Tickety Boo

Yesterday Alex and I went on a long trek (by car of course) to various bits of the Cairngorms.  I suppose we went the long way round to get to Glenshee.  We went via Strathdon and over the moorland to Balmoral.  Not a bad long way round.  This is what we saw:-
A very obliging Snipe that stayed on the fence post for quite some time while we took photos.  It even changed its pose every so often without being asked.

 n aloof looking Red Grouse that had clearly posed for professional photographers taking shots for whisky adverts and did not want to be associated with rank amateurs

 A Meadow Pipit that didn't stay around for long

and a Stonechat looking decidedly scruffy

Our target bird was a Ring Ouzel and we were told that it is often in the car park at Auchallater south of Braemar.  If there wasn't one there we were bound to see one on the four mile walk to the bothy at Loch Callater.  It was a hot day.  We didn't fancy a four miles there and another four miles back.  But our luck was in.  At the car park we got out to stretch our legs and straight away heard the plaintive song of a Ring Ouzel.  I have to confess it was a sound that I was not expecting.  The book says '...a few repeated notes or motifs at a slow tempo'.  This was one long call descending in pitch that had an unearthly quality.  It was not long before we saw the bird itself.  It wasn't with us for very long - a dash across the heather at the back of the car park, a short stop on a fence post and off across the road into the valley.

Ring Ouzel

That saved us an eight mile hike.

We carried on along the A93 t0 the summit at the Glenshee Ski Centre.  We did this mainly because it would have been churlish not to given we were in the area.  We may have sen some more Ring Ouzels or even a Ptarmigan or two or perhaps a Golden Eagle but we didn't, just more Red Grouse.

From here we retraced out steps and headed for Glen Tanar.  On our way we stopped outside the Boat Inn in Aboyne because we had been told that the trees on the river bank held Garden Warbler.  No luck on the warbler but we did spend some time trying to get photos of Sand Martins that were nest building in the river bank. We couldn't get views without a lot of vegetation in the way. There are much better photos of Facebook

Sand Martin

Alex wanted a picture of a Green Woodpecker.  On our last visit we heard one but it remained out of sight.  On this visit it wasn't even calling.  We did a short walk on the Juniper Trail.  It was full of Willow Warblers and Chaffinches we did hear a Chiffchaff and another warbler but ere unable to identify it by sound and couldn't see it.  Had we got a positive ID it would have meant one more tick for the year list.

The next and final stop was the Forest of Birse.  On the way I was given a lesson on the pronunciation of Doric place names.  The village of 'Strachen' is pronounced 'Straun' but the manager of Scotland's national football team is still pronounced 'Strachen'.

It is a long single track road running along side the Waters of Feugh (don't ask me how to say it) to the car park at the end.  What struck me was the number of Mistle Thrushes, there are very few in the Fraserbugh area.

Mistle Thrush

From the car park the road became a private track leading to farms and into the mountains

We made two discoveries here.  The first was a Red-legged Partridge and the second a Slow Worm.

Red-legged Partridge

Slow Worm

It was then the long drive home.

Just for fun we put together a 'trip list'.  Here it is, in no particular order:-

Buzzard, Pied Wagtail, Song Thrush, Mistle Thrush, Woodpigeon, Red Grouse,Black Grouse, Pheasant, Raven, Snipe, Common Gull, Lapwing, Willow Warbler, Stonechat Meadow Pipit, Oystercatcher, Goosander,  Dipper, Chaffinch, Curlew,Jackdaw, Swallow, Ring Ouzel,  Mallard, Blackbird, Siskin, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Carrion Crow, Rook, House Sparrow. Sand Martin, Dunnock. Robin. Blackcap. Great Tit, Starling, Herring gull, Magpie, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Greylag Goose, Feral Pigeon, Black-headed Gull, Teal Redshank and Linnet.  I make that 45 so a target has been set for future trips.

We also saw Red Deer. Roe Deer, Mountain Hare, Brown Hare and Rabbit.  A Slow Worm, Speckled Wood and some White and some Reddish butterflies but we were not paying much attention to them.

Today there were three 'Tick to add to the year list.

A Sedge Warbler heard on my morning walk it would not come out to be photographed.

And a Lesser Whitethroat and Whimbrel at Rattray this afternoon.  I took some time to find these birds.  The Lesser Whitethroat was in the garden of the Lighthouse Cottages and only came into view when I went back for a second look after seeing the Whimbrel which I only found after I had given up on the Warbler.  The Cottages had Willow Warblers, Chiffchaffs and loads of Swallows as well as Linnets, Robins, a Wren and a Dunnock and House Sparrows.  Meadow Pipits, and Sky Larks, Curlews, Lapwing, Jackdaws and Carrion Crows were in the adjacent fields with the Whimbrel. 

Lesser Whitethroat

Curlew on the left, Whimbrel on the right

Swallow, this one kept returning to this perch

And don't forget the rabbits

Back lit Bunny

Total on list 168

An Early Morning Start

I was up well before the lark yesterday.  The alarm was set for 3.00 am.  The plan was to pick up Alex at 4.00 and be at Glen Muick for 6.00 in the morning.  The mission was to see a Black Grouse lek.

And that is what happened.  However the wildlife watching happened before we parked the car.  On the way up the glen there were tens perhaps over a hundred Red Deer just at the road side.  The photos are rather grainy because the light was poor and the ISO cranked up to get a good exposure.

Red Deer

Mostly the deer were standing around in loose groups and not posing as one would have liked.  There were exceptions

Three Red Deer

One or twice we got one of the stags to strike a classic 'Monarch of the Glen' pose.

Red Deer Stag

Interestingly all the stage seemed to be sporting their 2016 antlers although it is this time of year that they are discarding then to grow the 2017 updates.

The other encounter on this road was with a Mountain Hare.  It stopped just by the road but was off before Alex could get a photo out of the passenger window.  We were not to know that this would not be our only Mountain Hare encounter so were cursing our missed photo and consoling ourselves that it was in any case too dark to get a decent image.

 Both Alex and embarked on this adventure for the day in the hope that we would see some birds to tick on our year list.  Alex has the same ambition as me - to get to 200 birds by 31st December 2017.  Like me this is the first, and possibly the only time we will do such a thing.

Neither of us expected that our first tick of the day would be a Red-legged Partridge.  But just as we had seen to grouse in the bottom of the Glen we saw two RLPs close by.  (Not to be confused with LRP birders abbreviation for a Little Ringed Plover or indeed LRPs which in the days of vinyl records that are making a comeback is a Long Playing Record)
Mostly they spent their time with us scurrying round in the tussocky grass trying not to be seen.

Red-legged Partridge

But they clearly decided that the only way to stop us looking at them was for one to come out into the open and give us a good photo opportunity before they disappeared.

Red-legged Partridge

Red-legged Partridge

I have always thought of the RLP as a bird of lowland farmland.  On the drive to Glen Muick Alex and I wondered where we could find one for our 2017 list and came to the conclusion that it would have to be one of those birds that was seen as a matter of luck rather than careful planning.  So our luck was in and in a most unexpected place.

So on to our main goal for the day.  This was to be a tick for Alex but not for me.  I had seen a Black Grouse on 29th January (see the blog post 'Sundays Big Trip').  This would be my first male Black Grouse of the year and the first time I had visited the lek for some time.

First I have to make it clear that this is a well known lek and is in a wardened area, second that we kept our distance in order not to disturb the birds.  The following photo was taken with a 400mm lens and as you can see they are a long way off.  A Lek by the way is an area where male birds meet to display and on occasions fight to determine which one has the right to mate with the females.  It is however the female bird that makes the final choice.  Several bird species do the mating thing in this way.  Black Grouse Lek for muck of the year but April/May is the key time of the year.

Black Grouse at the Lek

Here are some heavily cropped photos, so the quality is not that good.

Black Grouse Squaring Up

Sometime more than two birds are involved

Black Grouse Displaying

Red Deer also seemed to have got the bug and a couple were playing at the rut in a halfhearted fashion.  As you probably know the rut in earnest is an Autumn spectacle.

Red Deer

Yesterday morning at one time we counted 17 birds on the Lek.  All the black grouse we saw were males.
By 8.30 the lek was over.  The birds were drifting away from the display area leaving the glen floor to the Lapwing, Oystercatchers, Curlew,

Greylag Geese and Common Gulls.  The Red Deer having already left.

Lapwing

Common Gull

Greylag Geese

Red Grouse were all around us, mainly up on the mountain sides.

On the way back to the car we got a bonus of a Wheatear, another tick for Alex.

Wheatear

A better photo of a Wheatear than the one I didn't dare put on my blog post of 11th April 'The Egg Thief' but it could be better still.

From Glen Muick we decided to go in search of another two year list ticks at Glenshee.  Glenshee is a ski resort some 2,000 ft above sea level.  We hoped to see snow buntings and Ptarmigan.

The Ptarmigan, pure white in the winter would have shown up well as there was no deep snow.  In the spring they start to moult into their brown and grey summer plumage.  This made then the same colour as the rock strewn mountains with a pockets of thin snow.  We did not see a Ptarmigan despite and extensive search with telescope and binoculars.  The only snow bunting we saw, was like the Ptarmigan donning  more brown and grey than its white winter winter feathers on a distant fence post but nevertheless a year tick for me.

The other creature changing from winter white to summer grey and brown was the Mountain Hare.  There were so many of them that only the most casual of glances would miss them.  They were constantly on the move which instantly gave them away.  We could have watched them all day but had to remind ourselves that we were looking for Ptarmigan.  But that didn't stop us from going a long way to filling the cameras' memory card with cute pictures.

We eventually gave up trying to find the Ptarmigan and headed back down towards Braemar and back down the A93 to Aboyne to cross the river Dee and have lunch at Glen Tanar.  We than went on a four or five mile walk on the three bridges route and saw very little, on Crossbills, no Capercallies, but lots of Chaffinches.The only bird of note was a Bullfinch.....

Bullfinch

....until we got back to the car at the stables car park.  Last time we were at Glen Tanar see blog post for 28th March 'The Beast') Trevor told us that the fields by the stables were good for Green Woodpeckers.  We spent some time scanning the fields and came up with Blackbirds, Starlings, Song and Mistle Thrushes and Pied Wagtail.  We then heard the unmistakable yaffle of a Green Woodpecker coming from over the wall behind us.  Thank you Trevor, at the time I was a bit sceptical but you were right.  It is a good spot for Green Woodpecker.  Unfortunately it remained behind the wall and went unseen.  Of course it means we will have to go back at some time.

Lets leave this blog not with wild life but with some scenery

Loch Muick

Little Waterfall, Glen Muick

Little Waterfall, Glen Tanar

Total on List 146

Sundays Big Trip

Sunday was going to be a Big Birding Trip.  I started from home in the dark to drive the two and a half hours to Mar Lodge Estate in Upper Deeside.  The weather was just as predicted by the Met Office.  It was still, there were very few clouds and there was snow on the ground.  Little wonder the photographer in me got distracted and had to stop for some scenic photos

Upper Deeside

Upper Deeside

But I arrived quite early.  The mountain climbers who had stopped overnight in their camper vans were only just getting their first cup of tea before tackling the snow capped peaks of the Cairngorms.  As a result I was first up the path the Glen Lui.  Only a little way along I got my first bird of the day and a tick for the year list.  A Black Grouse

Black Grouse - Glen Lui

My second bird, again another tick was heard first and then seen - at a distance- so no photo.  It was a Raven.

From then on for the next three hours not one single bird.  Lots of views, lots of hill walker to pass the time of day with.

These four were off the bag two Monroes (peaks over 3000 feet).  I had a chat with them about their walk and about the work that the National Trust for Scotland were doing to restore the natural Caledonian woodland habitat which will help the Black Grouse, Capercaillie (my first thought when I saw the Grouse was that it was a Capercaillie, mainly because if its size as it flew from the forest floor into the Scots Pine), and other iconic Scottish fauna and flora.

...but not one solitary single bird of any sort until I was nearly back at the car park when I heard and then saw a Coal Tit.

I left Mar Lodge Estate with three birds seen and two year ticks to go on to Glenshee.

Glenshee is home to a ski resort on the A93 between Braemar and Blairgowrie.  It is famed, not just for the skiing but for the Snowbuntings that frequent the car park, the Ptarmigan on the ski slopes and Mountain Hare.  I saw none of these unless you count the Hare road kill on the way back to Braemar.  I did see a covey, or is it a pack of Red Grouse.  Another tick for the year list.  Of course there were the views.

Perhaps one reason for the lack of wildlife was the large number of families enjoying the snow both on the slopes and in the car park.  I made a mental note to go back during the week and in school term time.

So there was nothing to it than to drive home.  Four birds and three to list (not counting the Carrion Crows, Rooks and Jackdaws I saw in the villages.

I drove back via the Glen Tanar Estate on the South side of the river Dee.It prides itself on its wildlife, open access and conservation work.  When I have been here in the past I have seen Green Woodpeckers, Jays and other birds that would add to the goal of 200 birds in 2017.  But like Mar Lodge and Glenshee the bird life was conspicuous by its absence.

And the views were not up to the standards of earlier in the day.










Total on list 108