this. Geolocaters rule.

A happy bi-product of the conference, alongside some large hangovers, was a chance to take in some seawatching in south-east cornwall. The forecast looked pretty monster early on, and with 2003 great shearwaters passing Porthgwarra a couple of days before, I had pretty high hopes. As it turned out, the forecast was slightly out, but there you go.

Arriving at Pendeen at around half nine, even from the car park it was clear that this was going to be seawatching as I had never seen before. A couple of minutes scanning with bins revealed a steady stream of manxies close in, with a few sooties thrown in for good measure. Once we had settled further down the cliff, scanning with bins, it was possible to scan to and fro and never have fewer than 15 or 20 manxies in view. Counting them was going to be pretty pointless, and I gave up counting sooties after I got to 70 odd after an hour or so. I managed to keep a count on the 10 balearics that went past. What was so enjoyable about this was that all the birds were so close in, with a bunch of conference delegates, many of whom were inexperienced with shearwater ID, able to pick out the Balearics and eventually call them themselves…even armed only with bins.

Luckily for all, the first great shearwater that went past also did so at close range and all got onto it with ease. Not quite 2003 birds, but pretty special all the same.

The passage of shearwaters seemed to die down by lunchtime so I decided to head behind the lighthouse to look for migrants. In doing this I managed to miss a couple more great shears and a sabs gull, but I did have a nice little adventure myself.

As soon as I got away from the sea and could begin to hear birds, I became aware of some flava wagtails being present, hearing them overhead and seeing a few distant birds flying between fields. After walking up the road for a while, I turned back and headed towards one of the coastal paths, and all of a sudden more yellow wags than I have ever seen before got up from the field next to the road (bear in mind that these things are only just annual in NE Scotland!). As they flew towards me I counted 42 birds. When they got to where I was standing the flock was low over my head, and was in the process of turning round to head back into the field. All of a sudden, one of the birds let out a very buzzy call…not a million miles from a yellow wag but very different too, being a longer note and with less downslur. ‘Holy Shit!’…I said out loud to myself. All the birds then landed together in the middle of the field, concentrating under the 3 or 4 horses that were there. Scanning through them again I got brief, distant and mostly obscured views of a very grey and white looking bird, lacking any of the warmth of the other birds around it. At this point the horses spooked and of course all the wagtails did as well, with the flock dispersing and a lot of the birds heading out of view. Despite a few of us searching the area for a couple of hours we were unable to relocate the bird in the plethora of available fields with viewing only from the road. All of which was a massive shame as I’d put a fair bit of money being a citrine wagtail, but without being able to rule out any of the buzzier sounding taxa of yellow wag, or any of the colder eastern forms, its obviously going to have to go down as one that got away. Lets hope that’s my only disappointment this autumn.

Eden

2011-09-06T20:00:00.000+01:00

Every cloud has a silver lining. The particular cloud here is a stats course that has had me thoroughly bamboozled from the moment I set foot in the classroom. The silver lining though, has been that if I got up early enough and was prepared to walk a couple of miles, I could get a wee bit of birding in at the Eden estuary before having my mind turned to mush. No brainer.

Two mornings from the Eden estuary centre (a shed with a noticeboard and a toilet) scored me a good haul of things that I don’t see every day at home. Waders mainly. On the first morning, among the redshanks, lapwings and curlews, a good handful of blackwits were on show, as were a couple of ruff, and best of all, 2 curlew sandpiper flew past. Day 2 revealed similar numbers of blackwits and ruff, a few greenshank, and 4 juv spotted redshanks, which was particularly pleasing as it’s a species I’ve always had a bit of a softspot for.

But there were more than just waders on offer. Kingfisher was seen on both days, and three little egrets were feeding in front of the visitor centre on day 2, a none too shabby count for Scotland. Raptors were also putting on a good display, with Osprey almost constantly visible and seen fishing several times, and on the first morning, a pair of peregrines chasing redshanks at almost point blank range. Exhilarating stuff!

Hopefully, there will be more exhilarating stuff on the agenda soon, as my autumnal arrangements seem to be falling into place nicely. Week away one is a trip up to Sanday in Orkney in late September with the crew who went to Cornwall and the Outer hebs. Week away two is of course the ‘to be expected’ Ouessant trip in early October, which I’m looking forward to immensely as it almost didn’t happen this year. Bring on the cider, crepes, and brandy coffees! And the birds!

white billed divers in the UK

2011-08-21T09:13:00.004+01:00

Just how rare are these birds in UK waters then? It was as recent as 2009 (don't quote me on that...it was around about then) that they were removed from the list of species considered by the BB rarities committee, but recently there seem to have been more and more birds being seen.

From land, first of all, there were the annual spring build-ups in the Outer Hebrides, with birds regularly being seen from sea watching stations in April, and up to seven being seen in a day from various headlands and bays around Lewis. More recently, (i.e. last year) five birds were present at least for a few days together of the Morayshire coast....add to this birds being regular in winter and spring in Shetland and Orkney and we have maybe tens of birds present regularly in inshore in british waters...a status not a million miles from that of birds perceived to be much commoner, such as wintering black-necked grebe.

The real step up in the frequency of this species being recorded in Britain has come from the increased volume of seabird surveying for offshore windfarms. Quite a few birds have been recorded offshore from Tiree, in areas where aerial surveying revealed large numbers of great northern divers in spring (I once flew over a flock of 32 GNDs together off Tiree...something I would probably find hard to believe had I not seen it myself!). Perhaps these birds are the same as the ones being recorded further north around Lewis later in the season. It's not only the west of Scotland that sees these birds regularly though.

My jaunts into the North Sea have turned up many more WBDs than I could ever have imagined, with birds being seen through the winter and spring. I wouldn't like to speculate how many birds are out there but I have seen well in excess of twenty on my various travels, including a few stonking breeding plumage birds, and several 'pairs'. On one memorable day I saw a total of 6 birds! They seem to be less skittish than other, smaller divers (red-throats will take off when a vessel is in excess of one kilometre away) but are still a wee bit wary, hence the poor quality of the photos below! Instead of flying they prefer to swim away, often submerging their bodies leaving just ha head and neck above the surface of the sea.

I'd love to know exactly how many are out there. I wouldn't be surprised if we have over 100 birds in British waters from time to time.

bits and pieces

2011-08-20T21:00:00.002+01:00

One or two bits and bobs from the last few days, with a peregrine hunting off the foghorn on the 16th (something I've seen happening here a few times now) and a staggering three canada geese early on the morning of the 17th....a much more eloquent description of which can be found here. It was certainly a pleasure getting someone else's take on the stuff I see as 'every day'....and Jonathan is dead right...I would swap all the eiders in Scotland for an on patch lesser spotted woodpecker!

knotshots

2011-08-14T17:37:00.003+01:00

I love patch birding, and looking for and ever so occasionally finding rare birds although obviously this doesn't happen nearly enough. I also love spending time with relatively common species when they allow me to, really watching a bird, picking up little bits of behaviour and observing the finer aspects of their plumage (without having to lug a scope around!)

Today, a rather tame juvenile knot allowed me the pleasure of 20 minutes of its time, feeding on washed up seaweed in Nigg Bay as I sat on a nearby rock trying to look innocuous.

Most of the knot I've seen round here over the last few days (and there have been quite a few) have been adults but this is a juvenile, aged by the generally neat appearance of the pale fringes, and the thin, dark subterminal marks on the coverts, mantle and scapulars

In this pic it looks like it's having a nice wee sit down. However, this was in reaction to a passing dog and the cautious way is squatted down and then stood up again made me think it was some sort of threat posture.

Wee bit of a preen

all talk and no trousers

2011-08-13T19:59:00.005+01:00

Well it seems I got a little over-excited about the conditions this morning. There was barely a migrant to be had today....but it all started off so autumnally! Passing the allotments three ruff flew up river and barely 5 seconds later an adult arctic skua sheered over the golf course much as it would have done had it been out to sea. A decent start although I was already beginning to wonder where all the wee birds were.

Still no migrant action at the battery but a group of 40 knot went over towards grey hope bay, where I followed them. As I was getting there these 4 scaup flew by and landed in among the eiders in the bay...a decent record for the ness....I've never seen 4 here before and most records are of birds zipping past off the foghorn so it was nice to get a decent look at these.

Nigg bay yielded a migrant eventually, in the form of a whinchat perching on wires near the flooded area...which also had 2 each of snipe and teal. On a sadder note, this gannet was lingering on the beach in Nigg bay, with a broken wing. It's always a shame to see a bird with such charisma reduced to this, hobbling around with very little future. After what happened to that chap in Wales though, I was not going to offer any sort of 'intervention'. I'm quite fond of both my eyes.

It doesn't take much to keep me happy

2011-08-13T07:43:00.002+01:00

Its brilliant how a single, not at all rare bird can change your perspective of your birding day. Yesterday morning, I wandered all the way round the ness and saw literally nothing...until I got past the battery, when a great spotted woodpecker flew past me!

It was only my second ever record on patch, so a real goody. It appeared to dive down towards the sycamore but there was no sign of it at all when I got there so I guess it might just have carried on up the river. Not exactly what I was hoping for but more than welcome all the same.

Speaking of things I'm hoping for....For anyone who still had any lingering doubts, autumn is here. Greenish warbler and pallid harrier on Fair isle yesterday make it official! And as I write this, outside it is drizzling and a south easterly has been blowing all night...I have a very special feeling in my bones.

What am I doing sitting here typing this then?! Best get to it!

waderfest

2011-08-07T19:07:00.002+01:00

Ok, maybe 'waderfest' overstates it a little, but on my two visits today I picked up the following...25 turnstone (all highly good looking adults), 6 cracking adult knot, 2 purple sandpipers (one sporting some natty looking and almost certainly locally attached yellow leg flags) and best of all, a single greenshank, flushed up from the flooded area in Nigg bay by a dog walker. The greenshank is only my third for the patch, and my earliest one by a long way (the others both being in october)

There is a lot of water resting in Nigg bay....it looks great habitat for a green sand, or possibly something a little rarer....

Also kicking around today were yesterdays tystie with the eiders, along with two common and a velvet scoter, and offshore, an hours wavegazing yielded 18 manxies, 10 bonxies and 3 arctic skua.

tystie pics

2011-08-06T21:16:00.002+01:00

As if to affirm my feelings towards black guillemots (see last post) here's a bunch of pics I got of some displaying birds on North Ron. Their display involves a lot of whistling, while walking up and down in a style that can only really be described as 'mincing'. Very endearing, and staggeringly good looking too, with the devil red feet and gape.

And here's a little tystiefact for you. They are at least twice as common in Britain as cormorants are. Who'd have thought it?

no migs

2011-08-06T21:00:00.003+01:00

Autumn is here. I know this cos I spent part of today looking for migrants. I was pretty unsuccessful but it felt good to be getting back to it.

It wasn't a complete flop though. Three sooty shearwaters went north pretty close in, and two of them lingered in around a swarm of feeding kittiwakes and terns. There were quite a few bonxies, and singles of arctic skua and manxy too. Also off the foghorn, in among all the eclipse eiders was what looked like another eclipse eider in miniature. Except it wasn't, as it was a stonking breeding plumage black guillemot...I have a bit of a soft spot for the old tystie...I've watched them bonking in Oban harbour and doing very endearing display walks with whistles on North Ron. They have bags of personality, and the most striking red gapes. Great birds all round and a tricky one at the ness to boot.

Come to think of it, it looks nothing like an eider at all. I'll get my coat.

Killer whale

2011-08-04T21:33:00.002+01:00

Some old Killer whale footage, taken from a pelagic trawler during a haul one night (obviously!) These beasts have become all a bit spring watch recently. I've been lucky enough to see killer whale a few times now, but this one was my first and it was a mind blowingly big male. Hearing the creaking of the ship adds to the atmosphere a wee bit as well!

The Torry fox

2011-08-04T21:27:00.004+01:00

Or one of them at least. This little chap was insanely tame. It's worth bearing with the movie to see the fox running towards me at one point, and also to hear me addressing the little ginger scamp in a rather effeminate manner. It was filmed on my phone...just to give an idea of how close I was.

White beaked dolphins...

2011-08-04T20:59:00.002+01:00

friendly little souls, aren't they! Having beakies visit us like this was not uncommon on the dogger bank...

seawatch season

2011-08-04T20:00:00.002+01:00

Seawatch season is upon us....

and has been for about three weeks. It didn't half start well as well, with record breaking numbers of standard Europetrels turning up further south, between Yorkshire and Fife, with especially large numbers off Whitburn. I believe they had 350 odd there one day, somewhat obliterating any previous day, month or year records for the north east.

I figured with this many on the go I would be virtually guaranteed one off the ness, so back then when it was all happening, I put in a few early morning and evening shifts.

It was disappointing! Not only did I not get any stormies...I didn't get much else either! There were periods of good manxie passage, including 62 north in 45 minutes on the morning of the 26th. There were small numbers of bonxies and arctic skuas kicking around, but I guess the highlight was a single sooty shearwater that went north on the 24th.

Other notables have included a few whimbrel passing, and on the flat calm morning of the 27th, 8 white beaked dolphins heading south in the distance. My time on the Dogger bank has allowed me to become pretty familiar with these beasts...or I wouldn't have felt so confident about IDing them at such distances!

Work is still curtailing my birding....and a bit of some bug type thing is probably going to stop me getting up early tomorrow to look for 2bar crossbills...but autumn is now upon us. And I can't wait.

moderate counts of common species

2011-07-08T16:28:00.004+01:00

I've had a few trips to the ness of late, which in spite of the fact that I've seen bugger all of any consequence, have been very pleasant indeed. The other day was a bit of a ringlet fest (see above), with at least 18 on the wing along the path between the sewage works and the railway embankment alone. Is it just me, or are ringlets having a good year? Perhaps I'm just a little better at noticing them...I've certainly been seeing them in places I've never seen them before, and I've never seen as many as 18 anywhere before.

Anyway...this is supposed to be about birds, so I won't mention the emergence of Burnett moths or the odd silver Y, or the recent showing of meadow browns. Honest, I wont.

Seawatching has been sporadically interesting. The best of it was on the 5th, when 28 manxies went north in half an hour, and puffins were about in good numbers, with 24 going various directions in the same period of time. Looking out to sea has also revealed a few whimbrel heading south, and the odd skua as well.

Signs of late summer have begun to arise a little more frequently. The count of sarnie tern fledgelings was up to 9 this morning, which is a pretty slow build up. These things usually leave the colony en masse, which I suspect will be within a week or so, so we will soon have very busy times at Nigg bay to look forward to.

We've also had a bit of post breeding dispersal. A juv wheatear the other day must have come from somewhere else (I'm pretty positive they didn't breed here this year) and a flyover redpoll this morning was a very pleasant surprise. Looks like things are just about to get a little more interesting at exactly the time I will be starting a new job, which will severely curtail my birding time. Bugger! Still, in a while the old job might have forgotten about me and I might be able to post some stuff from the times I spent offshore with them.

flighty scoters

2011-06-30T22:11:00.003+01:00

I had another pop at the scoter flock at Murcar today. Disappointingly, the RIB that was disturbing the birds yesterday was present again, and the scoter were all way to far out to be sifted through effectively. In fact, they were so far out I couldn't even pick out any surfies. There were a lot of birds about though. From my position just south of the clubhouse at Murcar, I counted in the region of 2050 scoter, as well as large numbers of eider of course.

In my experience, common scoter especially are extremely timid when it comes to disturbance from vehicles. They hate boats of any kind, and are almost as skittish as red-throated divers when one approaches. The RIB from the last few days is not big and was not really going towards them with any speed, yet they still spooked well in excess of 1km away from it. They also really hate planes (well, low flying ones anyway) which is a pain in the arse as counting a flock sitting on the water is much easier than counting several flocks wheeling around in various directions!

I gave it three hours or so, during which time the odd flock flew past at closer range but there was nothing else doing...just the odd Arctic skua making it's presence felt, and a small pod of bottlenose dolphins slowly heading north.

It was a cracking day though which encouraged the butterflies to get out and about. Nothing spectacular but this ringlet showed very nicely...

Bring on the creche...

2011-06-30T10:06:00.002+01:00

Sounds a bit dodgy actually, doesn't it!

The first young Sandwich tern of the year was at greyhope rocks yesterday morning. This is their regular creche site and in a few weeks there should be hundreds of sandwich tern youngsters (along with smaller numbers of commons and a few Arctics) hanging around on the rocks waiting to be fed. This is the busiest time of year at this particular part of the patch, as all the tern activity coincides with southerly wader movements, so there are often brick red knots and the odd norwegian purple sandpiper dotted around among the terns. This for me spells the end of the summer and the beginning of autumn really, and the excitement begins to mount again.

All of which makes this post so acutely accurate, I'm thinking about taking it personally....

So I'd better mention some more birds. Sand martins....and young ones at that. There.

common blues

2011-06-29T09:50:00.002+01:00

I spent a very pleasant half hour in the company of two common blues yesterday, as they fed on a large patch of birds foot trefoil on the south bank. I will speculate that they had not long emerged...it is on the early side for them up here, and they also spent all of that time angling their bodies towards the sun rather than paying any attention to the member of the opposite sex that was fluttering around within metres of them.

The males are territorial so I should imagine I might be able to find him in the same place again.

The end of the middle of summer. Or something...

2011-06-28T19:43:00.006+01:00

There was a definite feel of the beginning of late summer at the ness today. The end of early summer feels like it passed only a few days ago, which leads me to conclude that the middlest bit of summer is actually very, very short. As soon as things stop going in one direction they seem to start going in the other.

Contributing to this early part of late summer feel were a few seabirds moving, including a manxy and 5 red-throatd divers heading south. The divers prompted me to wonder what kind of season they'd been having...failed breeders at this stage would probably not try again and might just leave the breeding grounds, heading down to favoured wintering grounds in the southern north sea. Equally as likely would be the possibility that 5 divers to the north of me really fancied being somewhere to the south of me. Anyway...here's three of them.

Also offshore there were a few arctic skuas hanging around, and a flock of 17 teal went south. 100 or so common scoter went north as well.

Another feature of the late summer here is the build up of goosanders in the harbour. Today there were 21, which is the most I've seen here all year.

And of course, lots of young birds evident today, such as swallows, linnets, pied wagtails starlings and the like. You get the picture, the really common stuff.

Just to cap it all off, wader numbers seem to be on the rise, with Nigg bay having a handful of redshank, turnstone, and a single common sandpiper, while 2 whimbrel went south over the golf course.

Britains worst twitcher?

2011-06-27T15:54:00.004+01:00

I think I'm probably up there! I spent three hours in the pissing rain looking for the white winged scoter today....a mere 5 days after it was last seen. There are reasons why I haven't been yet. Firstly, I was on a boat when it was found, and second, I was rather looking forward to the challenge of picking it out for myself. The fact that I 'can't call myself a proper birder', as some extremely enlightened dickhead put it on birdforum, might have had something to do with it as well.

No prizes for working out that I didn't see it! For the most part the birds were a long way off and my scope got a good soaking so the fact that I didn't see it means nothing...I'm surprised no-one saw it over the weekend and I'd be even more surprised if it has done a runner completely.

It wasn't a wasted trip completely, as I managed to pick out 2 (and probably 3) different adult surf scoters and also the first summer that has been reported as well, among the hoards of commons and decent numbers of velvet scoter. There were also good numbers of redthroats offshore, and three arctic skuas patrolling the coastline, in wait for terns returning north towards the Ythan estuary with a load of fish for their young.

All very enjoyable, but birds of the day were the flock of twenty yellowhammers that turned up at my place this morning!

Aberdeen bay mini pelagic...

2011-06-26T20:19:00.003+01:00

Well, not really a mini pelagic, more of a trip out to try and see the humpback that has been lingering off the beach. In this respect, it was a total flop. As well as failing to see the biggy, we singularly failed to see any whales at all...which came as a great surprise to me considering the ease with which I was seeing minkes just two days ago.

It was also a bit of a flop as far as the birds were concerned as well. A manx shearwater went north, and there were good numbers of puffins around as we got further out. Of interest were several young guillemots being accompanied by adults. I actually saw my first young guillemot about two weeks ago on the dogger bank, which I thought was a wee bitty early, but actually seems to tie in nicely with dates that the jumplings were...errr....jumping, on the farnes.

This bird obviously thought we were a bit too close and gave it's pathetic but rather endearing squeeking contact call. The noise became a bit of a favourite of mine out on the dogger bank this time last year.

It was an enjoyable morning being tossed around in a boat much smaller than those I'm used to, and not seeing anything much. Perhaps not £25 worth of enjoyable morning...but different certainly. However, on the way back into the harbour a bunch of bottlenose dolphins approached us and put on a spectacular display, often within a few metres of the boat, occasionally breaching clear of the water and throwing the odd massive salmon around. At one point they were so close I could feel the moisture of one of the blows on my face. You're not supposed to bother these things...but someone should really tell that to the dolphins, as it was a good 15 minutes before they good bored of our ooohing and aaahing and whatever noises cameras make.

Well worth 25 quid.

Humpback!!!!

2011-06-25T09:03:00.004+01:00

It's not often (actually, read never) that I head out to girdle ness to look for something other than birds. With the shenanigans of the day before though, and the calm conditions forecast, I had a days cetacean hunting on my mind. I headed straight over the golf course and set up the scope looking north and east over Aberdeen bay.

Well, the forecasts had been pretty good as the sea was calm and visibility was good. On scanning the horizon I soon noted several large feeding aggregations and settled on the likeliest looking one.

It took about 10 minutes. The first action came from a minke surfacing under the birds, and within about 15 minutes I'd seen two. The flock quickly dispersed though so I scanned around and picked up another.

The second flock soon revealed an attendant minke that surfaced a couple of times....and then all of a sudden, WOOOSH....a big bushy blow followed by a massive beast surfacing...revealing a knobbly little dorsal fin. Humpback! It was all over in a couple of seconds, long enough for me to pick out the relevant details but to be honest, leaving me a little shocked rather than elated. Despite watching the same flock for however long it remained, unfortunately I did not see it again.

I scanned and scanned for the next two and a half hours and picked up a fair few feeding flocks of birds, many of which had minkes feeding beneath them. In fact, over the course of the time I spent watching (about three and a half hours) I had in the region of 20 different sightings of minkes. It's no wonder I have not seen many minkes at the ness before...they were phenomenally far away, much further than I would have looked if I'd been looking for birds.

One thing I did note was that the 'structure' of the feeding flocks differed and certain characteristics seemed to offer better chances of seeing the whales. The presence of gannets seemed to be important....most of the gull/kittiwake flocks were unproductive. Also, the behaviour of the flock is important. A flock where most of the birds are sitting on the water will be no good...ideally, you need a swirling flock of birds with plunging and dip feeding occurring in quite concentrated areas...these type of flocks certainly gave up minkes more frequently than anything else.

Hopefully, I'll be able to be part of a boat trip out on Sunday to get a better look at these things. Fingers crossed!

Humpback????

2011-06-23T22:31:00.003+01:00

Back to the patch today after my last long trip offshore, on which there were many unmentionable highlights!

Girdle ness today was slow going. My head was fuzzy and there were very few birds of interest around. Lots of common birds, plenty of fledgeling linnets and meadow pipits and the like, but nothing to raise the pulse so I settled down for the sort of seawatch that had potential to turn into a snooze.

This was also pretty unspectacular, with nothing more than a lone puffin amongst the auk traffic of note. All of a sudden though my attention was taken by a large melee of feeding gannets and kittiwakes, tightly focussed on a particular patch of the sea. They had cetacean written all over them and after about ten minutes I got my first hint of what might be under the water.

I was fully expecting Minke whale...so I was pretty surprised to see a tall and bushy blow that was obvious even over the 3km+ range that it was at. At first I didn't really believe my eyes, but about 5 minutes later it blew again. All the while the hundreds of birds at the surface plunged and dipped, and the dark shapes of skuas could be made out as they harried at the other birds. All pretty spectacular stuff, had it not been so far away!

About ten minutes later I got my first look at the thing...and it was BIG. I'm pretty familiar with minkes, having seen hundreds of them at work (I was at work, not the whales of course) and it was easily a lot bigger than the biggest minke I've seen. I did see the fin, but the distances involved and the brevity of the views mean that I can't really say anything about it other than it was small.

Unfortunately, that was all I got on it. After about thirty minutes the swarm of seabirds vanished and I was left aimlessly scanning the horizon in hope of seeing it again.

It'll definitely go down as one that got away, but I'm reasonably confident it was a humpback. There was one not a million miles away a week ago, and it transpires that there have been other sightings as well. A cetacean considered to be a northern bottlenose whale was off Donmouth on monday, and there was another report of a possible humpback this evening from the battery!

With calm seas tomorrow it's going to be well worth a look out to sea again!

and another...

2011-06-01T08:51:00.005+01:00

Another summarising, catchy uppy kind of post as there's been nothing of late that has inspired me to put finger to keyboard. Late May has, to be honest, been a little disappointing...a sentiment that may well be mirrored all the way down the east coast. Obviously the weather has not helped, but I've heard rumours of certain things that might be regarded as standard late May fare being a bit later than usual, so perhaps, if the weather turns, we might still get a fall of red-backed shrikes and marsh warblers.

Not that any of that is any use to me as by the end ofthe week I'll be offshore. Well...not much use to my patch list, anyway...I suppose if I was going to dig out a marsh warbler it might be a little easier on a boat than it would on the south bank!

So what have I been seeing then...

Seabirds mainly...it's all been about the black and white, with my first black guillemot, puffin, velvet scoter and manxies making there ways onto the list. There's also been a little bit of wader passage, involving dunlins, whimbrel, and what are presumably tundra ringed plovers.

It's been so dull I've even resorted to looking at dark billed common terns...and...dare I mention it again, a yellowy billed and very yellow legged eider...

The eiders in the top photo have 'normal' bare part colouration. The eider standing in the second one has bare parts that are much yellower than the others. The bill is not remarkably yellow...but is definitely at the yellowest end of the variation we see around here. Unfortunately we don't get to see the legs as often as the bill, but these pins are definitely yellower than most. I'm sure you'll agree, this renders the bird in the second photo 'interesting'...

These ringos were small, dark, and part of a small flock of 7 (along with 10 dunlin) that appeared on the shore in front of Inverdee house. All other recent ringo action at the ness has involved birds in potential breeding areas such as Greyhope or Nigg bay. I'm inclined to think that these birds were passing through and were perhaps tundra ringed plovers.

And these were some of the dunlin they were with. I'm not going to try to ID them to subspecies as I'm not clued up enough on the variations within subspecies. The general tone of the upperparts and sparseness of the chest streaking on the top bird made it stand out from those around it.

Blimey....an update

2011-05-17T21:55:00.002+01:00

Hmmmm...why no updates since the 30th March? Well, to be honest, I got a bit bored of the whole blogging thing. It can be quite tedious trying to write interesting stuff day in day out, especially when there is nothing going on!

As well as that, I've been offshore for a wee while, so that period was under strict censorship. I also had a lovely holiday in Bruges, taking in all the fairytale buildings, swans and beer. My first non birding holiday (but hopefully my last for a while...)

So whats been happening at the ness? Well, in a word, spring! It's been a bumper year for some species, such as whitethroat, but numbers of other breeding species (such as chiffchaff and reed bunting seem to be down). The breeding season is in full effect and the first fledglings are out and about, with young pied wagtail and blackbird at the battery the other day.

Some girdleness spring fare.

It's also been a pretty good spring for migrants. Spring at the ness can more often than not be a slow event, with more unusual migrants being few and far between. I'm not even talking rarities here...apart from white wag and lesser whitethroat none of the 'common migrants' appear with any regularity. This year though has seen at least 2 garden warblers, a lesser whitethroat (although I didn't see that), a couple of white wags, a whinchat, and best of all, singles of tree pipit (only my second ever on patch!) and a reed warbler (my first ever spring bird anywhere in Scotland I think)

White wag showing all the right bits.

And this is the best pic of the tree pipit I could manage.

All this has left me on 80 species, which is well short of where I was at this time last year, but probably well in line with where I've been in other years.

The rest of may will be spent patching, but after that I'll be offshore for june. The forecast is not looking particularly exciting for the rest of May though....

Southerly

2011-03-30T17:09:00.002+01:00

A very southerly feel to todays birding trip to Teesside. Not only was it warm, but the main highlights were 35 avocet, a couple of little egret, and brief views of a singing Cettis warbler at Doormans pool. These were all ably supported by a cast including a few pinkfeet and barnacle geese (of dubious origin?), ruff, plenty of pintail, a confiding weasel, and my first wheatear of the spring. 20 years ago I used to visit the north Tees marshes regularly with my Dad. Back in those days, if you'd told me I was going to go down there and see avocet, little egret and Cetti's, I'd have bitten your arm off! Not litterally, of course.

Up on the moors

2011-03-29T19:37:00.004+01:00

Local Durham birding over the last few days has provided interest in the various forms of a oddly fast singing chiffchaff (nothing out of the ordinary, just sporadically singing in a rather hectic fashion), another glimpse of the 'strongly collared' jackdaw, and most enjoyable, a nuthatch watched gathering mud and smearing it around the entrance of its nest hole.

A trip up to the moors was todays activity, with a walk above the pretty little village of Blanchlands. Spring was well and truly sprung up there, with meadow pipits parachuting all over the place, and lots of noise from curlews, lapwings and the odd snipe. Lower down in the valley there were grey wagtails and goosanders pairing up, dippers on the streams, and a lone fieldfare. I was wandering if this was a little late for these, but apparently they are up on the Durham moors in flocks of several hundred until mid April, so this is completely unremarkable!

And of course there were plenty of grouse on show as well. They were being very vocal and appeared to be favouring areas of short growth that looked like they might have been burned in the last year or so. Luckily for the camera they were nice and approachable, too.

The males were looking pretty special, as they strutted around in the open, with their wattles looking incredibly bright at times. Look at the difference between the top bird and the bottom two pictures (of the same bird). On the bottom bird the eye ring is much stronger, and there are prominant 'moustacial marks' as well. Whats all this about? Is it age related, merely a function of the lower bird having more developed breeding plumage, or is it something to do with the 'masculinity' of the bird? Something to look into I think.

Much subtler, but equally as attractive. were the females.

The end of an era...

2011-03-28T09:14:00.004+01:00

I'm in Durham at the moment after an unplanned period of shore leave due to good weather!

While in Durham, it's always a pleasure catching up with old hunting grounds such as Brasside pond and Flass vale, and it's even more of a pleasure catching up with species that would cause a major stir if they turned up at the ness, or elsewhere in the north east of Scotland, such as nuthatch or willow tit.

My notebook has been busy over the last few days, more notable scribblings including a handsome drake pintail at Boldon flats, sand martins and chiffchaffs at various locations, and the aforementioned nuthatches, willow tits, yellowhammers, bullfinches etc all within a short walk from the house, and stock doves and treecreepers in the garden (where, incidently, I saw a 'strongly collared' jackdaw the other day....one to keep an eye out for)

And it's these additions to my notebook that signify the end of an era. It is now bulging under the weight of a few too many 'eiders with sails' and other nonsense, and it is now time to retire this particular black and red. It has, after all, seen better days.

Note the selotape keeping it all together!. The girly hairband is not to enhance the structural integrity of the whole thing, but simply so I know where my pencil is at all times. I must confess that there were long periods when my notebook saw little action. This particular one has been on the go since October 2008, but until spring 2010, I only used it when on holiday or birding somewhere a little different.

Perhaps it would have lasted a little bit longer if I hadn't been taking such extensive notes...

Bottlenose

2011-03-03T14:48:00.004Z

Spring happened in Aberdeen while I was away. I have come back to relative warmth, sunshine all sorts of birdsong and territorial behaviour, the flowers are out and the promise of migrants is just around the corner.

Of course there were no 'real' migs at the ness today...that sort of thing is a few weeks away at least. Birds were very evident though...Rock pipits were holding territory, and even gathering nest material, eiders were cooing, and generally things were active and out in the open. Even the Torry Glauc put in an appearance at the right end of the harbour, making it onto my 2km patch list for the year, along with fulmar, skylark and pied wagtail.

The bottle-nose dolphins stole the show today though...with 3 small groups feeding very close in shore. Occasionally they were breaching clean out of the water, which had all of the dog walkers and even the council re-cycling van stopping to have a butchers. One group contained a young animal, which stuck out like a sore thumb with it's tiny dorsal fin and really pale colour compared to the others in the group.

52 Glaucous gull

53 Fulmar

54 Pied wagtail

55 Skylark

43.20%

last day in Norwegian waters

2011-03-03T08:45:00.003Z

I'm writing this from the comfort of my own flat, with the kind of fuzzy head that usually endures the first morning back at home, and looking forward to getting back to a couple of weeks worth of patching before heading off for another month at sea. No rest for the wicked they say...which means I must be quite a nice boy cos I've got two weeks off.

The last day at sea was spent surveying by myself as my colleague had the most crippling toothache and was ordered from the bridge with a cocktail of painkillers. It was pretty much as unremarkable as the rest of the month, with a couple of little auks providing the most interest bird wise. Luckily, (and eventually!) there was some cetacean interest though, as 4 white-beaked dolphins joined us and endulged in a little bow riding for half an hour or so.

Oh yes....regular reader(s?) might remember that I speculated about the price of beer in Bergen a few posts back. Well. 160 Norwegian Kroner would get you very, very little change from a £20 note....or two beers in Bergen. Not even pints, either. No wonder they're all so slim and healthy looking.

A break in the weather

2011-02-26T20:26:00.004Z

A break from the howling wind brought us the best day we've had for survey by far this month...only to be hampered on and off by thick banks of fog. We were also disrupted by having to stop every 30 minutes or so to put something or other expensive in the water. Luckily, birds like things going in the water and they often come over and have a look at whats happening.

Gannets especially like a bit of that sort of thing and they put on a fantastic show as they plunged into the water around the boat. Watching them do this is great, but you only really get a feel for the speed they hit the water when you are trying to get shots of them. I got lucky.

Its not amazingly sharp (the focus I mean..) but I think it captures the moment.

Star of todays show was a sooty shearwater that arrived at one such stop and was still with us two hours later. If the light was a bit better I'd have got some decent shots.... It was showing a wee bit of moult in the secondaries, which probably means something...but I don't know what.

Yellow legged herring gull

2011-02-26T20:13:00.003Z

Well yellowish, anyway...perhaps a more peachy orangey colour. Not particularly evident on the first picture but much more so in the second, and really striking in the field.

This bird was pretty pale over all suggesting a Baltic bird, but the large amount of white in the wingtip, coupled with only the most piffling thin black band on P5 hint towards a more northern scandinavian origin. Perhaps it's a new species? Swelms gull?

Utsira

2011-02-25T11:02:00.003Z

Utsira, Norways legendary rarity island, is a place I've always wanted to see. And, well, I can just about see it....

Rock pipits

2011-02-25T09:22:00.003Z

As I'm still twiddling my thumbs somewhat whilst bobbing about off the Norwegian coast, I thought I'd put some bad photos of rock pipits on the old blog. Sorry Col...no Ross's yet...

This discussion on Bickerforum highlighted one or two things...the difficulties that can sometimes arise when IDing birds from photos, monitor issues, and perhaps most pertinent, the fact that we tend to ignore some common, 'boring' species....summed up rather neatly by Paul French when he said "I think most people spend too little time looking at pipits on the east coast in winter. Why would you when there are harriers and wildfowl and lots of other delights on offer?"

Well, unfortunately at Girdle ness we don't get harriers, and the only winter wildfowl of any note are eiders with sails, and they've been done to death already. So yep, sometimes I do resort to looking at rock pipits. I've been interested in the number of littoralis birds moving through in the spring so I thought I'd try and clue up on late winter petrosus birds first. Well...I say petrosus but really that is just an assumption based on the fact that there is a pretty healthy breeding population at the ness, and that the habitat is not really right for an overwintering littoralis.

I found that Rockits are actually really quite variable...with differences occuring in the degree of flank streaking, the amount of yellow in the bill, ground colour, prominance of wing bars and supercilium, and many other areas. I also found that your view of the bird can quite profoundly affect its appearance. Some birds appear to have quite striking supercilia head on, which then vanish when the bird is in profile. Others appear to have thick merging flank streaks which narrow when the bird stretches forward or stands alert. One of the most striking things was how my appreciation of the overall colour of the bird changed depending on its background. A dark and grey looking individual on grass will look a lot warmer and brown on rocks.

These two rockits below were photographed (badly) in January a few years ago...the two pics were taken on the same settings, less than a minute apart.

A 'normal' dark grey one below (it's what they most look like, especially in the gloom of a typical Aberdeen winters day) with a much paler bird above. Perhaps some littoralis can be separated from petrosus in winter, and that might be what this bird is. Or maybe it's just a pale and well marked resident bird?

P5 variation in some Norwegian Herring gulls

2011-02-20T20:22:00.004Z

With all the Herring gulls loitering close to the boat at the moment, and with a real lack of anything else to do, I've been able to have a look at some wing tip variation in adult birds. Each primary can show different patterning from bird to bird, giving some birds reasonably dark wingtips, some fairly white ones, and others a kind of common gull look, with a substantial white mirror surrounded by black.

There is a lot of variation in the length of the tongues on Ps 7 and 8, and the amount of white in Ps 9 and 10, but one of the most notable (because it's easier to see?) points where these gulls differ from one another is in the amount and shape of black on P5.

I know some 'normal people' occaisionally look at this, so for their benefit (if they've managed to get this far even), take the outermost feather at the wingtip (which is P10) and count inwards from there. When you get to 5, thats P5!

At the 'unmarked' end of the scale, this bird has a clear P5, with only a narrow band on P6.

Just a small spot on the outer web of P5 here. In most birds with black markings on both webs of P5, the outer web is the more well marked.

But just t0 prove that is not always the case, this one has a pretty evenly narrow greyish band. The next two both have more substantial marks on the outer webs.

The bird above also has some dark markings on the bill, above the red of the gonys...which seems a little strange in an adult.

Again, a narrow black band across P5 with more black on the outer web. Note the greyish spot on the outer web of P4 though.

And at the other end of the scale, you get these birds with really bold, broad bars across the tips of P5...the rest of the birds shown here were randomly photographed and examined later, but this sort of P5 bar is pretty easily seen in the field....at least when the bird is pretty close to you.

So what does it all mean then? Well, you could speculate that the unmarked birds are northern Scandos and the ones with well marked P5s are from the Baltic. But I'm sure it's not as simple as that, and where would that leave all the intermediate ones?

I'm not going to speculate anything. I'm just going to keep looking out for a 'marsh' gull!

gulls gulls gulls

2011-02-20T14:57:00.006Z

Some of todays trawl attendees. As you can see, gulls were dominant today, with gannet numbers being very low and fulmars taking even more of a back seat than usual. It's possibly somthing to do with us being further south and much closer to shore...but the much smaller catches from this area might have something to do with it as well. Unfortunately we only had the 4 expected species of gulls, but a group of three little auks also put in a brief appearance between stations.

There's a pretty bewildering variety of primary patterns among the adult herring gulls out here. Some have very large amounts of white at the tips of Ps 10 and 9, and others look very like standard argenteus birds. P5s are also showing a large amount of variation, going from unmarked on some birds, to others having complete and reasonably broad black bands across the tip. If the weather continues to frustrate this might even get a post to itself!

Gale force 9

2011-02-19T14:15:00.005Z

Dont you just love gale force 9? It makes surveying birds very difficult, and in some circumstances, it can make your tea fall over as well. Since we left Bergen on Tuesday the weather has hampered most of our efforts to do any work, which has become a little tedious really...especially with not a lot of better weather being forecast.

As a consequence of all this, I have seen very few birds of note. We are constantly tailed by gannets and fulmars, and at the trawls there can be upward of 1000 birds constantly wheeling around the boat, in search of 'junk food'. A flock of large gulls has also accumulated over the last few days but again, it holds nothing other than herrings and GBs. It might be of minor interest to you that somewhere between 5 and 10% of our attending fulmars are 'blue' or have some 'blue' in them....and that all (well, apart from 2 birds) of our gannets are adults.

The good thing about having these birds in such proximity of course is that there are plenty of photo opportunities....

To say that we have seen nothing would be slightly misleading though...the other day I got a millisecond glimpse of a phalarope that had to be a grey, but I just couldn't get enough on it.

And on leaving Bergen the other day, we chugged through several hours worth of fjords, which was pretty to look at, and also gave up 4 different white-tailed eagles. Two of these birds put on a rather spectacular display when they jumped a great black-backed gull and robbed a freshly grabbed fish from it. I've never seen a GB looking weedy before, but this one was dwarfed by the two eagles (one of which was a nice white tailed adult) that were harrasing it.

Things to do in Bergen when you're bored...

2011-02-14T16:25:00.004Z

I've had the pleasure of a few days in Bergen due to some ferocious weather in the North Sea recently. It's a pretty town, having the cheery confidence of a pretty girl effortlessly flitting from Norwegian to English and back. Or something. Fuck me it's expensive, as well! I've not been out for a pint yet but I suspect that these £8 for a beer rumours have some substance to them....

There are a few nice spots within easy walking distance of the harbour, too. From the very centre of the town you can take a fenicular(?) railway up the hillside to a viewpoint at the top. Up there, you are among forests and there is probably potential for some decent birding if you have the time. We didn't see an awful lot to be honest....a few jays, siskin, willow tit, and loads of bullfinches the size of goshawks, but if you had a day to kill and could wonder off into the woods who knows what you might come up with...black woodpecker, Tengmalms owl, Arctic redpoll???

There is also a marina that has been home to a ring-billed gull for the last 18 winters. I took a stroll over there yesterday to find it completely frozen over with a big flock of common gulls plonked right in the middle of the ice...much too far away for me to pick up anything throuth my bins. It's the sort of place that I should imagine, ice free, would hold a few sea ducks and slav grebe. I had to make do with flyovers of raven, peregrine and sparrowhawk.

In the middle of town there is a park with a large pond, which also no doubt holds the odd duck when it's not iced over...I saw a goosander heading that way this morning. It does offer opportunities for extreme larophilia if that is your bag though...especially if you're into common gulls

I guess the only thing that remains is to go and see if those beer price rumours are really true!

I am sailing....

2011-02-10T19:58:00.004Z

...around in the north sea, and I've just remembered that this time, I can blog about it! for a change, I'm on a bottom trawl, and I'm a bit further north than usual as well.

We set off from Bergen the other day (no birds in Bergen) and set sail southward for Hanstholm in Denmark, where we were to take advantage of some cheap fuel. Of course, there was a bit of spotting on the way down but we were passing through an extremely quite section of the north sea so I have nothing more lively than a few little auks to report.

We made Hanstholm last night and immediately there was the usual mad dash to find the pub. We eventually found one (full of smokers, which was a bit of a blast from the past) in a shopping centre, and there I got to watch England v Denmark, in Denmark, with Norwegians. Slightly strange but great fun all the same.

Up with the fuzzy headed lark this morning to try to take advantage of a few hours of daylight on Danish soil. There was a cold and drizzly wind blowing which made birding a bit awkward but I found some shelter among some conifers and eventually the birds began to reveal themselves. There was nothing remarkable, but among the great tits I had tree sparrow, a nice grey backed coal tit, and best of all, a churring crested tit or two.

At lunchtime we set off again for the wilds of the northern north sea, and for a while it looked like it was going to be an interesting run. Just outside Hanstholm harbour we had a load of red-throated diver, a blackthroat, and a common scoter. Thing tailed off pretty quickly though and we spent the next 150 minutes noting nothing more than a single GBBG!

Here's some pretty pictures. First up, a blue fulmar. I love these things...they just look so...rare!

Patch update

2011-02-02T20:30:00.002Z

It's been horrifically slowgoing down the ness over the last few days. I've added 4 species, which has taken me on to 51 in total.

48 Jackdaw
49 Goldeneye
50 Long tailed duck
51 Gannet

40.06%

Take a look at the new links on the other side over there as well. I'm now involved in two different patch list challenges, (same patch, slightly different rules) which now both have their own websites. Isn't the internet a wonderful thing?!

Them foreign jackdaws

2011-01-31T21:38:00.004Z

Them foreign jackdaws eh? I wonder how many of them we get over here. The boffins at RIACT consider them to be scarce but under recorded (or at least words to that effect) and I reckon they've probably got the second part just spot on. I mean, who looks at jackdaws? Specifically, who looks at jackdaws on the off chance that they'll pick out a subspecies that may or may not be identifiable and is, after all, only a subspecies.

I certainly don't. Most of the time. But sometimes the birds come to you, as this strongly collared jackdaw did in Durham while I was eating my toast one morning. My first view of it was as it swooped over the garden and even on that kind of view it's collar was very obvious. Unfortunately the camera just couldn't do this bird justice as the only prolonged views I got were when it was sitting high up in a tree, practically silhouetted. Even so, here are the photos.

At one point this bird sat with a far more 'normal' jackdaw although that was unfortunately out of photo range. In comparison, it appeared to be paler on the ear coverts and the nape, and seemed marginally paler on the underparts...this last feature was definitely not apparent when the bird was perched by itself, although there did seem to be a bit more contrast between the black of the primaries and the slate grey of the belly.

There's some really good stuff on the different subspecies of jackdaws here and on reading this, I reckon it looks like a candidate monedula bird, a scando or Nordic jackdaw. Probably not severe enough to call it a soemmeringii, but definitely an interesting bird.

I wonder what some thorough searching through jackdaw flocks would turn up. Possibly not all that much, as many monedula birds do not show pale collars and therefore wouldn't stand out from the crowd. It would be interesting to see if an un-collared bird could be picked out from a flock of spermologus though. Wouldn't it?

Durham, last week

2011-01-31T21:16:00.003Z

Took the opportunity to have some time at home last week, which was mainly a medley of shopping, eating and more shopping, but there were opportunities here and there between the courses to have a little bird spotting fun.

The main one was a trip to Rainton Meadows to have a look at the redpoll flock that's been hanging around. There were about 40 redpoll on view at the feeders on and off, including some very obvious lessers, some very obvious mealies, and a couple of birds that, had they showed a bit better, would probably have turned out to be Coues. One bird especially had a broad white rump and the typical 'fluffed' (oooerrr!) appearance but it buggered off before I could get a real good view of the undertail coverts or head and bill structure. The flock was jumpier than I expected it to be, considering the photos that have been doing the rounds....I guess the scope would have been handy!

Not too disappointing really as it was a very educational trip, and what a cracking little place rainton meadows is as well. Feeders all over the place, tame birds to be enjoyed by all, lots of very pleasant people enjoying the place and a flock of rare redpolls to boot! And to cap it all, three hot chocolates and two tunnocks tea cakes for £2.90. Now that is value!

Willow tits are pretty easy to come by there...so I made the most of them while they were available.

And is there a better looking bird out there?

local celebrity

2011-01-20T15:45:00.002Z

I went down the street this afternoon to try and get some shots of the local celebrity. For the second time, I failed to attract it to bread. I did manage to attract the attention of a few Torryites though, who were suitably astonished that I would want to take pictures of seagulls!

Before all that, I had my usual morning jaunt around the ness.

Numbers of relocating pink-footed geese had dropped considerably, leaving me to concentrate on other things. It was all a bit quiet until I got to Nigg bay, where I picked up the old (or equally feasibly, spotted a completely new) great crested grebe. Shortly after that, I had a distant flock of 13 snow bunting wheeling round the hillside on the other side of the railway line, looking pretty reluctant to land. To finish off I kicked up a Woodcock from the cover around the sewage works....probably a remnant from the december cold spell that found the smell to its liking.

44 Great crested grebe

45 Grey heron

46 Snow bunting

47 Woodcock

36.91%

Quite possibly one that got away...

2011-01-19T14:52:00.002Z

I've had three trips doon the ness over the last few days and they've all been pretty fruitless...8 sanderling being the best of it really, sanderling are much more of a summer bird here. I guess the main feature, over the last two days at least, has been the northerly movement of pink footed geese. A more 'purposeful' birder would no doubt have endeavoured to count these, or at least document them in some way....I however have been scanning them as they pass over in the hope that they reveal something rare.

And today that almost worked. As large skein number 7 or 8 passed over, I picked out what initially looked to be a white goose. A momentary lapse in concentration had me reaching for the camera before I got the bins back on it and actually had a good look. My initial thoughts were of snow goose, but this thing was off white (as opposed to gleaming white) and had a considerable amount of dark grey in the secondaries as well as the primaries (which were also dark grey and not black). It could well have been a first winter white phase, but with the views I was getting it would have been impossible to rule out any number of ganky hybrids. All this has proved to be a little frustrating as I've been looking at every close enough pinky flock in search of a snow goose for ages now...I guess I'll just have to put it down as a 'potential' snow goose. Certainly not a probable and possibly not even a possible...

So, three trips in and 43 species on the list....

33.77%

First post of 11

2011-01-18T08:25:00.003Z

Having been in North Sea blog exile over the festive period it was nice to have an interesting afternoon in Durham to get back into the swing of real birding, in the company of the old man! Aykley heads was the destination, a stomping ground from my youth, and sporadic kingfisher site. More recently it has become a little better known as the site for a wintering hoopoe that sadly popped it's clogs during the december big freeze.

First bird of note was a couple of willow tit...nothing special I guess but a once a bird year for me really...and an excellent opportunity to re-familiarise myself with its various calls.

And then it went a little bit wierd! As we skirted the woods, I noticed a raptor sitting in clear view on a branch. It didn't look like a buzzard, but that was what it had to be, wasn't it? Up went the bins, onto the unmistakable form of a Harris hawk! The illusion was shattered somewhat when it tumbled from the branch, jingling and jangling on its way. There was a bloke wandering through the woods pretty close to the bird but I can't be sure whether it was his bird or not.

And now more bulfinch related nonsense! A flock of 5 or 6 went over, giving some rather atypical urgent calls. One of the birds landed in a hedge pretty close to us, a female, looking perfectly normal. From within the 5 or so metres though we could here this bird start to give the quietest of songs. The song reminded me of that of a song thrush, with a series of repeated phrases, many of them made up by notes similar to the call note. Even from our close up position, we had to listen hard to hear this bird. There were times when it was obviously singing as we could see it's throat pumping clearly, yet we could hear nothing.

Apparently both sexes sing throughout the year, (although females sing less) and persue sexual activity for the dutation as well. There are two song types, 'directed' and 'undirected', with directed song being the quieter and almost certainly the one we were hearing. The directed song is given as part of the courtship display....but I guess the other bullfinch would have to be pretty close already for this to have any sort of effect.

Bullfinch revisited…

2010-12-23T15:57:00.005Z

Lindsay Cargills ‘trumpeting’ bullfinch in Aberdeen recently prompted me to have another look at the birds I had at Nigg bay not too long ago. While mine showed a few characteristics that might have favoured ‘Northern’, they were certainly not the big, hulking, tooting birds that Linday had!

I speculated that my birds may have been Northern on the basis of a few features. Most notable (and noticeable) was the saw toothed upper edge to the greater covert bar, a feature listed by Van Duivendijk for Northern birds. I also noted the amount of white in the primaries as being consistent with Northerns ringed on Shetland during invasion years, and a white ‘lozenge’ in the undertail.

The lack of bulk and tooting call was niggling me though and I was never really venturing any further than ‘possible possible’ Northern bullfinch.

Reference to two recent articles (Martin Garners birdguides article and one in the last Birding World, written by someone whose name I’ve forgotten!) has led me to rethink my position on this and now I’m pretty sure they were British birds.

Eliminating Northern

Apart from the obvious size and call issues (although not all Northerns are trumpeting birds), there is actually very little to support the ID of these birds as Northerns. The white in the primaries can vary in British birds and they can show as much white at the emarginations as Northerns do. Also, the white lozenge in the tail appears as frequently in male British birds as it does in male Northerns so no help there either! I sometimes think that the birds in my pictures have ‘pastel’ tones but I think this may just be a trick of the light. I certainly didn’t notice anything like that in the field.

One feature evident in the pics is the primary projection. Northern birds should have long primaries, roughly equalling the length of the exposed tertials…whereas the primary projection of my bird is clearly less than this, being not much over ¾ length. I have a photo that I have drawn some rather nifty lines on to illustrate this, but for some reason I can't get it onto the post....

Eliminating cassini

These east Siberian Bullys are supposed to have the most significant ‘saw toothing’ on the greater covert bar and are also said to call more or less like British birds do. Males also have the white tail lozenge with greater frequency too. Yet again though, the lack of bulk and primary projection suggests a British bullfinch. Also I think the greater covert bar is too narrow on my bird, as cassini has the widest bar here, apparently wider even than on a ‘normal Northern’. I think the final nail in the ‘interesting’ coffin is that British bullys can occasionally show this saw toothed greater covert bar as well.

So the verdict is that my bird is nothing more than a rather handsome male British bullfinch.

The end of the patch year

2010-12-17T15:43:00.003Z

Today marked the end of my patch birding year, as I'll soon be heading back to my other life, as an offshore surveyor until mid January. It seems that all of my efforts have been in vain as my percentage is not quite high enough to take first place, but it's been hugely enjoyable working the ness more than I ever have before. My final total is 136 species, which is a whole 11 more than my previous highest total....there are a few reasons why I managed such a (relatively) high total, but, lucky old you, they get a blog post all to themselves!

So the year ended with no new additions but not without a pleasant surprise. A brief seawatch (there's only a certain amount of sitting in the snow I can take!) was timed to perfection as a 1st year pomarine skua went sedately north past the foghorn. Also offshore was a group of six buntings heading south. They seemed pretty featureless so I'll never know what they were but the jizz was screaming lapland bunting.

Gulls were the main feature today. The harbour was full of herring gulls, including a few large and dark backed argentatus types. On the other side of the ness, in Nigg bay, I managed to conplete a count of the common gulls and came away with a massive 1800 birds!

I reckon I'll be missing out on a bit more hard weather action over the next few days. Already there are 11 lapwing in Nigg bay and I flushed 4 snipe up from the beach there. Who knows what'll turn up during this next cold snap.

I'll leave you with a few piccies from the ness this year...

Whiteout

2010-12-16T16:40:00.003Z

A whiteout which reduced visibility to about 50 metres sent me packing from the ness today, even though I was only about half way round. I was hoping that there might be a few things on the move, with the renewed cold weather, and I suppose there were! A mistle thrush flew north through Nigg bay towards Torry, and 8 lapwings were roosting on the shore here.

It was while I was sifting through a large flock of gulls on the water in Nigg bay that the snow really came on strong. Which was a shame really as I was enjoying counting the common gulls and looking at the variation between birds. I got to about 530 when I had to stop but there were well in excess of 1000 common gulls present. Head patterns seemed to vary the most, some birds having completely unmarked heads, some with strongly marked shawls, some with coarse head markings (particularly around the eye), and one bird (which was marginally darker backed than the others) that had tiny, neat grey streaks that were evenly distributed across the head, giving a 'hooded' effect. It was really quite striking but unfortunately the snow came on thick and fast while I was watching it and it vanished into the blizzard.

I'll have a look out for it tomorrow, which will be my last patch trip of the year as I'm back offshore over christmas and the new year. My liver and my bank balance are breathing a huge sigh of relief!

On Redstarts with white secondaries...

2010-12-12T21:44:00.004Z

A highly relevant topic for December I think you'll agree.....

There's been a fair amount of fuss about female type or first year redstarts with whitish wing panels in recent autumns. I seem to remember seeing a few myself in the autumn of 2008. They're fascinating, but not particularly striking birds to be honest, and I must admit that I wrote them off as being within the variation of normal common redstarts.

A little more striking are apparent adult male common redstarts showing a strong white wing panel in spring, and I've had the good fortune to come across two of these birds. The first was on April 17th, 2004, near the pretty little french village of Morlaas. Unfortunately I was not in a position to get any pictures, but from my notes 'it had a prominant white wing patch which in flight showed as a secondary wing bar'. Other than that, it looked pretty standard for a phoenicurus common redstart. I remember becoming tremendously excited about this as I thought I'd found something pretty rare...but at the same time I must have been a little dubious as I also noted in my little 'black n red' ...'a spring record (of samamisicus) in the south west of France seems extremely unlikely'....

I did a little homework on this and found out that there are examples of phoenicurus common redstarts that show this white wing panel, most often fond around the baltic. Not particularly close to SW France, but in existence none the less.

Fast forward then to (rather spookily) to the 18th of April 2010, half way up a hill behind Bilbao, probably within 200 miles of the above records location. Sifting through a very pleasant selection of migrants, this little cracker showed up...

Thanks to Davy Still for the photo.

With a bit of imagination and/or a magnifying glass you can see that this redstart has a humungous white wing patch. Unfortunately it was a bit distant and views were too brief to really have a good look at this, but there was nothing to suggest that this was anything other than a phoenicurus redstart with a wing panel.

So what does this mean in the grand scheme of things? Sod all, I guess, other than perhaps these 'white winged' redstarts are a little more numerous than we think they are, especially perhaps on the continent. What it might highlight though is that claims of samamisicus redstart have to be completely bullet proof if they're ever going to be accepted. While I fully believe that redstarts can and do come this far from the middle east, it's just as likely that one of these white winged birds could cross the channel as well.

I'd love to see one over here!

2010-12-09T14:13:00.003Z

Girdle ness was much, much quieter today, as despite appearances, it seems that the thaw (that I mentioned quite a few posts ago!) has finally set in. No geese or woodpigeons passing over, and many fewer woodcock and snipe throughout. Most noteable today were 3 buzzards circling together over the hill behind the sewage works...the most I've seen here together.

Before hitting the ness today I headed towards the docks and Victoria bridge with a bag of bread. I was hoping to get some decent shots of the glaucous gull thats been hanging around....but even though it had chosen the bakery roof to perch on it certainly showed no interest in my granary loaf. As has already been mentioned this is not a massive brute of a bird, and I don't think I've ever seen one with such a dainty and short bill, either, so I would agree that the chances are strong that this bird is a female.

More of the usual suspects

2010-12-08T14:25:00.004Z

Woodpigeon, woodcock, lapwing and pinkfoot all very much in evidence today....especially woodcock, with a pretty conservative count of 11 birds around the ness. Much the same as the last few days really, although there were a couple of pleasant surprises this morning.

First up was a bunch of 25 (ish) snow bunting that flew south over Nigg bay, stopping briefly in the newly planted patch before being put up by a dog walker. A single snob was also heard in (or probably over) Nigg bay.

The main prize today was a tufted duck lingering with a small bunch of eider in the harbour, very probably the same bird as Andrew had earlier in the week and further down the river. Tufty is one of those common birds that are actually really tricky at the ness...they're near annual I suppose, and this one was a very welcome addition to the patch year list.

And while I'm on about additions to lists, this brambling was a great addition to the garden list this morning!

137 Tufted duck

110.93%

Northern Bullfinch?

2010-12-07T16:07:00.003Z

Bullfinch is a pretty rare bird at girdle ness, probably not even being recorded annually, so I was pretty chuffed to come across a group of 5 (4 males and a female) along the railway embankment this morning.

I must admit, on first impressions these were unremarkable looking birds (if it can ever be said that a male bullfinch looks unremarkable!) Size wise they looked pretty standard, they didn't strike me as looking particularly bright, and they sounded just like normal british pileata bullfinches. No trumpetting going on here!

Luckily one bird approached me and gave some great views for a few seconds before they all disappeared over to the other side of the embankment and out of sight. I thought I might have some decent shots so I had a look at the back of the screen and was astonished, on zooming in, to see a really 'saw toothed' greater covert bar. From reading about these things on mr Garners excellent blog I knew that this was a feature of pyrrhula or possibly even cassini, so I did a little homework when I got home and compared what I found to my pics.

What I found was that the birds I caught on camera at least show some features of 'Northern' bullfinch...take a look and see what you think.

The 'saw toothed' upper edge to the greater covert bar can be seen in the above two photos...this feature is formed by the white extending up the outer edges of the greater coverts. The 'Advanced bird ID guide' shows this as a feature of pyrrhula but a quick search on the net has shown that this feature is even more marked on my birds than on the majority of birds labelled as 'northern'. Garner suggests that this may be a feature of cassini birds, from eastern siberia!

There also seems to be a fair bit of white in the primaries on this bird. The 'British Birds' paper from January 2006 suggests that some pileata can show as much white in the wing as pyrrhula, but an extreme bit of zooming shows that this bird has similar amounts of white in the wing to 'Northern' birds ringed on Shetland during invasion years. This bird shows whole leading edge of p2 is white, with some white on the outer webs of p3 - p6, starting at the emarginations.

And finally, the horrible (sorry!) picture above shows that this individual (which I'm pretty sure is the same one as in the other photos) has got some white in the undertail. While this can be present in pileata birds it is more prevelant in pyrrhula.

I'm not at all certain that this bird was a 'Northern' bullfinch...it certainly lacked the 'presence' that these birds are said to have, so if you have any thoughts or advice please leave a comment!

Another cracking day

2010-12-07T15:24:00.003Z

Another crisp, sunny, but bitingly cold day down at the ness, with some birds of real patch quality putting in an appearance.

I wanted to check around the sewage works first of all, and despite trying to avoid the burn as much as I could, I still flushed a snipe and a jack snipe as I crossed by the football pitch.

It was clear that there was still a lot of birds on the move...again mainly pinkfeet and woodpigeons, but with a few other things thrown in for good measure. I have been scanning through the woodpigeon flocks as they pass over the last couple of days, in the hope that a stock dove would be tagging along with them....well, today was my lucky day as one of the first flocks had a lone bird battling to keep up at the end of the line. This is only my second patch record of this species but with 'extralimital' records from down the coast at Old Porty during this current cols spell, I figured it was on the cards.

All in all I counted 186 woodpigeons going north in about 90 mins this morning.

While I was still recovering from this adreniline rush (the joys of patch birding!) 2 bullfinches bounded over towards the sewage works...another patch year tick and another really tricky patch bird.

I headed towards where they landed, picking up 3 long tailed tit on the way (something like my 7th patch record) and by now it was all making me a little giddy! All the while there were woodcock and snipe all over the place...with 6 woodcock being noted in total.

When I arrived at the bullfinches I was rather surprised to find 5 birds there...a female and 4 cracking and vocal males. They were initially unremarkable, being standard in size and call, and not striking me as being particularly bright...but more to come on that.

Unfortunately the cold was playing havoc with my athsma, so after a brief seawatch (where 2 stonkingly sailed eiders were present off the foghorn) I called it a day. One final flurry for the notebook when a pinkfoot flock flew by revealing 3 greylags in the lead.

135 Stock dove

136 Bullfinch

110.12%!

movers and shakers

2010-12-06T17:09:00.005Z

First of all, the movers...a lot of birds seemingly re-locating as the thaw begins to set in. Most prominant were regular skeins of pink-footed geese going north. Also, there were plenty of lapwings on the move with a monster flock of 40 birds moving south over Nigg bay, and a regular northerly trickling of woodpigeons.

I managed to hoover up the 1st year glaucous gull by standing at the allotments and looking downstream. Unfortunately my eyes were not quite bionic enough to pick up the female tufted duck that was also reported down there today. What I did manage to pick up at various places were at least 6 woodcock and probably 20 snipe, mainly around the stream and the cover at the sewage works....which leads me nicely onto the shakers...

Among the snipes feeding and showing well along the nigg bay stream, there were at least three jack snipe. With a bit of patience they it was possible to get some fantastic views of what is often not much more than a short bill and a pointy tail fluttering out of sight.

133 Glaucous gull

134 Jack snipe

108.50%

seedeaters

2010-12-01T11:28:00.002Z

The decreasing wind made birding a little easier than yesterday...and as a result there was a light movement of 'seed eaters' apparent. There seemed to be reed buntings all over the place, with about 8 seen all in all, easily the most I've ever seen here. As well as these there were siskins over the sewage works, a few chaffinches here and there and a flock of about 15 skylarks went south.

Also on the move was a woodcock that whistled past me as I wandered past the allotments, taking its place on the patch year list in position 132! I don't think I've ever gone a year without picking up woodcock but I'd kind of written it off for this year. Despite smashing my previous best patch year list by 7 species, there are still a few things that I need that I've recorded in every other year. I guess none of them are out of the question but I'll not be holding my breath for sooty shearwater (although they are still out there in the north sea) merlin (it's always been a september/october bird) and perhaps most surprisingly, stonechat. I guess last years bitter winter did for our local stonechats, and as far as I know there has only been one seen at the ness all year, in the autumn so perhaps a migrant or young bird moving through. If things continue the way they are going this year it may well be a bit of bleak time for stonechats....and it may well be some time before we see them regularly at the ness again...

Not much out to sea....a little northerly movement including a few red-throated divers and long tailed ducks, and a single drake goldeneye.

132 woodcock

or 106.88%

Its good to be back...

2010-11-29T20:34:00.003Z

From the wind and bitter cold of the central north sea, to.... well, the wind and bitter cold of Aberdeen! There's over a foot of snow in some places and the hard weather has driven at least 20 chaffinchs into the garden.

Meanwhile, out in the wilds of girdle ness, the wind and snow made birding pretty difficult this afternoon. During the few moments that I could hold my binoculars still I managed to pick up a reed bunting on the south bank, a pair of wigeon hurtling southward, and most appropriate of all, a couple of snow bunting scrabbling around in the long grass by the club house. I tried a seawatch hoping that the strong onshore winds might blast a few little auks my way, but the only thing I got was a sore face, so I called it a day pretty sharpish. Hopefully tomorrows weather will be a little easier to deal with.

In it to win it...

2010-11-09T13:48:00.002Z

I am currently tied up in Sunderland docks, waiting for a weather window that would allow me to go and get some 'work' done. I've been watching the weather with interest, not only cos it will define the rest of my working week, but also because it's been howling an easterly for the last few days....and we all know that Autumn does not end until the middle of november these days.

Having spent a few days on board gazing out of the window at some really unpleasant conditions, I decided to make the most of a brief lull in the wind and rain early this afternoon. I remember thinking two things almost simultaneously as I was stepping off the boat....'yer not going to see anything out there' was almost immediately joined in my head by 'you've gotta be in it to win it'...so I jumped ashore with optimism and pessimism ringing round my head in equal measure.

And I guess the lesson here is this...While the optimist inside may not always get it right, it's always worth indulging, cos about 300 metres from the boat I kicked up a big pipit with a long and heavy tail. No sooner had I clapped eyes on it it let out a lovely 'schreeep' that confirmed my suspicions...a Richards pipit!

A very pleasant end to my autumn! Unless the north sea can deliver. But that will have to be my little secret I'm afraid.....

Sloppy blogging...

2010-11-09T13:40:00.002Z

...at the end of October has meant that this will have to be a very brief run down of what was going on. Before heading off to sea I got in on the waxwing invasion with small numbers in and around Torry, including a few birds in the garden every now and again. The garden also hosted bullfinch on the 25th. My initial impression of this bird was that it was quite big...but that may well have been down to wishful thinking as it called very typically for a standard bird.

The undoubted hightlight came on the morning of the 28th....a relatively quite seawatch was enlivened by a cracking (and really quite big) minke whale moving south about 750 metres off the foghorn. Also that day a little auk went north and a snow bunting called as it went over on its way south.

There were also shed loads of porpoises about and a fantastic display from our near resident bottlenose dolphins made for a bit of a cet fest.

The new blue...

2010-10-25T14:57:00.002+01:00

Yup, I have been birding today but it was desperately quiet. There was no sign of yesterdays Iceland gull, and there was pretty much no sign of anything else for that matter. By patch standards the best of it was a bunch of long-tailed tits (sadly, all rather dark headed) that was flitting through the gardens at the Torry side of Nigg bay.

A chance encounter with 'a birder who might wish to remain nameless as he was supposed to be working' prompted an interesting question though. Are bluetails the new bluethroats?

Well, 'obviously not' seems to be the obvious answer, but if the relative declines in one continue and the relative increases in the other do too, is it possible that we'll see a time when annual records of bluetails outnumber bluethroats?

Gone are the big spring falls of bluethroats that used to happen back in the days when birding was conducted in black and white. But I suppose with 29 different bluetails and birdguides showing 52 (give or take a few no doubt) bluethroats this year, Tarsiger still has a little bit of catching up to do.

I'm not sure if there has been a decline of bluethroats or a range contraction on the continent, which would explain why they have become less frequent...but the bluetails have undergone a pretty substantial population increase, at least at the western end of their range, which almost certainly accounts for the greater frequency with which they have been arriving here.

Now imagine if cracking breeding plumage red-flanked bluetails started to regularly turn up during the spring....

This week I have been mostly...

2010-10-21T15:19:00.002+01:00

...seawatching.

Usually after strong westerlies back round to a northerly blowing into the North sea, we can expect some decent seawatching up here. Unfortunately that has not been the case this week, and despite spending every morning this week gazing forth from the foghorn I haven't really managed to see very much at all. There is more of the same forecast for the weekend (as well as a days worth of easterlies...) so perhaps Sunday or Monday will be worth a long session. Maybe Monday actually....Sundays long session may well be curtailed by a long session of a very different nature on Saturday night....!

So here's a brief run down on the highlights....

2 snow buntings, or, equally possible, a snow bunting twice....over greyhope bay and off the south bank.

Seawatching produced 2 little auks yesterday, a pomarine skua today, a light passage of red-throated divers, my first few long-tailed ducks of the autumn, and a couple of velvet scoter with the eider flock. Also in the eider flock, if I can be permitted to mention it, was a female eider with strange pointy bits on her back.

In general movement was slow, with only small numbers of gannets and kittiwakes. The most numerous bird was common gull, by a counrty mile, with birds moving offshore and a substantial flock in Nigg bay today.

Seawatching was so slow at times I was reduced to scanning for colour ringed rock pipits at one point...with success...I got a bird with yellow over light green on its right leg and green on its left with a shiny metal one there too. Must pass this on!

A few additions to speak of then....

130 little auk
131 pomarine skua

106.07%

Eider with sails...

2010-10-15T16:06:00.003+01:00

An eider with sails at the ness today. Not a particularly uncommon occurance, and the sort of thing that has prompted many blog posts in the past! Apologies for harping on about this!

The presence of scapular sails in an indicator of 'borealis' eider, as well as other variable features such as bill colour, head shape and the shape and colour of the frontal processes. The size of the scapular sails is also variable (i've had birds at the ness with larger ones). I guess what I really would like to know is just how big these sails have to be, to be significant.

The reason this topic has returned to my blog is this: I reckon the scapular sails shown in the photo above are reasonably prominent. In Martin Garners excellent article on eider ID in 'Birding World' it says of these sails, and I quote, 'Any bird displaying such obvious ornamentation can normally be considered to have an Arctic or Nearctic origin'....but I have a real problem with this. Firstly I reckon we see too many of these to be 'vagrants'. Second, and more importantly, shortly after I got the image above, this bird climbed up out of the water and showed itself to be sporting a nice colour ring combination of white over red on its left leg. I haven't recieved any confirmation of this but I'd bet that it was ringed as a young bird or a breeder on the Ythan...which, despite being pretty northern and feeling it in the winter, is not in the Arctic!

It might just be the case that my interpretation of this is all wrong and these are actually not significantly large scapular sails....there were other features that were perhaps inconsistent with borealis too. The bill colour was well within the range for mollissima (although probably consistant with an eastern borealis as well) and there was no sign of a steeper forehead or squared off lower edge to the black crown. The frontal processes were narrow and as the bird was a full adult (see pure white tertials) were fully grown, which is a pro borealis feature.

With winter coming and little else to look at at the ness, there may well be more to come on this!

Steppe on....

2010-10-14T17:15:00.003+01:00

I managed to cadge a lift up the Steppe grey shrike at strathbeg this afternoon. As you can see it was showing well and with good light and some half decent kit, some really good photos would definitely be in the offing.

What a corking bird it was...really distinctive with it's whacking great pale bill, large primary patch, long primary projection, pale lores and generally pallid and dingey plumage. Like other steppers it was really quite confiding...at one point it bombed out of its tree and headed straight towards my head. I had visions of it landing there, a la the lincolnshire (??) bird of a few years ago, but unfortunately I had to make do with feeling the breeze from its wingbeat as it passed.

This is perhaps the last thing the poor dunnock it devoured was aware of, too. The sparrows, chaffs and tits were certainly aware of the threat it posed, surrounding it sometimes but approaching with caution!

red listed shrike food!

Torry versus Girdle ness

2010-10-13T10:46:00.002+01:00

As we've begun to realise, Torry is the place to be post fall. At the ness yesterday there were very few migrants left....a sprinkling of crests and a redstart (although a black redstart was seen by others). In Torry however, on the mound there were blackcap, 3 or 4 chiffchaff, and a few goldcrests, and later on from my window there were a few crests, 2+ blackcap, and most appropriately, a garden warbler.

This is what I reckon happens....

Birds make landfall (at the ness or elsewhere....perhaps even attracted to the lights of the harbour?) and immediately spend as much time as necessary recuperating and feeding. When rested or energy levels are restored, they then start to search for more suitable habitat. Wheatears, pipits and other ground dwelling stuff don't need to do this as they've already found what they're looking for, but blackcaps, chiffchaffs and crests would all rather find a bit more cover than the ness has to offer, so they move inland.

I should imagine some birds move individually and some birds find company and move as part of a flock...but when they get to better habitat I reckon the flocks really start to form, and then to rove around the area in search of food.

After a few suitable locations have been discovered a flock would then move around these...waves can often be seen moving through the trees at the mound, for example...and perhaps for some time! The icterine warbler stayed around for a good three days, and there are still birds that almost certainly arrived over the weekend using my garden. The latest one of note being a garden warbler yesterday.

Girdle ness of course has other attractions....! The sea, which hosted a fine black guillemot (in greyhope bay) yesterday. It's also better for vis mig, delivering 4 flyover redpoll, and of course, it always has the ability to surprise. A finch flock at the torry end of the south bank yesterday consisted mainly of linnets, but had the odd goldfinch, chaffinch, and two very handsome tree sparrow!

129 tree sparrow

104.45%

hits and misses...

2010-10-11T20:07:00.004+01:00

Sunday saw a huge clearout of migs from the ness...although the totals that remained would heve been enough to quicken the pulse on any other day, with a few whinchats, redstarts, siskins, bramblings and a garden warbler....as well as a few lingering chiffs and goldcrests. A lot of stuff seemed to have shifted inland, with many chiffs and goldcrests now feeding on the wasteground on Abbey road. The habbo there looks brilliant...I think next time it looks like there's going to be a fall, I might set about the fence with some wire cutters....

About 100 barnies (in three flocks) went south as well.

Today was a very different day. Beautiful and warm, and still, with blue skys, which seemed to encourage things out into the open a little more. After spending this morning hunting around for a vanishing mega, and a quick pub lunch, I was soon down on the north bank (where a lot of the activity has been these last few days) where I quickly picked up this little feller among the goldcrests.

This yeller brow was really showy from time to time and even called every now and the for good measure. As I was positioning myself to get some better pics of this bird, I spooked something clumsy from the long grass, which flopped down into the thick cover on the steepest part of the bank. Long legged, round winged, and rather browny was all I got on it, and I was pretty sure it was a juvvy water rail...but the brevity of my views would not let me count it. This would have been a full on patch tick so I was unsurprisingly frustrated as I headed off to the battery.

The battery was still holding on to the chiffs, crests, and good numbers of blackcap, and a male redstart that looked pretty stonking in the sun. While moving round through the cover I flushed another round and whirring winged, long legged bird...but this one I got a lot more on....a bloody water rail! A most unexpected patch tick....and two of them on the same day!

Feeling my luck was in, I toddled off to the south bank to work the cover that I'd given some pretty lightweight coverage over the last few days. Not long in and I was getting terrible views of a dull looking unstreaked acro...I was getting a bit excited by this but after composing an image of the bird from the various millisecond views I was getting (including a rather handy one of the wing) I worked out that it was a reed warbler....albeit a very greyish one....Fuscus sprang to mind but the bird promptly vanished and my views had been shite so I left it at that.

So my yearlist total creeps onward...is the unthinkable (a total of 130) just around the corner?

128 water rail

103.64%

FALL....

2010-10-09T14:16:00.002+01:00

I was out at first light this morning, and by gum there were a lot of birds about!

As I arrived at the allotments it was clear there had been some sort of fall...Redwings and song thrushes were everywhere, there were wee parties of siskin dotted about, with bramblings thrown in every now and again for good measure. From time to time the bushes seemed to be dripping with goldcrests and chiffchaffs, and blackcaps were well represented too. There were hundreds of birds.

With a fall of this magnitude there's always going to be a few other bits and pieces to be found. In the allotments there was a redstart and a cracking male ring ouzel. At various bits of cover on the golf course I had whinchat and a very showy reed warbler, and at the battery I had a black redstart and a pied flycatcher.

Birding on days like this can be so much fun!

A quick check of birdguides showed that a few stripey phylloscs were turning up on the east coast, so I decided to try my luck in the more mature cover along the railway embankment in Nigg bay. Again, there were loads of birds here but apart from 10 long tailed tits I could pull nothing unusual out of the tits, crests and chiffs.

So I went home...and while waiting for the lunchtime sausages to cook, decided to scan the trees at the back of the garden. Immediately it was clear that birds were beginning to move inland, with thrushes and a blackcap feeding on the berries, a few goldcrests...and...hang on, a yellow browed warbler! Who knows what else is lurking in the bushes of Torry?

Please excuse the horrific YBW record shots.

So the Rouzel and the Lotis put me over the threshold of my patch year list record, and up to a whacking 127 species.

126 Ring ousel

127 Long tailed tit

102.83%....and firmly into second on the patch list ladder.

tristis??

2010-10-08T16:01:00.004+01:00

Much movement first thing this morning, loads of thrushes and finches on the move, mainly song thrush and redwing, with good numbers of chaffinch and brambling thrown in for good measure...in total I've probably had about 25 - 30 brambling fly over today. When the drizzle calmed down there were also a fair amount of goldcrests, accompanied by a liberal sprinkling of blackcap, chiffs, wheatears and a lone willow warbler.

One chiffchaff at the battery was particularly interesting....and I reckon it's good for tristis, which is something I only ever say with a great deal of caution!

It showed several pro tristris features...most of which can be seen above:

-No yellow/olive tones at all on the body feathers, apart from the flash that can be seen on the underwing on the top photo...(which is quite pale).

-Greenish edges to flight feathers (especially secondaries) and tail feathers.

-All dark bill and legs...the only colour being on the soles of the feet.

-Pale edges to tertials, with dark centres.

-Indistinct (but definitely there) pale tips to greater coverts forming a weak wing bar.

-Rusty wash to ear coverts and supercilium.

-Weak eye ring.

-Dark alula contrasting with coverts.

-Bullfinch like call...plaintive, monosyllabic, and rather mournful. Could be written peu...a hint of a downslur.

This bird was present again the next day, when I managed to view it in better light. The bird still had the same striking greyish 'presence' but the greenish tones in the wings and tail were much more evident.

125 Brambling

101.21%