I was asked why I hadn't done a blog recently

Someone asked me the other day why I had not done a blog for a few weeks.  I have to confess to being a bit flattered.  I didn't know my #My200BirdingYear would be missed.  
All the excuses I that sprang to mind seemed a little weak.  I had a cold at the beginning of July (no that was probably in June).  My sister and her partner visited ( not a good reason as we did some bird watching.  Jill's Buchan Birds and Beasts Studio was open to the public last week end and I was doing lots of work to help her prepare (not good enough - that week I saw a Green Sandpiper that was a new tick for the year list)
I think the real reason was that I had spent a lot of time going to places and not seeing the target bird (Green Sandpiper being the exception) so a blog would have been 'went there, didn't see a lot, came home' and quite boring.
So when I didn't have a cold at in the middle of the month I was going on my morning walks and seeing the usual sort of birds and wildlife 

Spotted Flycatcher

Fox

Female Bullfinch

Juv. Dunnock

When my sister visited we went to the Ythan and the Bullers of Buchan

Common Seal

Curlews

Juv. Kittiwake

Arctic Tern

Sandwich Tern

During the month everyone seems to have been seeing Manx Sheerwaters off the coast so I have spent the odd half hour at Kinnaird Head looking out to sea through my telescope and not seeing any at all.  
The other bird I did not see in July was a Mediterranean Gull.  Word came out the Margaret had seen it at Cairnbulg Harbour.  I go there nearly every day when I go to get the daily paper and hadn't seen one.  I was making special trips to the harbour to find it on 'my patch'.  On one occasion it was to meet Margaret who had just seen it.  No luck no Gull.  Later it came through the internet that it had been seen just a couple of miles  (if that) down the coast at Inverallochy Golf Course.  I had a few more goes at finding the bird in both locations without success.  I gave up when a report came through that it had been sen at the Loch of Strathbeg Lagoon on the 27th.  No one has seen it since.  On one of the days I did get a good Arctic Skua photo

Arctic Skua

The other birding thing to report is that I found a few colour ringed birds at Cairnbulg.  One was a Sanderling - third bird from the left in this photo.

Sanderling

 I have reported the sighting and been told that it the white one with a little flag could be an American ring.  I haven't had any feedback yet.

I found two Black-headed Gulls with rings.  One was a juvenile the other an adult, with a long lens and a heavy crop it is possible to read the lettering on the ring. 

Ring on an Adult Black-headed Gull

I have had feedback:-
'This bird was ringed by Grampian RG as age at least 2 years, sex unknown on 17-Jul-2014 23:00:00 at Ythan Estuary, Newburgh, Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, UK'

The one success has been the Green Sandpiper.  On 23rd (the same day I took the Arctic Skua photo) I got a message from Jimmy that there had been a 'possible' sighting of one at the Loch of Strathbeg.  When I got there the visitors centre was shut, I had to peep through the artistic screen to see what was on and around the Starnafin Pool.  Here is an image of the screen I took a long time ago.

Trying to find one of those cut-outs at the right height for a telescope is not easy.

Not long after I arrived Alex turned up.  He had got the same message from Jimmy.  It was staring to get gloomy.  A midst was coming down and we were not finding the Green Sandpiper.  From the scene there was one patch of ground that we could not see.  It would have been foolish if we had left and not tried to find a view point that covered that bit.  We did find such a place by skirting round the barn and trampling through the undergrowth to a fence that provided the vantage point we were looking for.  But the Green Sandpiper was not to be seen.  Visibility continued to deteriorate.  We were just on the point of calling it a 'lost cause' when Alex saw the bird fly into the very patch of ground we had moved to cover.  It was not there long enough for either of us to get a photograph.  It flew further away to one of the islands in the wet ground beyond Starnafin Pool.  That flight was enough to confirm that it was indeed the Green Sandpiper, its white rump and two tone body clearly visible.   Again it did not stop there long but flew even further away.  There it settled down and there we were able to get a photo albeit leaving a lot to be desired.

Green Sandpiper

 Alex and I were able to leave Starnafin with a bit of a smile on our faces.

As is the way of these things the following day several people went to Strathbeg to see the Green Sandpiper but were not successful.  And as id the way of such things over the next few days I saw the bird on three different days during my early morning walk round Lonmay.

Total on list 198




 

A Sunday Jaunt

I got two messages about rare(ish) birds at Loch of Skene to the west of Aberdeen. on Saturday.  One said that a Green-winged Teal and a Black-necked Grebe were there in the morning.  The other reported that they were still there in the evening.

On Sunday mid morning after our weekend guests (Daughter and three grandsons) had left for Edinburgh I took off to the Loch of Skene to find these birds.  I was expecting a largish crowd of birders to be there and that they would have found the birds and would be able to point them out to me without much hassle.  But life is never that easy.

There were two birders there who were on their way home.  They told me that they hadn't seen the birds and that earlier visitors had failed to find them.  This meant that I had to scan the loch just in case they had been overlooked.  I hunted through scores of Tufted Ducks and Goldeneye but there was not sight of a Grebe.  I found a small group of Teal but not one was the Green-winged Teal I was looking for.  All this took me beyond lunch time so I stopped off in Westhill to get a sandwich, a drink and I have to confess a blueberry muffin. I decided to go to the Ythan to park up with a view of the upper estuary to eat lunch and watch for an Osprey or two to turn up for their lunch.  Unfortunately it was high tide and it is my experience that the Ospreys fish the Ythan at low tide.  And this was born out.

I did think that I could not go home without at least one more tick for the year list.  The Bullers of Buchan is sort of on the way home from the Ythan and here I should be able to find a Puffin or two at this time of the year.  It did not take long to find them.  Not at the nest site but on the water at the bottom of the cliffs so about 150 feet away.

One Puffin

Three Puffins

One thing I learnt was that Puffins mate in the water.  That is what is going on in this next photo.

Puffin mating

 There were a few other bird around a well.

Guillemots, Razorbills and Kittiwakes

Kittiwake

Fulmar

 When I got home I read through my emails and found one timed an hour before I left for the Loch of Skene that said that neither the Green-wing Teal nor the Black-neck Grebe had been seen that morning.  If I had seen that when it was sent I may not have gone out for the day and had a good though frustrating days birding



Total on list 142 

Poor Visability

12th Mach 2017

Yesterday Lynn posted some great picture of Crossbills onto Facebook.  They were at Lenabo woods which isn't far away.  The other place I wanted to go to was the Bullers of Buchan to see what seabird had returned to nest on the cliffs.

Lenabo woods used to be an Airship base during the 1924 -18 war

Now it is huge conifer plantation but it has a fair number of deciduous trees as well.  Today it was rather damp and misty

 

It is a pity that historic and beautiful places like this are used as a dumping ground.  

 

Especially when there is a modern waste facility just a few miles away in Peterhead that takes all kinds of rubbish.

I didn't see any Crossbills but then it is a big forest and they do tend not to stay in the same place for long. I dad take a photo of a Chaffinch and as a sign of Spring some catkins

Chaffinch

Catkin

 The Bullers of Buchan are not far away but the closer you got to the sea the thicker the mist and fog became.

The Bullers of Buchan consists of nine fishing cottages in three rows.  The ones nearest to the sea are on the top of a cliff with only a footpath between them and a very long drop.

The cliffs are spectacular with many different rocky elements.  One, called 'The Pot' is a collapsed sea cave.  Today you could not see the bottom of it of the mouth of the 'cave'. through the fog.  To the South lies Slains Castle which was the inspiration for Bram Stokers 'Dracular'.  Samuel Johnson also visited the area.  Here is a link to his description of Slains Castle and the Bullers of Buchan.

Through the fog I could see that Guillemots and Razor bills had returned to the cliff face but not yet in great numbers.

Guillemots and Razorbills

Guillemots and Razorbills (clarified with the Lightroom Dehaze slider)

Guillemots and Razorbills

Kittiwakes were also present.

Kittiwake

Kittiwake

Herring Gulls had found nest sites towards the top of the cliffs where they are not so sheer and vegetation is taking hold.  I only saw one pair of Fulmars, again towards the top.  Shags nest low down near the waters edge and the fog was too thick to see any.

Herring Gulls

Fulmar

  The mist and fog was clearing as I drove home.  By the the afternoon when Jill and I went for a walk on Fraserburgh Esplanade the sky was blue and the sun was shining

Fraserburgh Harbour Beacon (the Golden Horn) and Two Paddle Surfers

Total on list 129